Well. I don't think this was what you wanted.

The code that generates the "Latest Post" is already pretty complicated, what with the auto-update mode, the collapsing stuff on the mobile page, etc. I found myself trying to resolve what would happen if you hit "+5" while you were in auto-update mode, and I decided that was more than I wanted to deal with. In addition, I feel like the "arbitrarily add more length to page elements" design that Facebook/Twitter have (even more annoying when it automatically does so when you scroll past a certain point) is a poor one at best. Yes, it saves re-rendering the entire page, but if somebody's really curious about that 6th post, and they're going to click once anyways, why not give them more if not all of the information they might be interested in.

There's also my design philosophy so far that dictates: "If you don't bother to log in, you don't get to have nice things." Guests don't get any dynamic Javascript things, nor do they have the convenience of idkfa keeping track of things they've already read.

Anyhow.

So that led me to two things:

• Now, when you're logged in, the latest post box will show you only unread posts. It will be empty once you've read everything.
• As a more "advanced" latest-posts-type-thing, I've included "The Stream." It's effectively like browsing the discussion items, but it isn't limited to one item.