Quinn Norton

1 month ago | emptywheel.net | Quinn Norton

What We are Quietly Losing in All the TumultLast 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.

2 months ago | emptywheel.net | Quinn Norton

The Other Half of the AI relationshipWhen 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 so close and attentively to AI that we lose track of the fact that we’re looking into a mirror. The source of all AI’s power and knowledge is humanity’s strange work. It’s human in form and content, and only humans use and are used by it.

2 months ago | emptywheel.net | Quinn Norton

How Vance unsettled the EuropeansWhile 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 decided in a meeting between the US and Russia only, has swept the legs out from under Europe, NATO, and the post-war transatlantic consensus.

2 months ago | emptywheel.net | Quinn Norton

A Normal Person’s Explainer on What Generative AI is and Does“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, it can not take account of problematic principles.

Nov 22, 2024 | emptywheel.net | Quinn Norton

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, but to hobble the next generation, and the next after that.