Israel-Palestine Conflict Erupts Into War: Clashes at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque exploded into a full-scale conflict, with Hamas firing rockets from Gaza and Israel launching devastating airstrikes, leading to a major humanitarian crisis before a ceasefire was reached.
Belarus Forces Down EU Plane to Arrest Journalist: In an act condemned as "state piracy," Belarus scrambled a fighter jet to force a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk, where they arrested dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, sparking international outrage and new sanctions.
India's Catastrophic COVID-19 Crisis Peaks: India reported a world record of 414,188 new cases in a single day, with the death toll surging and bodies washing up in the Ganges River as the healthcare system collapsed.
Colombia Erupts in Deadly Protests: Massive anti-government protests against tax reforms swept Colombia, leading to at least 17 deaths and forcing the president to withdraw the controversial proposal.
Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan Border Conflict: Deadly clashes erupted on the disputed border between the two Central Asian nations, killing 55 people and leading to mutual accusations of invasion and aggression.
May 2021 was a month where simmering tensions erupted into violent, kinetic energy. The signals were not of slow-moving crises or abstract political failures, but of physical force: rockets, hijacked planes, and street battles. The glitch for this era is this "Kinetic Signal"—the failure of dialogue and the reversion to raw, physical force as the primary means of communication.
This artifact simulates a satellite or radar tracking system overwhelmed by these simultaneous kinetic events. The screen is a cacophony of targeting vectors, missile trajectories, and impact warnings, each representing a different conflict zone.
The ghost in this machine is the illusion of a stable, rules-based world order. Your cursor is a targeting drone, and as you move it over the chaotic signals, you "lock on" to them, bringing their stark, urgent headlines into focus. It's a reflection of a moment when the world felt less like a conversation and more like a series of violent, intersecting trajectories.