What the picker changes

Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
12-week heatmap & outlet matrix — show the 12 weeks ending at the selected week (they slide back with the picker, they aren’t a fixed snapshot).
Per-topic volume / alias drift — same 12-week trailing window, anchored on the selected period.
Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
Anomaly cards — only show alerts the detector fired during the selected period. Quiet weeks legitimately show none.

What stays as-is

Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
Source & topic profiles — all-time data for the topic; the picker doesn’t affect them.

Rolling 7 days is a sliding live window for “current vibes”; switch to Weekly to compare specific weeks side-by-side.

Weekly Rolling 7 days

live window

Topic

Rocket Fuel Inefficiency

1 items · 1 aliases · peaked week of 24 May 2026 · first seen 27 May 2026

An aerospace scientist evaluates the scientific and engineering challenges of interstellar travel, concluding that alien visits to Earth are highly improbable due to vast distances, energy requirements, and propulsion limitations.

Volume by source orientation Methodology →

Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.

Alias drift

How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.

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Sample framings

Up to 12 framings spread across orientations. Each framing is a short phrase the topic extractor generated to characterise the piece's stance — not a quote from the source. Click through to read the original.

conversation-nz Centre-left

self-reinforcing logistical impossibility

Could aliens ever visit Earth? An aerospace scientist unpacks the challenges of interstellar spaceflight

26 May

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