The Moscow Times is on the wire, in English. Its reporting lands on the situation it belongs to, like every other source, and a story that fits none of them stays out.
UPDATES IN counts to the top of the minute. Every desk shows the same number at the same moment and refreshes at :00, instead of each tab counting from the moment it opened.
Every region on the map draws: Mordovia at Saransk on Ukraine, East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Fars on the Strait of Hormuz, and Buryatia on the Plague Tracker. A region was not a kind the map knew, so four of them were left off every map, and Mordovia was typed as a city to get drawn at all. A region is now its own kind, drawn with the cities' marker and the cities' label size.
2026-10-14
2 ENTRIES
The Ukraine column's clock reads KYIV. It said KYIV/MOSCOW, and from 25 October, when Ukraine goes back an hour and Moscow does not, the two cities are an hour apart, so one clock can no longer show both.
Meduza is on the wire, in English. Its reporting lands on the situation it belongs to, like every other source, and a story that fits none of them stays out.
2026-10-11
1 ENTRY
The privacy page now names every service a page loads from: YouTube for the live video, OpenFreeMap for the map, Amazon Web Services for the 3D map's terrain, X for photos and video on the wire, VesselFinder for the ship-tracking map, ADS-B Exchange for the air traffic map, and GPSJam for the GPS jamming map. Each sees your IP address and browser, and none gets your email address. It also says that the cookie remembering how you signed in last stays after you sign out.
2026-10-09
7 ENTRIES
Every date in the changelog's left rail takes you to that day, the oldest included. The whole rail fits on screen from the moment the page opens, the last few days now come to the top when you click them instead of stopping halfway down, and the rail stays where you scrolled it after a click instead of jumping back to the newest date. Back returns you to the day you were reading.
A line that lands while the desk is in a background tab now keeps its glow running while you are away. Hear the ping, click back, and the new line is at the top with whatever is left of its minute, counted from the moment it landed. Before, the glow was already gone when you came back.
From 1 Oct until Treasury publishes the new fiscal year's first figure, the debt clock's interest and deficit show the estimate for the whole new year at last year's pace, still running at that pace, instead of running on from last year's total. The heading reads FY2027 EST. and the line under it says FY2027 FULL-YEAR ESTIMATE AT FY2026 PACE, FIGURE NOT OUT YET.
Search results and link previews say what Situation is: every situation on one live map, with X, YouTube streams, oil prices and the Treasury on one screen. Every page's tab name ends in Situation, and the desk's tab reads The desk.
The front page says what following a situation is really like: bouncing between tabs, sifting through hot takes, hearing it late. The bars at its top and bottom read DECLASSIFIED, and its clocks are the desk's own, one per situation with the same names (DC, KYIV/MOSCOW, CENTRAL).
Two ways to sign up, and both make an account: a magic link (just your email) or an email and password. Either way your 7 days live start the moment you first sign in, and Situation Daily comes each morning. The box on the front page has both, one swap apart, and the sign-in page is now Sign in or sign up. A password sign-up gets one email to confirm it. However you signed up, the desk shows the days you have left and the ask to keep it live.
Signed in, the desk's top corner shows your account: the first letter of your email in a circle, where the sign-out button was. Click it (or Tab to it and press Enter) for your email, your access (7 days live and the days left, Live for life, or One hour behind), Situation Daily on or off, Change password if you use one, and Sign out. The same circle sits at the top of the site's other pages, and Sign out now works after a magic link sign-in too.
2026-10-08
8 ENTRIES
A new line on the wire glows for a full minute from the moment it lands, then fades out, and keeps glowing through the next update and through coming back to the tab. The update countdown ticks once a second from 59 to 0, every number a full second, then starts again at 59. It never stops, waits or jumps while an update loads, and the desk no longer updates twice in a row.
The debt clock wears the site's skin. The national debt, debt per citizen, interest and the deficit fill the page as four counters in big figures that never jump as they tick, each with its rate per second in amber and a link to Treasury's Fiscal Data, and THE DESK takes you back. In the US Debt column on the desk the four sit one per row, clear of the bar under them, each with its rate per second on the right and the live dots lined up. When Treasury does not answer, each counter says so with a red dot until the next refresh.
The error pages wear the site's skin: our fault (500), a form that went stale (422) with Try again to load it fresh, a request the desk could not read (400), and a browser too old for the desk (406). Each says what happened and where to go next. The not-found page now reads DESK OPERATIONAL like the rest, and its Back to the desk opens the desk again, not the landing page.
A new link preview card for every page: the world map with the five situations pinned, EVERY SITUATION ON ONE LIVE MAP, and the site address along the bottom.
A shared line now opens on a card in the site's look: the source, the time and the headline, with an amber bar that fills while the desk opens a second later. OPEN IT NOW goes straight there, and the headline opens the original post.
