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 247 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
Weisbrot: Pavel Durov was arrested in France over Telegram encryption
“That's why one of the reasons why Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested in France, because they didn't like that it was encrypted.”
Weisbrot: GPT-4o safety testers reported the model threatened to blackmail them.
“There was some model, I believe it was four point O where the engineers for that model had said, look, we see it doing things that are a bit scary for us, where if you pretend that you're going to like do something illegal, then it'll contact the authorities a…”
Weisbrot: Chinese government directly subsidizes manufacturers flooding US with opioids
“The Chinese government is directly responsible for flooding the US with these medications. They actively provide rebates to Chinese manufacturers that produce these drugs. And get them in the hands of Western companies that then lobby for them to be available …”
Weisbrot: Studies show sugar addiction is worse than cocaine and heroin
“It's a serious addiction. It's worse than cocaine and heroin. Like there's been studies that have been done.”
Weisbrot: WhatsApp Co-Founder Forfeited $400M Payout To Get Away From Zuckerberg
“The guy ended up telling Zuckerberg to F himself and he walked away from a four hundred million dollar, like partial payout. Just so he could walk away from the company and get away from it.”
Freckling: Law Enforcement Can Legally Buy Private Geolocation Data for Prosecutions
“It is legal for law enforcement to purchase private data that's collected this way through geo location, through search history and law enforcement can purchase that information and use it in prosecution without running a foul of the fourth amendment to unreas…”
Freckling: Google shared ad data with sanctioned Russian entity RuTarget
“Google was found to be sharing data with root target, which is actually a sanctioned Russian company, a unit of spare bank that was subject to sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine.”
Zhang: Bay Area engineers cost 4 to 5 times more than Shanghai peers
“So an average engineer here in the Bay Area cost about four to five times the salary of one of equal caliber in Shanghai.”
Fallows: Historical private equity returns average 10% to 12% versus 8% to 10% for public equities
“I think it's fair to say that on average, historically, the returns of private equity have been somewhat higher than public equity. Not three or four times as high, but if public equity is delivering eight to 10%, maybe private equity is delivering 10 to 12%.”
FanDuel Founders Got Almost Nothing in Sale Due to Liquidation Preferences
“I believe it was FanDuel that raised literally hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars. And when they got sold, The founders got little or nothing in the transaction because of preference items, liquidity preference items that the investors had.”
Hepworth: Cryptocurrency is the best-performing asset class on the planet long-term
“It's so important because it's the best performing asset class on the planet. It's volatile in the short term, but long term, it performs better than anything else.”
Stuart Cohen: Image Licensing Revenue Dropped Tenfold Over Fifteen Years
“No less than 300 dollars. Now you gotta think that each respective license will make no less than say 30 dollars. I mean, it's gone down tenfold easily in the last 15 years.”
Women-Founded Startups Receive Only 2% to 4% of VC Funding
“In the U S and in Canada, it's two to four percent of VC capital goes to women founded companies.”
Furman: Postpartum sleep deprivation mirrors tactics used in wartime torture
“When you're not, when you're sleeping in 2:03 hour increments, that's a form of war torture that people use still to this day. Sleep deprivation is a very common form of torture.”
Niedel: US supplement brands do not require pre-market testing
“You can create a supplement. You and I, Sean, can create a supplement together. We don't have to have it tested. We can take it to market. We can manufacture it. We can say it solves everything under the sun. And until the FDA or FTC pushes us to be able to ba…”
Freckling: Russian SDK Pushwoosh was embedded in US military applications
“A Russian software vendor called Pushwoosh was found to be installed in military and U S government agencies because they had they had disguised themselves. I think they had purported to have American employees based in Washington, DC, and this SDK, which was …”
Weisbrot: Stem cell brain injections can reverse stroke damage after six months
“There's evidence that stem cells that a stem cell injection directly into the brain can Undue damage from a stroke six months after, more than six months after.”
Pearl: Canadian authorities ordered crypto exchanges to freeze trucker assets
“So what did the Canadian authorities do? They instructed you know, the various exchanges like Coinbase, for instance to basically freeze the assets of the Canadians that had accounts there.”
Pearl: US states and Ivy Leagues are developing NFT diploma certificates
“I know that several companies are working with a few U.S. States, and obviously outside of the U.S. And with some you know, public organizations as well, like colleges and Ivy League universities on NFTing their diplomas, their certificates, and so on.”
Lakritz: Post-COVID Seed Rounds Have Ballooned Up to $50 Million
“Where you raise the seed amount, where, what you're talking about around half and five million dollars before COVID. And today it can be somewhere between five and 50. Even I've seen a seed investment.”
Frasier: 41% of US Podcast Listeners Are Non-White
“Brands are missing out on this, and this is a three trillion dollar audience, and not only is it a three trillion dollar audience, but 41% of podcast listeners in the U.S. Are non-white.”
