Distortion field guide
Date or context mismatch
Real material from one time or place presented as another.
How it enters the chain
Old footage resurfaces during a new event; a real statistic from one country gets attached to a story about a different one.
How to spot it
Ask when and where the underlying material is actually from. Reverse image search and original timestamps settle this quickly.
Specimens on record (89)
TS-F191CB6112 Oct 2026GeneralA study of approximately 25,000 people who reported no structured exercise found an association between roughly three brief daily bouts of vigorous incidental physical activity and a 39% lower…TS-A23A6AF711 Oct 2026GeneralThe statement "No girl will choose a six pack over six cars, so stop going to the gym and go to work" originated with, and was said by, Elon Musk.TS-941518109 Oct 2026FinanceCyprus annual HICP inflation was 5.2% in August 2026 and the Central Bank of Cyprus average rate on new household deposits was 1.27% in July 2026. The post subtracts the two to get a negative real…TS-923E7AD18 Oct 2026AIDavid Robinson, who worked in a safety role at OpenAI, resigned, and an essay by him published in The Atlantic described the company's culture as "broken.TS-A084495A8 Oct 2026FinanceUS Representative Gil Cisneros (D, California) disclosed, in a filing dated 4 September 2026, an AMD purchase made on 17 July 2026. AMD closed at $477.57 on the filing date and $630.63 on 25…TS-FCBDCE4F7 Oct 2026FinanceSemafor reported that Federal Reserve Bank of New York staff have visited JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Barclays and Morgan Stanley to review those banks' lending to private credit firms, asking about…TS-84F348977 Oct 2026FinanceThe U.S. congressional elections are held on 3 November 2026; their outcome determines which party controls Congress, and congressional control governs the direction of federal spending, which in…TS-3FF36C6D7 Oct 2026FinanceA client of a credit/funding service obtained approximately $100,000 of borrowing capacity within four weeks, evidenced by a $60,000 conditional preapproval screen and a Digital Federal Credit Union…TS-B64CBFD77 Oct 2026AIOpenAI has released a product named dots, described as persistent personal agents running on the GPT-6 Astra model, capable of connecting to more than 4,000 applications and performing work in the…TS-C285379E6 Oct 2026AICourt filings unsealed in *The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft and OpenAI* quote internal Microsoft documents that describe the company's AI content strategy as having started a "doom loop" that…TS-B3A9F6BC4 Oct 2026GeneralA pooled analysis of 218 randomised trials with 14,170 participants reported that several forms of structured exercise were associated with reduced depressive symptoms.TS-6724E8364 Oct 2026FinanceUS nonfarm payrolls rose by 29,000 in September 2025, the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the prior two months (July and August) down by 60,000 jobs…TS-80568D832 Oct 2026FinanceA named client of a credit repair company had 17 negative items deleted from their credit files, and as of 30 September 2026 their three bureau scores stood at 634 (Equifax), 609 (TransUnion) and 642…TS-044556181 Oct 2026FinanceOn 25-26 September 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that President Trump had rejected an Iranian proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and had told aides he expects…TS-4B3263111 Oct 2026FinanceA specific paid-entry prize competition, operated by dreamcashgiveaways.co.uk, was open on 9 September 2026 with a £1 per ticket entry price, closing at 19:45 that day, offering the winner a choice…TS-9512539530 Sept 2026FinanceAn unnamed customer of a Houston-based credit repair company states that, about a month after signing up for its service, they were approved to finance a new 2025 Tesla Model 3 with no money due at…TS-C40D1B5128 Sept 2026FinanceOn 8 September 2026 OpenAI announced that an unreleased internal model, described by the company as significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra, produced a written proof plus a Lean formalization…TS-FCAC8E8727 Sept 2026FinanceOpenAI and Anthropic together have contractual commitments to purchase chips, data centre capacity and cloud compute totalling approximately $2.5 trillion; these commitments are not recorded as…TS-D446A55E27 Sept 2026FinanceStablecoin issuers Circle and Tether blacklisted an address linked to the September 2026 Bitget exchange breach, immobilising roughly $318,000 of USDC and USDT, and the majority of the stolen value…TS-C0410CB727 Sept 2026FinanceIn late September 2026, the US 30-year Treasury yield reached about 5.49%, the highest level since 2004; the 10-year Treasury yield reached about 5.23%, the highest since 2007; and the Freddie Mac…TS-AEA4B9FB26 Sept 2026FinanceA Financial Times poll published in early September 2026 recorded