The front page is now the landing page, and the desk has its own address, /desk. SEE IT NOW opens it. If you're live (signed in, in your 7 days, or bought), the front page takes you straight to the desk. Old links to a line and old join links still work.
Signing out takes you to the front page. SITUATION at the top of every other site page goes to the front page too, and so does SITUATION on the desk unless you are signed in.
The emails wear the site's skin: the confirm email, the magic link, the password reset and Situation Daily. Each opens on an amber bar that says what it is, with one big amber button. The magic link email prints the link under the button too, in case your mail app hides buttons. Situation Daily numbers each situation's lines with their source and time, and shows each situation's local clock. Every email has Privacy and Terms at the foot, plus one-click Unsubscribe where there is one.
2026-10-07
5 ENTRIES
Buyers see a plain amber LIVE with the dot in the desk's top corner, signed in or not, so you can tell at a glance the desk is live. It replaces LIVE FOR LIFE; hover it for the email it is live with.
A new look for the join page: scroll and a short clip walks from fifty tabs to the desk, with the latest line from each wire (one hour behind) and the week or $49 at the bottom. Sign in, welcome, thank-you, changelog and not-found pages share the same skin, and the tab icon is now a round radar scope.
The desk wears the same skin. A radar scope by the name sweeps with a live blip, and UPDATES IN counts the seconds to the next refresh. A rail on the right pages through the situations, one dot each. Each column shows its own clock, and a red dot when lines landed in the last hour. Each wire line shows its source and time above the headline. A guest's locked lines show when they land. When the X wire pauses, a red line says why and when it resumes, if that is known.
The map wears the same skin. The bar on top has a THE DESK button, and a 2D or 3D switch under the map flips the map over in tiles while the other mode loads. The left panel has its stats and the legend as tabs, and KEY brings it back once closed. Wire lines on the map show ON THE MAP when a hover moves the map, and SHARED on the line a link opened. In 3D, long flights arc higher so the route reads as an arc. Turkey is named in full again, not T. The countdown turns blue for its last ten seconds.
Privacy and terms pages: what Situation keeps, why, and who receives it; the 7 days live, the $49 purchase, and what for life means. Both are linked at the foot of every site page and every email.
2026-10-06
11 ENTRIES
The Plague Tracker has its own map: Irkutsk, Shelekhov and Ulan-Ude down to the Mongolian border, with the anti-plague institute and the quarantined hospitals as you zoom in. A wire line about the plague or a quarantine that names a place marks an outbreak there for a week (plague incubates for days): a dark red stain spreading over the area. The map's legend lists only what this map draws.
Plague stories that also name Russia or Moscow now land on the Plague Tracker wire, not the Ukraine wire.
Watch every situation live for 7 days with just your email, no card. The five-minute live taste is gone: without the week, the map and the wire run one hour behind.
New words on the join page, the desk and link previews: every situation on one live map.
Sign in on another device with a magic link by email: no password. The link works once, for 15 minutes.
Live access is now $49 once, for life (for as long as Situation runs), through Polar. No subscription. Paying makes your browser live at once.
Buyers see LIVE FOR LIFE in the corner, and the sign-in page marks the way you signed in last.
The Plague Tracker joins the desk on the right: a wire for the suspected plague case in Irkutsk, with the local Irkutsk clock. @911NewsBreaks joins the X roster. The desk opens Hormuz, Ukraine, plague from left to right. US Debt and Weather sit behind the edge arrows.
A launch with no target on the Iran map rings its launch site and flies nothing. Only the Ukraine map flies a no-target launch toward the other side.
The daily email now deduplicates the same story from multiple accounts: no more duplicate headlines in the top 5 per situation. The email is renamed to Situation Daily with a new subject line and sender name.
AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY secret added to deploy config for Jev same-story classifier (enabled when the secret is present).
2026-10-05
1 ENTRY
The desk at window widths between 641px and 1100px now shows two columns side by side, not one column stacked. The edge arrows still bring the next panels in when they do not fit. A resize between 2 and 3 columns re-applies the window without a reload, and keeps your position when it can.
2026-10-04
20 ENTRIES
Map closures now scan every wire line from the last 24 hours instead of the 100 newest, so dev and prod show the same closures. The map's outages and zone events use the same full-window scan.
A flight halt inside a city no longer tints the whole country. 'Flights halted in Riyadh' and 'halted flights in Riyadh' both mark the city; only a line saying the country's airspace is closed or restricted closes the country.
Pinned accounts now need an on-topic match too. A post from a pinned account goes to that panel only when the post matches the panel's keywords; otherwise it routes by keywords like any other source. This keeps a PressTV post about Brazil off the Iran wire.
On the 3D map, zooming all the way out no longer jumps the view to the North Pole a moment after the zoom stops.
Link previews in Slack, Discord, iMessage and Facebook now name the site SITUATION.
