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9/11 in Realtime

911realtime.org

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Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#111

Post by peterleiser »

cout wrote: post #83
sanderjd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the feeling extremely clearly. And I still remember that feeling extending to the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, which I thought seemed justified and right. But I just as clearly remember how confused, frustrated, and just so disillusioned with the wisdom of my elders (I was still a teenager at this time) I felt when they were all so gung ho about invading Iraq, which clearly at the time had absolute…

I know next to nothing about geopolitics, but I always figured the the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan had something Iran since it's sandwiched between them.

Yes. Search for the phrase “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran” to see what folks were saying at the time .

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#112

Post by wizerdrobe »

tekla wrote: post #75

I was a kid living in the Bronx that day. I remember parents picking their kids up for no explained reason, the fucking TV cart showing the news, and going outside and seeing the smoke plume and the air smelling like burnt shit. Several kids in my class had parents who died on 9/11

The TV cart…

That’s probably the memory for many (most?) grade schoolers, isn’t it?

Was in a gifted and talented class that morning, we had the budget for a dedicated TV in the corner that stayed on all day with a global map showing the time and the position of sunlight moving over the globe. The administrators had a master controller that switched all the TVs in all the classrooms over to the news at the same time. Have little memory of the actual news but do remember having an old, stern southern lady (the kind that would paddle you if she still could) suddenly crying quietly as we watched the news that day.

That and our similarly elderly main teacher setting time aside the day before the invasion of Iraq to talk about the seriousness of going to war and what it meant for families. How she remembers her town before Korea and Vietnam.

With hindsight I wonder why Afghanistan just didn’t get talked about in the same seriousness as the invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan just kind of quietly happened, but the build up to Iraq just held more weight.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#113

Post by sanderjd »

marssaxman wrote: post #105
sanderjd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "even as a child", I would say "especially as a child". In my experience, this was a far more common experience among those of us who were not yet adults at the time, than among the adults. I have long felt that it is the greatest generational dividing line in the US. I was about half way through high school at the time, and the prevailing perspective of the march to war seems to be very different amon…

I was 25 then, but it seemed like mindless vengeful insanity all the same. The entire national character seemed to change, almost overnight, in a bleak and awful way; I felt like I was standing in the surf while a powerful wave receded, water and sand and gravel all rushing away around me, while I remained in place. I have felt like a foreigner here ever since, still a citizen but no longer an American.

Yeah. But would you say that your view was the prevailing one among people your age? Or, as I think you're implying, that you were more the odd one out, including amongst your peers?

Because unless I'm assuming wrong, I think your experience is in line with what I said.

My experience was different than yours though. It wasn't until I started mixing with more "grown ups" during college that I realized that actually the prevailing view among people even just a little older than me seemed to be in favor of the war, whereas the view I was familiar with from my own crowd of people my age was the opposite. And as I have talked to more and more people over time, I have continued to feel that this is basically correct about the prevailing view by age at that time.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#114

Post by rconti »

keepamovin wrote: post #15
dave84 wrote: post #11

I'm a bit lost, changing the timeline doesn't seem to correspond to the events or coverage of them. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

I think you need to "start it off" by pushing "Go" on the Controls window after you set a time. That seemed to then line everything up. Note that the Menu Bar time widget does not reflect the Timeline time tho!

yeah, I have no idea what's going on with the time. There is a 2 hour delta between the time in the box where I hit "go" and the "current time" on the menu bar. I'm on the west coast so it would make sense if it was a 3 hour difference, or a 0 hour difference, but 2 makes no sense to me.

Unless it was a DST change? But the 2007 change only happened for the start in March.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#115

Post by postalex »

very cool site, thank you. I didn't have TV that day, all I knew was from cnn and nytimes and fevered word-of-mouth, but years later I had a chance to dive into the various digital archives (including https://archive.org/details/911)—and what a remarkable time capsule they are. one result of that was this, a channel-browsing glimpse of America just before it happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMVTB2aVUg0

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#116

Post by dehrmann »

keepamovin wrote: post #22
swozey wrote: post #7

This stuff is so difficult for me to watch again, I was a senior in HS. Reading IRC logs from back then is also really interesting. And Nanog had a really interesting slideshow/powerpoint deep dive on the infrastructure outages that occurred. And of course the SomethingAwful thread that's been posted before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7990991 RE: this specific site.. interesting UX/UI choice. I was hoping I…

I relate: was also a senior. I had an English final that morning, I think. Earth shifted. It was an overwhelming experience seeing it happen on TV.

I was a senior. I grew up on the west coast, never been to New York, but my English teacher was from New York. She knew she'd lost friends that day, but not which ones. She held it together, but it really added a personal connection to what would have just been a horrifically impactful event on TV.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#117

Post by sophacles »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #76
linsomniac wrote: post #65

I had a fairly weird 9/11 realtime experience. I had pulled an all-nighter and ended up going to sleep right around the time this all started happening. So I went to sleep blissfully unaware, and then was woken up by my wife. Within 30 seconds of being woken up I learned: "4 planes were hijacked. They were flown into the World Trade Center. The WTC collapsed." I kept waiting for the punchline, but then realized it wa…

Something similar from my side. Was in college, on the West Coast, and had no early classes so I was still asleep. It wasn't until the girlfriend's family called her and woke her up - that we found out something was wrong. They were on the East Coast and her father was flying that day (just ended up grounded and stuck for a few days). But I don't think we woke up until 8 or 9am PST, Noon East... so by the time we wer…

One of my college housemates barged into my room and woke me up with "dude you need to turn on your tv". "What channel?" "It doesn't matter...".

TV warms up in time to see a replay of the second plane hitting.

I was groggy and said "woah good effects... what movie is this?".

The guy (who was rarely serious) looked me in the eye and said "this is real".

The world changed that day, in ways we're still figuring out.

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#118

Post by jihadjihad »

suckitsam wrote: post #69

There was a video I saw once several years ago that claimed to sync up ATC audio and flight radar of commercial and military traffic, but I haven't been able to find it since despite a couple cursory searches here and there. IIRC, it was a custom animation/overlay like they use in documentaries and newscasts, not a screenshot of FlightAware or anything. Any chance anyone knows what I'm talking about and has a link?

I'd be interested in seeing that as well. The only thing I can think of that is similar is the interactive Apollo 11 in Real Time: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#119

Post by shepherdjerred »

sneak wrote: post #57
bufordtwain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson

Call me crazy, but if our entire machinery of government can't function well enough to control itself internally to preserve human rights better than Mike Tyson, maybe we should toss the whole thing out and start over.

The purpose of a government has not historically been to preserve human rights

Re: 9/11 in Realtime

#120

Post by peterleiser »

sanderjd wrote: post #107
peterleiser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage people to read about Project for the New American Century (PNAC). 9/11 gave PNAC and the neoconservatives the optimal opportunity to implement their stated objectives.

What makes you think I didn't know / read about it at the time? All the comments here mentioning the neoconservative desire for regime change in Iraq predating 9/11 seem to imply that it was an obscure thing that people weren't very aware of at the time. But that isn't true at all. It was broadly understood and frequently discussed. It's just that people were so generally scared, pissed off, and ready for vengeance a…

Hi. I figured you did know / read about it at the time, actually. I think we have the same viewpoint. I was just using your insightful comment to encourage other folks to read about PNAC for historical context. I don't want anyone to pretend to forget, or younger folks not to know, what got us into the last 20 years of forever war.
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