SG

[Alex Boge @alexboge]

I find these World Trade Center simulations by Kostack Studio fascinating because they remove the smoke and let you see the collapse much more clearly.

In the real footage, so much is hidden by fire, dust, debris, distance, and chaos that many people come away with the impression that the towers simply dropped straight down into their own footprints.

But that is not really what happened.

These simulations make it much easier to see that the collapse begins in the heavily damaged and fire-weakened region, the upper section starts moving and tilting, and the destruction then propagates downward through the structure.

The towers do not simply disappear vertically into their own footprints. Large portions of the upper structure and exterior are moving outward and to the side as the collapse develops. Much of that motion is simply obscured in the real videos once the enormous debris cloud forms.

And this is also why I find these simulations useful when people describe the collapses as looking like “controlled demolition.”

Strip away the smoke and dust and the resemblance becomes much less convincing.

What you see is a highly asymmetric structural failure beginning around the aircraft-damaged and fire-affected floors, followed by an enormous moving mass progressively overwhelming the structure beneath it. There is tilting, rotation, exterior columns peeling away, debris being thrown far outside the building footprint, and structural failure occurring chaotically as the collapse moves downward.

That is very different from the neat mental image usually implied by “controlled demolition,” where structural supports are deliberately severed in a carefully timed sequence to produce a predetermined collapse.

And importantly, we already know what preceded these collapses.

Both towers suffered massive aircraft-impact damage. Fireproofing was stripped from portions of the structure. Large, uncontrolled fires then burned across multiple floors - for about 56 minutes in the South Tower and about 102 minutes in the North Tower - heating and weakening structural components until collapse initiated.

Once that upper mass began moving, the loads imposed on the floors and structure beneath became vastly greater than anything they had been designed to carry.

The result was progressive collapse.

No, an animation is not proof simply because it looks convincing, and these are not official NIST simulations. They are visualizations built under particular assumptions.

But as visualizations, I think they are extremely useful.

They let you see something the original footage often cannot show clearly: beneath that enormous cloud of smoke and debris was a complicated, violent, asymmetric structural failure - not two buildings neatly dropping straight down into their own footprints.

A note on the simulation: this is not intended to reproduce the collapse down to the exact motion of every beam, floor panel, and fragment of debris. No practical simulation could do that. Its value is in modeling the large-scale structural behavior - how the major sections deform, move, tilt, separate, and progressively fail. Think of it as a visualization of the mechanics and overall collapse behavior, not a frame-by-frame reconstruction of where every piece of steel ultimately landed.

[Alex Moore @heyalexmoore]

Harvard University just released free online courses.

No payment required.

Here are 10 courses you don't want to miss in 2026:

[Hasan Toor @hasantoxr]

🚨 BREAKING: Claude now lets you build, host, and share interactive apps, all inside the chat.

No code. No subscription. Just your idea.

Here is how it works 👇

[Nicolas Hervieu @N_Hervieu]

Droit des salariés à la vie privée : La @Courdecassation juge qu'un employeur ne peut refuser le télétravail au seul motif que le salarié s'est opposé à la visite de son domicile.

Car l'usage du domicile relève de sa vie privée & le salarié peut en refuser l'accès à l’employeur.

[BFM @BFMTV]

Microsoft: HOP, l'UFC Que choisir et 20 organisations lancent une pétition contre l'obsolescence de 400 millions de PC sous Windows 10
https://t.co/r7hQWuZNa7

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

France just spent €11 million to answer one question:
Are people living near vineyards dangerously exposed to pesticides?

The results are in. 🧵 1/

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Graham Greene has sadly passed away at the age of 73.

[BFM @BFMTV]

La SNCF veut-elle recruter des "métalleux"? La compagnie profite du festival de métal Hellfest pour présenter ses métiers et attirer des candidats
https://t.co/Zfn5c3rnIm

[Jean-Marc De Jaeger @JeanMarc_DJ]

SNCF Connect intègre ce lundi trois nouvelles fonctionnalités : une offre VTC/taxi avec Uber, la location de voitures avec Avis Budget Group et le guidage piéton sur le premier/dernier kilomètre. Ce qu'il faut savoir ⤵️
https://t.co/dThD38mCqJ

[Francois Vogel @francoisvogel]

Le train est-il un service public ?

[franceinfo @franceinfo]

🔴 La Défense est en crise : chute du prix du m2, galeries commerçantes désertes, travaux à l'arrêt... Si rien n'est fait, 40 % des bureaux pourraient être vides dans 10 ans.

[⛩ Ryo Saeba | Japon XYZ ⛩ @Ryo_Saeba_3]

Le robot de basketball de Toyota réalise le tir le plus lointain de tous les temps avec 24,55m après des années de programmation
L'un des ingénieurs est un grand fans de Slam Dunk et le robot avait déjà établi un record de lancers francs en 2019 🏀 #Japon

[SG @sebounet07]

Vous souvenez‑vous quand vous avez rejoint X ? Moi, oui ! #MonAnniversaireX

[France tv @FranceTV]

Cet entrainement grandeur nature du #Débarquement a tourné au fiasco...

L'exercice Tigre, qui eut lieu au sud de l'Angleterre et causa la mort de centaines de soldats, est resté secret pendant 50 ans.

#Apocalypse

[Stephane  @Stephane_SNCF]

Ce soir c’est le @ZoneInterdite
Il faut que quand même se rappeler de certaines choses
Basher le @GroupeSNCF c’est vendeur les groupes de presse et parler en mal de @GroupeSNCF c’est le top bankable pour eux. C’est pour ça que vous verrez peu d’article flatteurs
1/

[L'Équipe @lequipe]

Nantes, une valse infernale

Depuis son arrivée à l'été 2007 au FC Nantes, Waldemar Kita a changé d'entraîneur de nombreuses fois, pour peu de réussites. Voici le bilan des coaches toutes compétitions confondues, hors intérims : https://t.co/eRCzVsQneU

[Philippine Laniesse @PhilippineLan]

François @Bayrou relaxé dans "l'affaire" des assistants parlementaires du @MoDem. Sept putain d'années d'instruction pour ça.

Et pour moi, un sentiment très spécial. Pourquoi ? Parce que "le patient zéro", c'est moi. 🧶

[François Nollen @FrancoisN0]

[#TRSummit2023] 🗣️ "Le talent est global" rappelle @tlacroix6 (CTO @MistralAI) en réaffirmant le rôle et la valeur de l'#opensource et ses acteurs dans le monde entier 🌍

🗓️@TechRocksFr 🗓️@OSXP_Paris #OSXP2023 de beaux témoignages aujourd'hui pour la #communauté #opensource 🌱👏

[Payfit Engineering @PayFitEng]

And that's a wrap for the discussion of @Horgix with @SNCFConnectTech and @FindIt at the #MongoDBlocal Paris conference! Migration paths, scaling, observability, security, tooling, etc. with a strong focus on @MongoDB Atlas — even mentioned DDD!
Anyone interested in a blog post?

[SNCF Connect & Tech @SNCFConnectTech]

🏅#SNCFConnect, notre service tout-en-un des mobilités durables, se place à la 6ᵉ position des sites d'e-commerce les plus visités en France au premier semestre 2023 : une croissance de 8,6 % vs. 2022 ! @Ecommercemag_fr

https://t.co/B2nc7RyIYD