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 2,409 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
Means: The Flexner Report legally mandates siloed pharmaceutical medicine in the US
“The way medicine exists today, the guiding law in Congress is called the Flexner Report, which actually mandates that we can't look at disease holistically. We have to look at things in silos, evidence-based. We need to name a condition and then treat it with …”
Means: Stanford medical dean took $4M from opioid firms for ethics research
“Reached out to the Dean of Stanford Med School, who was a pain specialist, and we funded him directly with consulting payments, and then made a donation to Stanford to his lab for four million dollars from opioid companies to study ethics and pain management.”
Means: 15 of 19 members on 2011 NIH opioid panel took pharma payments
“The Dean of Stanford Med School who just took a bunch of money from opioid companies was appointed in 2011 to the blue ribbon panel on opioid recommendations. He shows 19 other elite academics. 15 of the 19 had direct payments from opioid companies that we Ver…”
Luckey: Apple agreed to invest $275 billion in China to stay independent
“Apple's got 95% of their manufacturing in China. They agreed to invest. They've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in manufacturing capacity there. They've agreed to invest a further two hundred and seventy five billion dollars in Chinese manufacturing i…”
Yeung says Prenetics never produced a false positive or negative in HK
“We're the only testing provider that never had a f**k up when it came to false positives and false negatives.”
Liemandt: Trilogy cohorts were told to bet a month's salary on roulette
“At the end of our trilogy university, a hundred days, you know, if enough of the teams that hit their goals, we would take everybody to Vegas and then we would get everybody around a roulette wheel. And we'd say, you have to bet one month's salary. On the numb…”
Parr: Gen Z is the first generation since 1800 with declining IQ
“Starting in 2010, They noticed a decline, and this isn't just in America. It's in Norway. They noticed there's a bunch of different countries. I think 80 different countries have actually studied the same thing. This isn't just an American thing. But starting …”
Horowitz: Las Vegas Police reopened the Tupac murder investigation at my request
“So at the end of the dinner, I say to the chief of police, Mike Gennaro, I'm like, Mike, you ought to reopen the Tupac case, and he goes, I'll talk to the sheriff. And the next day I called me, I said, what did the sheriff say? He said, if Ben wants us to open…”
Lemkin: Unemployed tech workers rejected jobs under $200k requiring direct individual work
“Enough that I had like a micro connection that had been out of work for six months and I gave them jobs. All of them in the end basically said, I want to make 200 K or more only to do meetings or manage teams. None of them were willing to do any work themselve…”
Parr: Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia insisted to me that aliens are real
“Joe, look, You're worth, like, ten billion dollars. Like, if there's Illuminati, like, you are either in it, or you're friends with the people in it. Tell me one thing that, like, you guys talk about, and he looked at me, he goes, aliens are real.”
Dorsey Actively Tried to Prevent the Release of 'Hatching Twitter'
“Jack Dorsey did not want that book out and he was trying to do everything he could.”
Noah Glass Conceived Twitter Before Jack Dorsey Took the Credit
“That's what it becomes, and if you, if Jack Dorsey had told the real story about Twitter, that his best friend Noah Glass really was the one that came up with most of it, and he stole it, you know, from him, and like, and that, that place was a shit show, and …”
Dorsey Gave Ev Williams an Ultimatum to Fire Noah Glass
“Jack, Who is best friends with Noah goes into Ev's office one day and he says, either you get rid of Noah or I quit.”
Dorsey Fabricated Twitter's Firetruck Dispatch Origin Story After the Fact
“And as far as Ev knew, Jack had come up with the idea himself, you know, when he was a little kid listening to fire trucks. That was a story that was added later.”
Dorsey Reaped $12B While Twitter Co-Founder Noah Glass Got Nothing
“Jack is worth twelve billion dollars, give or take. Noah Glass is worth about a zero dollars, ok? He never got anything. Ev gave him something, and he had to live off that and whatnot. If you're worth twelve billion dollars, give the guy ten million.”
Puri: Harvard had 1 African-American studies graduate for 57 faculty
“Like, I think there was only what was it? Like, there was one degree recipient in twenty-twenty-three in African-American studies. And 57 faculty.”
Puri: Cyberstarts promises startups $2M revenue through loyal CISO network
“He promises teams of fresh graduates, graduates from tech units, not only investment support in the startup, but initial revenues of two million a year. This is usually their first year of revenue, which is intended to boost them above their competitors and he…”
Parr: Traba explicitly promotes a 996 work culture
“And they basically, I think they explicitly said this on their website. We have a nine, nine, six culture, which means working nine AM to nine PM, six days a week.”
Means: Big Tobacco drove the largest food M&As in US history
“In 1990, two of the three largest M&A deals in American history were cigarette companies buying food companies. So every single processed food companies we can actually point to is either still owned by a cigarette company. We don't even realize this craft is …”
Means: 75% of FDA Funding Comes Directly from Pharma
“50, excuse me, 75% of the FDA is actually not funded by taxpayers. It's funded by pharma itself, and bureaucracies are built to grow.”
Means: Nine of the top ten US killers are diet-driven
“Nine out of 10 killers of Americans are foodborne illnesses. I mean, we can dance around it. It's just that simple. Like, you would wipe out heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, respiratory illness, COVID deaths even, if you got our country metabolically m…”
Means: 95% of USDA nutrition guidelines panelists receive food or pharma funding
“The USD nutrition guidelines committee, which basically approves and recommends various foods. 95% of it is funded by 95% of the panelists are directly funded by food companies or pharma companies.”
