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 1,976 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 14 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
Major League Lacrosse Resisted Commercial Models Used by NBA and UFC
“And I kept running into almost at every turn obstacles and questions as to why major league lacrosse at the time was not doing what the UFC was doing or MLS was doing or MLB was doing or NBA was doing. And I would have those conversations with leadership and t…”
Rushkoff: The New York Times misrepresented Israeli COVID study for clicks
“So when I see a piece In the New York Times that, you know, the headline and the first few paragraphs are arguing that, oh, you know, when Israel opened up its schools, its elementary schools COVID rates went up. And then you finally read all the way down, and…”
Cialdini: Humans Are Only Species with Concept of Future Obligation
“I mean, for the first time in evolutionary history, all these species, besides us, never had the concept of future obligation to return what has been provided to them.”
Cialdini: McDonald's Families Bought 25% More Food When Given Balloons First
“The other half, each kid got the balloon as they entered. Those families bought 25% more food because they had been given something first.”
Cialdini: Tailored Free Gifts Boosted Fast-Food Purchases by 24%
“Researchers did a study. People came in, and one-third of them just went to the to the counter and ordered their food. Another third of them came in and were given a very attractive key ring with a beautiful medallion on it by the management. Oh, thank you for…”
Cialdini: 6,700-Site Study Found Scarcity of Supply Top Conversion Driver
“There was a study of 6700 E-commerce sites and A-B tests that were done for various components inside those sites. Does the site have free delivery? Does the site have a search function? Does every appeal end with a call to action? They had 29 of those. The to…”
Elizabeth Holmes told Isaacson she used his Steve Jobs biography as a how-to book
“In fact, when people would come up to me, and they'd say, I used your Steve Jobs book, like Elizabeth Holmes would, the person who invented Theranos launch Theranos. Say, oh, I use your Steve Jobs as a how-to book.”
Isaacson: Josiah Zayner Sells CRISPR Materials Online Through The Odin
“Josiah Zainer,
Runs a store called the Odin, and you can go online and get CRISPR and use CRISPR maybe to regulate the myostatin, so you'll have bigger muscles, things like that.”
Conant: Campbell Soup replaced 300 of its top 350 leaders during turnaround
“We turned over 300 of the top 350 leaders in the company. Six out of seven.”
Cole: Cinnabon forfeited millions in EBITDA to restore franchisee trust
“We killed the initiative. We walked away from millions, millions in EBITDA. It was devastating for the company and the budget, but it was the only option to preserve the relationship with my franchisees”
Hertz: Three in five young adults feel lonely often or always
“Three in five, 18 to 34 year olds, feel lonely often or always.”
Hertz: One in five millennials has zero friends
“One in five millennials Don't have a single friend.”
Hertz: Stanford study showed deactivating Facebook reduces loneliness and increases socializing
“And there was a landmark study that was carried out by Stanford University about a year and a half ago, a real gold standard of a study where they had 3000 participants, 1500 in a control group, and the other 1500 were expressly charged to go off, in this case…”
Hertz: Lonely people are 30% more likely to die prematurely
“That's why loneliness, it turns out, is if you're lonely, 30% more likely to die prematurely than if you're not”
Hertz: Loneliness under two years significantly raises early death risk
“What's worrying is that even relatively short periods of loneliness, so even periods of loneliness under two years, Researchers have found can significantly increase your likelihood of an early death.”
Hertz: Some shopping malls use acne-revealing lighting to discourage teenagers
“They also put special lights in the bathrooms of these malls, which expose teenage acne, so that young people won't want to spend time there.”
Hertz: Open-plan offices cause workers to withdraw and use email more
“Surprisingly, open plan offices actually make people really socially withdraw, maybe not that surprisingly, so panopticon so noisy, people tend to withdraw, communicate more on email.”
Greenblatt: A basket of 299 unprofitable billion-dollar companies gained over 100%
“There are now 299 companies that lost money in 2019. So this is pre-COVID. So there were money losers in 2019 with a market cap now over a billion dollars. And if you bought every single one of those money losers, those 299 companies with market caps over a bi…”
Greenblatt: Success Academy's low-income students outperform New York's wealthiest districts
“There are now 20,000 kids in 47 schools, and they would be the top district in New York City, and most of the kids 87% are minority low income. Kids. And yet they beat all the wealthiest school districts.”
Zurbuchen: 12 JWST Engines Were Damaged by Wrong Chemical Flush
“They, the engines that are there, 12 engines, were flushed out with the wrong chemical. Instead of actually checking, the person who flushes it out, they tried to clean it. That's exactly what they should do. They need to use the right chemical. Instead of che…”
Ridley: Billions in licensing costs are blocking new nuclear power station designs
“So for example, you know, we've been unable to come up with new designs for nuclear power stations for several decades. That's because licensing a new design for nuclear power station would cost billions under the present licensing system. So nobody bothers to…”
Eyal: LGBTQ suicide dropped partly due to online community connection
“What they haven't talked about is, for example, that LGBTQ suicide has dropped, largely because one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons is that people from disparate groups, if you lived in that small town and nobody was like you becaus…”
Eyal: Youth harm metrics are at record lows and suicide was higher decades ago
“Everything that kills kids, everything that harms kids, not just kills kids, it harms kids, is down to record lows. Homicide, record lows. Truancy, record lows. Drug use, record lows. Pregnancy, record lows. Incarceration, record lows. All these things are at …”
Kelly: Glimpsing balances default mode network and triggers synchronized gamma brainwaves
“And it actually, when you're in an fMRI, which I've been, it balances, if you keep going, it'll balance your default mode network and your task mode network. It will open your parietal lobe. It'll not only calm you, moving you from beta to alpha, but it'll act…”
McGonigal: Taking three steps disrupts the brain's inflammation process
“Stand up and take three steps. And no matter how you're feeling because that gets the blood flowing and it automatically disrupts the inflammation process.”
