Thursday, September 10, 2026

Ronny Chieng

 History lessons. Bidets in Japan blastocysts Hope for some of the worst of the worst.

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Would someone REALLY try it?

#NeverForget #9/11 #WSJ

Get ready for the internet to fill with reflections in connection with the 25th anniversary of murderous, tragic, and heroic events of September 11, 2001


Read the story here of how the security director at Morgan Stanley trained the 2000 plus Morgan Stanly employees on 22 floors of the World Trade Center South Tower to evacuate two by two singing, leaving space for first responders who might be going up. This effort paid off: all but 13 employees survived. Security Director Rick Rescola was one of the 13 who did not make it.


Cantor Fitzgerald in the North Tower by contrast lost hundreds of employees.


Read the story.  Drills matter. Situational awareness matters.


Then bear with peculiar RantWoman reflections on the other side.




Flash back to 1993, the first bombing at the World Trade Center. The bombing was a car bomb in a parking garage under one of the towers.


The bombing was sufficient to do serious damage but nowhere near enough to, say collapse a skyscraper.


Enter RantWoman's fairly recent graduate school career. People who knew RantWoman as an undergrad might never have predicted that RantWoman would take courses in International Business and read the Wall Street Journal on the bus on the way to work--on Wall Street, but in Seattle.


Right. The BUS. And a job at an organization that had the word COOPERATIVE in its name. Still it was kind of IT job one could get at the time without a computer science degree if one's humanities degree comes with the skills to analyze report writing requests and collaborate on projects. (Jobs like this are definitely still to be had even though #AI changes everything.)


RantWoman specifically remembers riding the bus to work at some point after the 1993 bombing and reading a long back page of the front section story about how if one wanted to take down the towers flying an airliner full of jet fuel into the towers would be one way to do it.


Did Osama Bin laden read the Wall Street Journal? Did Osama Bin Laden just cook up the idea separately based on his education as a structural engineer?


RantWoman remembers mentally filing the story under "would someone actually try it?: along with reasons not to want to work in the World Trade Center.


RantWoman probably has more to say, but start there.

Monday, September 7, 2026

Labor day for Long Haul truck drivers

 RantWoman has truckers in her orbit. Not sit around and regularly drink tea but definitely real people that makes this post mean something for RantWoman

Allegations of fraudulent registrations: BS

 More media about rubbish from the mouth of President #StableGenius

Geography Lesson, among other things, for President #StableGenius

#Midterms #hispanidad #Geography 

Unabashed encouragement about to #VoteThemAllOut



RantWoman is SO tempted to suggest that if President #StableGenius can't respect US history which is a lot older than his Scottish and German forebears on this side of the Atlantic, he should just GO BACK WHERE HE CAME FROM.

This is not an opinion about whether Scotland or Germany would have him, but perhaps transit could be arranged to the Central African Republic or one of the other places on the State Department's travel highly not recommended list. Maybe he could opt for the Department of Homeland Insecurity self-deportation incentives instead,

Friday, September 4, 2026

White Sands Missile Range: the largest military installation in the world?

 The RantWoman department of eccentric tourism opportunities presents the White Sands Missile range. Clearly A LOT has happened there since RantWoman and some other NSF summer science program participants visited decades ago.