Quinn Norton is a writer who likes to hang out in the dead end alleys and rough neighborhood of the Internet, where bad things can happen to defenseless little packets. She writes about hackers, humans, bodies, technologies, and internets.
"Useless in terms of… tactical details" -Stratfor
The America We’re Losing I have a fond memory of dropping my barely school-aged child off with a friend for babysitting. My friend, Simone, took my daughter’s hand and said “You’re going to learn the right way to misuse a roman candle!” I held up my hands, and shouted “ten!” to indicate how many fingers […]
Proteins, Factories, and Wicked Solutions Part 3- But What is AI Good For? (Go to Part Two) There are many frames and metaphors to help us understand our AI age. But one comes up especially often, because it is useful, and perhaps even a bit true: the Golem of Jewish lore. The most famous golem […]
The Death of the Internet and Karim Khan’s Inbox The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan is not having a good year, and neither is the ICC in general. It was never an easy job, going after people who commit Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. The ICC tries to prosecute crimes in opposition to […]
Why you should use Signal (But maybe ditch Whatsapp?) Pete Hegseth is Bad at His Job The Secretary of Defense and Fox Host Pete Hegseth keeps using Signal to talk about war plans with people he’s not supposed to be talking with at his day job. He also gets caught, because he’s bad at security […]
Protesting Safer in America It’s not looking good out there, and a lot of people in the coming months (and maybe years) will be taking the streets to show the government their displeasure. Protesting the Trump Administration is still legal, but there’s a lot you should know before you take your rights out for some […]
What We are Quietly Losing in All the Tumult Last week the ghouls of DOGE came to gut NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) by firing all the probationary employees, because they were the easiest to fire. It was terrible, but it won’t be their last visit. I wanted to take a moment to focus […]
The Other Half of the AI relationship Part 2- Pareidolia as a Service (Go to Part One) (Go to Part Three) When trying to understand AI, and in particular Large Language Models, we spend a lot of time concentrating on their architectures, structures, and outputs. We look at them with a technical eye. We peer […]
How Vance unsettled the Europeans While Musk was ripping through the US government like a 10 tonne toddler on cocaine, Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to the Munich Security Conference last week to tell Europeans how to run their democracies. His 19 minute speech, coupled with Trumps’ announcement that peace in Ukraine would be […]
A Normal Person’s Explainer on What Generative AI is and Does Part 1 – In the Beginning was the Chatbot (Go to Part Two) “Are you comfortably seated? Yes, well, let’s begin.” *Clears throat theatrically* “Our experience, in natural theology, can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like the discipline of practical reason, […]
Why Trump Won The making of the electorate Trump just won, and thusly the United States we have now, started decades ago in school. The Conservative Takeover of America was not secret, it was worse than secret; it was boring and bureaucratic. The conservatives worked slowly, patiently, and persistently to not merely change our institutions, […]