Trent Hergenrader

Joyce Carol Oates @Joyce... 17h O So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend's or relative's accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the "most wealthy person in the world."

Elon Musk ' @elonmusk X.com Oates is a liar and delights in being mean. Not a good human.

lol she got his ass and he knows it

Cover art for "The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play" by Trent Hergerader and Stephen Slota. The Image depicts a purple horizon set against a yellow background with a timeline of events, historical structures, and a cityscape beneath a giant hand. The back cover reads: The Worldbuilding Workshop is the first comprehensive treatise on worldbuilding as an educational tool for deconstructing, analyzing, and contextualizing the planet’s most urgent, mind-boggling questions. The process unfolds across six stages that collectively encourage hypothesis formation, research, group discussion, and systems modeling. By interrogating governmental, economic, social, and cultural forces at various points in space and time, learners are prompted to reflect on: 1) how these forces came to be in the first place; 2) how different people experience(d) these forces based on their respective socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts; and 3) how each of us can shape these forces within our shared reality. Beyond advocacy for avant-garde technologies or flash-in-the-pan activities, co-authors Trent Hergenrader and Stephen Slota point to worldbuilding as a strategy for reconfiguring education to meet 21st century challenges and teach critical thinking as well as its less-talked-about sibling, empathy. Featured topics include: how and why worldbuilding is supported by contemporary theories of human thinking and learning (e.g., constructionism, situated cognition); interrelationships between constructivist teaching and assessment practices; how instructors and learners can co-develop accurate representations of worlds set in specific places and times; geographies and demographies of worlds; creation of ethical character sketches that capture broad characteristics of diverse populations; and how instructors and learners can interact with co-constructed worlds through simulation and role-play.

JUST TWO MORE MONTHS (!!) until The Worldbuilding Workshop hits bookshelves/earbuds near you!

I'm so psyched to finally reveal the book cover, which @mitpress.bsky.social graciously allowed me to design.

The *final* final version may vary very slightly, but this is the general layout.

a woman is standing in front of a chain link fence with the words wake up on her face . ALT: a woman is standing in front of a chain link fence with the words wake up on her face .

I’ve read a billion books and watched a million films and documentaries about the rise of fascism in Europe in the 30s and I really never thought being one of the fascism noticers would feel like this but here we are

Really great thread—clearly articulates why @thergenrader.bsky.social and I have focused so much of our time and writing on helping educators implement worldbuilding and world modeling projects in their classrooms (to drive home foundational critical thinking and empathy skills).

This part.

Wordle 1,535 1/6*

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I should pay more attention to #Bluesky since my feed is much better than the dumpster fire of unbridled racism and bigotry on the site formerly known as #Twitter. But hard to have any faith in any tech since co-opting tools for evil is far, far too easy in the unregulated Wild West of the Internet.

Two endorsements for the upcoming book The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking & Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play. "The Worldbuilding Workshop shows how to center imagination—our mind’s world-building, time-traveling power—at the heart of education in a world that urgently needs it." - James Paul Gee, Regents Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University; author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy "A genuinely new, practical, and much-needed pedagogy for playful and connected learning. Where everything zigs to numbers and algorithms, The Worldbuilding Workshop zags to role-play and narrative to nurture humanistic inquiry of our complex worlds." - Sebastian Deterding, Chair of Design Engineering, Imperial College London; coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies

Ahead of our book's upcoming launch, @mitpress.bsky.social has shared a pair of fantastic endorsements from other researchers in the field! 🤯🤩

Home - Collaborative Worldbuilding A book to aid writers and game developers in the art of worldbuilding.

Thanks for the boost! Hope you've seen my 2018 book, Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers too. The methodology we use in the upcoming book is similar but geared for an audience of educators rather than storytellers.
www.collaborativeworldbuilding.com

Ah this is exciting, by my reckoning that’s two academic books on worldbuilding out this autumn, three’s a trend & a feature in the bag as they say in the carefully built world of hacky journalism.

❤️

#EAFC claims to be hyper realistic but they can’t even figure out that you need 5 distinct shirt colors every match: home side, away side, home keeper, away keeper, and referee. It’s not rocket science and would be easy to check before each match

Superheroine here

Trying to reformat a large document using ChatGPT.
Me: How is it coming?
ChatGPT: I haven’t started actually generating the .docx yet because your full essay text still needs to be pasted here in the chat for me to process in chunks.

Wow! It really IS like having a PhD-level expert by your side!

This past AWP in LA had a few panels on AI. It was pretty clear that most speakers weren’t familiar with it at all, much less how it might be used in beneficial ways. Mostly just uninformed hot takes, which is the typical AWP panel.

“I’d define it as self-awareness; an ability to trust your own judgement. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.” Joe Strummer on Punk.

Sam Altman says that ChatGPT is now like having a “superpower” and the equivalent of “a legitimate PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand, that can help you with whatever your goals are.”
This only reinforces in my mind that almost no one understands what PhD-level experts do. 🙄

one of my tiktok followers made this

Textbook sealioning: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealion...

This match absolutely reeks of “next goal wins” #goldcupfinal #goldcup2025 #usmnt #usamex

Damn it I turn around for two seconds and a wolf gets in my sheep breeding pen. I come back with some wheat only to find floating blocks of wool and mutton. I gave the wolf two bones but only got black clouds so I killed that $&@!er with prejudice. God what a miserable way to start my morning.

Coincidentally, I have also declared a cease fire in the Middle East.

Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts is a 128-page expansion for the Blades in the Dark roleplaying game — containing a treasure trove of lore, setting material, and alternative mechanics John Harper develop...

Proud to be the 4,748th backer 😎 on @BackerKit Crowdfunding for Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...

Coming in December...

A tale of two presidential coverages by WaPo. A stark example of how the legacy media helped push us into this disaster. On the top, Trump today with 151K jobs. On the bottom, Biden in 2021 with 194k jobs.

Re Zelensky at the WH, yet again, feminists and trauma/abuse- informed thinkers are years ahead of political analysts.

There is no acceptable affect, no way to charm an abuser, and no “deal” other than playing very very dead that would change how Trump and his flying monkey Vance behaved.

It's the most shameful day in US history since yesterday.