Today's Thing is a very simple website - but a very powerful tool, in my opinion. Meet Atlas Politica. It's a live news tracker for global news, geopolitics and conflicts - a world map that updates news and events across the world in realtime, with links and summaries of news websites and sources.
There's really not much to explain about this rather beautiful Thing, actually - it's super intuitive. You either click one of the dots (the ones with numbers on them denote multiple news items coming from the same place) to read a headline summary (which also provides links to the news source), or you can look at the Top News and Recent Events tabs on the left for a list of updated news items.
If you sign up for premium access, you can filter the entries by category - there are 11 categories including Business & Economy, Terrorism, Crime, Elections, and Conflicts & Attacks. The site seems to be largely driven by major American news outlets, as well as old faithfuls like Associated Press, Reuters and The Guardian - which means that it might not be as populated as I'd expect such a tool to be. But it's still a pretty great no-frills way to see all the important things happening around the world quickly. It's definitely not as overwhelming as trying to keep up with current events with tabs from 5 different news sites open.Â
And it's a million times better than getting your news off Twitter.Â