I’ll be doing anniversary posts here with updates. The first is from Arynne Wexler, who is so much more than a comedian.
“Never Forget” has to mean more than remembering the date.
— Arynne Wexler (@ArynneWexler) September 11, 2026
But also – never forget why it happened.
We do no honor to the dead by remembering their deaths while becoming too uncomfortable to remember the hatred that killed them. A hatred that wants to kill or convert every…
He did well, but I'm pretty sure that I would have done the same thing. My very first thought after seeing the second plane hit was, "They need to ground every plane immediately." https://t.co/Zgl63A0YDH
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2026
And then there’s this:
He lost the war right at its onset. https://t.co/XSAnMHXbbP
— FilmLadd (@FilmLadd) September 11, 2026
Either he didn’t understand the nature of the enemy, or he was too enamored of his Saudi buddies in the oil business.
[Update a few minutes later]
One of the most haunting visualizations of September 11, 2001: watch as the skies over the United States suddenly empty as the FAA grounds all flights. pic.twitter.com/XD0O4ziMgz
— Josh Barzon (@JoshuaBarzon) September 7, 2026
I was in Puerto Rico, about to go to the airport for a flight back to LA, and about to call a cab to the airport. As soon as I saw the second plane hit, I knew there was no point. If I’d been home, it would have been eerie to look toward the east from our balcony, where normally every clear night you can see the planes lined up for final at LAX all the way out to Palm Springs, and see an empty sky.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Yes, the war won’t be over until we actually win, and ending the monstrous regime in Tehran will go a long way toward that.
[Update a while later]
Thoughts on asymmetric warfare, from Supersonic Redhead:
The War Has Changed. Our Thinking Has Not. https://t.co/iPX6Jz4tE8
— Supersonic Redhead🛫 (@Supersonic_Red) September 11, 2026
[Update a while later]
Remembering the heroes of Flight 93, by Salena Zito.
And a related oldie, by Dave Barry a year after the event: On Hallowed Ground.
[Update a few more minutes later]
James Lileks, on the martyred towers.
Replacing them would have been a big FU to the people who cheered as they fell.
Back in those days I was enamored by a piece of WindowsXP (remember that?) software called “Flight Explorer”. I used to use it on my laptop on my outdoor deck to observe commercial flights coming in to land in the small city that is only 20 miles east of me and my house is right under one of the flight paths. Always interesting to know where a particular plane is coming from or going to.
But on 9/11 I had to break it out to observe. NOTHING over CONUS that eve. Since Flight Explorer would only show commercial traffic not military.
Err my bad. I meant Windows 2000….
I still use XP on my older machines and regard it as the pinnacle of Windows, and Word 2003 the pinnacle of Word.
Maybe. I found Windows 2000 to be excellent. In fact went straight from Win95 to Win2K skipping the Win98 to Win98 2nd Edition and Windows Vista fiascos entirely. I ended up using WinXP because it came with my next laptop. It was fine. But for me Win7 was the pinnacle. Win8 couldn’t decide if it was for handhelds or desktops. Win10 was definitely a step backwards in look and feel to Win7. It appears Win11 has finally caught up to Win7 in that dept. If you can put up with the AI encrapment. It is claimed it is possible to disable it on install. As easy as it is to edit the registry I presume. But I digress from the OP.
Well I meant WindowsME. But I also skipped the awkward Win7-WinVista-Win8 transition using the Nancy Reagan approach…
Yep. I still have a little ASUS eeePC running XP for programming embedded systems in instruments and logging serial data in testing.
Remember it, I still use it!
Ha! With you there Wodun. Still using Win7. I won’t say where…. 🙂 All the other hardware broke so nothing earlier anymore….
As a side note but related: Gas and Diesel prices have hit record highs.
