Alright, quick Buy Me a Coffee update because things have been moving at terminal velocity.
First: thank you. Like, actually thank you. This project is free, ad free, and built for public access, and that only works if the server stays upright.
As of today: $1,500 in donations came in from you all. That is wild.
Here’s what that money is doing right now:
✅ Keeping the site online
Traffic spikes have been… aggressive. Donations go straight into hosting, database, and bandwidth so the site doesn’t faceplant when Reddit (or whoever) shows up.
✅ Ingesting and cleaning more data
A lot of what’s “missing” for people is not because it isn’t in the files, it’s because raw dumps are messy: duplicates, broken PDFs, weird OCR, inconsistent naming, redactions, etc. This helps fund the boring-but-critical work that makes search and connections actually usable.
✅ Making the site better to investigate with
Stuff I’m actively improving based on what people keep asking for:
faster document loads + fewer 500s
better search ranking + dedupe
cleaner person/entity merges (aliases, spelling variants, “Les” vs “Leslie” type issues)
timeline filters that feel more like a real research tool
more visible source links so everything stays citation-first
If you want to help without donating:
share the site with researchers/journalists
report broken links with the exact URL
drop good citations when you find something important
build a dossier with sources so findings don’t get lost in comment soup
And if you donated already: you’ve genuinely helped keep this thing independent and online. I’ll keep shipping updates and posting progress as it lands.
No hype. Just work. Appreciate you.