Keeping the obscure in the public realm.
Edition 1
7 active signals, chosen by hand
We don't tell you what to believe. We show you what's worth noticing.
A National Security Archive briefing book says long-redacted excerpts of the station's three-volume internal history are among the last secrets left in the JFK assassination records.
2 sources
Stories stay here until something stronger displaces them, then move to the Archive.
The LZ experiment says it cannot explain a single particle interaction with known sources, and is careful not to call it dark matter. Theorists have already proposed more than a dozen ways it could be.
Why Spider noticed Most "mysterious signal" headlines turn out to be overreach. This one is the reverse: the scientists themselves are the most cautious voices…
5 sources
The case appears in one paragraph of AARO's fiscal 2025 annual report, released in July 2026 with data that ends in May 2025.
Why Spider noticed A Navy report of about a hundred objects and two unidentified vessels off the U.S. coast is the kind of detail that would normally lead a…
4 sources
The September 11 release ended nearly two decades of requests from the Public Interest Declassification Board. The list of released interview records stops short of the two officials the board had named first.
Why Spider noticed Anniversary releases get one day of attention, and this one was framed as a long-awaited success. Set the board's list of priority…
7 sources
Leopardus tilcayo, a spotted cat smaller than a house cat, was identified through genome analysis of an animal living in a Bolivian sanctuary since 2017. Local people already had a name for it.
Why Spider noticed Coverage led with "first new cat in 100 years." The quieter detail is how thin the scientific record still is: a species formally described…
4 sources
A September 21 GAO report on the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act finds 14 of 23 approved properties disposed of so far, most from the first round, and unclear timelines for the rest.
Why Spider noticed An experiment in fixing a slow government process is about to end, and its own scorecard is mixed: one strong round, one stalled one, and a…
5 sources
At one site, dubbed the Shark Tooth Graveyard, the team recovered about a thousand teeth spanning more than 22 million years.
Why Spider noticed "New species found" is a familiar headline. A seabed holding 22 million years of shark teeth in one place is not. It is a strange, concrete…
3 sources
Historically significant government records that remain partly or wholly secret, and the slow, documented process of getting them released.
The board appeals to ISCAP for review of the daily-brief summary. The Commission's Bush–Cheney interview is released with redactions in November.
The board writes to the president recommending release of historically significant 9/11 records.
The daily-brief summary and 11 interview memoranda are released. None covers the Clinton or Gore interviews.
The National Security Archive publishes its briefing book on the CIA Mexico City station history.
Earlier signals worth another look.
DNA from the skin a British naturalist shipped from Kathmandu shows a pangolin long lumped in with the Chinese pangolin is its own species. The global conservation authority has not yet weighed in.
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