amanda southworth

ASDE-X is a runway surveillance program designed to prevent collisions and the FAA spent $550 million to install it at 35 of the busiest airports in the U.S. But on March 22, 2026, ASDE-X partially failed to predict a collision that would have prevented a fire truck from crossing the path of an incoming Air Canada CRJ, killing both pilots. Why did ASDE-X fail? Or, did it fail at all?

Most people nod and don’t know what to say when you say you’re getting sober. It’s like getting pregnant in your mid-20’s. Is it congratulations, or indicative of a darker turn we didn’t know about that will get rougher in the future? There has been slight proudness and well wishes. It is mostly just awkward glances or words unsaid that people don’t want to peer into. Maybe they just don’t know how to.

Why in this modern world where we are the most “advanced” we’ve ever been, do we fail more than ever to trust that specialization and abstraction layer designed to make our lives easier? The answer can be found in so many tendrils of history, but I want to dissect it from an unexpected place: the vividly gruesome, unlikely, and confronting story of TWA Flight 800.

I used to think making change was the thing. I used to believe that changing the world, dominating it and reshaping it in my hands was the goal. Now, I not only see how naive that is, but how many terrible things have been done in the name of changing the world. How many civilizations, companies, people, and products have tried. And what they left in their wake.

Stopping someone from posting about their suicidal thoughts doesn’t make them go away. Hiding comments in a celebrity’s post about their body does not stop people from dissecting it in other platforms. But, content moderation also gives these platforms a chance to deploy their answer to a question everyone is asking. What is a content generation platform’s responsibility to the greater world it exists in?