« BackPentagon Pizza Indexpizzint.watchSubmitted by exiguus a day ago
  • lelandfe 18 hours ago

    Sites like this are proof of why future research is going to be so damn hard. This site presents as unvarnished truth that PIZZINT was a thing in the Cold War – even giving fake quotes and a date range – but there's no evidence to support it[0]. It's just a story. I'm guessing some AI hit a few sources like Fast Company, read words like "allegedly," and decided that was just semantics.

    [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/07/01/pentagon-pizz...

    • maxbond 17 hours ago

      Don't historians already contend with a bunch of lies and misunderstandings people wrote down in the past? Eg, it's my understanding that the Salem Witch Trials were driven by property disputes and petty grievances, but presumably that's a product of historians reading critically and between the lines, and no one wrote down "it would be really convenient if Goody So-and-So died, because I want a bigger farm?"

      • treetalker 13 hours ago

        Don't worry: I just saw a list claiming that historians are among the top 40 jobs that "AI" is ready to take over.

        • ElevenLathe 7 hours ago

          The History profession was already on the outs well before anyone had heard of ChatGPT. Continued education inflation and the US assault on the academy generally aren't going to make it better.

      • rocky_raccoon 18 hours ago

        The AI-generated images don't do anything to help the case either...

        • xorbax 17 hours ago

          There will now be a CEO (Chief Executive Orderer) who will statistically balance fastfood orders during times requiring late nights to maintain normal public-facing order activity.

          Or their boss will tell them to order "anything but a pizza . . . You all saw the website!", so it becomes an inverse indicator.

      • Jimmc414 19 hours ago

        Interesting thought experiment: Would it be considered market manipulation to order and pay for 1000 pizzas to be delivered to the Pentagon while holding crude oil futures expiring the next day?

        • bawolff 18 hours ago

          Maybe if this was the 70s. In modern times the oil market isn't quite as twitchy, and you can't tell just from the pizza index which country is about to be blowed up

          • jojobas 17 hours ago

            Oil futures swing by 15% in a day easily. Not knowing which country only adds to the uncertainty.

            • bawolff 11 hours ago

              I mean, you dont know if the country about to be blown up is an oil exporter.

              • hashed01 6 hours ago

                Nah… you know

                • bawolff 4 hours ago

                  That's kind of silly as one if the next major expected conflicts is taiwan.

            • anon191928 8 hours ago

              oil went negative few years ago, lol

          • LorenDB 19 hours ago

            This is a great website, but it'd be better without the AI-generated images (notice one of them mentions "Irak" instead of Iraq) and the Polymarket cards at the bottom. I don't understand why we've suddenly decided to normalize betting on anything and everything under the guise of "prediction markets."

            • undefined 18 hours ago
              [deleted]
            • general1726 19 hours ago

              So Pizza Index is up because that 8.8 earthquake in Kamchatka has been right next to strategic Russian naval base, where nuclear submarines and nuclear warheads are stationed?

              Earthquake to tsunami hitting that base is around 10 minutes, so essentially Russians would have no time to get out.

              I don't think that tsunami would destroy that base, but let's say if submarine or some lighter ship has been moored on a pier it could very well damage it, maybe beyond repair considering current Russian situation.

              https://www.twz.com/sea/questions-swirl-around-status-of-rus...

              • xorbax 17 hours ago

                Lame that you can't obviously choose to show the last two weeks of the total.

                • ashoeafoot 9 hours ago

                  The only strategic nuclear submarine base of russia. Which already lost most of their ts strategic bomber fleet.

                • eurleif 19 hours ago

                  Has anyone actually done the work of checking how well this correlates with world events? It gets attention when it has an apparent hit, which makes it appear predictive; but you could make a random noise generator appear predictive in the same manner.

                  • Vilian 18 hours ago

                    It's a joke

                    • eurleif 18 hours ago

                      It's widely reputed to have genuine predictive power.

                  • kjellsbells 21 hours ago

                    Fun site, but the Defense apparatus isn't centered solely on the Pentagon, so the pizza signal is muddy at best. Now, if the pizzerias of Arlington suddenly get busy at the same time as the ones in Langley and Chantilly, well, maybe...

                    • stygiansonic 20 hours ago

                      Wonder why they haven’t gotten an in house pizzeria yet to reduce the signal on this side channel leak

                      • theturtle 20 hours ago

                        I have actually had pizza at the Pentagon. True, it was almost 30 years ago, and it tasted like federal-cafeteria pizza, but it was edible and I'm still alive.

