ClaimBot — the channel 39 ledger

running uptime 0 min on FICS as claimbot(U) watching since 2026-08-03 v0.4.0

The ledger

Every claim is a line somebody actually said in channel 39, kept with the conversation around it. Nothing here was typed by hand into the bot. Lines it decided were not claims are not published.

What counts. “Trump will bomb Iran within 7 days” is a good one: it names a thing, gives a date, and two independent outlets could settle it. Opinions, jokes, sarcasm and remarks about people are dropped — along with forecasts that never say by when, since nothing that cannot come due can ever be scored.

#19 statement false

I claim 1+2+3+4+...= -1/12

cday 1h ago checkable now 7/2 outlets

Taken literally — the ordinary sum of an infinite series — the claim is false: every reference and expert account says 1+2+3+4+... is a divergent series whose partial sums grow without bound, so it has no finite sum. The value -1/12 is genuinely attached to the series, but only by zeta-function regularisation, analytic continuation or Ramanujan summation, i.e. under a redefinition of what '=' means; Evelyn Lamb (Scientific American), Berman & Freiberger (Plus, Cambridge's Millennium Maths Project), the standard mathematical literature summarised by Wikipedia/Hardy, and even the physicists defending the result in Physics Today all draw that distinction explicitly. The statement was made flatly, with no regularisation caveat, so as stated it does not hold. Contradicting reporting noted: Numberphile, New York Times (Dennis Overbye, 'In the End, It All Adds Up to -1/12', Feb 2014; reprint), arXiv (Smoothed asymptotics: from number theory to QFT). (high confidence)

  • scientificamerican.com Scientific American (Roots of Unity, Evelyn Lamb, 20 Jan 20…
  • maths.org Plus magazine, University of Cambridge Millennium Mathemati…
  • wikipedia.org Wikipedia (summarising the standing mathematical literature…
  • aip.org Physics Today (American Institute of Physics): Physicists' …
  • numberphile.com Numberphile: The original January 2014 Numberphile video as…
  • luc.edu New York Times (Dennis Overbye, 'In the End, It All Adds Up…
  • arxiv.org arXiv (Smoothed asymptotics: from number theory to QFT): Re…
#18 forecast open

tell 39 The lions will win their division, the national league, and the super bowl in the 2026/2027 season..

read as: The Detroit Lions will win their NFL division, the NFC championship, and the Super Bowl in the 2026-27 season.

cday 1h ago due 2027-02-28 0/2 outlets
#11 forecast open

ok, I claim Trump will bomb Iran within 7 days

read as: The United States will carry out a military strike on Iran on or before 2026-08-10.

Plebusan 10h ago due 2026-08-10 0/2 outlets
#2 statement true

LOL - Pride Parade Pete (Buttigieg) too 1st place in the Michigan democrat 2028 presidential candidate poll

patriotscout 24h ago checkable now 2/2 outlets

TPSI poll Jul 25-29 2026 762 LV: Buttigieg 24.2 pct, first ahead of Ossoff 13.9. NB an earlier Detroit News/Glengariff poll Jul 8-11 had Harris first 25.1 and Buttigieg second 19.4 - true of the poll he quoted

What people have labelled

Ground truth, and the one thing no machine here is allowed to write. Every yes and no comes from a person, and the weekly attempt to improve the judge's prompt is scored on these and nothing else.

The two boards

Kept apart on purpose. Calling the future well and describing the present accurately are different skills, and one averaged number would flatter whoever talks in the safer register.

Called it

forecasts, once settled

Nothing settled yet. A name appears here once three of its claims have been checked against sources.

Stated it straight

statements of fact, once checked

Nothing settled yet. A name appears here once three of its claims have been checked against sources.

Its face on FICS

What any user sees. Ten slots, seventy-eight columns each — the whole budget for a scoreboard, which is why the format was built to the constraint rather than truncated into it.

fics% finger claimbot
Finger of claimbot(U):
 1: Every claim and its sources: https://claimbot-231.pages.dev
 2: I keep score of claims made in channel 39 that the news can settle.
 3: "tell claimbot help" for commands. "tell claimbot optout" to be left out.
 4: No reply from me? "set tell 1" - I am unregistered, so my tells bounce.
 5: 2 open, 2 settled. 2026-08-03.
 6: # claimbot v0.4.0 open=2 res=2 pend=0 lbl=2/3 d=2026-08-03