2026-02-19 - Ask For Story Ideas
Hello World
Context
I would like to do some research on various essay, long-form research, or non-fiction book ideas. I’ve made a template so that I can ask mostly the same question of multiple engines without having to re-type anything or make mistakes.
Mega-Category: Antiquity Discoveries
Description for item three
Angle I’m Interested In Pursuing: Revisionism
First approach or angle
Goal
I want you to only answer this question as if I were a new user and this is my first question. Don’t look at my files or chat history.
I’ve provided a Mega Category and an Angle.
You and I are going to create a system for creating an entirely new news source, like a news magazine, newspaper, podcast, video news broadcast, etc. Actually, the actual delivery format is still in flux. Let’s refine this by saying you are helping me run a daily news-magazine engine with very strict rules. As such, I have hired you as a ruthless filter for true yet interesting signal. Your only goal is to surface fascinating, non-hyped stories that working researchers actually care about — never press releases, never industry cheerleading, never “magic thing changes everything” or “Thing I don’t like is the end of all of us” fluff.
All I want back is a markdown table that I can copy and a paragraph
The markdown table should have Theme # Theme Name Material Count [analysis period] Key New Events Sample Long-Form Angle Why Orthogonal/Balanced
Proposed Steps
STEP 1 – Your task - coming up with five themes
Now that we have a Mega Category and an angle, we need to researched a candidate list of themes, and we’re going to need to iterate and refine this again and again until we get a rough balance of material. This is called balancing out an editorial calendar. We’re going to need to do this every time we go through this exercise as the online information landscape is always changing. It is, as if we were setting up our news source from a completely blank slate. What we’re going to need is to make our list of themes detailed enough to be the most active and also the most orthogonal to one another. To do this
From the past 30 days only search web + X/Twitter/Online/Social Media/Technical Journals for high-quality content matching today’s exact combination. Keep only thoughtful, reasoned discourse (academic preprints, expert threads, conference talks, policy discussions, long-form essays, etc.).
QUALTIY CONSIDERATIONS
- We need to consider source material. We live in an age if information warfare, so most - perhaps an overwhelming percentage — of what you’re collecting is meant to skew the conversation. We need to filter out noise. A good place to find noise is Press Releases, submarine stories that actually are promoting something else, breakthroughs that are hyped beyond reason, and oddly enough, stories that don’t seem to have much intellectual reasoned discourse — those with either a bunch or hype or a bunch of derision. Filter that crap out as much as you can
- Themes are great, but we want to share new things, not analysis of existing things. Do each of these themes have a sufficient number of new events to say, perhaps, write a long-form magazine article about? If not, re-do the list, combining topics, making new ones, whatever it takes to get it as mutually orthogonal as possible.
From the filtered results, extract the 5 most prominent, mutually orthogonal themes that have enough fresh events and developments to each support a 3,000–5,000-word long-form magazine article.
STEP 2 Report back your candidate list
Then after a blank line comes the paragraph saying which theme you recommend as today’s lead and why. Nothing else.
Background
For my topic, I want a balance of things recently talked about and things that have lasting power. I also want multiple lists so I can compare them and get ideas.
Success Criteria
That a random selection of any of these recommendations stands up as being worthy of publication after continued research and writing.
Failure Indicators
STRICT FILTERS – remove ALL of the following noise:
- Press releases, company announcements, fundraising posts
- Submarine/advertorial stories
- Hype pieces that call anything “revolutionary / game-changing / AGI tomorrow”
- Pure derision or doomer rants with no reasoning
- Low-effort memes, one-liners, or rage bait
Reporting back anything but a markdown table. I don’t want a pitch on what to do next. I don’t want praise. Just the table and the recommendation.
Input
Output
The table and the recommendation paragraph described above.
Work Area
Use internal work area. No external work area needed.
I might want to keep a log if I run this multiple times. I’m not sure.
Log
- 2026-02-18 00:39 - Created