The Fun Department
Five instruments our analysts built to measure things that should not be measured. They run entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere, saved, or read by anyone, including us.
The Lie Detector
Paste a statement. The machine will analyse it, dramatically, and return a diagnosis. It cannot tell whether anything is true. It can count adjectives.
The machine is warmed up and waiting. It has already formed some opinions.
Not an actual lie detector. It counts words, capital letters, numbers and phrases like “clearly” and “studies show”, then describes the counts in the tone of an instrument. It reads the statement's style, says nothing about whether it's true, and never says anything about whoever wrote it. The same text always gets the same reading.
The IQ Meter
Measures confidence instead of intelligence. Six statements, one slider each, one Confidence Quotient. It takes about twenty seconds, or less if you're very sure.
How sure are you?
Six statements. Move each slider to how sure you are, not to what's true. The instrument can't tell the difference, and neither, statistically, can you.
The Bureaucracy Translator
Paste government or corporate text. You get it back in plain English, and then as The Questionable Times reads it: literally, and without mercy.
Examples are invented. Names in anything you paste are left exactly as they are: the translator reads the prose, not the people.
The translator knows 380-odd phrases, from “going forward” to “we remain committed to”. It will also tell you what the text says if taken completely literally, which is usually more interesting.
The Emergency Probability Generator
Today's probabilities for the things that matter, recalculated at midnight UTC. The Questionable Terminal ticker at the top of every page runs on the same figures.
Tuesday 27 October 2026 · UTC · the same for every reader, all day
- Pirates Today98.2%↑ +8.2 on yesterdayCoastal readers should keep an eye on anyone carrying a map.
- Kettle Already Boiled by Someone Else42.2%↑ +10.1 on yesterdayThey did not fill it back up.
- A Parrot Knows Something20.9%↓ -31.7 on yesterdayIt isn't telling.
- Mild Inconvenience ForecastHeavy after lunchNothing serious. Everything slightly annoying.
- Cat Knocks Something off a Table88.8%↓ -8.5 on yesterdayThe cat maintained eye contact throughout.
- Surprise Fire Drill12.0%↓ -11.5 on yesterdayIt will begin the moment you get into the shower.
- "Unexpected Item in Bagging Area"92.8%↑ +6.1 on yesterdayAn assistant will be with you after a pause long enough to reflect.
- Global Gravity StatusDownwards, as agreedChecked this morning with an apple. The apple is fine.
The Breaking News Siren
Every three hours, the red strip under the ticker reports something perfectly ordinary that has been interpreted incorrectly. Everyone sees the same bulletin at the same time.
Cat sits on keyboard. Email sent. Recipients treat it as policy.
Next bulletin at 09:00 UTC.- Crossword finished apart from one clue. The clue remains at large.
- Car alarm stops on its own. Street unsure how to feel.
- Grass continues to grow at the rate of grass.
- Traffic light turns green. Drivers interpret it as encouragement.
- Weather forecast turns out accurate. Forecasters asked to explain themselves.
- Phone reaches 1% battery. Owner described as calm, until then.
None of these machines work.
Every number in the Department is invented. The Emergency Probabilities and the ticker are a hash of the date, the Lie Detector and the IQ Meter are word counts and arithmetic, and the Translator is a dictionary with opinions. Nothing here is a forecast, a measurement or a judgement about any real person, and none of it uses artificial intelligence: the machinery is pretend, and proudly so.
Whatever you type into these instruments stays on your device. It is not sent to us, stored, or shared.