THE THING ABOUT IT IS.

How to use this site.

In a hot debate? Check the card, share the card. The checks travel with the link.

An argument card

A claim somebody's making, read plainly and read at its widest, each tested against what it would have to predict. Two results, never averaged.

A record card

A hateful statement, documented: who said it, the source, and a severity on a published ladder. No grade, because nothing is in dispute.

The main use

In a hot debate

1

Find the card

Search takes a word from the claim, a name, or who it was aimed at. The topics hold every card on that fight.

2

Check it before you repost it

If a post makes you want to share it the second you finish reading, that's the cue to look it up first. Check what it actually claims, not the feeling it produced.

3

Share it whole

Most tested claims split. Across the 160 tested so far, the plain reading failed outright 36 times and the widest held twice. The part that cuts against you is what makes the rest credible.

4

Share it with your own side too

A correction from across the aisle reads as ammunition. The same card from a friend reads as a check.

What a card can't do: settle who's a good person, or prove anybody lied. Don't send one that tests a different claim than the one in front of you, and don't send one you haven't read.

The standing habit

As current events

Start with This Week

The week's most serious recorded statements and its newest tested arguments, quoted, dated, and checked.

Follow a fight, not just a week

Click a topic and the fight's whole history opens: the same claim returning with a new event attached, arguments hardening into language aimed at a whole group.

Subscribe

RSS carries every new card. The Dashboard keeps the counts, and every chart clicks through.

No card yet?

Run the check yourself

1

Write the claim down twice: the plain version an ordinary listener would hear, and the widest the same words reach. The plain one has to be fair.

2

List what each version predicts, before you look anything up, so the goalposts are planted before you know the answer.

3

Go check, and keep the two results separate. The full method is at why we believe our readings are correct.

The rest of the site