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 601 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
Palantir and SpaceX sued the US government for first defense contracts
“Palantir and Roland, SpaceX, all had to sue the government for the first big contract, because the primes were sophisticated at selling, sophisticated protecting their interests.”
Kupor: OPM successfully dissolved 42-year federal hiring test consent decree
“And literally that consent decree existed until about three months ago when we kind of went back to the original plaintiff in that case, actually, who was still alive. And we were able to actually get to a resolution where we got ourselves out of that consent …”
Kupor: Federal government relied on self-attestation without skill tests for 42 years
“Literally for like 42 years basically the government did away with any form of test, not just like that pace test, which was kind of a, an aptitude test and a leadership test, but also any kind of like Functional tests... We literally relied on self-attestatio…”
Ridley: UK has the developed world's highest industrial power prices
“The highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, bar none, second highest domestic electricity prices second to Germany.”
Lonsdale: Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK
“And in Mississippi, I think, is our poorest state right nearby, and you think of Mississippi, and you don't think of wealthy people, and it's wealthier now than the UK, obviously.”
Lonsdale: Tech startup formations in China have collapsed over four years
“You've seen the number of tech starts have collapsed over the last four years in China.”
Lonsdale: Chinese models now dominate global open-source AI
“Their open source models in the world, for example, are now dominated by the Chinese.”
Schmitt: Missouri holds a $24B legal judgment against China
“Missouri has currently a twenty four billion dollar judgment against communist China that is, you know, can, you can seize assets.”
Machado: Russian agents and Iranian Quds forces train Venezuelan military
“And many of the, of their agents are freely operate in Venezuela, have trained Venezuela army and militias, as well as the Iranian could army.”
Lonsdale: Former SF DA Chesa Boudin Worked with Hugo Chavez
“Our recent DA in San Francisco, who we threw out of power chase a boot, and I guess worked with Chavez as did many other of the far left in the U S.”
Sofman: Waymo has driven 70M+ miles and is 5x safer than humans
“Today, like there's over seventy million miles and statistically it's five times safer than a human. It's like genuinely like it is saving lives from a, on a, from a statistical basis.”
Hilton: San Francisco Homeless Housing Costs Up to $1M Per Unit
“They defined shelter as what they call permanent supportive housing, which is an apartment unit costing because of all the other Corruption and regulation involved in house building in California, 700,000 dollars, 800,000 dollars, a million dollars now in San …”
Cotton: Federal improper payments and entitlement fraud total hundreds of billions
“And we're not talking something here, Joe, that's in the millions of dollars, that the billions or tens of billions. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Cotton: Supreme Court will restrict nationwide district court injunctions
“So I think these activist liberal judges are issuing so many of these injunctions that you will see a decision I hope sooner rather than later at the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court using its power the apex of our judicial system outlines the circumstanc…”
Cotton: China runs spies across Washington targeting U.S. government officials
“China has spies running all over Washington DC and elsewhere, targeting intelligence officers, military officers, high ranking government officials.”
Cotton: China pre-positions cyber tools in critical U.S. infrastructure
“They also are some of the most aggressive hackers in the world as well. Targeting government systems, targeting corporate systems, and placing tools in critical infrastructure for moments of tension in the future.”
McCord: AI infrastructure spending will reach $1T by early 2030s
“I think, you know, it'll be the biggest infrastructure build that humanity has ever done, I think. I think you could make that argument. I think we will hit a trillion dollars in the early 20 thirties.”
Stitt: Oklahoma provides families up to $7,500 tax credits for school choice
“Now every single family has up to 7500 dollars of a refundable tax credit. To go to a school of their choice”
Lonsdale: US NGOs receive over $100B in government funding
“In this country, NGOs receive over a hundred billion dollars of funding from governments now. It's actually probably a lot higher than that.”
Gil: Curing all cancer and heart disease would only add 5-7 years
“If you got rid of all of cancer and all of heart disease, I think you add something like five to seven years”
Gil: Google's Med-PaLM 2 outperformed human physician experts
“Google released a model, I think two years ago called MedPalm too, where if you compare the answers from that model relative to physician experts, it outperformed them. In other words, if you use physicians to train the model will get worse.”
Census Bureau Omits Two-Thirds of Transfer Payments From Household Income
“In measuring household income, the Census Bureau counts only about a third of all transfer payments as income to the recipients. It doesn't count food stamps. It doesn't count housing subsidies. It doesn't count Medicare. It doesn't count, and it doesn't take …”
Gramm: 88% of Government Benefits to the Poor Are Not Counted as Income
“So in total, for the people who are classified as being poor in America, 88% of the benefits that they get from the government are not counted as their income.”
Bottom Quintile Real Government Transfers Grew From $9.7k in 1967 to Nearly $50k in 2017
“In 1967, when the warm poverty ramped up counting all transfer payments as income received, and all taxes paid as income lost, the average family in the bottom 20% of income earners in America got 9700 dollars in real purchasing power dollars adjusted for infl…”
Gramm: US tax code is progressive up to $7.5 million
“But if you look at actual IRS data, the tax code is progressive up to about seven and a half million dollars a year.”
