Can’t Explain

Author: Colin Dixon
Live (planned): cantexplain.au
Repo: github.com/coldix/cantexplain

A fun, viral, evidence-backed hall of ridiculous claims. Low-evidence, high-emotion accusations, paired with the original source and a Git-timestamped receipt, presented with observational humour.

The claim was loud. The evidence was not.

Sibling of ministryofdoubt.com and electiontracker.au. Same rule — show me the evidence — applied to the claims that arrive already shouting. See docs/FAMILY.md.

This repository is a scaffold for review: site chrome, content model, evidence convention, and planning docs. It is not the launch set. Three cards are labelled format examples.

Stack

Astro (static) on Cloudflare Workers Builds as an assets-only Worker. No @astrojs/cloudflare adapter — official Astro and Cloudflare docs say a static site does not need one. Same family path as electiontracker.au. Details in docs/BRIEF.md.

Local development

From /web/cantexplain:

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:4321.

Live: cantexplain.au (cantexplain.com.au 301s there).

npm run build      # sync evidence, validate published entries, build to dist/
npm run preview    # serve the build
npm run deploy     # build + wrangler deploy to cantexplain.au
npm run validate   # evidence + source checks only
npm run new -- --slug my-slug --person "Name" --year 2026

Node 22 (see .node-version).

How to add an entry

1. npm run new -- --slug short-descriptive-slug --person "Pauline Hanson" --year 2026
2. Drop the capture into evidence/<year>/<slug>/ and point evidence.path at it.
3. Fill the frontmatter. Quote or mark paraphrase. Write a caption that obeys docs/TONE-GUIDE.md.
4. Leave status: draft until a human has opened the source URL and the file.
5. Flip to published or featured, then npm run validate and check /hall/<slug>.

Field reference: docs/CONTENT-MODEL.md.
AI may draft, not publish: docs/AI-PIPELINE.md.

Docs

Doc	What
docs/BRIEF.md	Full project brief
docs/CONTENT-MODEL.md	Entry fields, vocab, examples
docs/TONE-GUIDE.md	Voice and caption rules
docs/AI-PIPELINE.md	Collect → draft → human handoff
docs/FAMILY.md	Ministry, Election Tracker, Oze
docs/ROADMAP.md	Phase 1–3

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.