The Index is one number, 0 to 100, filed twice a day: how loud the strangeness noise is compared with the AI story in the same window, from the same feeds. Higher is louder. It is not a measure of truth. It is a measure of where the room is looking. The Gnome keeps the ladder:

• 0 to 19: QUIET GARDEN
• 20 to 39: RUSTLING HEDGE
• 40 to 59: LANTERNS LIT
• 60 to 79: THE ROOM IS SHOUTING
• 80 to 100: FULL CIRCUS

0. Version, and what is comparable with what (frozen 2026-08-28)

The input list is **v0.2** and it is FROZEN. Nothing is added to it or taken out of it without a version bump on this page, filed the same day as a correction on the errors page. That is the whole point of numbering the inputs.

• **v0.1** covers every reading taken **before 2026-08-27**: 25 Aug morning (80.9), 25 Aug evening (78.3), 26 Aug morning (56.9). Two Google News search feeds (inputs 13 and 17) were added inside that window.
• **v0.2** covers every reading from **2026-08-27** onward, on the 22 feeds listed below, unchanged.

**v0.1 readings are not comparable with v0.2 readings, and they are marked as such on the chart, on the front page, and in news/index_history.jsonl.** The Index fell 42 points across that boundary. The room did not move that far in two days; the plumbing did. Comparing across the line would be exactly the failure this instrument exists to name in other people. What the Index measures is the number for the day, and the movement between readings taken on the same list.

1. Inputs (numbered, so a correction can name the line it changed)

Thirteen numbered strangeness inputs and four numbered AI inputs, carried by 22 feeds in all: 18 on the strangeness side and 4 on the AI side. A numbered input can be more than one feed (input 9 is two subreddits, input 10 is four, input 8 is a podcast and its video channel), which is why the numbered count and the feed count differ. The feed-level list is news/sources.json and it is the same list this page describes.

Strangeness side, section "strange": 1. The Debrief (RSS, weight 3, filtered to UAP and high-strangeness pull words) 2. Mystery Wire (YouTube channel feed, weight 3) 3. NewsNation (YouTube channel feed, weight 1, filtered) 4. The Why Files (YouTube channel feed, weight 3) 5. Jeremy Corbell (YouTube channel feed, weight 2) 6. The Proof Is Out There (YouTube channel feed, weight 2) 7. Blurry Creatures (YouTube channel feed, weight 2) 8. Last Podcast on the Left (podcast RSS, weight 3; and its YouTube feed, weight 2) 9. r/UFOs, r/HighStrangeness (Reddit top-of-day RSS, weight 3 each) 10. r/aliens, r/Paranormal, r/Cryptozoology, r/SkinwalkerRanch (Reddit top-of-day RSS, weight 2 each) 11. Coast to Coast AM (RSS, weight 2) 12. Ancient Origins (RSS, weight 1) 13. Google News search feed, "UFO OR UAP OR paranormal" (RSS, weight 2; added in v0.1 to widen the strangeness side beyond channels we chose)

AI side, section "ai": 14. Ars Technica AI (RSS, weight 2) 15. The Verge AI (RSS, weight 2) 16. MIT Technology Review AI (RSS, weight 2) 17. Google News search feed, "artificial intelligence" (RSS, weight 2; added in v0.1 for the same reason)

2. Window and cleaning

• Window: the 36 hours before the edition files (06:30 and 15:30 boards; 09:00 and 18:00 cutoffs, US Central).
• An item counts once: duplicates by URL, then by the first words of a normalized title, are dropped.
• Items below the house floor (mocking the dead, naming private people, and the like) are dropped before counting.

3. Weights (what "counts" means)

Every kept item gets a score: source weight times 10, plus up to 12 points for recency (24 hours decaying to 0), plus 2 per pull word (UFO, UAP, craft, orb, whistleblower and the rest of the list, capped at 4). The score orders the record on the page. THE INDEX DOES NOT USE THE SCORE. It counts items. v0 counts every kept item on each side equally.

4. The formula

Index = strangeness items / (strangeness items + AI items) x 100, rounded to one decimal, printed as a whole number. Example, 25 Aug 2026 morning: 38 strangeness items, 9 AI items: 38 / 47 = 80.9, printed 81, FULL CIRCUS.

5. Honest caveats, v0

• It is self-referential: we chose the feeds. A feed added or removed moves the number. That is why the inputs are numbered and every change is logged as a correction with its date.
• The sides are not the same size. Thirteen strangeness inputs against four AI inputs biases the number high. v0 reports it anyway because the day-to-day movement is the point, not the level; v1 will weight by side.
• Reddit top-of-day feeds are a sample, not the subreddit. YouTube feeds carry the newest 15 videos only.
• Counting items treats a 10-second short and a three-hour interview the same.
• Two editions a day share a 36-hour window, so consecutive readings overlap by design.

5a. Living verdicts (v0.2, the board law)

The machine never rules on TRUE. It rules on what the record shows right now, dated. The lead of every edition carries WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS, written from the item's own artifact (the post, the page, the video's opening minutes), and any item the desk has ruled on wears its status inline: UNCHECKED (no artifact reached), CHECKED with the date, or UPDATED with the date when a later pass moved the ruling; the prior ruling stays in the record. A verdict that updates is not a correction; a verdict that was wrong about the artifact is, and goes to /pages/rights. The hub pages (/pages/claims, /pages/hearings, /pages/fakes) use the same status words: OPEN, REAL, FAKE, MISATTRIBUTED, always dated, never silent.

6. Versioning

v0: this page. v0.1: inputs 13 and 17 added (Google News search feeds), first filed 2026-08-27. v0.2 (2026-08-26): section 5a, living verdicts and the status words, added; no change to inputs, window, or formula. Any change to inputs, window, or formula bumps the version and lands in the corrections log at /pages/rights.

6a. Editorial control

Every edition is reviewed by a human editor with the authority to reject any item on factual grounds before it publishes; that editor is the publisher. Machine-assisted drafting is disclosed on every page. Every synthesized line carries Resemble AI's inaudible Perth watermark, embedded by the voice tool on every file it makes; it is provenance, not a rights claim.

7. Use it

The number is free to quote and embed with attribution to mastergnome.com. The widget is at /pages/widget. The daily share block is plain text; paste it anywhere.

Dig. Verify. Bring the gem.