The media likes to blame the wars but I disagree. This issue is more fundamental and has to do with the way international oil markets are arranged. The US already has enough domestic crude production, including shale, that exceeds domestic consumption of gasoline and diesel*. I’m all for free markets, until they become monopolistic or get hamstrung through bad treaties or contrived “market arrangements”. I call BS on the current pump prices.
This could be fixed and it has nothing to do with the Straight of Hormuz/Trump.
We should also increase our domestic refining capability. I’d put tax policy in place to make it so. If CA wants to tax their refiners out of business so be it. The rest of the US doesn’t have to follow. Sucks to live in CA. Sorry, but not sorry Rand.
Free markets are best, until they get to be monopolistic or hold *us* hostage. Bad trade deals or bad market arrangements are simply that, bad….
*Grok: (9/11/26) Yes. Recent U.S. crude oil production (including shale/t[l?]ight oil) already exceeds combined domestic gasoline and diesel demand on a volumetric basis. …
One of my first job interviews in NYC was at Nomura Securities in the WTC. Whilst at BNP we had visited the WTC in 2000 for some meetings with Cantor Fitzgerald. I still have their business cards in my rolodex.
Unfortunately, I had left NYC a year earlier for the ISU MSS program, and had only been back in the U.S. a week at most when it happened. I was in Leavenworth, KS helping my Mom move, the TV was already packed, so we heard it unfolding on the radio.
To this day I feel some small measure of guilt for having left NYC, and not being there to lend aid when it happened. Maybe it’s the Boy Scout in me, although one thing that always impressed me about New Yorkers was that in a time of crisis they will come spilling out of the woodwork, get things squared away, and then just melt away into the night.
My take on the whole thing? Our response was entirely the wrong one. The old terrorism paradigm for airplane hijackings was passengers kept quiet, a couple of Jews might get shot (hey, it was what it was, not trying to glorify it), but pretty much everyone else would probably get home okay. During 9/11, the passengers came to realize that no, they weren’t going to go home, and on Flight 93 they responded accordingly, bless their souls, and customers continued to respond accordingly going forward. Instead, we fell for the FUD, lashed out like a wounded animal, and culturally have never fully recovered.
As the years pass, and I see so much decline in our society, I’m filled more with sorrow than anything else, at what might have been (remember VSE? We could have a much more developed Cislunar Econosphere, but we seem to have ceded that to the Chinese) and how enshittification is setting in everywhere. I’m also angry about the state of our education industry here in the U.S., which will absolutely hamper us in the long run.
How have we let this come to pass?
How? Because people so dumb they can’t find their ass with both hands, and so ignorant they wouldn’t know what it was for if they did find it, have been deified by social media. America is on the Think System (see “The Music Man” for how that works).
Until Friday, I had never heard the story of Lt. Heather Penney and Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville. In case you didn’t read the whole Washington Examiner story, it was as follows: Penney and Sasseville were stationed at Andrews AFB, and were scrambled to intercept United Flight 93. Each flew an F-16, and were authorized to open fired…but there hadn’t been time to load missiles or ammunition on the jets. So the two decided that Sasseville would ram the cockpit, and Penney the tail of the 757. I heard her interview with PBS rebroadcast on WMAL, and she said very simply, “We were on a one-way mission. If we succeeded, we wouldn’t be coming back.”
I have no words to express my admiration.
I do remember hearing about this FUBAR. That they had to face that choice is the absolute pinnacle of ill preparedness. 911 was so many failures on so many levels.
I remember the senior flight attendant on AA-11 who had her throat slit for not surrendering the cockpit keys.
Grok says I got this wrong. She was stabbed. OK.
I still think we should have nuked a few places.
Most Muslims are peaceful but even a small % bent on conquest means there are more jihadis than Americans. Of course, the problem isn’t just with war but conquering through immigration. The herd moves where the sheepdogs direct it.
What comes back to me from 9/11 is looking up and seeing a crescent moon with a star. We have a crafty enemy that thinks generationally but we don’t respond to them with this in mind.