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 1,810 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
Walt Disney formed a private entity to build Disneyland after board rejection
“He is the Walt Disney who Has come up with a crazy new idea based on his obsessive hobby with model trains that the board of Disney Studios has basically rejected. And so he has gone full crackpot like Colonel Kurtz style and started his own separate company o…”
Retlaw received $121 million from Disney Productions for attractions and royalties
“Insanely, Wed Enterprises, which would later be Rett Law, got a total of seventy-five million dollars in checks from Walt Disney Productions for the Disneyland Railroad and for the monorail, between 1953 and 1981, and another forty six million for name royalti…”
The famous Disney flywheel sketch was drawn for the Wall Street Journal
“So the legend that's out there that everybody believes is that this was a napkin sketch that Walt himself drew. No, it was actually created Buy a Disney Studio artist as an illustration for this Wall Street Journal piece.”
Vanguard and rival index funds own 24% of the US stock market
“Vanguard is the largest shareholder of most U.S. Corporations, and together with the other big index funds like BlackRock, State Street, and Fidelity, they own 24% of the entire U.S. Stock market.”
84% of Vanguard funds have outperformed their peers over the past decade
“84% of Vanguard's funds have outperformed their peers over the last 10 years.”
Rosenthal: The Lamborghini Urus shares its platform with the VW Touareg
“The Lamborghini Urus, the Lamborghini SUV, that is the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne, which is the same platform as the Volkswagen Touareg. When you buy a Lamborghini Urus, you are buying a car that is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg.”
Fiat paid virtually zero equity value to acquire Chrysler
“Fiat paid either zero or almost zero in sort of equity value for Chrysler.”
Court Records Revealed Bernie Ecclestone Skimmed an 8% Formula 1 Revenue Fee
“Nobody writes anything down, because Bernie never writes anything down, and when the dust finally gets settled, and many decades later, all of the books and stuff become public through a whole series of court cases, turns out Bernie's actually taking eight per…”
Bernie Ecclestone Stripped Formula 1 Race Tracks of Advertising and Hospitality Revenue
“In addition to these agreements that Bernie was having everyone sign, race organizers were required to surrender income from trackside advertising and corporate hospitality.
To Formula One owned entities.
So this now means that the race organizer, the track bu…”
Bernie Ecclestone Bought the FIA's Formula 1 TV Rights for Under $10M
“Rather than you taking 30%, I'll pay you five million dollars a year, going up by one million every year, up to nine million at the end of this term, in exchange for your percentage of the TV.”
Russia Paid Formula 1 $50 Million Annually to Host the Sochi Race
“So they sign a deal with Russia. And of course it's a deal with the state. You know, anytime you're negotiating with Russia, you're negotiating with the state. To construct a new two hundred and seventy million dollar F-one track around the Olympic Park. And p…”
Red Bull Racing Operates at Near-Zero Profit Just to Market Energy Drinks
“They generate zero profit despite being one of the best teams and the highest revenue teams or near zero profit, very thin to create the biggest marketing spectacle that they can to sell energy drinks.”
The Mercedes Formula 1 Team Generates an Estimated $200 Million in Annual Profit
“Mercedes does an estimated two hundred million in operating income from Formula One now.”
The Mercedes Formula 1 Team's Valuation Grew From $165 Million to $6 Billion
“When he joined the team in 2013, he negotiated to own almost a third of the team, which at the time, the whole team was worth about one hundred and sixty five million. And it's now, 13 years later, worth six billion dollars.”
Formula 1 Teams Average $200 Million in Sponsorships, Comprising 60% of Revenue
“About 60% of the revenue comes from sponsorship, and the teams are now averaging about two hundred million dollars of total sponsorship per team, but average is kind of the wrong way to look at it because it varies wildly from front of the grid to back of the …”
Formula 1's Revenue Share Distributed to Teams Plunged From 50% to 37%
“The percent of F-one management revenue that goes to teams, which was 50% back in 2018 and has shrunk to about 37% last year.”
Only 23% of Gen Z consider the NFL their favorite sport
“And if you look at the data, US adults as a whole, 33% say the NFL is their favorite professional sports league. But if you look at Gen Z, only 23% of Gen Z say That the NFL is their favorite professional sport, so 10 points less than the broader population, a…”
The NFL traded NFL Network to ESPN for a 10% equity stake
“So August, 20, 25, the NFL reached a deal with Disney and ESPN to essentially sell the NFL network, the NFL's cable network and the NFL's official fantasy app to ESPN for a 10% equity stake in all of ESPN in return for this swap.”
The NFL added 4M female fans in Taylor Swift's first year
“In the first year of the relationship, September of 23 to September of 24, the NFL added four million female fans. The Chiefs were 3.4 million of those.”
The NFL skims a share of private equity exit returns for all owners
“Upon any eventual sale or monetization of the ownership stake that private equity would have in an NFL franchise, A portion of the returns on that investment get skimmed off the top and go back to the NFL and then get distributed equally among all 32 NFL team …”
Rosenthal: Coca-Cola's Robert Woodruff backed segregationist politicians in the 1940s
“In fact, Robert Woodruff was openly supporting segregationist politicians during this time.”
Late 1950s McCann taste tests showed consumers preferred Pepsi over Coke
“Consumers, when presented with the two drinks, Coke and Pepsi, in a blind taste test, a statistically significant number of people prefer Pepsi. The taste of Pepsi.”
New Coke actually beat original Coke and Pepsi in blind taste tests
“They've done tons of taste tests. Not only does it beat Pepsi in taste tests, it beats original Coke. People prefer the taste of new Coke.”
