Great info. Thanks for taking the time to jot it down!

So that's the long of it - was it worth the read?

To many, I hope. To me, yes.

I appreciate the time you have spent giving your perspective. It's what I already figured as any civil knows. Unfortunately, or fortunately, everyone isn't a civil engineer with the eye to see the things you pointed out so easily. You taking the time to really spell it out is rare and I hope others read it as well and form their own questions. Everything you said pretty much nails it.

The model would be harder to manipulate. Since it's a preexisting structure, beam and column sizes are known. Connections are known, and the loading is known. The only thing that could vary would be the loading they specified. However, I'd argue there isn't enough swing there to alter the way the building collapsed. As in if they modeled 80psf loading, I don't think 100psf loading would alter the sequence of failures significantly. So yes the model isn't 100% accurate, but it's certainly the closest almost exact model I've ever seen to explaining the video we've all seen.

Then them modeling the official failure mode and it does nothing is the nail in the coffin for me.