Ground Zero [DOT 11/9/20]


19 years later: These 9/11 photos remain just as haunting
https://www.ksat.com/features/2020/09/10/19-years-later-these-911-photos-remain-just-as-haunting/


John Feal Survived 9/11 and COVID-19. Here’s What He Says About the Virus.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/09/10/john-feal–9-11-and-coronavirus-survivor–has-a-message-for-you


This is my shocked face :/

When Americans needed honesty most, Trump gave them lies and fantasy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-americans-needed-honesty-most-trump-gave-them-lies-and-fantasy/2020/09/10/ea1ff54e-f38b-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-b-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans


TWENTY EIGHT YEARS OLD

Teacher, 28, dies of Covid-19 as US schools prepare for return to classrooms
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/teacher-28-dies-covid-19-schools-reopening-south-carolina


Wow.

Oregon fires force 500,000 to evacuate as blazes across American west kill eight
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/wildfires-us-california-oregon-washington-latest-death-toll


Stonks!

Why Citigroup’s CEO is retiring earlier than expected, paving the way for the first woman to run a major U.S. bank
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/10/why-michael-corbat-is-leaving-citigroup-paving-way-for-jane-fraser.html


Sprots!


S-M-R-T!

UK mathematician wins richest prize in academia
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/10/uk-mathematician-martin-hairer-wins-richest-prize-in-academia-breakthrough


This guy’s laugh


OMG.

A puppy with a cleft lip is adopted by a boy with a cleft lip: ‘They instantly loved each other’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/09/10/puppy-rescue-cleft-lip-boy-lacey/


Have a good day, see you at Happy Hour!

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27 Comments

    • I was at a small Midwestern college town.
      Everything stopped.
      Professors worried how Bush would fuck it all up.
      Meatheads immediately drank and talked up torturing “the people who did this”. 
      Some people loaded up trucks and drove 17 hours to NYC to volunteer any help they could.
      Most of us just hung out silently trying to process everything.

    • I was at work in Atlanta — actually up on the north perimeter. We watched the news coverage for a while, emailing people frantically (we had a New York office), and then one of the VPs said he was going home. Some of us lower-ranked employees stayed for a while (it was a dot com and chain of command was dispersed — my boss was in Boca Raton, for example). Finally I looked out of our window at the King and Queen buildings (our office was part of that complex) and said, you know, it may not be smart to hang around two of the tallest buildings in Metro Atlanta near one of the busiest airports in the world. I’m going home too. We all left. At home I watched news coverage until I couldn’t take it any more. I honestly don’t remember much more about that day or even that week.

      • Speaking of Atlanta, that’s where The Other Half was, on business. A little remembered factoid about the Twin Towers is that the roof of one of them, if not both, was a jungle of communication antennas, so when they went down so went some TV, radio, and cellphone service. 
         
        The cellphone lines were overwhelmed anyway so that didn’t matter much, no calls were going in or out. At work in Midtown (so about four or five miles away) we lost internet access for three days and phone service for two weeks, because there was a…Verizon maybe?…building down there that took a secondary hit when one of the towers collapsed.
         
        Anyway, so back to Atlanta. I didn’t hear from The Other Half for a long while. My landline worked, even though I lived downtown, but for some reason my service was routed through Midtown, the ways of the telephone system are indeed mysterious. Finally, I did. He found a pay phone that didn’t have a mile-long line of anxious customers. He was stuck somewhere on the New Jersey side because they had closed the bridges and tunnels. He had his rental car and he went back to Hartsfield and asked if he could hang onto it. The clerk looked up his info, saw that his home address was in Manhattan, and was like, “Keep it for however long you need.” Because it was Atlanta there was a lot of “God bless” and “Have a blessed trip” and apparently he said, “I’m just hoping to find open gas stations, but thank you.”
         
        Eventually he squeezed through, I think via the Lincoln Tunnel. We were just north of The Frozen Zone so he was able to drive to the apartment. I remember this vividly. He arrived home on Thursday, September 13th, 2001, at 3:30 AM. 
         