Means: Kellogg's US products contain ADHD-linked dyes omitted in Canada
“Kellogg's is a stark example, but their ingredient list, they changed completely for the American kids versus just across the border in Canada. It has addictive ingredients. It has the colorings that make it really bright that are linked to ADHD and other deve…”
Means: 15% of American high schoolers are prescribed Adderall
“We prescribe 15% of high schoolers basically meth, you know, Adderall, which is literally like one molecule away from meth.”
Adcock: Hundreds of thousands of undetected guns enter US schools yearly
“Several 100,000 guns are being brought into schools in K to 12 every year in the U S and not found.”
Parr: Sports betting apps assign account managers to encourage losing gamblers
“DraftKings or whatever? They have account managers. So if you become, I read about this one woman who was making like, a 150 grand a year, so whatever that puts her at in terms of class, but not like crazy wealthy, and she's, and she lost all of her money, and…”
Chief reached $100M revenue in five years by accepting all applicants
“They grew to a hundred million in revenue in four or five years. They let in 100% of the people who apply in the interview.”
Shkreli: Made his wealth in clinical drug development, not price hikes
“A lot of people think that I take medicines and raise prices. Well, this drug was barely in human beings. It had been in like 30 or 50 people. Helped up until that point. And, you know, I made most of my money in, in sort of developments in, in environment on …”
Shkreli: Every insurer covered Daraprim because it was cheaper than ICU stays
“There's not an insurer in the world that didn't cover Daraprim because If you don't pay the 50,000 dollars roughly what Daraprim costs for a whole course, forget per pill, about 50 grand if you end up needing Daraprim. If you don't pay that, you're gonna pay f…”
Ali: Bill Gurley yelled at founder over lost Andreessen Horowitz deal
“Friend of mine was raising money and got a term sheet from Andreessen Horowitz and Bill Gurley at Benchmark and went with the Andreessen Horowitz term sheet. And Bill Gurley was so mad that he called the founder up and like yelled at them for two hours. And se…”
Luckey: The New York Times published a fabricated quote of mine
“The New York times posted a quote for me that I literally never said. And I told them like, Hey, you said that I said this, I never said that. They said, well, it's more or less what you said. We don't think the meeting is different.”
Enjeti: NIAID granted $600K to Peter Daszak in Anthony Fauci's final days
“Dr. Fauci on his waning days as the head of NIAID actually just granted a 600,000 dollar grant to the same individual for the same type of research, which possibly led to the escape of coronavirus from the Wuhan lab.”
Puri: Chamath profited from poorly performing SPACs while retail investors suffered
“Chamath in reality had a bunch of really shitty SPACs where he made a bunch of money. And people who invested in his SPACs on the whole, like just got ripped to shreds this year.”
Helwani: Dana White tried to block my ESPN hiring before day one
“From the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN.”
Abraham: Zcash and Monero can be decrypted; Iron Fish is truly anonymous
“So you had, you know, coins like Zcash and Monero that were created, but it turns out Those actually can be decrypted and you can figure out where all of that went. So she's the first person that really figured out how to make truly anonymized crypto. And it's…”
Puri: Multinational oil companies used local intermediaries to bypass bribery laws
“Those companies couldn't get their hands dirty. They could not risk Bribing foreign like politicians. So what they did was they let this guy bribe the fallout foreign politicians, get the rights, and then they would cut a commercial deal with him.”
Puri: MrBeast trains key executives by having them shadow him continuously
“Like, from morning to night, like, the guy, I remember one guy he hired, he was also Jimmy's alarm clock. Like, he would go wake him up, and from the moment Jimmy woke up, they were together, till the moment Jimmy signed off to go to sleep, and he would do tha…”
Liemandt: Alpha School requires second graders to run a 5K
“Our second graders gotta run a five K. Our eighth graders have to do a tough mudder, or they also all have to cross the finish line at the same time.”
Alpha School outpaces 100k-student district in perfect STAAR scores
“And, you know, we have a building with a few hundred people in Austin, Who get more hundreds on the Texas car than a school district of a 100,000.”
Liemandt: 46% of Alpha School students prefer school over vacation
“Four weeks ago when we surveyed all our kids, 46% of our students said, I would rather go to school than go on vacation.”
Twelve billionaire philanthropists warned Liemandt not to invest in education
“Before I did this and put my billion dollars in, I talked to a dozen billionaires who'd all spent over, had all spent over a billion dollars on education. And to a person, every single person said, don't do it.”
Liemandt: Software buyout firm saw $20B pipeline of distressed SaaS deals
“I saw twenty billion dollars of pipeline companies that were, they were looking at about splitting the cash flows buying for a dollar.”
Parr: Swedish twin study found 45% of investing behavior is genetic
“And the results that he found Was basically, and concluded, was that 45% of savings and investing patterns and behaviors was genetic, which I find to be astounding.”
Smith: US Longevity Gap with G7 Is Driven Primarily by Diseases of Despair
“America is falling behind some of the other, like, G-seven nations around longevity, but I thought it was because generally people were dying earlier but it's actually due to these things called diseases of despair. So just like alcoholism drugs, etc. But if y…”
Puri: Zuru Tech's automated manufacturing cuts homebuilding costs by 10x
“It's basically like more than an order of magnitude. So it's more than 10 times cheaper to build the homes this way.”
Shaan Puri: DeepSeek outperformed OpenAI models without access to top-tier chips
“You ever heard of DeepSeek? They were in the news recently, created that big algorithm, didn't even have access to the best chips, and somehow outperformed all of the OpenAI models.”
Galloway: $40B child tax credit was stripped while $120B Social Security COLA passed
“Forty billion dollar child tax credit that would benefit young families stripped out of the infrastructure bill, but the hundred and twenty billion dollar cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through.”