311–320 of 523 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.
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…
What destroyed American life were Americans, being scared, thoughtless and not talking to each other, in the name of money, absolute security, patriotism and tribalism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> By the time I got out of training, the news cycle had moved on so it wasn't until the first anniversary of 9/11 that I saw the news footage of the event for the first time. This might seem strange to some younger readers, but remember in 01-02 internet video (and, indeed, internet faster than dial-up) was not ubiquitous. My family has a VHS tape recording of the news that day because that was how the average person…
> This might seem strange to some younger readers, but remember in 01-02 internet video (and, indeed, internet faster than dial-up) was not ubiquitous. And even if you used internet video (or, heck, even read news online), none of the sources (origins sites and Google and other portals) had the capacity to deal well with the major surge of associated with a event like 9/11. Everything online was spotty or broken unde…
For those too young to know, being slashdotted was a term for your website going offline due to too much traffic, named for (and primarily used on) the site slashdot.com. Slashdot was the preeminent popular tech/nerd discussion forum of the time, and being linked from a story on slashdot would often direct more attention to your server than it could handle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.
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…
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…
how about "stop fucking with other countries", instead?
maybe bring Kissinger to the international court?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yeah I forgot about all the confusion on what else would be attacked! People should talk about that more. Every single piece of infrastructure in the whole country was on people’s minds and locked down! Is there a documentary about that? There is so much possibility for an “isolation thriller” where people’s concerns in their small towns are more the focus than the outcome of what happened by the time the dust set…
I recall a big anthrax scare in the weeks following. Lots of people were sending white powder to official addresses.
Man that time period must have been so much harder for adults than the teenagers at the time
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This might seem strange to some younger readers, but remember in 01-02 internet video (and, indeed, internet faster than dial-up) was not ubiquitous. And even if you used internet video (or, heck, even read news online), none of the sources (origins sites and Google and other portals) had the capacity to deal well with the major surge of associated with a event like 9/11. Everything online was spotty or broken unde…
I recall that even slashdot got slashdotted, which was itself incredible. The admins there at least had the sense to put up a static page with info about the attacks, which is where I first got some details about it after a fellow student in my theory of computation class first notified me (I think he had a pocket radio he was listening to in class). For those too young to know, being slashdotted was a term for your…
A current term for the same thing is the “HN hug of death”, as HN can drive the kind of effect slashdot used to (in part because it has become the new center of gravity for some of the kinds of discussions that used to drive traffic from Slashdot.)
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…
> Additionally, the fact that members of the Saudi government aided and assisted the hijackers... Details? My understanding is a huge fraction of the Saudi population have jobs that amount to government sinecures (while immigrants do most of the real work). Are we talking about high-level members with real leadership positions, or some minor member of the royal family working in some ministry doing nothing and going…
Wow this is a great word. Hadn't heard it before. Thanks for sharing.
Is it just me or are all the channels broken with just old-school TV static? Maybe the server is overloaded with the HN & reddit hug of death.