“Civilization is like a jetliner, noisy, burning up enormous amounts of fuel. Every imaginable and unimaginable crime and pollution had to be committed in order to make it go. Whole species were rendered extinct, whole populations dispersed. Its shadow on the waters resembles an oil slick. Birds are sucked into its jets and vaporized. Every part, as Gus Grissom once nervously remarked about space capsules before he was burned up in one, has been made by the lowest bidder.” – David Watson

… A thought after the crash of Microsoft operating systems bringing temporary paralysis, and in some cases ongoing disruption to many aspects of the megamachine: banks, logistics, emergency services, planes and airports, trains, medical databases, TV stations.

In Portland, Oregon the mayor made an emergency announcement due to the paralysis of city services, including emergency services.

There were also incidents of schools and supermarkets closing, and card payment systems crashing in businesses.

An industry analyst counted 1,396 cancelled flights wordwide. In some cases there were no screens working to announce the cancelled flights. In the UK, the 143 cancelled departures and 142 cancelled arrivals coincided with the busiest day for air travel bookings so far this year.

“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Center and a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

Carpe diem!

Leeds: massive riot against the child-snatching authorities

A large-scale riot broke out in the working-class neighbourhood of Harehills in Leeds, yesterday 18th July 2024. Fights with police started in the afternoon after social services tried to abduct four Roma children from their home. The children fought off the agency workers and were joined by a crowd of locals who attacked the police, as they evacuated the ‘social care’ workers and attempted to drag away the intractable kids. One van left through a jeering and combative crowd with smashed windows.

Several more police cars were smashed, overturned and destroyed. Police were attacked with stones, bricks and bottles, before being forced to make a ground retreat, chased by a crowd that grew to several hundred, maybe a thousand. Public-order cops in riot gear were seen escaping in vans under a torrent of projectiles. Burning barricades were constructed with bins and other objects. A double-decker bus was destroyed by fire. Police reportedly called on regional reinforcements, but it was not until 1am that they returned to the streets with the fire brigade. Nobody was reported hurt although it seems unlikely that all cops escaped unscathed, no matter how fast they ran away.

The next day, as fires still smouldered, police began ‘several’ arrests and promised to ‘hunt’ the combative youth in the area, calling for snitching and DIY surveillance footage and working with ‘community and religious leaders’, and ‘reassurance patrols’, to pacify the population, fearing another hot night tonight (19th July).