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 7,044 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 96 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
Simkhai: Egyptian authorities actively use Grindr to track and arrest gay men
“It's not alleged. It happens.”
Cliffton: Zipline will serve hundreds of millions of homes within five years
“And so I think that, you know, the question of how long is it going to take to expand from the, You know, thousands of homes that are served today to the hundreds of millions of homes that we ultimately need to serve. I think that that process will probably ta…”
Horowitz: US recycling rates could double to 70 percent by 2028
“As you start to make the economics better, you start to see that this 34, 35% number can start to look more like 50 or 70%, and we think that there's a real opportunity to do that in the next five years.”
Black women start U.S. businesses fastest but receive disproportionately low venture funding
“The reality is, guy, black women are starting businesses faster than any other group of people in this country, but we're not getting funding, and also, because we're not getting funding, we can't really grow our ideas, so if we really wanna, like, reduce the …”
Major Consumer Brands Are Failing Their Sustainable Palm Oil Pledges
“The, some of the largest consumer products companies in the world had made these commitments, but every one of them was failing because there was no viable alternative.”
Co-founder Chris Burch personally sued Tory Burch and her entire board
“So we wanted him to change his concept, and then he sued us. He sued me personally and my entire board.”
De Jong forged municipal zoning blueprints to save first Suitsupply store
“And so then I thought, ok, I took a pen, I practiced as long as I could, To, you know, have almost the same handwriting as the unit where it was store written in, and I just penciled store in my unit. And then I went back to the municipality and said, but guys…”
Gibson: Precision fermentation foods will become the norm in a few years
“Precision fermentation powered food products are going to become the norm in a few years time”
Yassin: 195 localized media hubs will eventually replace Hollywood's dominance
“In the future, there is a room for a 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie are done.”
Nike offered Allyson Felix a 70 percent pay cut during 2017 negotiations.
“I remember when Wes called me, and he told me what it was and the number was 70% less than what I had been making, and I remember just feeling like somebody had just, like, punched me.”
Female track athletes routinely concealed pregnancies to avoid sponsor pay cuts.
“Women really struggled through pregnancy and motherhood in track and field, and so what they would do is, if they were like in between contracts, like I was, they would Hide their pregnancies, they would sign new deals, and then they would carry on or contract…”
Major athletic brands traditionally construct women's footwear using molds of men's feet.
“A shoe is made off of a lass, which is a mold of a foot, and it's, A man's foot that has been used to make women's footwear.”
A multibillion-dollar rival pressured a major retailer to drop Xero Shoes
“When we were first trying to get into retail, we had a significant order that was supposed to get placed one day by a major, major retailer. And at the end of the day, the order didn't come through, and we called and said, what happened? And from investigating…”
VandeHei predicts that the majority of media companies will go under
“I think that most media companies are going to go under”
Scholl: Overture is designed to be profitable at $5,000 fares
“And then for Overture One, we've said, look, we want to focus on business class. And so we've designed that airplane such that it will be profitable for airlines at fares a quarter of what was charged on Concorde.”
Scholl: Boom will produce first Overture by 2026, test in 2027
“We're breaking ground on the plant to build it, and we will be in production by the end of 24. We'll have the first airplane in 26, and we'll start flight testing it in 27.”
Scholl: Boom aims for Overture passenger certification by end of 2029
“And our goal is to spend two years in that flight test campaign and then be certified to carry passengers by the end of 2029.”
Simmons: ESPN canceled scheduled 2008 Obama interview over political bias concerns
“ESPN squashed it, and they squashed it for reasons that... I didn't fully understand. ESPN was very worried about... Bias, or... Seeming like they were biased one way or the other, with Democrats, Republicans, whatever it was. And they were just like, well, yo…”
ESPN Undersold Grantland's $8M Podcast Ad Inventory For $750k, Says Bill Simmons
“They sold all of our podcasts advertised in the subway for 750,000 dollars a year. When we had, it was easily six, seven, eight million dollars worth of advertising we could have gotten from the pods at that time.”
Bill Simmons Was Shocked Spotify Paid $200M For Gimlet's $10M Revenue
“And then they bought Gimlet and they bought Gimlet for like two hundred million dollars. And we were like, wow, Gimlet makes like Ten million dollars a year. They just got two hundred million dollars. Like, what the hell? Like, we were way more profitable than…”
Jerry Moss refused to offer A&M equity to acquire I.R.S. Records
“Jerry Moss, I wanted to merge with A&M and get shares in A&M. And Jerry Moss had said initially, yes, we'll do that. Then when I went in to finally make the deal, he said, well, we can't give you shares in A&M, but we'll buy IRS. And he quoted a number which w…”
Menker: Gro predicts data months before the USDA with near-perfect accuracy
“Even in the U.S., our models are predictive and accurate four to six months in
In advance of when the USDA comes out with its numbers within like, 98 to 99% accuracy.”
Menker: Gro insights outpace foreign government agricultural reports by two years
“In places like India, in places like Russia, in places like China, in places like Africa, our lead time for sort of our insights is one to two years at times.”