The map wire's rows now have a share icon, the same as the desk wire. Click a row's share icon to copy a link to that headline.
The sea on the 3D map moves on every look, night too, and each sea's waves travel the way its real wind blows for the month.
On the 3D map, zooming back in brings the tilt back after a zoom out, and dragging the zoomed-out world map no longer jumps the zoom.
Opening or closing the oil stats panel no longer moves the map back to its starting view.
The 3D map's sea ripples and glints with animated light on the water: a slow, subtle movement on every look. Off when your system reduces motion.
The 3D map no longer jumps north when you zoom all the way out from the home view. The view stays under the cursor at every zoom.
An announced or planned offensive with announces the launch and air strikes to retake a place no longer draws an arc or a hit on the map. Announces the launch, announced, and announcing are now forecast words, and the hit detector treats them as alerts. A line naming Saudi-backed or Saudi-led forces now resolves to the Yemeni government map actor.
Every number on the Hormuz oil stats panel links to the EIA page it comes from. Click a name to check it; on most pages the row is highlighted.
Oil through the Strait of Hormuz: EIA's latest quarterly figure sits on the stats panel with the quarter it covers.
Pointing at an event on the map no longer moves the map. The event still lights up with its wire line; pointing at a wire line still slides the map to its event.
The live ship feed on the Hormuz map now asks for every vessel type the source sends, not only the two it used to ask for. If the source delivers data, more ships and tankers show on the map.
The AIS feed logs a warning in the server log when it has returned 0 vessels for 30 minutes in a row, so a dead feed shows up before anyone has to check it.
The map legend moved into the left panel. The panel on the left of every map has two tabs: OIL STATS and LEGEND. A map without oil figures shows the legend alone. The legend no longer floats on the map.
West Azerbaijan province and its towns are on the Hormuz map: Urmia, Piranshahr, Oshnavieh, Mahabad, Khoy, Salmas, Naqadeh, Sardasht, and the East and West Azerbaijan region boundaries. UAV activity lines over these towns place a drone loiter on the map, the same way drone activity does.
A map with aircraft hidden on a narrow screen no longer throws a console error about traffic-box layers. The country names and the region labels sit above the airspace and outage tints on that map too.
2026-10-02
5 ENTRIES
A launch from Fars province no longer puts an impact burst at the launch site. The launch site is an origin, never a hit. Explosions at Fars still land there.
The daily email now sends at 7 AM Eastern every morning: the top five events from every situation in the last 24 hours. Each one opens the map on that event. One click to unsubscribe from any email.
The Hormuz map shows oil figures on its left: world oil use, China oil use, US oil use, and US crude in storage, from the EIA, updated every 6 hours.
Oil through the Strait of Hormuz: EIA's published figure sits on the stats panel with the year it was measured.
Tankers through the Strait: a live count of tanker crossings in the last 24 hours, next to the 7-day daily average, from our ship tracking.
2026-10-01
18 ENTRIES
Hovering a drone, a missile, or any event on the map now shows that event alone, the same as hovering its line in the wire. Every live line draws on the map with no hover.
Posts longer than 500 characters stay off the wire. Pasted press releases and long threads crowded out the breaking lines.
Sign up for the daily email on the landing page or the guest desk: one email every morning with the biggest events from every situation. One-click unsubscribe.
Fars province is on the Hormuz map. A launch from Fars now draws its arc from there, not from Iran's centroid.
A sentence that begins with No explosions, No blasts, or No impacts no longer plays the explosion sound for that row, and the places named in that sentence no longer draw a hit on the map. The launch from the first sentence of a multi-sentence row still flies, unaffected by later negated clauses. A carrier or a strike group no longer triggers a jets sortie.
Shot mode is gone; share a line with its share icon.
The US blockade line sits at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, where the Navy enforces it.
A hypothetical, a conditional, a negated, or an attributed internet cut-off line no longer tints a country as an active outage. Said, says, and according to silence the line, the way the sound rules do. A line naming the actor and the victim on the same outage tints only the victim, never the actor.
@hey_itsmyturn (Shin, OSINT / ADS-B / IMINT) joins the global X roster, keyword-routed into whichever panel matches.
A strike in the Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz now lands on the southern shipping lanes off Musandam, not mid-channel. A line naming the corridor or the lanes together with the strait puts the hit in the water south of Larak where the traffic lane runs.
Crimea counts as Russian ground on the Ukraine map. A drone launch from Odesa towards a Crimean base now draws one arc there, not a second track from Crimea.
The lockbox count under each wire panel is now a link to the upgrade. A guest past the taste can click the count to get everything live.
The wire hears missile threat and drone threat as a launch. A line naming a place with those words, like MOSCOW OBLAST MISSILE THREAT, now draws an arc from the opposite sides lead actor. A threat with forecast or alert wording keeps the plain ping.
