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 5,135 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 50 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
Sacks: ESG fertilizer policies collapsed Sri Lanka's economy
“Look at the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy because they implemented these ESG rules on fertilizer.”
Sacks: US broke 1990 pledge to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward
“Baker made the promise to Gorbachev, not one inch eastward. Gorbachev said, yes, ok, they can reunify, but we do not want NATO moving up to our border. Baker made that promise. We have brought NATO up to their border.”
Sacks: Democrats spent $44M boosting MAGA candidates in primaries
“So, recently, there's an article about the Democrats have spent 44 Million dollars this election cycle basically running ads in favor of the crazy MAGA candidate in primaries.”
Sacks: Sri Lanka had a 98 ESG score, beating Sweden and US
“He mentions that Sri Lanka has a near perfect score of 98, higher than Sweden, which is 96, and the U.S. Is a 51.”
Friedberg: Dutch government fired shots at protesting farmers
“The government started shooting at them. They got shot.”
Chamath: Bitcoin's baseline fundamental price is $3,500 to $5,000
“The baseline price of Bitcoin, where things seemed, you know, where rational supply and demand were meeting each other before all these, you know, five, 10,000. 3500 to 5000.”
Chamath: Crypto exchanges make tens of billions front-running order flow
“It's not illegal to front run crypto trade. So Most of these organizations that that run an exchange, right, compete for order flow, and they're able to just look at that order flow, and then they front run the trade, and they're on the other side of that. So …”
Critics like Calacanis only changed their tune after Anduril became successful
“And Jason, like many influential people, some of them even in this room, who have treated me like shit for years, suddenly changed their tune as soon as Andrew was on the upswing.”
Media commentators like Jason Calacanis caused Luckey's firing from Oculus
“Jason and the people like him are the reason I was fired from my, from Oculus, my own company.”
Luckey confirms a direct causal line from 2016 donation to Facebook ouster
“As you know, these things are very complex, but more or less, yes. I mean, there's a direct causal line from that to me being put on leave to me not being allowed to come back and then pushed out.”
Sacks: Democrats now represent professional elites while Republicans become populist working-class
“Historically the Democrats were the party of the working class. They are now much more the party of the professional class. And they buy into the belief set of sort of the college educated, the, you know, the, those sort of, you call it the woke sensibility. A…”
Greenwald: Donald Trump saved MSNBC and The New York Times from bankruptcy
“Back in 2015, most of these news organizations were on the brink of collapse. Every MSNBC host was on the verge of being fired, you know, a couple of months away from being fired because nobody was watching. The New York Times had severe financial difficulty. …”
Greenwald: Over 10 million Americans voted for Obama twice, then Trump
“There are literally millions of voters in excess of ten million, depending on how you count, but definitely in excess of ten million. Voters who twice voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 12, and then in 2016 voted for Donald Trump.”
Rabois: Florida abortion law is more permissive than France and Germany
“It's actually more permissive than any European country. But nobody knows that. France actually only allows abortion up to 14 weeks. Germany is like 16. So we're 20 here, so we're more liberal than Europe.”
Tim Urban: Berkeley and UCLA require diversity statements for chemistry professorships
“Berkeley, right now, and UCLA, and about 20 other schools. If you want to apply to be a chemistry professor, The first thing that you do is you have to fill out a diversity statement, and it's called, that sounds nice, a diversity statement, but it's actually,…”
Greenwald: Nine of ten most populous countries refused to expel Russia
“Here are the top 20 countries by population, and the ones in yellow are the ones who refuse to support the UN resolution expelling Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, and you can see that it's nine out of the 10 Most populous countries”
Chamath: $35 trillion in global wealth destroyed in early 2022
“Since the beginning of this year till about yesterday, so I think the number is still going up probably by at least by a trillion dollars. We have destroyed collectively as a society 35 trillion dollars in global market value. Now, to give you a sense of that,…”
Palihapitiya: Most Black Americans would not directly benefit from student loan forgiveness
“So the majority of the black population would not be directly benefited by student loan forgiveness.”
Calacanis: Twitter avoids eliminating bots to prevent a 20% activity drop
“The problem is they don't want the bots to go because the only sign of life in that business Is spammers and, you know, all these fake accounts being created, so they're just scared to take that 20% hit.”
Calacanis: Chinese operators use TikTok to track users and program children
“And then the Chinese are running it, and they're programming our children and have all their data and locations.”
Chamath: At least 5 to 10 big tech employees work for foreign governments
“Like in the tens of thousands of employees that work in big tech, there's probably at least five or 10 of these people that work on behalf of foreign government.”
Sacks: Snake Island Ukrainian soldiers surrendered rather than dying fighting
“That was fake. Okay, you had Snake Island where the 13 Ukrainian soldiers said we're gonna bring us death rather than surrender. It turns out they actually surrendered.”
