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 3,064 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
Lore: Quidsi rejected a competing buyout offer $100M higher after Amazon threats
“Yeah, it's even, even worse that we got a higher offer that we didn't take.”
Bill Simmons: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell lied about Ray Rice
“And they did. Though Rice's told them. No, he lied.”
Make Magazine's first issue perfectly described Square's card reader design
“If you want to know the real story, just get the first issue of Make Magazine. It's publicly available. It describes exactly what we were building, and I knew that when I went to Bob.”
Maldonado: Most retailers make more from slotting fees than product sales
“And these, you know, retailers, most of them, they make more, more money from slotting fees than they do from actually selling products.”
NRA Does Not Publicly Oppose Smart Guns, Says Biofire CEO
“The NRA, as an example, does not oppose the development of smart guns, right? That's their public stance. You can go read on their website.”
Tim League controversially offered a remote job to an accused employee
“I made the decision at the board meeting to offer him a copy editing position that he could do from home.”
Tom Rinks: Taco Bell's first three Chihuahua commercials copied his submitted storyboards
“They tested that ad in the northeast, which has happened to be where I was in Michigan, and I just lost it, you know, because it was the commercial that I'd written. You know, the first three commercials were our commercials, like we had storyboarded and share…”
Andy Dunn was arrested for assault during a 2016 manic episode
“And I was arrested for felony and misdemeanor assault of my now wife and mother-in-law who were Trying to keep me from running into the street naked out of my apartment on ninth street.”
Mullenweg: Wix violated copyright by making derived WordPress code proprietary
“What we often go to bat for and fight for, including with this company called Wix, is what they did was they took our code, and then the code they derived from it, so the modifications they met, were, they said were proprietary and secret to Wix. And so what w…”
Troy Carter: White executives literally hold 'head of Black music' titles
“You actually, believe it or not, have white people that are the heads of black music with a title at some of these companies.”
Jeremy Stoppelman emphatically denies that Yelp allows pay-to-play review manipulation
“The answer is, of course, absolutely not. That's never been the case. And in fact, you can prove it to yourself. Look at any one of our advertisers and see if you find negative reviews. Chances are you will, because everyone gets the occasional negative review…”
Zimmer: App-based drivers support California's Prop 22 by four to one
“Four to one driver support Prop. 22 versus the alternative.”
White executives hold 'Head of Black Music' titles at some labels
“You actually, believe it or not, have white people that are the heads of black music with a title at some of these companies. You know, it's, and literally you have qualified black executives in the company, but actual white people with a title, the head of bl…”
Cisco CEO John Morgridge abruptly fired co-founder Sandy Lerner six months post-IPO
“I was sitting in my little office in the corner, as I did every day, and he came in, and he sat down in the chair without making an appointment, and he said, ah, you know, I think it's time you retire. He says, you've got all this money now, you just, time to …”
Jim Koch: Heineken and Beck's exported non-compliant, inferior beer to America
“They send us Heineken that's outlawed in Germany because of Germany's strict beer purity law, and the Becks they send us isn't the same Becks they have in Germany. They add forbidden adjuncts to it.”
Wenner: Rolling Stone Published UVA Story Without Adequate Fact-Checking
“But the general report on rape on campus was quite accurate. The Illustrated main story of the rape victim that was made up by that rape victim. And we print that without adequately checking it.”
Koch: Heineken and Beck's exported beer with ingredients outlawed in Germany
“They send us Heineken that's outlawed in Germany because of Germany's strict beer purity law, and the Becks they send us isn't the same Becks they have in Germany. They add forbidden adjuncts to it.”
Brian Smith: Lack of Prior Use Enabled US Trademark Registration for UGG
“And I did a search of the world, especially the US, to see if there'd been any prior use of the trade name Ugg, and they had not. So, That opened up the gate for me to do the registration of the trademark.”
AI revolutionized radiology scans, but human radiologist demand has still increased
“AI has now completely revolutionized radiology. Every single radiologist uses AI to Study the scans. It does it incredibly fast, incredibly accurately, better than a human can. However, radiologists' demand has gone up.”
