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
People often wonder about how attraction affects whether an interaction is sexual harassment or not. I have an answer for that, a story from my own life. This is my story, but I’m so damn tired of starring in it. Let’s make it your story this time. Warning: this piece is scary and disturbing af, […]
Let me tell you something you secretly believe, secret even from yourself, because you are an American: poor and sick children aren’t going to amount to anything. This is true whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.
Every year on December 4th I tell people about what was done to the 21-year old revolutionary, Fred Hampton, by the government of America and his city of Chicago in 1969. But this year I wanted to talk about what Fred Hampton gave us before he was assassinated, and maybe what he could have given us if he’d lived.
This statement is a seed, it’s written to be read aloud at gatherings, but not as-is. Take this, and make it your own, and share with those whom you love and are grateful for. My promise for this day is to be thankful. But gratitude is complicated. There’s always the lacuna in thanks, the thing […]
I know everybody is looking at that thing right now on social media. Hang back — don’t tell me what’s happening with the active shooter. Don’t tell me about the flood in progress. I don’t need to know about the skewed path of the car or the janky homemade bomb that might have gone off a thousand miles from me.
Computer systems are poorly built, badly maintained, and often locked in a maze of vendor contracts and outdated spaghetti code that amounts to a death spiral. This is true of nothing else we buy.
I’m really excited to announce that Quinn Norton, whom many of you may know from her great reporting at Wired, is starting to write again after a too-long hiatus. Even better, she’ll be sharing her work here, after she releases it to her Patreon supporters. The work will include both fiction (like this story) and […]