Vi's everything blog

114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.

I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.

Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.

There are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:

1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.

2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.

3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.

The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.

Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.

A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.

We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.

Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:

"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."

The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.

I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.

It is important not to walk away from it thinking "but I'm not going to be an engineer, so that's fine."

In my adult life, I have (among other things) run a small business, I have managed a bank branch, and I have been a mortgage processor. In any one of those three jobs, not knowing the exact correct laws and procedures for what I'm doing could really fuck up someone else's life.

If I don't set up payroll correctly, I could create a huge disaster for myself and employees, either immediately or come tax time. QuickBooks keeps trying to get me to let AI manage my payroll and I would rather stab myself in the hand.

If I didn't handle deposits and Fincen reporting correctly in my branch banking days, I could end up accidentally committing many many crimes and making it harder for people to catch some of the really big, really terrible crimes. (Hint: this was important to uncovering all the Epstein shit!) That's not even counting all the actual cash I was responsible for. (It makes me want to throw up thinking about the fact that I literally handled about a million dollars in cash every week for 2 years.)

If I didn't handle my mortgage processing exactly right, people could lose their homes. I cannot stress enough how easy it is for shit to get REALLY FUCKED UP if deeds and mortgages are not filed exactly right. People get their homes (legally!) stolen from them every year.

Someone started messaging followers anonymous messages that I'm a Zionist. I wasn't paid for a number of commissioned artworks. Meaning I couldn't pay rent, which means I'm technically homeless. When I asked another artist to boost, they said they didn't appreciate being involved in a personal dispute. I don't have a dispute. I'm just Jewish.

I'm not saying any of this for sympathy, it's more that I loathe how acts of antisemitism have all of these apologists. No it's not Jew hate they just hate zionists. It's not antisemitism, you're just a bad person...I'm exhausted by having to prove to an impossible standard that antisemitism exists and devastates people.

That they call all israelis colonizers.

''The founding of Israel was based on displacement of Palestinians''- Look, I don't want to minimize that at all because people losing their homes is fucking terrible but that doesn't mean the solution is expelling Israelis now. There was a population exchange between Greece and Tuurkey in 1922. Both sides ethnically cleansed people. It was a terrible thing to do. But both Turkey and Greece exist now as two seperate states with clearly defined borders (if you ignore some shit erdogan tries to pull in the agean). And you don't question Greece's or Turkey's right to not be wiped off.

''Israeli identity is fake because it was based on smth that happened 3000 years ago!!!''- Ok sorry to break it to you but us Greeks have made our entire national identity revolve around who we were 3000 years ago. And if you want to argue abt fakeness of identity I would argue ours was a less organic one. Jewish people maintained the same religion and basic belief systems for 3000 years. They continuously felt the connection with Eretz Yisrael. We switched to Orthodox christianity from whatever 12 god shit we had, we lost most of our literacy that allowed us to keep tpuch with ancient texts, we embraced so many customs from the Ottomans and YET it was still valid when we tried to reclaim our ancient greek identity to build a nation partly on the basis of that

''European colonial powers helped prop up Israel which means it is an imperialistic state!''- Do you think Greece got independence or gained more land purely through OUR military strength lol?

That changed with Operation Cast Lead. I had no idea what it was called at the time. I was checked out completely. I was starting my PhD, and had no idea that there was anything happening in Israel. If it was mentioned, I just kind of glazed over and forgot about it. I was American, what did I care?

But the people around me in academia? They knew.  They cared. They saw my posts on Facebook spending time with a cousin who lived there; a trip to Tel Aviv five years ago.

This was all it took.

I was asked by other students about Israel, where I stood on it, what I thought. These questions carried an air of accusation that puzzled me. When I said I do not know, and I do not care, the questions became more pointed, more hostile. Was I a Zionist?

What is a Zionist, I asked.

I did not know. I heard the term only in circumstances of it being in the title of Jewish organizations mentioned in temple conversations. I wasn't there for that, though, I wanted a second helping of kugel and the ladies gossiping at the post-services buffet were in the way.

My ignorance and nearly complete disinterest in Israel did not matter. I was tied to Israel whether I liked it or not. My dark eyes, tan skin, long dark curly hair, Mediterranean features, my Jewish husband  who wore a kippah to fancy occasions... inquiring minds needed to know, was a good Jew or a bad Jew?

It was a game, and I did not know the rules. Tails they win, heads I lose. I quickly learned that unless I verbally prostrated myself and proclaimed the most violent of antisemitic terrorists had a point, I had to answer for Israel. Even if I did that, I would still have to answer for Israel.

Israel did not make me a Zionist. My Judaism did not make me a Zionist. Antizionists, who have always been antisemitic, always been hostile, made me a Zionist. Because I was not allowed to be anything but that, not if I wanted to have any respect for myself.