Does the 'Gems Distributed to Creators Today' refer to today's forum activity?

Up until now, I've been looking at the total distributed gems, but just now I realized something I don't understand. 'Gems Distributed to Creators Today' 8,565,059 Gems I've realized, embarrassingly, whether these gems are the ones already distributed to everyone today, or if they are the gems determined by today's forum activity. Which one is it? Also, I believe the monthly distributed gems are determined by a daily budget. I wish this daily budget were averaged out, so that instead of having high-gem days and low-gem days, it would be truly averaged, with similar gem distributions every day. I still don't know the cause of the mysterious sharp drops twice in September. I suspect there might even be occasional bugs with contribution scores. I'm enjoying participating as a hobby, but the sharp drops really do take a big toll 💦💦