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 1,273 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 18 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
Ferguson: 1340s anti-Semitic pogrom sites correlated with support for the Nazi party
“There's some very interesting research showing that sites where there were anti-Semitic attacks in the 13 forties were also sites centuries later of support for National Socialism during the rise of Hitler.”
Lonsdale: US Out-of-Wedlock Births Exceed 30% for Whites and 70% for Blacks
“And, you know, white people back then had five percent out of wedlock births. Black people had about 25%. Now those numbers are over 30% for white people, over 70% for black people in America out of wedlock births.”
Harper: Canada's 2020 deficit exceeded his entire final federal budget
“In Canada, and you know, we thought I had run a large deficit back in, in, in in Canada last year, the fiscal year just completed, the deficit of the federal government will be 30% higher than my entire last budget.”
Harper: Before Trump, no Western country agreed China was a threat
“Prior to President Trump, there was not an agreed There was not an agreed posture in any Western country that China was actually a long-term threat. Now, it happened to be my view, but it was, I can tell you, it was not really shared by very many people.”
Jaswa: 95% of California private schools opened while public schools remained closed
“From August on something like 95% of private schools were open, while in California, basically no public schools were open.”
Brooks: US poverty rate stayed at 10-15% despite $20T spent
“We have, the poverty rate has bounced around between 10 and 15% every year since then. Despite the fact that we spent somewhere around 20 trillion dollars in the war on poverty.”
Luckey: Top US Tech Companies Unprecedentedly Avoid Partnering With Military
“Because for the first time in history, most innovative technology companies in America are largely not working with the United States military. That's truly unprecedented. There's never been a point in US history where that was the case.”
Palmer Luckey: Chinese companies are selling lethal weaponized drones abroad
“The Chinese in particular have a variety of companies that are building Weaponized drones with, you know, really lethal systems on them. And those are being sold to other countries right now.”
Kimbal and Elon Musk were first to see internet door-to-door directions
“We were the first two humans to see maps and door-to-door directions on the internet.”
Klausner: Scientists Can Reset Cell Age Without Losing Identity
“Over the last few years, a number of scientists have figured out amazingly how to manipulate the Yamanaka factors to dissociate the resetting of the age clock
From the loss of cell identity.”
Klausner: Rejuvenated Cells Reset to Ages 12 to 20
“The early studies actually suggest that when you rejuvenate cells this way,
They sort of go back to the end of development, sort of the, you know, around 15, you know, 12 to 20, somewhere between puberty and the end of development, and there seems to be a litt…”
Klausner: Cells Can Be Rejuvenated in Days, Enabling Rapid Trials
“We can rejuvenate cells in a couple of days, and as we learn to measure what this, quote, young, healthy cell looks like. It's not about having to ask whether people don't age as much over four decades. It's about the types of measurements that we can do with …”
Florence: Gen-1 reached 99 percent reliability with one hour of data
“Gen one was able to across several different tasks and then many other tasks that we showed since hit these, like, 99% plus levels of reliability on just one single hour of robot data.”
Gopalan: Software engineers now do more code review than code generation
“More software engineers are doing code review than they're doing the generation of code.”
Levie: Top Box AI Use Cases Involve Tasks Never Previously Staffed
“Some of the use case, some of the top use cases we see from customers with our AI agent and their data, Are actually things that they never deployed people at before. So it's, I want to go and have an agent read every contract in our company, because I want to…”
Scott Wu: AI autonomous work time doubles four to five times yearly
“And the thing that's really crazy about this stat is, you just see it very consistently double. And I think for the last few years, it's doubled about four or five times every year, you know, which is insane, which means, you know, you wait two or three months…”
Ross: Coverage built and shipped a custom enterprise feature in one day
“Like we can now have an enterprise customer come up who says, oh yeah, this is so close, but we actually need it for is X. We can build X in one day, ship it live and close that deal. We did this last week.”
Kolicich: AI investment at 4% of GDP lags historical industrial revolutions
“If you look at the Industrial Revolution in Russia in the early 20th century, I think investment as a percentage of GDP got up to 20 or 25%, and then China was investing 40 or 50% in their industrial revolution of GDP, and now in AI we're investing, like, thre…”
Lonsdale: The US spends $40B annually on incompetent job training programs
“We have forty billion dollars a year of training programs, and they're just completely incompetent.”
Outset maintains over 80% offer acceptance, beating multimillion-dollar lab packages
“We have a more than 80% acceptance rate of our offers. And these include, like, we've beaten labs with multi-million dollar packages.”
Nolan: SpaceX can be cash-flow positive whenever it wants to be
“I think now the company, you know, has money and can be cashflow positive whenever they want to be.”
Nolan: Uranium enrichment is the only nuclear step the US lacks domestically
“The reason we're doing enrichment is because that's the one step the US doesn't do at any scale.”
Lonsdale: Musk fears US power shortages and is impressed by China's output
“We actually, I was with Elon recently. He was here, and his, one of his big concerns for the US was not having enough power. He's very impressed by how much power China's making overall.”