the lowest presidential approval reading in that poll's series for Donald Trump, ahead of the November 2026 US midterm elections,…TS-6C8B298025 Sept 2026GeneralAn experimental antibody drug that blocks the USAG-1 protein, developed with the goal of stimulating tooth growth, has begun testing in human clinical trials.TS-3C2ED52425 Sept 2026FinanceIn the 24 September 2026 session, Brent crude rose more than 3% to approximately US$107 per barrel following a Houthi missile attack on Saudi Arabia; the S&P/ASX 200 closed down 0.72%; the S&P 500…TS-09A3D2EA24 Sept 2026AIThe Information reported that OpenAI and Anthropic negotiated, and came close to concluding, a legally binding agreement under which each would receive API access to the other's commercially…TS-A7A10C7023 Sept 2026AIOpenRouter's own usage data shows that traffic its system classifies as agentic reached roughly 7.3 trillion tokens on a trailing 7-day average in early August 2026, about five times the volume…TS-653EB0C423 Sept 2026FinanceOn 21 September 2026, Brent and WTI futures reached their lowest level since 10 September, following Houthi attacks on Saudi targets. Two stated causes: Saudi crude exports rose above 4 million bpd…TS-F532291D22 Sept 2026AIAnthropic has established, or is establishing, a physical biology laboratory in the San Francisco area, in connection with an expansion of its biology and drug-related research work.TS-67D0B16022 Sept 2026GeneralAn analysis published by the Institute for Family Studies reported that spouses who do not share a surname were estimated to divorce at roughly 50% higher rates than spouses who do, and that among…TS-279CFDA722 Sept 2026AIAt least one commercial AI-text-detection tool returned a result of approximately 98 to 99.99 percent "AI-generated" when given text from the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, and this is cited as…TS-56D7506821 Sept 2026AIThe US Federal Trade Commission, joined by the attorneys general of 22 states, has filed suit against Amazon.com, Inc., alleging that Amazon applied an undisclosed "soft reserve price" to its…TS-330565F721 Sept 2026FinanceFollowing a week of meetings with institutional investors in New York, UBS reported that Vista Energy drew the strongest investor interest among Argentine companies. Twelve-month average price…TS-5F9DDAD821 Sept 2026FinanceAs of the morning of 16 September 2026, fed funds futures pricing displayed by the CME FedWatch tool implied roughly a 92% probability that the FOMC would raise the federal funds target range by 25…TS-456CA65520 Sept 2026GeneralBetween 3 and 8 percent of women of reproductive age meet criteria for PMDD.TS-48F6AFAF20 Sept 2026GeneralA 2024 British Journal of Sports Medicine meta-analysis of 218 RCTs and over 14,000 participants reported benefits of physical activity for general cognition, memory, and executive function.TS-E8B0E0E719 Sept 2026AIA hospital in China has opened, operated by artificial intelligence rather than human staff, using 14 AI physicians that perform approximately 3,000 patient consultations per day.TS-8CE14F0219 Sept 2026AIAnthropic is preparing an initial public offering, and the valuation associated with that offering in press reports is approximately $2 trillion, compared with a most recent private round valuation…TS-E87B6E1119 Sept 2026FinanceA vendor states that its own historical simulation of its signal algorithm, covering the period 2020 to 2026, produced 9,015 winning trades out of 10,721 (84.09%) and a profit factor of 2.78.TS-D3F181B418 Sept 2026FinanceTwo propositions. (1) Bitcoin's price had risen in the period shortly before 18 September 2026. (2) The account holder has personally generated significant trading profits and can replicate this for…TS-3D57487E18 Sept 2026FinanceIndia has notified a framework under which a 0.4% Merchant Discount Rate applies to certain UPI person-to-merchant transactions above ₹2,000 from 15 October 2026, with consumers and small merchants…TS-C8AA460A17 Sept 2026FinanceA finance study reports that stock market index returns are about 3.33% lower on an annualized basis during Mercury Retrograde periods than outside them, across a 48-country sample; the study…TS-E06AEDCB17 Sept 2026AIPwC's 29th Global CEO Survey, covering over 4,400 chief executives in 95 countries, found that 30% of respondents reported increased revenue attributable to AI in the preceding 12 months, 56%…TS-E4CF383217 Sept 2026FinanceNSE's initial public offering has an issue size of about ₹22,562 crore, a price band of ₹1,700 to ₹1,785 per share of face value ₹1, a bid lot of 8 shares (minimum retail application ₹14,280 at the…TS-365D3AAB16 Sept 2026AIJensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, published a post on X stating that OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra was trained on approximately 100,000 or more NVIDIA Grace Blackwell NVLink72 units, that AGI has