261–270 of 523 posts
Why does 9/11 matter so much but not the many far more horrible atrocities that the US regularly supports or commits (and that 9/11 was partly a response to). Clearly some lives are considered worth far more than others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heart disease and cancer are an aggregate of very many diseases — there are many types of heart diseases (stroke, cardiac arrest, coronary artery disease), and many types of cancers. COVID is a single disease that has killed many multiples more than a single heart disease or cancer.
This is semantics. Taking just heart disease as an example, all of the types that you mentioned are heavily influenced by the same types of behaviors. Smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc. I addressed this in another comment elsewhere in the thread.
In contrast, heart disease and cancer are much more expensive to mitigate. Regular exercise reduces the incidence of some heart diseases for the average person by about ~50% (estimating from the graph) [2]. We have no cheap way of reducing cancer incidence (besides vaccines for some viruses that cause cancer) — for example, intervening in cases of substance addiction is expensive.
So even if your comparison was correct (it's not), how is it relevant? Are you trying to argue that the government should compel people to completely alter their lifestyles before they should mandate masks or vaccines? That makes no sense, because 1) preventing cancer requires mandating vaccines and 2) the interventions are orders of magnitude more expensive.
Or, are you trying to suggest that the deaths of 650,000 people (in the US) are insignificant because there are some aggregate diseases that kill more? And therefore, because we can't stop all death, it's pointless to try to even mitigate some death?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
[2] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.CIR.00000488...
If anyone is confused about the BBC not syncing up with the other news coverage, it seems like the creators did not take the time difference into account. You will need to get to 13:59 GMT. On a personal note, that's the channel I was watching on that day 20 years ago. Watching the exact same coverage again is just ... unsettling.
I hate the reminders of 9/11 every anniversary. I know "never forget" is a slogan, but I really am trying to forget. It impacted me deeply. I left NYC and never came back.
Specifically, the "Janitor Hears Explosion from WTC Basement" in the news ticker includes claims that an explosion occurred in the basement 40 seconds before the first plane impact. Some quick Googling shows that this janitor and another associate went on to try to build a careers on top of these conspiracy theories. One of them even tried to sue President Bush and 155 others over 9/11 with a rambling lawsuit that alleges everything from controlled demolition of the towers to sex trafficking by the defendents.
Not a credible source, to say the least. I have no idea why this site thought to include his claims, but I suspect they're trying to seed doubt about the official timelines.
Cool site, but take some of the editorialized content with a huge grain of salt.
When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…
Re: Indian Point - containment buildings are pretty armoured by design. The Indian point containment vessel walls are several feet of high-grade steel reinforced concrete. You might be thinking of the skinny, low quality rebar used in common construction at this point - this isn’t that, the rebar here is 2.25 inches thick, made of good-quality steel, and spaced every fifteen inches or so. The containment building is…
At the time of the attack, more modern aircraft were used, which had much thinner skins and were much more lightly constructed. Which means that they got much more shredded by the building construction as they passed through, and which also helped take off a lot more of the fire insulation from the trusses in the building.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Al qaeda won. They destroyed the way of American life before 9-11. We are a different country now. So much government control over the last 20 years because of the 9-11 like TSA, Patriot act, massive government surveillance all in the name of “Homeland Security”. Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers exist precisely because of 9-11. The distrust from all of the secret government acts is only part of the equation. The t…
Your first paragraph laments the expansion of government control and surveillance triggered by 9/11 (which I agree with), but in your next, you use pejoratives to identify people who choose not to get a vaccine or engage in hygiene theater. How would you classify the bully tactics being used by the current administration to coerce citizens into getting a vaccine? This is yet another example of government control and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unpopular question, how did a plane and jet fuel burn down a steel reinforced building? That's the germ of a bunch of 20 year old paranoid conspiracy theories, basically the 2001 version of COVID denialism. If you're asking a genuine question, there are decades-old engineering analyses and all kind of layman's translations of them that explain it. I'm sure they can be easily Googled.
None of them ELI5, as I’ve originally asked. I’d love an ELI5 perspective. Thank you.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a50/1230517/
Goes into depth debunking most of the conspiracies I've heard of.
My best ELI5 for the one you are asking about:
Does a bar of chocolate need to melt completely into a puddle of liquid before it changes shape and becomes softer?
Of course not. The chocolate bar will become mushy and deform before it becomes a liquid.
Jet fuel burns at 800 - 1500 F, whereas steel melts at 2750.
But just like chocolate on a warm day, it loses its strength at much lower temperatures. By 1500 degrees steel is at less than half of its strength.
Have you ever wondered how ancient civilizations managed to melt metals, or create ceramics? After all, they didn't have jet fuel yet!
Well, when some kilns use wood as a fuel source, they can burn at up to 2000 F! Wow! Isn't combustion neat?
The WTC was full of flammable materials like wood, plastic, rubber, and cloth. Jet fuel burns at 1500, but just like a wood kiln, other sources of combustion can make things much hotter.
TL;DR - You don't need to heat something to the point of being a puddle of liquid to weaken it.
It's interesting how little the broadcasts of other nations changed whereas American news just replayed 9/11 footage time and time again. The CCTV played a soap opera and BBC was focused on mad cow's disease. It also appears that NHK was much more focused on a typhoon in Hokkaido.
I personally vividly remember watching the news on BBC World and saw at least one of the towers collapse on live TV. You don't really forget something like that.