Hughes: Elite Higher Ed Only Assigns Centrist to Far-Left Authors on Race
“When I was at Columbia, I took many courses on the history of slavery, race relations broadly, and similar to the rest of elite higher education in America, the people you read range from basically centrists at the most to far left.”
Hughes: Arab Slave Trade Captured 12 to 20 Million Africans
“Arabs enslaved between, you know, 12 and twenty million Africans over the years, starting with the conquest of Islam in, in the sixth, or in the seventh century.”
Hughes: Martin Luther King Jr. Argued for Class-Based, Not Race-Based Policy
“In his book, Why We Can't Wait, he says we should have class-based policy, not race-based policy.”
Hughes: MLK's Final Book Dedicated an Entire Chapter to Critiquing Black Power
“In fact, in his final book, he, the whole second chapter is a critique of the black power movement, which was the BLM of its day.”
Hughes: Roughly 66% of Black Households With Children Are Single-Parent Homes
“Now we're at 66%, roughly, of single parent homes in the black community.”
Scott: Private companies beyond the top 50 trade at value-investment multiples
“However, if you look just beyond sort of the top 50 private companies, you go from incredibly high multiples to extremely reasonable multiples that look almost, almost like they're very good value investments.”
Helberg: US Signed Deal for 4,000-Acre AI Industrial Park in Philippines
“Just last week we signed a historic deal with the Philippines, 4000 acres, right next to Subic Bay where we're gonna build a first-of-its-kind AI-native industrial park, and the goal is really to secure inputs that are vital for American and global supply chai…”
Helberg: No technology in human history has caused mass unemployment
“In the history of human civilization, we have never encountered a time when you had a technology that led to mass unemployment.”
Helberg: Trump maintains a very good rapport with Xi Jinping
“The president has been clear that he wants to have a positive impact. Constructive relationship with Xi Jinping, and he does. They actually have a very good rapport.”
Lonsdale: China's Belt and Road Loans Are Unpayable and Seeking Bailouts
“And right now all the Belt and Road loans are coming due and no one can pay them. It's a big crisis right now. They're trying to get money at the IMF.”
Sankar: In 1989, 94% of US weapon spending went to commercial firms
“If you go back to 1989, not that long ago, when the Berlin Wall still stood, Only six percent of major weapon system spending went to defense specialists, what we think of today as prime contractors whose only business is defense. 94% of the money for major we…”
Black: China's state global capital outspends the US seven to one
“That's really a key part of this, because if it were just using government dollars, we wouldn't be any different from China. And they're seven times the size of us.”
Black: China's sulfuric acid export ban affects 25% of global market
“So, sulfuric acid exports have been banned from China, and that's 25% of the market. That starts May first.”
Black: DFC and OPIC insurance products boast near 100% recovery rate
“In the history of the DFC and Opix insurance product Pretty much close to a hundred percent recoveries.”
Sandler: Drexel financed Turner, Wynn, MCI, and Pulte when Wall Street wouldn't
“Of bonds for companies, and companies such as Ted Turner, Steve Wynn, MCI Communications Pulte Homes, all these companies that could never gotten financing before were now able to get financing and grow, and the market grew from that.”
Sandler: Milken received about 30% of department profits for bonus allocation
“Mike's deal that he'd made from Drexel at a time when it was a very small market was that something like 30, 30 some odd percent of the profits of his department would go to the bonus pool he could allocate.”
Lonsdale: 32% of Small Businesses Cannot Find Reliable, Punctual Workers
“32% of these businesses you're seeing, 32% of millions of businesses have a job opening, but they can't find someone who's willing to come and just work hard and show up on time.”
Bevirt: Joby and FAA agreed on every detail of aircraft design
“This is a moment we've been working for more than a decade to get to the point where we have designs where we've agreed with the FAA on every detail of the design.”
Bevirt: AI Lets Joby Aerodynamicists Compress Months of Work Into Afternoons
“He's now able to build in an afternoon what would have previously taken him weeks or months.”
Bevirt: Air Travel Costs an Order of Magnitude Less Than Driving
“So air travel today is our lowest cost, highest speed, and safest mode of transport. So it's hundreds of times safer or even thousands of times safer than driving. It is you know, more than 10 times faster, and it's on the order of an order of magnitude less e…”
Kaplan: Devin became top contributor to own codebase by Summer 2024
“It took us until Summer of 2024 for Devon to become the number one contributor to its own code base, like which was like the first real milestone.”
Kaplan: Major regulated firm automatically resolves 70% of security alerts with Devin
“One of the largest regulated firms in the world, they do very thorough sort of security vulnerability scanning on their code... And they're remediating 70% of these automatically now in production with Devon.”
Lonsdale: Kushner and Gil automated Qatar building permits to just two hours
“My friend, Jared Kushner, who's obviously, you know, been involved in these administrations, he worked with Qatar, with Elad, and they built something where the permits only take, ah, 120 minutes there. So if you want a permit to build something, it'll get bac…”
Wu: AI autonomous task duration grew from 10 seconds to 18 hours
“One of the stats that people talk about a lot is this METR report, which basically says for each different model that comes out roughly how much human work can it do in an automated fashion before you have to go interrupt it and say, oh, that was wrong. Let's …”