NeutralFeed is a hosted feed of verified, zero-stakes information. Cloud genera, lock cycle times, the definition of the kilogram. Six channels, one endpoint, and nothing that will ever need a correction at two in the morning.
Live payload · rotating
Since 20 May 2019 the kilogram has been fixed by setting the Planck constant to exactly 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ J s. The cylinder at Sèvres is now an artefact rather than a definition.
The two caissons carry equal masses of water whether or not a boat is aboard, so the wheel is very nearly balanced. A half-rotation costs roughly the energy of boiling eight kettles.
Cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, nimbostratus, stratocumulus, stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus. The scheme descends from Luke Howard's essay of 1802.
Westray to Papa Westray in Orkney is timetabled at two minutes over 2.8 km. With a following wind it has been flown in under a minute, which is shorter than the safety briefing.
1200 by 800 millimetres, eleven boards, seventy-eight nails. The standard fixes the nailing pattern as well as the dimensions, because that is what determines whether it survives handling.
The number is not round because it was chosen to match the second already in use. The definition converts an astronomical convention into an atomic one without changing the length of anything.
{
"id": "std_0417",
"channel": "standards",
"headline": "The kilogram is defined by the Planck constant",
"body": "Since 20 May 2019 the kilogram has been fixed by setting the Planck constant to exactly 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ J s. The cylinder at Sèvres is now an artefact rather than a definition.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.14
},
"sources": 4,
"verified": "2026-01-14",
"half_life": "indefinite",
"reading_level": 11,
"duration_s": 22
}{
"id": "inf_2290",
"channel": "infrastructure",
"headline": "The Falkirk Wheel turns on about 1.5 kilowatt-hours",
"body": "The two caissons carry equal masses of water whether or not a boat is aboard, so the wheel is very nearly balanced. A half-rotation costs roughly the energy of boiling eight kettles.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.31
},
"sources": 3,
"verified": "2025-11-02",
"half_life": "indefinite",
"reading_level": 9,
"duration_s": 24
}{
"id": "met_0088",
"channel": "meteorology",
"headline": "There are ten cloud genera",
"body": "Cirrus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, nimbostratus, stratocumulus, stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus. The scheme descends from Luke Howard's essay of 1802.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.16
},
"sources": 5,
"verified": "2026-03-08",
"half_life": "indefinite",
"reading_level": 8,
"duration_s": 20
}{
"id": "trn_1174",
"channel": "transit",
"headline": "The shortest scheduled flight lasts about ninety seconds",
"body": "Westray to Papa Westray in Orkney is timetabled at two minutes over 2.8 km. With a following wind it has been flown in under a minute, which is shorter than the safety briefing.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.44
},
"sources": 3,
"verified": "2026-02-19",
"half_life": "1 year",
"reading_level": 9,
"duration_s": 23
}{
"id": "obj_0631",
"channel": "objects",
"headline": "The EUR-pallet is specified down to the nails",
"body": "1200 by 800 millimetres, eleven boards, seventy-eight nails. The standard fixes the nailing pattern as well as the dimensions, because that is what determines whether it survives handling.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.38
},
"sources": 3,
"verified": "2025-09-27",
"half_life": "indefinite",
"reading_level": 10,
"duration_s": 21
}{
"id": "hor_0009",
"channel": "horology",
"headline": "The second is 9,192,631,770 oscillations of caesium-133",
"body": "The number is not round because it was chosen to match the second already in use. The definition converts an astronomical convention into an atomic one without changing the length of anything.",
"calibration": {
"stakes": 0,
"controversy": 0,
"urgency": 0,
"novelty": 0.21
},
"sources": 4,
"verified": "2026-01-14",
"half_life": "indefinite",
"reading_level": 12,
"duration_s": 26
}
GET /v1/feed?channel=standards&limit=1
$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $NF_KEY" \ "https://api.neutralfeed.com/v1/feed?channel=standards&limit=1" { "items": [ { "id": "std_0417", "headline": "The kilogram is defined by the Planck constant", "calibration": { "stakes": 0.00, "controversy": 0.00, "urgency": 0.00, "novelty": 0.14 }, "sources": 4, "half_life": "indefinite" } ], "rotation_token": "rt_8f2c...b019" }
Every item carries its own calibration and its source count. Nothing has to be taken on trust, which is convenient, because the entire product is a request to be trusted about what is dull.
Photograph: Michiel1972 · CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Why anyone buys this
Every item carries a half-life, and almost all of them are indefinite. The A-series paper ratio was true in 1922 and will be true in 2122. There is no news cycle to keep up with, no wire to monitor, and no correction arriving at two in the morning.
Each item is scored on four axes before it ships, and an item over threshold on any of them does not ship. In eleven years of operation no NeutralFeed item has been the subject of a complaint, because there is nothing in one to complain about.
Because the feed does not need to be fresh, it does not need to be online. Take the signed offline pack and the screen in your lobby keeps working through the outage that took out everything else in the building, including the sign telling people about the outage.
Channels
Subscribe to all six or pin one. We have added two channels in eleven years and removed none.
Units, tolerances, and the documents that fix them. The most stable channel in the corpus and the one customers pin when they want something that will still be correct after they have left the company.
Locks, lifts, junctions, towers and the arithmetic behind them. Consistently the highest-dwell channel: people will read about a boat lift for considerably longer than they will read about anything else.
Classification, not forecasting. We describe what clouds are called and how the scales were built. We do not tell anybody whether it will rain, because that is a prediction and predictions are how a feed acquires stakes.
Timetables, gauges, crossings and routes, held as published rather than as running. Nothing in this channel is live, which is precisely why it is safe to put on a departure board.
Manufactured things, their dimensions and their origins. Pallets, cones, fasteners, packaging. The channel most often pinned by industrial customers, who find it either useful or reassuring and decline to say which.
Time signals, scales and the machinery of keeping them. The smallest channel and the slowest-growing, which is appropriate. Popular with customers who want one item on screen for a long time.
The Dullness Index
Scored during editing, returned in the payload, and available as a filter. If our thresholds are too permissive for you, set your own.
Whether any reader's circumstances change as a result of knowing it. A lock cycle time changes nobody's circumstances. An interest rate does.
Whether two reasonable people could hold opposing views. The boiling point of water is not controversial. Almost everything with a person's name in it is.
Whether it matters that you read it now rather than in a year. If an item decays, it is news, and news is somebody else's product.
Whether it surprises. The only axis with headroom. Zero novelty is a feed of things you already knew, which is not calming, it is irritating.
Ambient is free for one screen and one channel, and it does not expire. The key takes about a minute.