A strike on several vessels now draws that many impacts on the map. Struck 2 vessels draws two impact glyphs near the place, each at its own point and pulsing on its own timing. Vessel count only: a missile count does not raise it. Capped at six, so dozens of vessels does not carpet the strait.
An airline ban or a carrier cancelling flights no longer tints any country as an airspace closure. Only a line where the country's own airspace is the object counts: the wire reads the sentence boundary and ignores airlines as the object of the flights word.
The debt clock counts up with the year's trend instead of the last day's swing. The tick rate now comes from the last 365 days of Treasury data, so September tax receipts no longer make the US debt counter run backwards.
The wire is English only now. IRIB, Tasnim, Channel 12, and Haaretz are off, and posts in other languages no longer show.
Air defense in a direction of a country draws that half or quarter on the map with a shield glyph. Northwestern Iran, NW Iran, southern Lebanon, and eastern Ukraine now show a clipped area in the air-defense color with a shield-and-plane glyph at its center, matching the existing restricted-airspace look. A named place in the same line still draws at the place only.
2026-09-21
1 ENTRY
A desk left open all day no longer grows in memory. The wire used to hold on to every old row after each update, and a day-old tab could reach 9 GB.
2026-09-15
17 ENTRIES
WTI and Brent on the strip now come from the NYMEX and ICE front-month contracts. The old Brent feed printed five dollars low for eight hours on 2026-09-15.
A wire line that lists many target cities now flies an arc to every one of them, not only the first few. Crimea counts as Russian ground on the Ukraine map.
The masthead lists every rostered streamer who is live right now, with a link to the stream, even when the stream title matches no panel.
The live-in countdown fires for every streamer on a panel, even when YouTube's page title is junk.
A strike reported as already landed now shows the impact, not a missile in flight.
A launch row draws one arc to the place it names, not to every place in the sentence.
When a wire line names jets, missiles, and drones together, the jets lead: the sound and the map follow the fighter jets first, then missiles, then drones.
Zoom out and the map shows only the major places; zoom in to reveal the rest. A place with a hit, a launch, an alert, or heat this week stays at every zoom.
The wire now hears Iran and Israel in their own languages: IRIB, Tasnim, Channel 12, and Haaretz.
The map wire now lists every line the desk does, not only the kinetic ones.
Lock the map wire so exploring the map never scrolls it away.
Links that leave the desk now carry a small arrow so you know before you click.
The airliners chip turns amber when the airspace empties.
Jets and drones reported over a place now patrol the area on the map, each with an amber wake, and the place stays marked under them.
A sun, dawn, dusk, or moon glyph in front of each column clock, and by the name on the map page, shows which light it is there.
The Red Sea islands and Al Mokha are on the map.
Zoomed all the way out, the map names regions such as the Levant and the Gulf States where country names used to pile up. Zoom in past 4 and every country name is back.
2026-09-14
4 ENTRIES
The airliners count and the military aircraft layer are live again.
A wire line that reports explosions or damage caused by a launch under way, such as explosions heard on Qeshm Island due to missile launches towards the Strait of Hormuz, now sounds the launch and flies it. A line where the cause is over and done, like casualties as a result of an earlier attack, stays quiet as before.
The refresh countdown no longer flashes a full minute after each update.
When an update fails or the wire has not refreshed, the desk waits a full minute before it tries again instead of retrying every second. The retry storm slowed the site for everyone on 2026-09-14.
2026-09-11
9 ENTRIES
The map labels the United Arab Emirates as UAE, so the name no longer crowds Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
A cluster munition line flies as one carrier, not a salvo. When it lands, a scatter of small flashes spreads around the target instead of a single hit. Hover the line later and the replay lands the same scatter.
A launch with no weapon named now sounds and flies as a missile, so an unknown launch never sits on the map for hours as a slow drone.
Hover a non-English line on the map wire and its English translation takes its place, the same as the desk. On a phone the English stands under the line.
Hovering a wire line that already has an event on the map no longer covers it with the country spotlight. The launch ring, the arc, and the replay of a landed flight play on their own, as before. The spotlight is only for a line that names a country and has nothing else on the map.
Point at a country on the map and the thin white edge gives way to the bold border, the same as pointing at a wire line about it. A country with no flag colors still gets the bold border and the bold name.
The map wire lists every warfare line, kinetic or not: internet blackouts and throttling, GPS jamming and spoofing, cyber attacks, and communications jamming or cuts. A country named under one of them tints grey with a big faded glyph: wifi for internet, a satellite for GPS, binary for a cyber attack, a radio tower for communications. Several on one country sit side by side, and a line saying it is restored clears it. GPS jamming across the Persian Gulf tints the whole Gulf. Hover the tint for every family on it with the state and the time left, hover a wire line and its glyph comes up bold. Legend rows added.