Gramm: Prime-age poor employment fell from 68% to 36%
“When the war on poverty started, 68% of the poor people in America worked. That number is now down to, and that's prime work-age persons, ok? Now it's down to 36%.”
Joe Lonsdale Claims Massive Racial Disparities in Top-Level Math Achievement
“So I think right now, for example, between the races, maybe it's not comfortable, but Asians have 25% of them that score, you know, at the top level in math, whereas with Hispanics, it's two percent and blacks is one percent.”
Phil Gramm: China Destroyed Half Its Tech Equity Value Attacking Jack Ma
“When government can't stand someone like Ma, and they attack him and destroy half the equity value of the tech industry in China, You're going to have an impact on growth.”
Greenblatt: ADL represents assaulted Jewish students at Pitt, Michigan, and OSU
“In the past month, since classes started, we tracked, I think we've got about half a dozen assaults, anti-Jewish assaults. We're representing students at Pitt, at Michigan, I think at Ohio State, who've been victimized and assaulted in just the past four to fi…”
Greenblatt: DNI reported Iran is funding and organizing campus protesters
“The Directorate of National Intelligence, the arm of the government that coordinates the FBI and the CIA and the NSA, they reported Iran is providing money And organizing capabilities to these protesters.”
Fryer: Paying students for inputs like homework was wildly successful
“When we paid kids to, so we did two types of experiments. One, we paid them for inputs, right? So we paid them to do specific behaviors or accomplish very specific things that we wanted them to do. Do your homework. Come to school. Don't beat people up. Stuff …”
Fryer: Paying students for academic outputs produced zero results
“On the other hand, when we designed experiments exactly as economic theory thought we should, which is you pay for the actual output, not the input, we got nothing.”
Fryer: Black-White Median Wage Gap Is Unchanged Since 1950
“If you have the 90th percentile, there's been a lot of convergence between blacks and whites in the last 30 or 40 years, right? But if you're at the median, there's been no, the black white wage gap at the median is the same today as it was in 1950.”
Lowery: US Builds Only Dozens to One Hundred Air Missiles Monthly
“I think our entirety of our short range air missiles that we can build per month are in the dozens.
Like, I think in the tens or the, or maybe end up to like a hundred.
But just orders of magnitude less than what folks can build with consumer electronics.”
Lowery: China Can Probably Build 100,000 Small Drones Monthly
“If you talk group one and group two, China can build probably 100,000 group one and group two systems in a single month.”
Hughes: Barnard banned Columbia student over viral pro-white civilization speech
“So this was caught on video, went viral throughout campus. He was actually banned from Barnard's campus as a result. Though it didn't actually happen on Barnard's campus.”
Lomborg: Top 12 global aid policies return $52 per dollar spent
“So we find 12 amazing things that the world should be doing. We find an average, they will give you 52 dollars back per dollar spent.”
Lomborg: Cold kills 170,000 annually in US and Canada, versus 20,000 heat deaths
“Every year in Canada and the U.S., about 20,000 people die from heat. That, we should absolutely recognize that. But every year, a 170,000 people die in Canada and the U.S. From cold.”
Lomborg: Cheaper gas prevents 12,500 cold deaths annually in the US
“We estimate cheaper gas Meant that 12,500 people did not die from coal every year in the US.”
Emil Michael: Uber has paid roughly $100B to drivers over time
“Uber over time has probably paid a hundred billion dollars to drivers. A hundred billion dollars.”
Gallagher: BlackRock and MSCI funnel US capital to blacklisted Chinese entities
“We've done an investigation of BlackRock MSCI, and we've only scratched the surface. We've investigated some other some venture capital organizations, and we are, we're, Capital continues to flow even to companies that are on various federal government blackli…”
Gerstner: More compute will be deployed in 2024 than all previous history
“We're gonna deploy more compute in twenty-twenty-four than in all previous years combined.”
Gerstner: 44% of Americans Aged 18–29 Prefer Socialism Over Capitalism
“Joe, among the age group, 18 to 29, 44% of that group believe socialism is a superior form of organizing government than capitalism.”
Gerstner: Ukraine Aid Could Fund Invest America for 20 Years
“What we've spent in Ukraine to date would pay for this program for 20 years and seventy five million children touching almost every American household.”
Gerstner: 10-year yields are peaking and rate cuts are coming in 2024
“We're nearing the top of tenure, if not at the top. We're gonna see rate cuts next year, and importantly, we're at the beginning of what may be the most important super cycle, accelerant, to our economy in a long time.”
Karp: Palantir AI identifies adversary positions across large land masses
“The most powerful use of our product currently, and again, of one of our products is Being able to identify an adversary over a large lying mass using AI, and that obviously it's been reported has led to a different level of ability to acquire the adversary's …”
Lonsdale: India is now producing more annual unicorn startups than China
“There's now more unicorns per year recently in India than China, as China falls, and India seems to be rising there.”
Balaji: China is flexing new diplomatic muscle via Saudi-Iran deal
“What they have flexed over the last couple of months is the new diplomatic muscle. Right. They've managed to get France and Brazil and a bunch of neutral countries, formerly neutral countries. They have peace between Saudi and Iran.”