Weisbrot: Crime rates have declined since the advent of gaming
“And in reality, what we've seen is a decline in crime rates since the advent of gaming.”
Gisenau: Microsoft launched a free app competing with ChitChattr
“We had an incident about a week ago or so where Microsoft have launched a free app, a portion of which competes with an element of our application.”
Cien: French payroll taxes equal 100% of an employee's take-home salary
“If you want to pay 5000 that lands in the pocket of that employee, you would basically have to pay another 5000 In, under the form of different taxes. Unemployment insurance, medical insurance, health insurance, and lots of different other insurance and taxes.”
Weisbrot: America is the only Western democracy without universal healthcare
“America claims to be the strongest, best country in the world, but it is the only Western democracy that doesn't have healthcare for all.”
Blanchett: Regular indoor plants do not clean the air
“Plants actually don't clean the air. We think they do, but they don't.”
Weisbrot: Solo Founder Sold AI App Builder to Wix for $80M
“There was this other guy who started a business where like you just Tell the AI the app you want to build and it builds it for you. And he ended up selling this to Wix for eighty million dollars after being an operation of six months.”
Colbertson: Founders can legally delay Form D filings until after receiving funds
“You don't have to file anything with the SEC until 15 days from the first day, from the first investment that you receive from your investor.”
Sadan: Website Traffic Is Shifting From Google Search to AI Chat Platforms
“Historically, when we talked about SEO of website, of how websites are being found, SEO was kind of equal to Google, but that world is shifting and we're seeing The increase of traffic from some of these chat platforms, because people are now not just going to…”
Fallows: Alternative asset allocations rise in direct correlation with investor net worth
“If you start to get into a seven or an eight-figure portfolio, people, we, you do find that their so-called alternative asset or their private market exposure goes up in correlation with their net worth. So whereas your average person with a million dollars ma…”
Weisbrot: Vibe-coding AI tools are known to destroy sections of code
“Vibe coding tools have also been known to destroy sections of code.”
Windley: Traditional search firms charge a 33.3% fee per search
“And what you've pointed out is my theory of why there hasn't been as much change in this industry as in others, because it's such a good model for the hydrogen struggles, for the corn fairies, charging 33 and a third percent. Per search, right?”
Blue: Millennials Make Up Close to 60% of B2B Buyers
“It's close to 60% of B to B buyers are now millennials”
Kelly: Vast majority of US VC capital goes to a couple dozen firms
“There's 3200 VCs in the U S and You know, the vast majority of the capital goes into a couple of dozen of them, you know, in a handful of markets.”
Spahr: Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok cite press releases as authoritative sources
“And we have even seen in some of the answers that we've received back that Claude or ChatGPT or Grok is citing a published press release as an authoritative source of content.”
Hepworth: More millionaires exist on Earth than the 21M total Bitcoin supply
“There's only twenty one million. And so there's literally more millionaires on the planet than there are Bitcoin.”
Hepworth: Crypto Estate Planning and Inheritance Issues Have Been Solved
“And so the market is actually already solved for these issues. If you were just to Google like crypto, like Estate solutions. There's so many companies that are solving for this now. So these were issues maybe five, 10 years ago, and people aren't aware to the…”
McKay: Shopify Does Not Natively Recalculate Sales Tax on Edited Orders
“If you do it in Shopify, Shopify doesn't natively recalculate tax for you.”
The largest startup investor in France is the public bank
“Like the biggest investor in France is the French public bank, which is bonkers, if you ask me.”
Stuart Cohen: Creators Cannot Pursue Infringement Damages Without Copyright Registration
“So then if you do not register your work, aside from making it harder to protect, you also cannot go after any kind of damages if people use your work without permission.”
Stuart Cohen: Many Photography Collections Have Licensed Archives to AI Models
“And then a lot of collections in, in the photography world, Have licensed large language models to scrape their archive to.”
Weisbrot: AI models already exist that read emotions from camera video
“If an AI has the ability to see your camera, then it can read your emotions. That, that, that kind of modeling has already been done.”
Goleshuk: AI interviewers dynamically probe candidates based on high-level screening goals
“With AI, you can just define the high level task. With like, this is what you need to figure out and AI will be interviewer from in yeah, in our case will essentially try to dig into the specific part of the candidate's experience to be able to get the answer.…”
Weisbrot: Lovable generates a full website and content in two minutes
“Now with lovable, I can literally give it a prompt and it will generate the website and the content inside the website for me in two minutes for free.”
Renoui: Trump tariffs add 10% to 50% to e-commerce cost of goods
“And we can talk, start talking about the tariffs that Trump just enforced. This is something that's adding anywhere from 10 to 50% on your cost of goods.”
Renoui: Cat Food Brands Outperform Dog Brands in the Middle East
“So cats are very popular here. So you also see cat Supplement brands or cat food brands do really well in this region, but when it comes to dog brands, it doesn't really pick up as much.”