Declared zones are on the map: a prohibited area, exclusion zone, or mined waters a side announces shows as a hatched red area. Iran's restricted zone from the blockade line past Chabahar into the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea is the first. A line naming it lights the whole area for 15 minutes, and hovering that line or the area brings up its name and who declared it.
The US naval blockade line is white, not red, so it reads apart from Iran's zone, and it runs coast to coast from Khor Fakkan to the shore east of Jask. Its name shows when you hover it.
2026-09-10
10 ENTRIES
Subscribers can hold the map on one look: AUTO follows the sun, or pick DAWN, DAY, DUSK, or NIGHT from the pill at the top of the map. The pick sticks across reloads.
The markets strip no longer pushes the desk down when the quotes arrive.
A drone launch that names only the country it is headed for now draws its arc on the Ukraine map.
The debt clock's dollar signs sit in line with the figures at the same size.
The map opens on the stream the column was playing: it sits in the media corner over the map's lower right, muted. A wire post's VID or IMG replaces it, and the media's BACK TO LIVE button returns to the stream.
A line that names the attack only inside a causal clause, 'as a result of' or 'resulting from', plays no missile clip. The line reports the aftermath, not the launch.
Bloomberg plays again in the US Debt column.
A drone launch that names only the country it is headed for now draws its arc on the Ukraine map.
The debt clock's dollar signs sit in line with the figures at the same size.
In the day, dawn, and dusk looks, flights draw as dark ink on the map so they read on the sand.
2026-09-09
16 ENTRIES
The desk keeps refreshing while its tab is in the background: updates land and ping while you work elsewhere. The ring and the countdown keep the real time left in the cycle, and coming back to the tab refreshes the wire at once. A cycle the browser paused still catches up on return with one ping for the backlog.
A warm glow marks where hits have clustered over the last week, building with repeat strikes and fading as they age.
Military aircraft over the Gulf are on the Hormuz map, from live ADS-B: tankers, transports, patrol and surveillance flights, with type and registration on hover. An AIRLINERS ALOFT count in the corner shows how many airliners are in the box (hover it for what it counts), and when it falls to nothing the map marks the airspace as emptied on its own, before any headline says so.
A missile seen over a place in its own country is not firing at it. The Iranian missile seen over Qom draws the launch ring at Qom and no arc.
A line quoting a news outlet plays no launch sound and draws no arc.
A launch line that names where the drones or missiles left from but not where they are going now flies them from that place toward the other side for the flight window, instead of a ring that faded after fifteen minutes.
Clashes, skirmishes, gunfire, and small arms lines play a machine gun clip. Hover the line and the place pulses. Nothing flies, so no arc.
Every sound on the desk plays at the same level, so the volume control scales them all alike. Electronic warfare lines pick from three real radio jamming clips.
The desk's first update after you open it lands when the wire next refreshes, not a full minute later.
The Strait's islands, ports, and shipping lanes are on the Hormuz map: Abu Musa, the Tunbs, Larak, Hormuz Island, Sirri, Lavan, Khor Fakkan, Bandar Lengeh, Ras al-Khaimah, Asaluyeh, and the lanes. A line naming one lands there.
The map follows the sun over the place it shows: dawn, day, dusk, and night looks, from the real sun height there, changing on the minute as the light changes.
Point at a country on the map and its name and border go bold, the same as pointing at a wire line about it. Turkey, Egypt, and Kuwait join the countries the Hormuz map knows.
The US Debt column opens on a debt clock: the national debt, debt per citizen, interest this fiscal year, and the deficit this fiscal year, ticking from Treasury's latest releases. The streams are behind it.
A line that says an actor is firing towards a place, with no weapon named, now flies. The map picks missiles or drones for it, plays the sound, and draws the arc, the same as a line that names the weapon.
Ships in the Strait of Hormuz are on the Hormuz map, tankers in accent, from live AIS position reports. Coverage comes from volunteer receivers, so gaps happen.
A wire post with a video or an image attached plays no launch sound and draws no arc, no sortie, no explosion, no siren, and no air defense ring. The media is the update. The row still pings, and the VID or IMG button still opens it.
2026-09-08
8 ENTRIES
Weather joins the desk: Ryan Hall, Y'all live when he is on, with a storm wire. The desk shows three columns; the arrows at the edges bring the fourth in.
Add the desk to your phone's home screen. It opens full screen on the desk.
Wire sounds play on phones now, not just the plain ping.
A line more than ten minutes old when it lands on the wire no longer glows like breaking news. It gets a lighter amber ring that fades over one minute and does not type out or sound. When the tab sat in the background, the desk catches up on return and pings once for the whole backlog; lines from the last ten minutes still glow, type, and sound as usual.
Hover a wire line and the place it names comes forward on the map: its label goes bold and white over about a second. When the line names a country, the country's border goes bold and its flag fills the territory the same way. Move off and it fades back.
