All things briefing

Short links that follow the clock (UTC): /brief/today · /brief/yesterday · /brief/monday (any weekday) · /brief/3-days-ago · /brief/latest · /brief/random · /brief/today/1 (today's briefing #1, the number on the stream card).

1. A place comes up. Next on a shuffled list of about 230 places around the world; or, one time in four, a random spot on Earth with news within 1,000 km; or the place the last briefing said a story leads to next; or where a viewer asked it to go.
2. An AI reads the day's news there and writes the briefing, naming the outlets it draws on. It runs on a local model on the operator's own computer.
3. It gets a floor. The same model places the story on the E0–E14 stack of The Arena and tags the phrases that touch other floors; a second, blind reading re-checks the floors every few hours.
4. The globe may show open data when a second judgement says it shows the pressure the story is about: river flow for a flood, fire for a wildfire. Most stops show none.
5. The page goes up about a minute later, with every source and a check link that opens the same data at the same place.

1. A search by the place's name. The name goes to GDELT, the open index of the world's news, for English-language articles that mention it in the last 24 hours, newest first (up to 25). If GDELT has none, Google News search for the last 7 days.
2. Old and empty results are dropped. Anything older than 7 days or undated goes; what is left is sorted newest first. A place with nothing is flown past without a briefing.
3. The newest eight go to the AI. It is told to lead with the strongest story, prefer the most recent, ignore anything older than 36 hours, and name the outlet for each fact.
4. Every article it was given is listed on the briefing's page under Sources, including the ones it didn't use.

So "top" here means recent, not popular: nothing ranks stories by readers or importance. The search finds articles that name the place, so a story about somewhere else that mentions it can come up, and a town sharing its name with another can pull in the wrong one. English-language outlets only, for now.

Every briefing page lists the data the globe showed with it, under "Open data on the globe — check it yourself".

Every briefing card on the stream carries a number for the day (#1 from 00:00 UTC); that number is what !source takes.