Angle: China now leads consumer robotic floor care instead of US
“We used to, past tense, lead the consumer robotic floor care industry.
We don't anymore.
China does.”
Jet.com raised a $618M Series A while operating with negative gross margins
“But the real key was raising, we did a six hundred and eighteen million dollar Series A. So we'd raised some money before that, and then we had the six hundred million Series A. That was a really tough round to get done. That was, at that time, we had negative…”
FDA $365,000 application fees are the primary barrier to domestic generics
“Our biggest inhibitor and why we haven't done it yet is all the fees that the FDA charges. So it's about 365,000 dollars to set up what's called an end on new drug application.”
Kilgore: Mainstream beauty products carry at least a 1,200% retail markup
“And in all of these different layers of distribution, you would end up with a markup of 1200% At minimum on that product. So something that is manufactured for five dollars would retail for 60 at minimum because the retailer themselves are taking at least half…”
Chang: Uber Eats and DoorDash take up to 50% of restaurant margins
“So with margins becoming thinner and thinner in the restaurant industry, we find our original strategy of delivery becoming highly unsustainable with delivery apps like Uber and DoorDash taking margins specifically in the city up to 50%.”
Rudolph: Banza lot testing was 97% lower than activist claims
“We published a statement very quickly on our website that, you know, not only acknowledged historical testing results for what was sort of being questioned, but also even tested the same lot. It was 97% lower than what was being claimed.”
Pansino: YouTube's Promote Feature Costs Roughly $10,000 Per Million Views
“And now I think the math that I did, if you, the cheapest I think you can do, cause you can pick region and you can pick but if you want, it's about a thousand bucks for a 100,000 views. So if you want your video to reach a million views, it's about 10,000 dol…”
Grant: Top Individual Salespeople Actually Tend to Make Worse Sales Managers
“And the better you are at individual sales, the worse you tend to be as a manager. Your teams actually achieve poorer performance.”
Harris: Safety controls on open-source AI models can be removed for $100
“I won't go into technical details, but basically for about a hundred dollars, you can retrain all the safety controls off of it.”
Researchers Took Two Years to Discover GPT-3.5 Could Synthesize Dangerous Chemicals
“It took two years, for example, for researchers to figure out that GPT-III.V, the predecessor to GPT-IV, had research-grade chemistry knowledge, meaning you could ask it questions about, you know, how to synthesize dangerous chemicals, and it would tell you ho…”
Heirloom's direct air capture is 5,000 to 10,000 times more land-efficient than trees
“So compared to trees, these are actually about Five to 10,000 times more land efficient.”
Masterson: Drunk Elephant did zero paid advertising from launch until 2023
“So I decided not to advertise early on. Yep. Never advertised till last year, actually.”
Gilboa: Optometry is the only medical field where doctors sell prescribed products
“Optometry is interesting. It's the only part of human medicine where A doctor can prescribe something to their patient and then sell them that product and make margin on it.”
Finke: Brimstone's process can be carbon-negative even using dirty fuels
“The beauty of our process is that actually could be substantially lower carbon or even carbon negative under a wide range of energy sources, including the use of those dirtier fuels.”
Electric flights cost one-sixth to one-half as much as gas-powered planes
“A six to half the cost of flying gas-powered airplanes, and you're doing it sustainably.”
Khan: 15 to 60 minutes weekly on Khan Academy prevented COVID learning loss
“What we saw in twenty-twenty-one is that the students who put in an average of 15 minutes on Khan Academy a week in a school setting, they actually saw no COVID learning loss, And that students who put in 30 to 60 minutes, they accelerated almost 40% faster th…”
Khan: Majority of minority-majority US schools lack Algebra II and Physics
“A majority of minority-majority schools, so that's a mouthful, but a majority of minority-majority schools don't offer courses like Algebra II, Physics, Et cetera. Not to even mention things like AP courses or IB courses.”
Simkhai: Egyptian authorities actively use Grindr to track and arrest gay men
“It's not alleged. It happens.”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”