Wood: Steve Jobs rejected Netflix app on Apple TV over hardware rivalry
“And I think Reed sent an email to Steve Jobs saying, are you guys interested in this? And Steve Jobs replied, no, we're not interested because we hear you're building Hardware that competes with Apple TV. And so why would we ever do business with you? You know…”
Ulukaya reveals Chobani was nearly forced into bankruptcy after Idaho recall
“You're about to File bankruptcy. Exactly. I've never talked about this anywhere before. It wasn't that damaging. But what it is, is the banks got really nervous, and they wanted their loan to be paid back. And that loan was used to build a factory supported by…”
Elkabetz: Ultra-precise global weather forecasting will arrive within 3-4 years
“I believe that with the kind of constellation that we're putting in, in space and the kind of products we're working on, This capability will be available globally, not even in a decade, in let's say three to four years max.”
Kaufer: Fake review farms target Google but explicitly exclude TripAdvisor
“We see these review places offering to write fake reviews on Google and some other sites. And then they say, except TripAdvisor. Cause like, yeah, if like, if they try, we catch them, we shut them down.”
Vogt: Autonomous vehicles can become 10x to 100x better than human drivers
“With these systems, they, you know, they're already good. The ones we have today are safe, but there's no reason to me why we can't see them become 10 times better or a hundred times better than human drivers.”
Vogt: Autonomous vehicles will not become a commodity or winner-take-all
“Our view is that you know, the handful of companies that you know, do this first and start these cycles of iteration and learning, Are probably going to end up with the best products. And it's likely that it becomes harder and harder to catch up as these other…”
Vogt: Within 50 years, human driving will be seen as reckless
“The first is, is that I have very little doubt that self-driving cars will be Many, many, many, many times safer than human drivers to the point where it starts to look a little reckless to let humans drive cars in places where there might be pedestrians and c…”
Eremenko: Lithium-ion batteries will never power planes larger than 10 passengers
“And lithium ion batteries, even if you take them to their absolute theoretical maximum, You are never going to fly an airplane that's bigger than about 10 people and a couple hundred kilometers distance.”
Universal Hydrogen expects to retrofit half the target fleet by early 2030s
“We would expect to be able to get through at least half that fleet by the early 20 thirties.”
Eremenko: Boeing and Airbus must choose hydrogen over hydrocarbons by late 2020s
“In the late 20 twenties, I think it will be absolutely impossible for either of those two companies to say, we're going to launch a brand new airplane that will burn hydrocarbons, right?”
Eremenko: Commercial hydrogen flights will operate globally before 2032
“Long before a decade from now, guy, you will be able to fly on hydrogen with a major regional airline, both in the U S or in Europe or in other parts of the world. For a ticket price that will be equivalent or lower, with the comfort knowing that the airplane …”
Altman: AGI will eventually be capable of finding a cure for cancer
“Eventually, now this will require more compute, but if we society at allocate to compute to that, you can say, like, could you go off and find a cure for cancer? And it can spend a lot of its compute cycles doing amazing scientific progress like that.”
Altman: Everyone will eventually have an AGI companion assisting them all day
“But I imagine that we get to a world where each of us has sort of like a, what feels like an AGI companion that we are talking to all day that is helping us be the best version of ourselves, learn, be efficient, be happier, and we'll all experience that way.”
Altman: OpenAI's board can wipe equity to zero for safety
“We also have something in our documents which says if we need to for safety, the board can just totally wipe out everyone's equity value to nothing.”
Altman: Models orders of magnitude above GPT-3 could enable massive disinformation
“Like, at some point there will come a time, one, two, three orders magnitude, who knows what, how much more powerful than GPT-III, where I think a language model Can really have a huge disinformation effect on the world.”
Altman: Powerful digital intelligence will exist within 10 years
“Sometimes these things take longer than you think, but let's say, like, in 10 years, I think there will be powerful digital intelligence in the world.”
Altman: Human creativity and desire for status will not disappear with AI
“I don't know what the jobs of the future will look like, but I am confident that human creativity Desire for status. Desire to, like, do new things and to, like, accomplish. That's not gonna go anywhere.”
Lore: AI-driven text commerce will act like a best friend recommending products
“Using artificial intelligence and texting, I think people would be able to, in the future, just text what they want, and the system would know you as well as your best friend or family member, and be able to recommend precisely what you want, and either using …”
Friesen: Hydropanels can eventually provide the lowest-cost potable water on Earth
“There's no Physical reason, this is a big statement, why these source hydropanels can't eventually be the lowest cost delivered potable water on the planet. Lower cost than what you flush toilets with at home, what you consider sort of free water, which of cou…”
Scaringe: Gas cars will be rare antiques within 25 years
“So call it the next 15 to 20 years, we'll see the fleet of vehicles in the world
Essentially shift almost entirely towards electric, but you know, within, I'd say, 25 years, it would be fairly rare to see a gasoline powered car on the road.
It would be like se…”
Araque: Quaise Can Reach 20-Kilometer Depths to Unlock Global Geothermal
“So we think we can get to 20 kilometers. This is twice as deep as we've ever drilled as humans, and precisely what's needed to make geothermal totally global and ubiquitous.”
Araque: Gyrotron millimeter waves can vaporize any subterranean basement rock
“Anything that's down there in the basement rock
Can be vaporized through this.
if you try to vaporize a metallic wall, it's not going to work, but there's no metallic walls down there.
So, so rock vaporizes.”