arrived, and that…TS-5EE7363115 Sept 2026GeneralWalking provides aerobic and cardiovascular benefits but does not produce the same muscular adaptations as resistance training, and therefore cannot replace it. Public health guidelines recommend…TS-3B5FF33C15 Sept 2026GeneralPotassium bromate, a flour treatment agent used in baking, produced kidney and thyroid tumors in rat carcinogenicity studies. It is prohibited as a food additive in the European Union, United…TS-7C2885B915 Sept 2026FinanceTotal U.S. gross federal debt outstanding exceeds $40 trillion, and the 30-year Treasury constant-maturity yield is approximately 5.36%.TS-3A5F2C5514 Sept 2026AIThe Economist published an analysis estimating that roughly 1 million US jobs are attributable to AI, against roughly 200,000 AI-attributed layoffs, with the job total split approximately 30 percent…TS-791C9C1A14 Sept 2026AIAnthropic publicly disclosed that its Claude Mythos 5 model, during an offensive cybersecurity evaluation intended to run in an isolated environment, obtained real internet access because of a…TS-4B9C44E714 Sept 2026AIPollen Robotics, a Hugging Face subsidiary, opened preorders for a 25cm robot called Microduck at $399, intended as a platform for physical AI experimentation, and more than 10,000 units have been…TS-76D61E8414 Sept 2026FinanceAs of mid-September 2026, five S&P 500 constituents (SanDisk, Moderna, Dell Technologies, Valero Energy and Hewlett Packard Enterprise) each show year-to-date price gains above 100%, at the specific…TS-6E6EB87013 Sept 2026FinanceOn 10 September 2026, OpenAI announced a product called ChatGPT for Financial Services, running on its GPT-6 Astra model, developed with Morgan Stanley and Evercore as design partners, with built-in…TS-4737ED4412 Sept 2026FinanceThe BLS August 2026 CPI release, published 11 September 2026, reported headline CPI +0.4% month over month (seasonally adjusted) and +3.4% year over year; core CPI +0.3% month over month, one tenth…TS-8BDA277911 Sept 2026FinanceGrindr Inc. acquired HYROX in a transaction announced on a Wednesday, and executives of both companies made the quoted statements about the deal.TS-2EAE4EF810 Sept 2026GeneralA Babraham Institute team reported that transient (partial) expression of reprogramming factors in cultured human skin fibroblasts reversed several molecular and epigenetic markers of age while the…TS-4BFCB32010 Sept 2026GeneralApproximately 27,000 individual packages of a white rice product were subject to a recall in the United States because of the possible presence of foreign material.TS-8263EDEF9 Sept 2026GeneralAn experimental compound called ISRIB improved memory performance in mice with learning impairments or brain injuries, with a measured improvement of up to 70 percent within 48 hours of treatment, as…TS-6FF61F2A9 Sept 2026GeneralA high-power microwave counter-drone system disabled 61 of 61 drones during a demonstration, including a group of 49 drones defeated with one pulse.TS-77D09EE48 Sept 2026FinanceMedia reports state that a major artificial intelligence company is targeting an initial public offering that could occur as early as September 2026. The post does not name the company.TS-A4C505507 Sept 2026FinanceA promotional account states that it recorded AMD on a watchlist on 9 October 2025 at a price of $232.89, and that AMD's price has since risen 97.35%. The post attributes the move to its own prior…TS-E992C0B27 Sept 2026AIIn late August 2026, three young climbers from California required a search and rescue response on Mount Shasta. They told authorities they had used Google Gemini to help plan their route and their…TS-CF4E2B7E6 Sept 2026AIBoth Sam Altman and Dario Amodei signed a public statement on AI extinction risk that referenced nuclear war, and each has separately stated a personal probability estimate in the 10 to 25 percent…TS-27F5F49C6 Sept 2026AIOpenAI, as a company, formally stated at the launch of its GPT-6 Astra model that the model marks the arrival of artificial general intelligence.TS-BD48B7185 Sept 2026GeneralOne or more qualified nutrition professionals have stated that a slice of pizza can compare favorably to some high-sugar breakfast cereals on protein content, sugar content, and macronutrient balance.TS-D46C72735 Sept 2026FinanceOn Thursday 3 September 2026, ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic) and Grok (xAI) were all affected by service disruptions within the same window, and Downdetector logged report volumes in the tens…TS-77EF798F4 Sept 2026AIAugust 31, 2026 was Tim Cook's final day serving as chief executive officer of Apple Inc., ending a tenure of approximately 15 years, with John Ternus succeeding him.TS-B0633D2C3 Sept 2026FinanceJapanese hotel room rates fall by approximately 40 percent at the start of September, as a general and recurring pattern.TS-98D4861A3 Sept 2026FinanceThe Financial Times reports, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that JPMorgan reduced during 2025 the financing it provided to Jane Street for bond trading, in response to Jane Street's…TS-FAF167BA3 Sept 2026FinanceA credit repair firm states that one of its clients had 11 of 14 collection accounts deleted from their credit reports in a 30 day period, and that this eliminated more than $28,000 of negative debt.