Global Black Lives Matter Movement Spreads: Protests went global, with massive demonstrations in Europe, Australia, and Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a knee with protesters. In the UK, tens of thousands demonstrated, and NASCAR banned the Confederate flag.
China-India Border Clash Turns Deadly: At least 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed in a violent clash in the Himalayas, the deadliest confrontation between the two nations in decades. Reports indicated soldiers were "beaten to death."
COVID-19 Pandemic Developments: Worldwide cases surpassed 7 million. Brazil's government was accused of altering its death toll reporting, and a court ordered President Bolsonaro to wear a mask. India surpassed Italy to have the sixth-highest number of cases.
Environmental Disaster in Russia: 20,000 tons of fuel spilled into a river in the Arctic, prompting President Putin to declare a state of emergency.
June 2020 was the month the fractured signal became a global flood. The energy from the protests didn't just compete with the pandemic narrative—it began to overwrite it. The glitch is this "signal bleed," where one dataset becomes so powerful it corrupts and colors another, forcing a new interpretation of reality.
This artifact simulates a global mapping system trying to display two urgent, simultaneous crises. The cool, clinical blue dots of the pandemic are still present, a persistent background reality. But the fiery, energetic red of the protest locations bleeds through, staining the map. The system can no longer show one without showing the influence of the other.
The ghost in this machine is the re-prioritization of crisis. Your cursor acts as a lens for this new focus, intensifying the protest signal wherever you point it. It shows that even when multiple emergencies exist, our collective attention inevitably flows to the one that burns the brightest, changing the landscape for all other data.