Vol. 01Soon
Fact-check in 60 seconds
A pocket routine for verifying a claim before you repeat it. Works on tweets, headlines, and uncles.
A manifesto for the age of AI
Stupidness
is no excuse.
The answer to almost anything is thirty seconds away. Not knowing used to be an excuse. Now asking takes thirty seconds. Curiosity is free. Ignorance is expensive. This is the front door of a small, useful knowledge hub for a smarter internet.
Fig. 002 / The Stupidity Tax
What not-knowing costs.
A small, non-exhaustive ledger of expensive failures that one basic question, check, or safeguard might have prevented.
- $460MKnight CapitalOne of eight servers missed a software update and continued running obsolete trading code. In 45 minutes, the system generated a $460 million loss.
- ≈$125MMars Climate OrbiterLockheed Martin software produced thruster data in imperial units. NASA's navigation software expected metric units. The mismatch went undetected, and the spacecraft was lost near Mars.
- 500M emailsNHS reply-all stormA faulty mailing list allowed one email and its replies to generate approximately 500 million messages in 75 minutes.
- ≈$18.5MMariner 1A missing overbar in a guidance equation—combined with a guidance-antenna failure—contributed to the destruction of the Venus-bound spacecraft five minutes after launch.
- ¥40.7B ≈ $347MMizuho fat-finger tradeA trader entered 610,000 shares at ¥1 instead of one share at ¥610,000. The Tokyo Stock Exchange accepted the order, and its system failed to cancel it.
Fig. 003 / The Excuse Detector
Paste an excuse.
Get an AI verdict.
Public verdict history
Published excuses and answers — expand for the full archive.
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Fig. 004 / The Manifesto
Seven tenets, no filler.
- 01
Curiosity is free.
Ignorance is expensive. The gap between not knowing and knowing is now measured in seconds, not semesters.
- 02
Ask the machine before you ask the mob.
A quiet question to a model beats a loud opinion in a group chat, every single time.
- 03
Confidence is not competence.
The loudest voice in the room is often the one that hasn't looked anything up. Verify, then speak.
- 04
Read the thing.
The contract. The docs. The label. The source. Two minutes of reading has saved more lives than any hot take.
- 05
Prompt like you mean it.
Vague questions get vague answers. Specify who, what, when, and why — and the model will meet you there.
- 06
Being wrong is fine. Staying wrong isn't.
Update your beliefs when the evidence updates. That's not weakness. That's the whole game.
- 07
Stupidness is a choice. So is the other thing.
Every day, you get to pick. Choose the interesting one.
Fig. 005 / The Field Guide
Coming next.
Vol. 02Soon
Prompt like you mean it
How to talk to a model so it stops telling you what you already knew and starts telling you what you didn't.
Vol. 03Soon
Spot the confident wrong answer
The tells — human and machine — that a very sure-sounding sentence is quietly making things up.