Well, I was 21, mate. I watched this happen live on television, and even then I could have told you this wasn't when “it” started.
It wasn't even the first Islamist terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That happened in 1993.
Hamas had existed since 1987. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was already decades old. 9/11 was carried out by al-Qaeda, an entirely different organisation.
So bundling Hamas, Palestinian “resistance” and 9/11 into one great Muslim Cinematic Universe is historically illiterate.
What 9/11 *did* start was the War on Terror: Afghanistan, then the catastrophic adventure in Iraq, thousands of dead American servicemen and their allies, vastly greater numbers of dead civilians, extraordinary rendition, CIA torture, secret prisons, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and an enormous expansion of the national-security state.
America responded to nineteen hijackers by spending trillions of dollars, invading countries, shredding its own professed commitment to human rights and spending the next quarter-century politically losing its fucking mind.
That is the historical legacy of September 11 worth discussing.
“Hamas started here” is something you'd say only if your understanding of the Middle East began when you switched the television on that morning.
I don't say this lightly but Steam is quite literally the only company I am okay with having this monopoly.
There are so many ways they could use steam to generate more money. I see every opportunity for them to exploit their userbase and they choose not to.
They have exceptional customer service, steam charts are public (something MANY companies would rather not be public to hide embarrassment), ludicrous deals for games several times a year, banning in-game ads, making it a requirement for developers to say whether or not they used AI, the mod support and steam workshop. The list goes on.
Any gaming CEO would kill to have Steam and would promptly kill it within 5 years to appease share holders.
Don't even get me started on the Gabecube (the new steam console).
Steam single-handedly is holding PC gaming up and I never want anything to happen to it.
Other companies can eat shit and learn to actually respect their customers like Valve and Steam do—but they won't, because that means not squeezing every dime possible out of your userbase.
My moment was life changing. I remember sitting at my desk late at night staring at plans that no longer felt like mine and wondering how someone like me could get it wrong so many times. I felt small and ashamed of how close I was to giving up
Then one thing became clear to me
I have to take responsibility and start creating the life I want. I am not my past. The mistakes I made are behind me and they do not define who I am. Now I finally have the chance to do things better and shape my life in the way I choose, with responsibility and obsession
This was the moment everything began to shift