Lorri Hopping (HoppingFun) ➪ ➪ ➪ NYC

Clown school: "The worst moment has a name — le flop. It's the part everyone dreads, when you can feel your red nose begin to droop as the dead air fills the room. But it's also where the real work begins."

I think this would be one of the hardest of all degrees for me to attain.

At a clown school near Paris, failure is the lesson For decades, students at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier have been paying to bomb onstage. The goal isn't laughs — it's learning how to take the humiliation and keep going.

"Comedy and clowning begin not with jokes, but with the pleasure of being ridiculous... Of finding your idiot."

One of my gigs me to Baraboo, birthplace of the American circus, and to Ringling rehearsals, where my guide was Peggy, the first female clown. What a fascinating (and ancient!) art form.

Judge Orders Release of 5-Year-Old, Whose Detention Drew Outrage

Gift link to "One judicial finger in the dike" case.

First, they took his bunny hat and his Spiderman backpack, and then used him as bait to lure his mother to the door, and then detained him and his Dad in horrid conditions for 11 days. He got sick.

One kid, one case, one story... among how many?

Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept."

Astonishing thing for a judge to do.

Minnesotans on Bde Maka Ska, a lake in Minneapolis. Photo credit WCCO-TV

Greenpoint: St. Anthony has services in English, Polish, Spanish; Newton Canal (Superfund site) was frozen 2 days ago; one of two Polish bookstores I passed

Two dark figures hustle down a snowy city street as a hazy full moon glows above them.

Dark red soup in colorful Polish ceramic bowl with meat pierogi lurking beneath surface

Packs of bottled water outside a store on sidewalk pallets. Most of them frozen solid.

Spacious pinball arcade, 3 walls lined with machines and a bar table in the middle.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn, excursion today turned up a giant pinball arcade a block away, Polish pierogi & red borscht, full moon, frozen water.

This trend is giving me life. College is cool, knowledge is great. The liberal arts is rad. Being well rounded is the GOAT.

Fund all colleges and universities. We should be throwing money at them. Make it affordable for all. Let people take underwater basket weaving if they choose.

Announcing the IFTF x GDC Scholarship Program. We have a small number of passes to distribute amongst our community, so if you are interested, please visit this thread on IntFiction.org for details: intfiction.org/t/iftf-x-gdc...

TODAY is last chance to submit.

We've watched our games tick over various significant numbers inc 500 but nothing happened.

10 reviews shows "positive" as a blue label.
50 shows "very positive" if over 80%
500 shows "overwhelmingly positive" if they are 95% positive.

Quick snaps from Playcrafting's game showcase at OSNYC.

That Cardboard Box in Your Home Is Fueling Election Denial A previously unreported boom in profits for the shipping supply giant Uline has provided the funds for a deeply conservative Midwestern family to bankroll anti-democracy causes around the country.

That cardboard box in your home is fueling election denial...

A boom in profits for the shipping supply giant Uline provided the funds for a deeply conservative Midwestern family to bankroll anti-democracy causes around the country.

(Published 2022)

The anti-ICE/CBP rally in Chicago's Daley Plaza has grown significantly in just the last half hour.

The crowd is spilling out into street; I'd say there's over a thousand people here at this point.

Opinion | Students Are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up

Beyond using LLMs to do their writing, coding, drawing, and planning, young people are also off-loading to #AI the important process of learning how to navigate emotionally charged social situations. Clay Shirky (gift link):

YouTube video by Sra Lyn Catherine O'Hara's John Candy Eulogy

Catherine O'Hara deserves her own funny, personal, moving eulogy from someone who knew and loved her as much as she know and loved John Candy. Someone who knew her real laugh.

youtu.be/O8CoPFXED_Y?...

DOJ has since killed this link. This is what was there:

How lucky are the game players and game devs in striking range of Wakefield, England? Brenda & John Romero will BOTH be in town for DARK AND DOOMY, an exhibit of indie games, a comedy show, a fiendish escape room. Beam me up! (if only).

@brendaromero.bsky.social @johnromero.bsky.social

Frozen East River with Manhattan skyline on horizon, as seen from command post on Pulaski Bridge.

East River frozen! No ferries running, boats about to get iced in.

View from Pulaski Bridge between Brooklyn and Queens. #nyc #polarvortex

Multiple giant oar fish swimming towards the surface of the ocean. There is a tiny diver near the middle one.

Pelagic Respite

In memory of Alexei Navalny
Who sacrificed his life fighting Putin
✊ Don't Give Up #StopPutin #StopRussia

OS NYC - Gaming, Esports, Streaming - NYC OS NYC is the home for gamers and streamers in New York City. Located at 50 Bowery, OS NYC is the place to play your favorite video games and stream. Fitted with top of the line PCs, Xboxes, PS5s, and...

TWO game events in/near Chinatown this evening couldn't be more different. A private play test group was both welcoming and interesting, for emerging documentary game Normandie. Then, I spent an hour at Playcrafting's wild game party exhibition, with wall to wall to wall games at OS NYC. Whoa.

More 'No Kings' protests planned for March 28 as outrage spreads over Minneapolis deaths Organizers are planning what they anticipate will be the largest "No Kings" protests yet, targeting what they call authoritarianism under President Donald Trump.

Save the date, spread the word: March 28, the third No Kings protest aims for record crowds in the nationwide march to preserve our democracy and protect our Constitutional rights.

#nokings

If you work in journalism: you cannot use machine learning to upscale a photo and still be telling the truth. It WILL lie, even if you don't intend to tell one.

It can only do what it does by inventing details where none exist, which means it will inherently be misrepresenting reality.

Playtesting Playtest with Schell Games by filling out this form!

Schell Games is cooking up a lot of exciting projects, but we need YOUR help to make them outrageously fun! If you're interested in playtesting early versions of our games and experiences, sign up at schellgames.com/playtest.

You can join in-person or remote, and groups are welcome!

ICYMI, here's the 2021 investigative report that resulted from the whistleblower leak. #taxtherich

"Only the little people pay taxes."
—Leona Helmsley (billionaire "Queen of Mean" convicted of tax evasion and extortion

Students and recruiters: Register now for the NASW Virtual Internship Fair on Feb. 6, 2026 NASW student members looking for great science writing internships or one-on-one networking conversation with editors at news and science organizations are invited to register for the 2026 NASW Virtual Internship Fair.

Seeking excellent candidates for a paid internship in science writing? Reserve your spot at NASW’s Virtual Internship Fair, scheduled for Friday, February 6 from 1-5 PM ET. NASW membership is not required for recruiters, and the “table” is free.


SIGN UP TO RECRUIT:

We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) | Yarn Spinner Early 2025, ACMI, the Australian museum of screen culture, put out a call for comissions for Game Worlds. They wanted to commission microgames from Australian developers, and the brief was deliberatel...

Every word of this article is a delight. There are some great anecdotes about working for real tip lines.

yarnspinner.dev/blog/hint-li...

Alex Pretti’s Friends and Family Denounce ‘Sickening Lies’ About His Life

Gift link: Family, friends, colleagues in the medical profession remember Alex Pretti as someone who devoted his life to helping, to caring, to making the world a better place.

Let's make sure their voices are heard above the sound and the fury and the utter nonsense.

#minnesota #ice

The Chun regime that my wife fought against in the 80s did the exact same thing. They needed a "crisis" that "only they could solve" to hoard more ill-gotten power, so they chose one city (Gwangju), declared its inhabitants enemies, sent trucks full of soldiers to violently attack and kill them.