A line about a launch that has not happened yet ("now we wait for Iran to launch missiles at Jordan") draws no arc. Only a launch the wire reports as happening flies.
The maps know more places. Hormuz gains southwest Saudi Arabia (Abha, Najran, Jizan, Khamis Mushait), Yanbu, Taif, Dammam, Kuhestak, Aqaba and Camp Titin, Prince Hassan, Al Minhad, and Sheikh Isa. Ukraine gains 52 places: the rear cities and ports, the front-line towns, Enerhodar and its nuclear plant, and the Russian air bases and launch sites inside the map. A wire line that names one of them now lights its token.
A burst of routine headlines pings once.
2026-09-06
4 ENTRIES
Sign out lands on the desk as a guest, not on the sign-in form.
The desk opens Iran on the left, Ukraine in the middle, US Debt on the right. A desk you rearranged by dragging keeps your arrangement.
Guests get the sound, fullscreen, and fold buttons on a stream column, the same as subscribers. Channel switching stays with the live desk.
Sound starts off. A browser that never chose hears nothing until you click PING. Five seconds after you arrive the chip bumps and turns amber so you know it is there. Your choice is remembered per browser as before.
2026-09-04
40 ENTRIES
Arcs lost their arrowheads. The taper and the crawling dashes already say which way a flight goes.
The map wire floats over the map's right edge, see-through, so the map runs on under it. Centering and the opening fit use the open part.
A crosshair button in the map's upper left, or Enter, takes the map back to its opening view, centered.
The map legend folds on the desk. Click LEGEND to fold it away or open it; the map remembers which.
Hover a country and its flag fills its territory, top to bottom in bands: Ukraine and Russia on the Ukraine map; Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan on the Hormuz map. Move off and it goes.
A retold hit answers the hover. A second line about the same hit inside the hour draws no second token, but hover it and the place pulses like the first. "Strikes near Dnipro" now flies to Dnipro too.
Hover a wire line and the map slides to its target: where the flight lands, the hit, the alert, or the launch site, else the place the line names. The zoom stays where you left it.
Air raid alerts turn a siren. A line like "new air raid alert in Kyiv now" is on the map wire and lights a red beacon over Kyiv, a soft halo that blinks twice and rests like an emergency light, for 15 minutes. Hover the line later in the day and it blinks again. Legend row added.
A crescent moon leads a column's city clock while it is dark there, from the sun's height over the city at that hour, so you know at a glance whether Kyiv or Tehran is in its night.
REPLAY rests while it plays. The button greys out on the click and comes back when the sortie and its sounds are done.
The Gulf of Aden is named on the Hormuz map, and a line reporting a hit there puts the hit on its waters like the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
The map wire has a ↑ button in its head. One tap takes the wire back to the top.
A line's number flies. "5 Russian missiles to Dnipro" puts five missiles on the arc in a vee, "several" or "a wave of" puts four to seven, "missiles" alone three, jets a pair. Past seven the lead carries the figure: "15-20 Shahed drones" flies seven with ×15-20 on the lead. A retelling of a flight inside the hour still draws no second arc, but hover it and it flies again by itself like any landed flight.
Russian missiles leave from the Iskander launch areas around Taganrog on the Ukraine map, the usual source of strikes on Dnipro and the south-east. Drones still leave from the Kursk region. A line that names its own launch place wins.
Launch sites light. A line launching from a named place with no target, like "Russia is launching ballistic missiles from Rostov and Voronezh", has nothing to fly to, so a white ring rises from each place named for 15 minutes. White, not amber: amber means a hit. Hover the ring and the wire scrolls to the line; hover the line, today or later in the day, and the sites ring again. Legend row added.
A strike told in the past flies on hover. A line like "the Yemeni PLC air force carried out strikes on Hodeidah and Taiz" draws nothing as it lands, no sound, no sortie. Its REPLAY button flies what it would have looked like: a pair of jets from the base to each place named, with the sound.
The Yemeni government is on the Hormuz map as an actor, flying from Al Anad Air Base, which is now a token. Lines naming the PLC, the Presidential Leadership Council, or the Yemeni air force draw from there.
Jets leave a contrail. A sortie no longer draws a solid arc: the jets lay a soft white trail behind them, and each stretch of it thins and dissolves a few seconds after they pass, oldest first, the way a contrail goes in the sky.
Hover a hit and it pulses. A wire line with no flight to show, a strike on one place or several, throbs a big amber ring on each place while the pointer stays, so the eye finds them at once.
Arcs taper. An arc is thin and faint where it starts and full weight where it lands, so the way it goes reads at a glance, moving or not.
The moving things draw on top. Arcs, flyers, sorties, and air defense rings sit above every token and name on the map, so nothing covers them.
