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Verified before it reaches you
AI news, with the receipts attached.
Every morning the AI news cycle hands you the same story wearing a different hat. A model got smarter. A price got cheaper. Somebody with a ring light is very confident about what it all means.
And you’re sitting there with cold coffee and an actual job, trying to answer one question: does this change what I do today?
That’s what this is for.
What you get
I read the vendor blog. Then I check whether it’s telling the truth.
Docs, pricing pages, changelogs, the unglamorous stuff nobody screenshots. When the official number and the live number disagree, I don’t pick the prettier one. I show you both, with dates.
claim: “3x faster, half the price” checked 08.13.26
−vendor blog: 3.2x faster, $0.40 / 1M tokens
+measured live: 1.4x faster, $0.40 base + reasoning tokens billed separately
The gap is the story. You get both numbers and both dates, every time.
Then the part everyone skips: what it costs when the bill shows up. Not the headline rate. Token math, undocumented caps, the free tier that stays free right up until you use it for something.
Every piece lands the same way, and you leave knowing what to change tonight and what to ignore.
Do this / Skip this / Wait on this / Steal this line
That last one is for the meeting where someone asks what you think and you have four seconds to sound smart.
The process
Five steps, run on every single claim.
Go to the primary source - Vendor docs and filings, not the press release
Check it live, today - Every volatile number gets a date attached
Publish the disagreement - Official figure against measured figure. Both shown, neither buried. This is the part nobody else does.
Price the real bill - Headline rate, token math, and the caps nobody documented
Hand you the decision - Do, skip, or wait, plus a line you can steal
Who’s typing this
Twenty years of asking “how do you know that?”
Former U.S. Marine. Twenty-plus years in intelligence, GIS, and cloud. Which means I got paid for two decades to be suspicious of confident claims and obsessive about where information came from. Turns out that’s an absurdly good background for covering AI right now. Not the career plan, but here we are.
I build things too, not just write about them. When I test a tool, it’s because I need it working by Thursday.
I’m wrong sometimes. When I am, I correct it out loud, near the top, where you can see it. That’s the entire point of a thing called Ground Truth.
Also: husband, photographer, and full-time employee of a dog who thinks every video call is about her.
Background
USMC
Intelligence, GIS, Cloud
20+ years - professional experience
Building, breaking and learning - always!
Not on the menu
What you will not find here.
“This changes everything.” Nothing changes everything. Some things change one workflow, and I’ll tell you which one.
Affiliate roulette.
An ultimate guide that’s just the docs with a filter on it.
If a launch doesn’t matter, I’ll say so and give you your ninety seconds back.
Stay up to date
Every post goes straight to your inbox. No spam, no daily firehose. Just the piece, the receipts, and the decision at the end.
Join the crew
For builders, operators, and anyone who got volunteered to “look into AI” for their team. Argue with me in the comments. Some of my best corrections started as a reply from someone who knew the tool better than I did.
Verified signal. No noise.
Then go build the damn thing.
Corrections policy
If I’m wrong, the correction runs at the top of the next piece. Not a footnote. Not a quiet edit. The top.