Flexport CEO says government hid port delays by moving ships offshore
“They passed this rule that the ships have to wait a 150 miles offshore so that the carbon, so that the pollution wouldn't hit LA, like reasonable, good. But then they kept using the same metric for how many ships are waiting right outside the port. And it went…”
Sacks: PayPal worked with ADL and SPLC to de-platform users
“PayPal was taking the lead to financial deep platforming. They were working with the ADL and the SPLC to kick, to just to identify groups to kick off their platform.”
Sacks: Tucker Carlson gets more young Democratic viewers than CNN or MSNBC
“Tucker Carlson now gets more young Democrats listening to his show than CNN and MSNBC”
Sacks attacks teachers' union leaders for claiming no COVID learning loss
“The heads of the teachers union said there is no learning loss. They are the ones who lobby to shut the schools down.”
Calacanis notes human rights groups report up to 1M Uyghurs incarcerated
“That is the numbers that human rights organizations are saying between 300,000 and a million people are incarcerated right now being tortured, raped, and in doing forced sterilization reeducation, and when they're released are being tracked in ghettos.”
Chamath: No professional Silicon Valley VCs invested in Theranos
“There's not a single person in Silicon Valley, I think, who put in a single shekel into this thing who actually does this as a real job.”
Chamath: He and Friedberg are currently witnessing an active biotech fraud
“There's a fraud in biotech going on right now that David and I saw up front.”
Sacks asserts more U.S. COVID deaths occurred under Biden than Trump
“More Americans have already died from COVID under Joe Biden than Donald Trump.”
Jan Crawford notes healthy teenagers face minimal risk of COVID-19 death
“A healthy teenager has a one in a million chance of getting and dying from COVID, which is way lower than, you know, dying in a car wreck on a road trip.”
Palihapitiya: Children born during the pandemic experienced a 22 IQ point drop
“Children born during the pandemic have experienced a catastrophic drop in cognitive development of 22 IQ points.”
David Sacks cites CBO report stating Build Back Better costs $5 trillion.
“Just today, we got a report from CBO saying that this Build Back Better bill wasn't going to cost two trillion, like the administration said. It's going to cost five trillion and add three trillion to the deficit.”
Sacks: Lockdowns and mask mandates only delayed COVID-19 transmission
“Lockdowns didn't work at all. At most, lockdowns and all these measures, whether it's mass mandates or whatever, All it did was delay the timing of the virus.”
Chamath: I am down 17% on $200M in 2021 PIPE deals
“Well, I'm technically up 19%, but that's really because of one deal. If I take that one deal out, which was a total outlier, I'm down 17% on about two hundred million dollars of investment.”
Chamath: Billionaire tax targets Democratic tech founders over Republican private fortunes
“The Democrats are writing a bill that will disproportionately tax democratic successful billionaires. And it'll leave intact the Kochs, who is literally the boogeyman to the progressive left who wants to write this bill.”
Chamath: Public board directors must accept acquisition offers with 30-35% premium
“The directors have a fiduciary responsibility to actually vote in favor of that deal because they're not allowed to look at who the buyer is and say, no, we don't want to do that. So if he puts out a reasonable fair market offer price, you know, of the closing…”
Sachs: Tether is likely solvent despite its reserve composition
“My guess is that Tether is solvent. I don't think it's, it lacks solvency”
Sacks: Haugen's whistleblower push was a coordinated political operation
“This was coordinated. She's got a Democrat, a well-known Democratic operative named Bill Burton working for her. She's got a team of lawyers. She's got a PR team. This whole thing.”
Sacks: YouTube removed 1M COVID videos over dissenting views
“YouTube just took down a million COVID videos because they disagree with official position on COVID.”
Balaji: China has won every round of US war games
“The US military has a perfect record in its war games with China. China's won every round.”
Sacks: Russian 2016 Facebook ad impressions were an infinitesimal fraction of total
“When you actually look at the number of impressions that were created by the sum total of all of the so, the so-called disinformation of all these ads, It is a fractionally small, infinitesimal drop in the ocean compared to the total number impressions on Face…”
Sacks: Tech leaders' shared political alignment causes selective censorship
“But see what I object to is the fact that the censorship rules only seem to apply To one side of the spectrum is, look, both sides are capable of spreading misinformation, but only one side is being censored. Why? Because the people running these powerful tech…”
Calacanis: Proposed EV tax credit gives non-union Tesla $4,500 less
“The 12,000 dollar credit that they're giving to or they're proposing to give to all EV manufacturers is only if you have union employees It's 4500 less to Tesla.”
Sacks claims PayPal partners with ADL and SPLC to ban users
“Basically, PayPal is creating the equivalent of a no fly list with respect to their service. Well, for anybody who they put, they deem as deplorable or undesirable, basically they're working with the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Southern Poverty La…”
Sacks claims Biden administration coordinates social media bans with Big Tech
“She just sort of casually mentioned that, oh yeah, by the way, the administration is flagging posts for a social media company, for big tech companies to take down, to remove. And posts, yeah, and she just kind of meant, Just casually mentions, oh yeah, the bi…”