Airspace tints tell you their time left. A closure or a restriction stands 24 hours from its line unless a later line renews or lifts it. Hover the tint or its plane and the tag reads the country, its state, and how long is left.
A landed flight flies again on hover. Hover a wire line whose drones or missiles have already landed and the map shows that flight by itself: the arc, dimmer, with the flyer moving along it on a loop while the pointer stays. Jets lines have REPLAY instead. Its tag reads LANDED.
Hover a wire line and only that line's moving things stay on the map. Every other arc, flyer, sortie, and ring goes while the pointer stays; hits, smoke, and airspace tints stay put, so the map still reads. Move off and it all comes back.
The map wire shows media. A line with a video or an image has the same VID or IMG button as the desk; it opens over the map's corner, × or Esc closes it.
Explosions burst on the map. When the explosion clip plays for a line, two to five flashes burst in a cluster on the place, a beat apart: on a hit as the line lands, and at the jets' target after a sortie. The sortie itself flies for the length of the jets clip, so REPLAY lines up: jets, then the burst.
Air defense up. A line whose sound is air defense and that names a place, like "Israeli air defense engaging over Eilat", puts white rings radiating from that place for 30 minutes. Hover the core and the wire scrolls to the line. Legend row added.
Jets fly a sortie. A line like "Israeli jets striking targets in Tehran" plays the jets clip while the arc draws itself from the base to the target with a swept-wing glyph at its tip, holds a beat, and goes. No standing arc for jets. The line's REPLAY button flies it again with the sound, on the map page and in the column.
An arc lives until its flyer lands. A drone's arc to Sumy stays up for the 45 minutes the flight takes; a missile's arc keeps its 15 minutes.
More lines draw the arc. "Houthis launch cruise missiles toward Eilat, Israeli air defense engaging" pings air defense and draws the Houthi arc. "Drones heading towards Manama, sirens sounding" pings the siren and draws the drone. "7 Russian drones from Sumy to Poltava now" draws Sumy to Poltava. All-caps lines count. Oblast is no longer read as a blast. Boryspil is Kyiv's airport on the map.
The thing in flight reads apart from its arc: a white missile with fins and an amber flame, a white drone, a white jet, bigger than the arc's arrowheads. A cruise missile flies at 900 km/h. "Missiles" is a salvo and "jets" a flight: three fly in a vee, the lead a little ahead. Hover a flyer and the wire scrolls to its line, and a tag on the map says what it is, where it is going, and its ETA.
A sighting starts near the target. "Drones heading towards Manama, sirens sounding" means someone sees them near Manama: the flyer starts five minutes out and lands in five. Air defense engaging means the same. A sighting without sirens starts fifteen minutes out. A launch verb alone flies the whole way from the origin.
Drones and missiles fly at their real pace. A flyer's place on its arc is the time since the line landed, at the speed of what is flying: a Shahed-class drone at 185 km/h, a missile at 3,000 km/h, jets at 900 km/h. A missile is there in minutes and the glyph goes when it lands. A drone crawls for hours and is still in the air when its arc fades.
The link card shows the map. Paste a Situation link into X, Slack, or a chat and the preview is the Gulf map with the wordmark, not the old desk screenshot.
Guests get the map and the live wire. On the free desk each column with a map opens on it, the MAP chip opens it full size, and US Debt shows its stream. Five minutes live per situation per browser, map and wire, then both run an hour behind: the map's ask comes up (dismiss it and keep watching), the column badge turns red, and the last hour's wire rows sit blurred under the ask on the desk and on the map. Every guest column has the fold button.
Drones and missiles fly the map. Each launch arc carries a small glyph riding from the launch point to the target, a drone or a missile by what the line says. Ukraine and Russia draw arcs now too.
The map. A column's video slot now opens on that situation's live map, and the MAP chip in the column's controls opens it full size: hits from the wire, launch arcs from the actor to the target, smoke over a hit for a day, closed and restricted airspace by country, US bases, and the US naval blockade line. Hover an arc or a hit and the wire scrolls to the line behind it.
The ping hears a launch through its sourcing. A line like "Iran launches missiles toward the Gulf, per initial reports" plays the missile clip now instead of the plain ping. So does "missiles launched towards" and a launch followed by an official's denial.
A line with two events plays both. "Israel has intercepted these missiles. Iran is now launching a second wave of missiles" plays air defense, then the missile clip, one per sentence.
The desk lands whole on load. Rows no longer type out one by one when the page opens. Typing is only for lines that hit the wire while you are watching.
2026-09-03
7 ENTRIES
The phone desk is designed for phones now. The wire starts under the column title, three named chips over the deck jump between situations, the strip runs edge to edge, and the page is the only thing that scrolls.
Guests on a phone no longer see the locked video box or the in-wire upsell. One line under the masthead says what the desk is and that the guest wire runs an hour behind. The $5 button at the bottom is the one ask.