        As a concluding editorial comment it is this Manhattanite’s opinion that the pandemic and the response on all levels is far worse for the city. But at least for now there seems to be no plans to invade China in retribution.

      • There’s an even more heart-wrenching one that I won’t research. Two or three years ago I read about a boy in a wheelchair whose family adopted a dog who, because of cancer as a puppy, had both his hind legs removed, so the puppy was in a wheelchair. It’s more like a harnessed cart, you may have seen one of these. Of course they became inseparable and the dog lived to be something like 14 years, so well done all around!

  1. Coworkers were just outside the tunnels, driving into the city for meetings. They saw the planes/flames, and were able to turn around and head back home. The uncle of a school acquaintance of my son’s was on another of the planes. The linked photos are as devastating today as they were in 2011. As is the continued toll of death among first responders from exposure to the toxins.

    • I actually left a much longer “where were you” comment but I deleted it, it was verging on the mawkish. But I will say I was downtown, on an E train, last stop World Trade Center, but I lived downtown so I was headed in the other direction. 
       
      I can’t remember my own cellphone number but I can summon every minute of the subsequent 48 or 72 hours even now, 19 years later. 

      • I was having a cup of coffee, watching the news before I went to work. I called the office and told them to turn on on the TV. Needless to say I didn’t go in that day, I sat in front of the TV in stunned silence.

        @MegMegMcGee thanks for the Happy Hour shout out. I think this one will be a welcome distraction.

      • i was at work..uhh..sorta… gubment appointed re schooling jobbo as i was a bit of a trouble maker… anyhoo i was rebuilding/upgrading old puters to be given to low income families when i heard it on the radio
        figured it was the radio station running a prank and laughed it off
        then i got home and saw it on the telly….

  2. …I was on holiday that september…so when one of the people I was staying with came back from picking up breakfast for everyone & tried to tell us what was happening in a rapid-fire blizzard of french I couldn’t take it in to begin with…it was just too much unprecedented horror happening all at once for it to seem plausible…by the time he said a plane had crashed into the pentagon I’m pretty sure I accused him of trying to play some sort of practical joke on the foreigner (me) but by the time we had the tv on there was a plane headed for the second of the towers

    …we stayed in that room in front of that tv for the rest of the day…I think possibly until it was time for breakfast again…or at least I did…various friends (& friends-of-friends) came & went & some of them brought food or drinks & there was an endless disbelieving conversation about the who & how & why & what-happens-now interspersed with people checking in on any & everybody they knew stateside

    …I remember more than one person who wondered whether such a tragedy actually on home soil might over the longer term shift attitudes & policies when it came to visiting destruction on far away places that were no stranger to such loss…& thinking those who (accurately as it turned out) predicted very much the opposite were overly cynical & not being fair in their appraisal of America’s underlying sensibilities

    …the only thing that seemed clear was that that day had changed things the world over

  3. I was working as a network admin at a medical clinic in Nashville when we were told to change the channel on the lobby TV to network news.  Everything came to a screeching halt for about 30 minutes until one of the doctors who owned the joint told us to turn off the TV and go back to work.  We turned off the TV, but then immediately hit the interwebs because fuck her, this shit was important.

  4. My wife had just given birth to our first child 5 days earlier.  My mom had flown in from Hawaii and was staying with us.  We were hanging out in bed enjoying our new baby when my dad called and said “turn on the tv, we are at war.”  My father was a former Marine colonel so nothing ever made him panic, he just said it like any other statement.  My wife and I turned on the tv and wondered what we had done bringing a child into this world.  My mom was stuck with us for a few weeks before she could return home.

