Support

Status

The payment links are open

This page was published on Oct 05, 2026, before there was anywhere to send money, so that the terms would be read before the button. The company now has its own tax ID and its own bank account, and on Oct 13, 2026 the three options below became buttons. The notice that stood here until then is recorded in Corrections + changes with its date.

Payments are taken by Stripe on a page it hosts. This site never sees a card number, and what Stripe keeps is set out in Privacy. Anything that is not a reader contribution, including a grant, starts with a letter to s@bud.day, for the reason given under Grants.

The ask

What support pays for, in the order it would be spent

At full cadence — the bank fired on schedule, panels rather than a single grader, and several agent teams running at once — the program needs up to $15,000 a month in cash or API credit. That is an estimate and it is labeled as one rather than printed as a finding: there is no charged figure yet, for the reason given first below. When a measured figure exists it will replace this one, and the estimate will stay on the page beside it, so anyone can see how far off it was.

1. A fully instrumented round, and then a price. The 2,673 draws in measurement one carry no recorded cost, because the runner learned to record spend after they were taken. The first thing money buys is a round instrumented end to end, after which this page stops describing work and starts quoting a figure.

2. The confidence instrument. Asking a model what it would stake on an answer, and scoring that against what actually happened. It is the difference between catching a compounding failure and reporting one afterwards.

3. The re-grade of both arms, and the judging panel. The tier-1 grader sat 4.1 points below a three-judge panel — four times the size of the effect it was meant to reveal — and in measurement one the grader cost multiples of the models it was grading. The protocol question sits queued behind its instrument, and money is what un-queues it.

4. Publishing the run files. figures.json registers the SHA-256 of files nobody can yet download, so the digests cannot be recomputed off this site. That is stated as a real gap rather than implied away. Closing it is hosting and hours, not research.

Readers

Three ways to give, and nothing bought by any of them

Once, any amount$5 a month$25 a month

Each button opens a Stripe page. It asks one question beyond the payment: whether you may be named in the ledger if your total for the year reaches $100. The answer defaults to no. A monthly contribution is cancelled by writing to s@bud.day.

Reader support buys no tier, no badge, no early access, no vote on what is measured, and no mention inside an issue. It buys the work continuing, and that is the whole of it. Contributions below the naming thresholds published on Independence are not named individually; anyone who would rather not appear at any level can say so and will not.

Grants

Grants and institutional support, by letter rather than by button

A foundation, a business or an institution that wants to fund this work writes to s@bud.day. There is no button for it, because every condition on Independence has to be agreed before anything is accepted, and the objection clause is agreed in writing. A button cannot do that.

The grantee is Budday Budderson Studio LLC, a for-profit company. It can sign a grant agreement and receive funds by bank transfer into its own account; it cannot accept a grant that requires a charity or tax-exempt status, and it does not use a fiscal sponsor to look like one. Any philanthropic funder is limited to 50% of the year’s total resources in the first year and 25% after, and is named in the ledger at $100. Bank details are sent by letter to a funder whose agreement is signed. They are never published here.

Before you give

Not tax-deductible, and not a charity

The recipient is Budday Budderson Studio LLC, a New Mexico company, and support of this publication is not tax-deductible. Anyone who tells you otherwise about a sponsorship here is selling something. Nothing on this page is a solicitation for a charitable contribution, and no part of this program holds or has applied for tax-exempt status.

The ledger

Who is funding this, kept current

Named at the thresholds set out on Independence, updated within thirty days of any change, and totalled each year in The Log’s cost section.

Current funders: the publisher.
Current support from companies this program measures: none.
Declined to date: none.

Those three lines are the same on both pages. If they ever disagree, this page is wrong and Independence governs.

Companies

If this program measures your models, read the conditions first

Support from a company whose models are measured here is accepted, under ten published conditions written before any of it was asked for. The short version: your support never pays for a measurement of you; every route and every credit is disclosed issue by issue; and there are limits on how much of a year’s resources any single supporter may represent.

One condition is worth stating here because it is the one companies ask about. Telling this program it has made a factual error costs you nothing — a correction is welcome from anyone, checked on the merits, and published under the name of whoever raised it. Objecting to a finding that survives that check, or asking for one to be changed, softened, delayed or withdrawn, ends the support and is published in full alongside the finding. Every supporter agrees to that in writing before anything is accepted.

The full list of companies that will be asked is published on Independence, with the answers blank, because it was published before anyone was asked. Write to s@bud.day.