Subscribers on a phone get the live video folded under a LIVE row above the wire. Tap it to open or close the player. The desk remembers your choice.
Each column's fullscreen button fullscreens the map or stream again. It had switched to a per-panel capture with no way out. Use SHOT in the masthead for captures.
Pin the market strip: click a group's name on the right of the strip and the tape stays on that group instead of rotating every 15 seconds. It holds through the refresh. Click again to let it rotate.
When the X API is down, a red line above the market strip says the X wire is paused, what X returned, and since when. It clears on its own once posts flow again.
Skip ahead on the strip: the arrow above the group name jumps to the next group now instead of waiting out the 15 seconds. If the strip is pinned, the pin moves with you.
2026-09-02
4 ENTRIES
Shot mode: hit SHOT in the masthead (or press S) to strip the desk down to a clean, dated capture with the site URL stamped underneath, ready for a normal screenshot. Esc exits.
While shot mode is up, an Esc to exit chip sits in the corner. Click it or press Esc to leave.
Air raid alerts get their own sound: a siren for rows mentioning air raids, sirens, red alerts, or take cover orders.
Posts from @BarakRavid now play the clown horn even when the text does not name him.
2026-09-01
30 ENTRIES
Phone masthead fits on one row, and the desk opens on the middle column without scrolling the top away.
Drone sightings and activity reports now play the drone sound, not the plain ping.
@bonzerbarry joins the global X roster.
@PTVBreaking1 (Press TV Breaking) joins the Iran wire, pinned like @PressTV.
Signed-in subscribers no longer see the Chip in button. You already pay for the wire.
The phone masthead drops WHAT'S NEW and shows the update countdown instead. The changelog is still at /changelog.
Quoted posts no longer type out character by character. The post types, then the quote fades in under it.
A column that refills after an empty cycle stays silent instead of sounding every row.
Backfilled rows (a new roster account's recent posts, a feed catching up) land at once, glow, and stay silent.
The new-headline glow fades evenly from the moment a headline lands and is fully gone when the countdown hits zero.
The Axios marker waits until a headline stops glowing.
Headlines citing Barak Ravid or Axios honk. Twice. Instead of any other sound.
New headlines reveal one at a time, oldest first: each types out before the next starts, and its sound plays as it starts. The last row to type is the most recent.
Analysis framing (reflects, reports, forecast, estimate) and simple past (targeted, attacked, struck, fired) keep the plain ping. "Has launched", "have fired", and "just struck" count as now and stay themed.
The desk fits your screen again on desktop: each wire scrolls inside its own column, and short columns no longer trail dead space.
This page. The WHAT'S NEW chip in the masthead shimmers when something has landed since your last look.
Guest access: the full desk free with the wire one hour behind, and updates land with the same glow and sound. The live wire is $5 a month.
Sound alerts on the wire. Missile launches, drones, fighter jets, explosions, and air defense engagements each play their own real sound, never the same one twice in a row. Everything else gets the sonar ping. The PING chip in the masthead turns it all on or off.
Themed sounds only fire on real events. Analysis pieces and officials reacting get the plain ping.
The fallback ping keys MTS, Monitoring The Situation, in Morse at 750Hz.
Non-English posts translate to English when you hover them.
Filter any wire to a single source with the funnel button.
Quote-tweet videos now carry a VID tag that plays in the column player.
Loading skeletons while the desk fills in, and headlines arrive newest first.
Posts citing Barak Ravid or Axios carry a marker.
Share any headline: its link unfurls into a proper card, and the row glows for whoever follows it.
Every headline now routes to exactly one wire, no doubles across columns.
GPS jamming map joins the Iran wire's rotation. PressTV joins its roster.
Cleaner panel headers: title and clocks up top, one uniform control strip below.
Go-live countdowns sit quietly until the last minute, then pulse.
2026-08-31
9 ENTRIES
The X wire: posts from a hand-picked roster land in each panel's wire, with photos and videos playable in the column player.
Quoted tweets show their full quoted text as a block quote.
Scheduled streams show a live countdown in the masthead and announce the moment they go live.
Live maps on the Iran wire: ship traffic and air traffic. The LIVE badge only says LIVE when it is.
Drag any column by its header to reorder the desk.
Phone layout: a one-column swipe deck.
Fold any column's video away to run it wire-only.
Generalist live streams route to the right column by what they are covering.
The market strip stamps its oldest quote time and runs on a UTC clock.
2026-08-30
4 ENTRIES
SITUATION launches: a live geopolitical terminal. Markets strip, three situation panels with live video, and a wire of headlines for each.
The 60 second cycle: a filling ring, split-flap price updates, typed-out headlines, and a glow on anything new.
Channel stacks per column with live detection, one audio source at a time, and dead streams auto-advancing.
The wire keeps a 7 day archive. The market tape rotates energy, yields, commodities, and metals.