Coca-Cola labeled the original formula 'Classic' to renegotiate its bottler contracts
“And Coke and their lawyers ultimately decide That if they keep new Coke on the market as the official Coke, and they call the old Coke, Coca-Cola classic. They can make an argument to all the bottlers. The Coca-Cola classic is a new drink.”
Gilbert: Trader Joe's pays its suppliers cash on delivery
“You just have cash as soon as you drop something off at their loading dock. This gives them a huge edge of being a preferred customer for these vendors. That those companies never have any cash flow issue or a waiting issue. As soon as they drop it off, Trader…”
Elon Musk Offered to Buy DeepMind with Tesla Stock in 2013
“He immediately calls up Demis and says, I will buy the company right now with Tesla stock. This is late 2013, like, early 2014. Tesla's market cap is about twenty billion dollars.”
Google Doubled Its Offer to Keep Ilya Sutskever Before OpenAI
“Google came back with a big counter, something like double the offer, and I think it was delivered from Jeff Dean personally, and Ilya said, nope, I'm doing this.”
OpenAI Only Collected $130M of Its Initial $1B Pledge
“The funny thing is, it was later reported that a billion dollars was not actually collected. Only about a hundred and thirty million of it was actually collected to fund this nonprofit.”
Google Operates an Estimated 2 to 3 Million Custom TPUs
“But today, Google, it's estimated, has two to three million TPUs. For reference, Nvidia shipped, people don't know for sure, somewhere around four million GPUs last year.”
OpenAI Originally Planned to Be a B2B API Business Before ChatGPT
“They also just throw up a paywall randomly because they thought that the business was going to be an API business. They thought that the projections were all about how much revenue they were going to do through B to B licensing deals. And then they just realiz…”
Google Paid $2.7B to License Character.AI and Rehire Noam Shazeer
“Google ultimately in twenty-twenty-four, after ChatGPT launches, pays 2.7 billion dollars, I think, to do a licensing deal with Character AI, the net of which Gnome comes back to Google.”
Waymo Reportedly Surpassed Lyft in San Francisco Gross Bookings in January 2025
“This year, in January, they were reportedly doing more in gross bookings than Lyft in San Francisco.”
Waymo Study Shows 91% Reduction in Serious Injury Crashes vs Human Drivers
“The study that Waymo just released last month showed that they have 91% fewer crashes with serious injuries or worse compared to the average human driver, even controlled for the fact that Waymo's right now are only driving on city surface streets.”
Google Announced Gemini Reached 450M Monthly Active Users
“So they announced there are now four hundred and fifty million monthly users of Gemini.”
Neoclouds Will Offer Google TPUs in the Coming Months
“I think within a year it might happen. There are rumors already that some NeoClouds in the coming months are gonna have TPUs.”
Google Maps Generates an Estimated Five to Ten Billion Dollars Annually
“They don't break out revenue, but estimates are that Maps does well over five billion in revenue, maybe even ten billion in revenue.”
Google Owns Eight Distinct Products With Over One Billion Users
“It is wild that this one company has eight products with over a billion users and started this era with just one search that didn't even have a billion users yet, but search, Android, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Drive, Photos, and then if you count the Play …”
Dimon: JPMorgan Wrote Off Bear Stearns' Entire $12B Tangible Book Value
“It was three hundred billion of assets and a twelve billion dollar book, tangible book value. We wrote off the whole tangible book value in the, when we bought the company to pay, we had to liquidate the loans.”
Dimon: JPMorgan bought WaMu at a $30B discount to book value
“We bought it for a thirty billion dollar discount to tangible book value. Because they had debt, and we left the debt behind. And so, and that thirty billion was approximately what the mortgage loss was gonna be.”
Alphabet generates more net income than any other U.S. company
“Google, and I should say Alphabet today, generates more net income or profit than any other U.S. Company. More than Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, JPMorgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway.”
Page and Brin told VCs only Steve Jobs met their CEO bar
“There's one person that we met in this whole process who we think meets our bar, who we would be willing to come in and hire as our CEO here at Google. Oh God, who is it? Steve Jobs.”
Ballmer: Microsoft's first antitrust inquiry came from FTC over IBM collusion
“This was our first antitrust problem. I don't know if you guys know this, is the FTC at the time thought we and IBM were working to divide the market because we had done some positioning. What's windows good for? What's always too good for? We and IBM had done…”
Ballmer: Neither Gates nor I ever attended a quarterly analyst call
“Bill never went to a quarterly analyst call and I never went to a quarterly analyst call.”
Epic has zero customer churn among its major hospital clients
“They have the majority of the U.S.'s major hospital systems using their software and of their over 600 customers, they have never lost a single one.”
Epic's core differentiation is its single unified database
“It is true that Epic's core database, the core single database, and this is Epic's big differentiation. There's only one database that every application pulls from.”
Cerner merged 36 entities together before Oracle acquired it
“By the way, earlier when I said 24 different companies merged together to create Cerner, I forgot that this chart that I'm looking at predates when Cerner then bought Siemens. So then there's another 12 companies that had merged together to become Siemens that…”
Epic posts '10 Commandments' barring IPOs in every campus bathroom
“They have them posted in every bathroom and in every break room across the entire campus. And so any visitor who goes there and it's open to the public, you can just go in and see the 10 Commandments in the bathrooms there. The 10 Commandments are number one, …”
Epic operates with minimal middle management and zero divisional budgets
“So, because of that high level of trust, there's very few middle managers. You understand the system that everybody else works within, and you don't have to corral chaos. Most of the people they're hiring are right out of school, so they've been there for a lo…”