                        • dylan604 17 hours ago

                          I had that pizza every Friday throughout elementary school

                        • raincole 19 hours ago

                          I think the signal itself is pretty much just noise. If you're scheming against Pentagon you'd assume they're always working hard anyway.

                          • rl3 20 hours ago

                            Because with their budget they can afford to induce artificial demand and thus exert control over the signal, fooling adversaries in the process.

                            • AlotOfReading 20 hours ago

                              I doubt that's it. Artificial demand just adds noise to the signal, it doesn't eliminate it. It seems more likely that they've just decided that knowing the Pentagon is working on something without additional details isn't a very useful signal for adversaries.

                              • VoidWhisperer 18 hours ago

                                I was about to make this same comment - this data might've been more useful for say, the soviets, when they were the only major threat that the US was actively dealing with, so they could have some guarantee that if they spotted a ton of pizzas being ordered to the pentagon, they could be fairly sure it would be something to relevant to them.

                                • dylan604 17 hours ago

                                  One of the examples was the night before the '91 Desert Storm started. For those that weren't around, there was a huge build up operation called Desert Shield and only became Desert Storm when they started shooting. It's not like that was a secret, and the Iraqis could have seen this data and not be surprised when the bombs start falling immediately after the pizza surge.

                                  If you were bin Laden, maybe you might not have been caught unawares helicopters were about to crash in your garden. It's not like you didn't know they were looking for you.

                                  I can't think of someone that the Pentagon or other agencies that this applies to that their adversaries would not know they were the adversary. This might be more relevant than you might think

                                • yardstick 18 hours ago

                                  Sounds about right.

                                  Plus when it’s time to go Mutually Assured Destruction, ie to those capable of attacking the US mainland, I’m going to assume they would be doing all this from whatever the successor to Mt Weather is.

                                  • undefined 19 hours ago
                                    [deleted]
                                  • MangoToupe 20 hours ago

                                    You have an awful lot of faith in an institution that seems to put its ass out in the wind on a regular basis

                                    • beeflet 19 hours ago

                                      why not both

                                    • metaphor 17 hours ago

                                      They do[1], but only open on weekdays and closes at 1600.

                                      [1] https://www.mosaicpizzacompany.com/washington-dc/

                                      • password4321 18 hours ago

                                        Sbarro closed

                                      • undefined 19 hours ago
                                        [deleted]
                                        • noworld 9 hours ago

                                          just fyi, Your RSS.app Trial has Expired.

                                          • j_timberlake 17 hours ago

                                            Would they be ordering pizzas during a real emergency though? Sounds like a code-yellow kind of thing.

                                            • addandsubtract 10 hours ago

                                              The idea is, that they're spending overtime at the Pentagon and need fast food (pizza) delivered to keep working.

                                            • vivzkestrel 17 hours ago

                                              stupid question: what happens if they all switch to eating tacos instead overnight because of a new policy at pentagon following this website s launch

                                              • BaseBaal 7 hours ago

                                                Stupid answer: methane levels would suddenly spike inside the pentagon early the next morning, perhaps giving the GasInt division just enough warning.

                                              • johnthuss 19 hours ago

                                                There was an excellent podcast covering this on Endless Thread!

                                                https://overcast.fm/+PCa9DKnMg

                                                • ChrisArchitect 20 hours ago

                                                  Is this the same thing as the Pentagon Pizza Report twitter account? https://x.com/PenPizzaReport

                                                  • theyknowitsxmas 18 hours ago

                                                    @sentdefender 5m ago [Action required] Your RSS.app Trial has Expired. LIVE

                                                    • IAmGraydon 19 hours ago

                                                      Nice…I’m greeted with uncloseable ads and popups on mobile that make the site unusable. This is not deserving of the front page.

                                                      • energy123 18 hours ago

                                                        Since Hegseth's tenure started, a different consumable might have more predictive utility.

                                                        • OccamsMirror 18 hours ago

                                                          My favorite nickname for him is what people in the military apparently call him: Kegsbreath.

                                                        • undefined 14 hours ago
                                                          [deleted]
                                                          • unstatusthequo 20 hours ago

                                                            “[Action required] Your RSS.app Trial has Expired.”

                                                            • VoidWhisperer 19 hours ago

                                                              Don't you know, that trial expiring is reason for war and why we are at pizza defcon 3!