The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Osnos: Trump hired actors for his 2016 campaign announcement crowd
“He hired actors to flesh out the crowd at his announcement speech. He really did, meaning he didn't think that people were actually even going to come to his announcement”
Osnos: Ultra-fast construction in China frequently yields structurally unsound buildings
“When they build a building in a week, It's often not a great building, and you can adapt that metaphor, meaning it's structurally unsound, or it doesn't wear well, or it's not creative, or it's not architecturally significant, or any of those things”
Osnos: Underestimating Chinese process innovation will catch the West flat-footed
“I think we will be caught flat-footed if we under-appreciate what China is able to accomplish, because you can actually change the nature of a product by changing the way that it's produced, by making it available to a larger number of people, by sort of makin…”
Osnos: China's education system fails to foster disruptive innovation
“The education system as it's constituted today is not encouraging kids to be disruptive and wildly innovative. It just is not.”
Osnos: Chinese tech startups rise and fall faster than US counterparts
“And it, that evolution, it just happened faster even than we would see in the U.S. So you can go from being, you know, a non-existent company to being the leader to being gone in the course of a couple of years.”
Osnos: Foreign tech firms struggle to compete against local Chinese startups
“And what you find over and over again in the cases that I've looked at is that the people who know the most, in the most subtle terms about what Chinese consumer habits are, about what it is that they're looking for, they really do succeed. And I hate to say, …”
Osnos: Alibaba is unlikely to successfully expand directly into the US
“This is a little bit unfashionable to say, but I'm actually a little bit skeptical about the possibility for a company like Alibaba, for instance, to come in and change things in the United States. There may be places where they can do it, but I think at the m…”
Osnos: Memories of past hardship hedge against rapid political instability in China
“I think that the, it will take time for the following reason. Like there are a lot of people in China today who still remember just how bad things were, how recently. I mean, there was, we forget that during the Cultural Revolution and during the famine that p…”
Osnos: Trump is a product of a 30-year US sociological trend
“Trump is the tiny outgrowth of a vast sociological phenomenon that's been going on and will go on over the course of the next 30 years.”
Osnos: Smart guns will eventually become part of the US future
“I think smart guns will probably end up being a part of our future in the United States, and that'll prevent a kid, for instance, from picking up their parents, you know, even if that parent has a legitimate use for it, let's say it's a cop, you know, keep tha…”
Osnos: China achieved 30 years of US infrastructure progress in a decade
“China achieved in human development progress and in physical infrastructure development in the span of 10 years what We did in 30 years or 50 years and a whole variety of measures, whether you're talking about, you know, concrete usage, for instance or how muc…”
Osnos: China's hukou system is a major obstacle to innovation
“This set of restrictions, which is generally described as the HUCO system, which is the household registration system, is one of the biggest, I think everybody agrees, obstacles towards a more organic, innovative system that drives talent From around the count…”
Osnos: Chinese state decisions are driven by fear of losing control
“When in doubt, trying to understand what's going on in a Chinese decision-making process, if you revert to that idea, which is, if we take our hands off the tiller, we lose control, that explains a whole lot of the decisions that are made, and good or bad.”
Osnos: China blocked access to several news sources between 2013 and 2016
“So in practical terms, if you're sitting in Beijing or Shanghai right now, you're not able to get on a half a dozen information sources, news sources, data sources that you could have three years ago.”
Osnos: Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is not going anywhere
“This anti-corruption campaign, which has been a big story for the last couple of years is going to be around. It's not going anywhere.”
Osnos: Paying with cash in China carries a negative social stigma
“And in fact, this is the part that I find really interesting is that if I pay with cash, It's now a little bit of a negative social stigma.”
Osnos: Environmental awareness drives shifts in Chinese political consciousness
“So the biggest change over the last five years in some ways among that gets to where is the political system going is that five or 10 years ago. It was the foreigners who were complaining about the air quality in Beijing and Shanghai and other big cities, and …”
Osnos: Huawei hiring lawyers signaled China's shift toward IP protection
“One of the clearest signs that China was beginning to take IP more seriously and regard it differently was when a company like Huawei, for instance, was hiring a lot of lawyers, because that meant they were suing other people to defend their own IP.”