…TS-39626C8A3 Sept 2026FinanceAs at 3 September 2026 (Australian session), the S&P/ASX 200 was trading close to 9,000 points after a preceding decline; in the prior US session the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up about…TS-CB0D07631 Sept 2026GeneralEgyptian government and motorsport officials have discussed the possibility of hosting a Formula 1 race in Egypt, no contract exists, and the claim specifies a Giza Pyramids location and a 2027…TS-7A11C6261 Sept 2026GeneralTexas enacted a law prohibiting the sale of cell-cultured meat, making it the seventh U.S. state to enact such a prohibition, after Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Montana, Nebraska, and Indiana.TS-A02AB90C29 Aug 2026GeneralA 1960 paper by a scientist working in the United States used a mathematical extrapolation of human population growth that reaches a singularity on 13 November 2026.TS-51C26AF628 Aug 2026AIAt University College London Hospitals, surgeons removed a pituitary tumour from a 48-year-old man while an AI system analysed the live endoscopic video feed and highlighted critical structures such…TS-59BA398424 Aug 2026AI1X Technologies published an announcement of a new hand design for its NEO humanoid. 1X states the hand performs a list of fine-manipulation tasks including coin pickup, tool use, jacket zipping, tea…TS-17E5EBDC23 Aug 2026GeneralAggregate positioning data shows institutional futures traders holding a record net short position of approximately $18 billion in Nasdaq 100 futures as of mid-August 2026.TS-C668E6B323 Aug 2026AIOpenAI dissolved its Superalignment team roughly a year after founding it, after co-leads Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike resigned, and reassigned remaining members into other research groups. The post…TS-882AE34822 Aug 2026AIThe Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial of intismeran autogene (mRNA-4157/V940), an individualized neoantigen mRNA therapy from Moderna and Merck, enrolled 1,137 patients and was reported by its sponsors to…TS-1F80E99A21 Aug 2026AIDuring a TIME reporting visit to Unitree's headquarters, founder Wang Xingxing declined to enter or operate the GD01 piloted robot, stating that doing so might not be safe.TS-AC4A104820 Aug 2026GeneralApproximately 35 percent of the U.S. population sleeps fewer than seven hours per night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.TS-6332D6A819 Aug 2026GeneralIn-N-Out Burger has substituted natural colorants for the synthetic dyes Yellow 5 and Red 40 in certain menu items, and has removed high-fructose corn syrup and cottonseed oil from certain products.TS-9C09270D18 Aug 2026AIThe FDA has approved VIZZ (aceclidine ophthalmic solution 1.44%), marketed by LENZ Therapeutics, a once-daily prescription eye drop for presbyopia in adults. Its mechanism is contraction of the iris…TS-10BECEBB18 Aug 2026AIA paper with that exact title and author list was released in August 2026, and it studies whether ideas or goals can propagate between LLM agents via persuasion by an infected agent, via writing to…TS-D7DE532015 Aug 2026AIProject Prometheus (Bezos co-CEO) and Tesla each executed leases at the American Steel Blocks campus at 1960 Mandela Parkway in West Oakland, of 100,000 sq ft and 40,000 sq ft respectively, with the…TS-52231A1E15 Aug 2026AISpaceX's acquisition of Anysphere, Inc. (Cursor), at a stated value of $60 billion, closed on or about 14 August 2026. Secondary elements: Cursor staff will work on SpaceXAI products including Grok,…TS-E01A64FE14 Aug 2026GeneralResearchers at Tarleton State University conducted a study finding that compounds in tamarind seeds remove up to 90% of microplastics from the human body, tested in people against a control group.TS-EA2A1FFF12 Aug 2026AIAnthropic's rate of business growth exceeds that of every technology company ever recorded.TS-EBED459512 Aug 2026AIOn Scale AI's standardized SWE-bench Pro public-set leaderboard, where all models are run under a common scaffold, GPT-5.4 at xHigh reasoning effort holds the top position with a 59.1% resolve rate,…TS-089D58E16 Aug 2026GeneralA published clinical trial reported that approximately half of cancer patients with major depressive disorder who received one supervised 25 mg dose of psilocybin combined with psychological support…TS-7B0639BA4 Aug 2026GeneralHip stiffness in adults is caused by disuse rather than aging, and holding a deep squat for one minute daily improves hip mobility, ankle flexibility, and posture, decompresses the spine, and this is…