Notices by Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)

They took a Golden Girl who served in WWII off the DoD website?
These people are just stupid. And nuts. Stupid nuts. https://www.jta.org/2025/03/20/politics/holocaust-remembrance-pages-removed-in-pentagons-dei-purge

Bea Arthur, vet: https://web.archive.org/web/20250208020826/https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2803048/before-stage-and-screen-bea-arthur-shined-as-a-marine/

@MAKS23 I am so, so confused by Meloni

Still thinking about Mark Klein. I only hung out with him a few times, but he was a great guy. He gave me his book and we chatted a lot. Told me a lot about his union - it was clear being a union man was a lot of what gave him the courage to take on the telco-government-NSA spying complex. We've lost the world that made him, and we're poorer for it.

Won't it be fun to bring back that bullshit. Then a whole new generation can grow up chronically ill with shitty lungs like me.

My daughter can run circles around me, and I love it.

@fluffykittycat when the trusts bust you, they bust you.

weirdly, the best movie on this is Who Framed Roger Rabbit 😂

What I grew up in:

what's gonna be fun is when companies and nation states start shooting each other's comsats out of the sky.

If this works Musk is going to be sooooooo maaaaad

https://mastodon.social/@MEActNOW/114140499095752123

Marco Rubio's theory is that the First Amendment doesn't apply to green card holders and no one, no one at all, should let that go by unnoticed. That is a rewrite of the most precious part of our constitution.

I've written about NOAA, one of the most important agencies hardly anyone knows much about. They're out here doing God's work, and DOGE is out to kill them. A lot of us might go with them if we can't stop these ghouls.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/03/06/noaa-the-biggest-little-agency-in-america/

Fun fact: the actual response to Trump's Joint Address to Congress was delivered in France.

At this point my AI series is on hold for a few days, partly because my kid is visiting, but mostly because I really need to sit down and tell you that the attack on NOAA means everything.

We need them every damn day. NOAA is the unsung hero not just of America but of the world's food supply. They are key in climate change. They are the agency that stops you from needing FEMA.

@evan we do know quite a bit about how humans learn language, and under what circumstances they don't. there's a lot we know about the construction of language, linguistics is not a new field. we definitely know enough to know it's not the AI attention mechanism or ingestion of vast datasets. we're born wanting to say ba ba ba, but language and meaning are deeply embodied for the first few years. and really the all of them, but that's too far for most people to go.

I would prefer to live in less interesting times.

What We Talk About When We Talk About AI

https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/14/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-ai-part-one/

I've published the first part of an explainer on artificial intelligence I've had going in my mind for a while.

Would love to hear what you think of it, and if you like it, share it!

Without Sullivan, corruption would have ran unchecked in America. Without Sullivan, I wouldn't have had a career. Without Sullivan, a lot of people would have died from the accidents of unchecked corruption. Sullivan is the keystone of press freedom in opposition to corruption.

Corruption is the opposite of infrastructure. Sullivan keeps bridges up, roads whole, food safe, and medicine clean.

Where are we? Why are we just letting it all happen?

Remember the Muslim ban? The airports filled with people. The marches in New York and DC, and yeah, the pussy hats.

Now it's just crickets. We're quiet, now, waiting for the dems to save us, or just waiting for the ax to fall.

The scariest part of all of this chaos in the American government is the lack of protests in the streets.

Folks, my folks, are just leaning so hard into misinformation right now, and it's toxic and dangerous. People who are against this neo-fash takeover, people who feel disempowered -- I get the emotions and why feeling helpless leads to bad info hygiene, but it's more important than ever to stay solid with reality and facts.

Don't spread it if you can't check it, or you don't know it for sure.