McGonigal: Violent crime declined while video game playtime skyrocketed
“Video games, the number of people and the hours that we've spent playing them has skyrocketed, and yet violent crime has gone down almost on the same curve, and so it's just, it's like completely ludicrous, and nobody actually believes it increases violence.”
McGonigal: My 2008 and 2010 Games Forecast the 2019 Respiratory Pandemic
“Two of my biggest games, one in 2008, and one in 2010, forecast big respiratory pandemics that started in China for the year 2019 and 2020”
Roger Martin: Grade 10 students solve integrative problems as well as MBAs
“These girls who were grade 10 girls, so they had definitively six fewer years of formal education, right? Grade 11, grade 12, four years of undergrad compared to our MBAs and our MBAs on average have about four and a half years of work experience. So they have…”
Holland: Huawei clearly used leaked Cisco intellectual property in 2003–2004
“It was back in 2003, 2004, but there was a very clear cut case that Huawei was using conveniently leaked intellectual property.”
Barrett: Emotional granularity improves school performance, stress resilience, and illness recovery
“There's research which shows really clearly that in, in Western cultural contexts like ours, knowing a lot of emotion concepts and a lot of emotion words and being able to Use those to create very nuanced, precise, emotional events actually is really helpful. …”
McLean: Fortune's Enron takedown originated from short seller Jim Chanos' tip
“But this piece, nonetheless, which started when a guy named Jim Chanos, who many people know, he's one of the longest-running short sellers out there, came to me and said, how does Enron make money? Tell me if you can figure it out.”
McLean: Credit markets doubted Enron while equity investors remained total believers
“There were a lot of smart people who were short the stock for a while, and even though the information, their skepticism traveled in a very small circle, the broader circle of people didn't really understand how, how the company made money, and there was this …”
McLean: Lloyd Blankfein Told FT He Did Not Consider Himself Well-Off
“The Financial Times did a really good interview with Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. It was a couple of months ago, maybe a month ago, and Blankfein said in that interview that he didn't consider himself particularly well off.”
Ackman: Herbalife runs paid Google ads targeting my name
“Herbalife is still running a negative campaign about me personally, which I find fairly remarkable. The way you can see this is if you Google my name I don't know if you want to do this right now. What will pop up is an advertisement And it, the advertisement …”
Ackman: Herbalife settled with SEC for $20M over China disclosures
“In the last six months, and you can Google it, Herbalife paid, settled with the SEC for twenty million dollars for misleadingly describing their China business and their public finance, because it actually, the compensation scheme is precisely the same as, and…”
Calacanis was invited to Molly Bloom's celebrity poker games in Los Angeles
“I was invited to all the Molly, Molly's games in LA, because I was living there at the time, and she used to invite me to all these games, and be like, at the Four Seasons, oh, Leo's here, and Toby's here, and they really want to see you, and I was like, they …”
Calacanis: Asana Has Built a Much Bigger Business Than Basecamp
“I forgot the name of it because it's no longer the biggest player in that space. Like there's other people like Asana who've built like much bigger businesses, but you know, they decided they wanted to build a profitable lifestyle business.”
Wojcicki: About eight US states outlaw children walking or shopping alone
“I can't tell you which states they're in, because I haven't memorized those states, but I know there's about eight states that have laws that say you can't let your child walk alone. You can't leave your child, you know, in the store by themselves.”
Balaji: Wuhan hospital overload and lockdown prove COVID is far worse than flu
“Wuhan was a normal city on December first of last year, and by January 23rd, all seven hospitals were filled. People were being sent home to die. The entire city was put under quarantine, and it was, you know, the largest, like, you know, quarantine in human h…”
Maples: 10 out of 10,000 startups create 95% of annual venture value
“First of all, this is why 10 companies out of 10,000 every year create 95% of the value in the startup business.”
Pasricha: Decision-making energy is only replenished by sleep or glucose
“They say when you're done with your decision-making energy, there's only two ways to replenish it. Number one is sleep, and number two is glucose, or anything that turns into glucose in your body.”
Schwarzman: Lehman's 1984 sale was triggered by trading limit breaches and rate losses
“People in the trading department exceeded limits on certain type of security, and it ended up that interest rates went the wrong way, and, you know, we lost doubly on the trade, and the impact of that on a mark-to-market basis would have gotten close to wiping…”
Kahneman: Insurance underwriters varied by 50% on identical cases, defying 10% expectations
“So, we asked the executives the following question. Suppose you take two underwriters at random. By what percentage do they differ? I mean, you look at the difference between their premium, divide that by the average premium. What number do you get? And people…”
Collins: Jobs wanted Apple's greatness proven by not needing him
“He wanted Apple to be a great and lasting company that its ultimate proof would be that it didn't need him.”
Nagoski: No scientific evidence shows open relationships are better or worse than monogamy
“Yeah, there isn't any evidence one way about them being better or worse. They're just a different relationship structure.”
Nagoski: Historically, sexual frequency showed no statistical link to pregnancy rates
“Almost none of the sex humans have ever had
Is reproductive. Even before there was hormonal contraception, there was not a statistically significant relationship between frequency of sex and number of pregnancies.”
Empathic Discipline Intervention Cut Student Suspension Rates by 50%
“And that exercise reduced the suspension rate among students whose teachers got that message by 50% over the school year.”
Guided Reframing Interventions Dramatically Reduced Child Abuse and Maternal Depression
“What Bugenthal found was that this exercise dramatically reduced the rates of what she called harsh parenting, like things like spanking and other kinds of physical acts that, that you could think of as a child sort of maltreatment within the first year of lif…”