About This Site
I’m a former journalist and current political junkie. I wondered if there were unifying threads among US opinion columns – so I set AI on the job. While I sought ways to apply objective measurements, I discovered the summaries were useful to understand the daily direction where opinion writers are going. The summary output developed here by AI should not be considered definitive, but combined with the links supplied, they are a good beginning for seeing commonalities. Right now the report only includes newsletters that are free to access and subscriptions I own that allow machine reading. If I gain paid subscribers, I hope to include other pay subscriptions later, as well as audio and video podcasts that require more AI compute. — Mike Fourcher
Daily Pulse Archive
Discourse Temperature Scoring
Each newsletter is scored individually, then averaged with equal weighting across all newsletters in a segment — preventing high-volume publishers from dominating the score.
Alarm Level
Measures how urgently and anxiously a segment frames current events.
Weighting
Intensity & frequency of crisis language50%
Immediacy of threat (now vs. future)30%
Breadth across topics20%
Scale
1 — Calm, analytical, no urgency
2 — Mild concern: "worth watching"
3 — Crisis framing: "deeply troubling"
4 — Emergency language: "constitutional crisis"
5 — Imminent catastrophe: "the republic is ending"
Triumphalism Level
Measures how celebratory, vindicated, or victorious a segment's tone is.
Weighting
Confidence & finality of victory claims50%
Historic vs. temporary framing30%
Breadth across topics20%
Scale
1 — Neutral or deflated, factual
2 — Mild satisfaction: "encouraging"
3 — Clear celebration: "we were right"
4 — Victory framing: "winning on every front"
5 — Maximum: "history will record this"
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