  5. I just saw this on Democratic Underground…
     
    Let’s Put Things Into Perspective
    Americans killed in Bowling Green Massacre: 0
    Americans killed in Trump’s Caravan Attack: 0
    Americans killed By Soup Cans: 0
    Americans killed by Ebola: 2
    Americans killed in Benghazi: 4
    Americans killed in the Spanish American: 2,246
    Americans killed in War of 1812: 2,260
    Americans killed in 9/11/2001 Terrorist Attacks: 2996
    Americans killed in American Revolution: 4,435
    Americans killed in the Mexican War: 13,283
    Americans killed in Korean War: 33,746
    Americans killed in Vietnam War: 58,152
    Confederate Soldiers killed in Civil War battles: 94,000
    Union Soldiers killed in Civil War battles: 110,100
    Americans killed in Europe, WWI: 116,516
    Americans killed by Japan, WWII: 160,914
    Americans killed by Trump, COVID pandemic: 196,345
    Americans killed by Axis, WWII: 214,362

    • I’m a little confused over the Europe/Japan/Axis WWII numbers.  Germany, Italy and Japan made up the original Axis powers.  Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria signed on later and then there were other non-signatories like Finland which fought alongside them.  But, ultimately, there’s no real difference between a US soldier who was killed by a Japanese or German or Romanian soldier and a US solder who was killed by the Axis.  They should have just listed Americans Killed in Combat in WWII:  291,557.

  6. My sister worked for a financial magazine in a building a couple of blocks from the towers. She was walking to work when she saw the first plane hit. She said it felt like time stopped for a moment. She kept walking to work, but she said on the way she was feeling drops of stuff falling on her. She was in her building and talking to her boyfriend who was on the roof of their apartment building(East Village with an amazing view) when he watched the second plane hit. She wasn’t allowed to leave – even after the towers fell so she was stuck in her building til like midnight that night.   We were all freaking out because we couldn’t get in touch with her. 
    After that she quit that job and went to work for Doctors Without Borders and is now an ER nurse at NYU Medical.

    • …they do say you can’t keep a good dog down

      …although in my family when I was a kid the good dog generally did stay down when you asked nicely…it was the other one that would knock me off my feet & slobber affectionately all over my face

      …not sure they’d have managed it if I’d been the size I am these days but those posts always buoy me up, certainly

    • Yeah, this was something that was going to be a pretty obvious talking point.  As good as Woodward’s work has been over the years, ultimately he put his own career in front of about 200,000 people’s lives.  When push came to shove, Woodward chose his money.

    • I agree that he should have released the tape sooner, but everyone knew that Trump knew the dangers and was downplaying it for political purposes (other than people dumb enough to support him).

      The surprise isn’t that he knew. The surprise is that he was dumb enough to have it recorded.

      For that, I’m not on board with the aiding and abetting take in that post.

      I’d be more inclined to hammer down on people like Bolton and their books for that. As well as Trump’s enablers in the house and senate who shrugged everything off with silence for those tax cuts…and even those who waited until now like Miles Taylor (whether or not they benefit financially) to speak out.

      Woodward isn’t a health expert nor is he POTUS. Woodward isn’t Speaker of the House, senate minority or majority leader, news anchor for a mainstream media outlet, or Fauci/Birx/etc. who should have been and still be SCREAMING FROM THE FUCKING ROOFTOPS.

      Those are the people on which the responsibilities lie, not on Woodward.

      He does deserve all the clapback for holding off releasing that particular clip, but the aiding and abetting, in my opinion, is over the top and shifts the blame from those listed above.

      • In a perfect world I would agree with you but in my lifetime politicians, especially Republicans, will not admit they are wrong or point out the faults of those they give power.  Woodward’s whole credibility is being a “real journalist” in a world of Fox News hacks and corporate journalists.  Information is now a commodity and if you want the truth you need to buy a book or subscribe to something.  This is not the way this fucker got his credibility and not the way it should be. 

        • I don’t disagree with you and even if I did, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in any type of argument. I just think the onus should be properly placed and in this case I’m not so sure that it is?

  7. My oldest child’s first day of pre-school, which fell on my days off.  We knew it was time to turn off the TV, which had been on all day, when Li’l Lemmy said, “I want to see the plane fly into the building again.”

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