Wednesday ORT: Allnerds, GS Pricing, The Author LEARs, BYD Burns, The Worst PORSH

All subscribers welcome

you gonna lear today

Sorry for having my awful, ugly face at the top of this post. Unlike the average “male” autowriter, I don’t feel that everything needs to be a selfie. In this case, however, the juice is worth the squeeze. I’ve driven 1,084 miles in the past 22 hours and I have a Pat Metheny gig to attend, so this will be a short ORT. Racing content from NASCAR was given to me by MDG, I may add it as a comment below. As always, interesting off-topics will be pinned. I’ll also be doing a “Watches and Wonders” post tomorrow for paid subscribers, so we can all talk about why we won’t be building actual wealth in 2026.

I said we a data center today

I hope you got some Tweed Runners on sale, like I did, because Allbirds has now completed the chrysalis-to-butterfly transition that, it’s now obvious in hindsight, was always destined to happen. The firm has sold its shoe business for $39 million to a company that will probably run it the rest of the way into the ground by selling junk “Allbirds” to Famous Footwear, and it has now pivoted to… being an AI compute resource. It’s raised $50 million on top of the $39 million it got for selling the shoe, and that money will be used for buying “compute”.

The scam/stupidity/cupidity here is breathtaking. To begin with, $89 million in can only get you about 25 NVIDIA GB200 racks. To put this in perspective, when I worked for NVIDIA, on the CoreWeave and other platforms, I generally fixed or “RMA marked” approximately 30-40 GB200 boxes a day. It’s a trivial amount. I could put the entire Allbirds spend in my basement…

…except there is no way in hell Allbirds will actually get the rack systems. The whole CoreWeave/NVIDIA circular money scam has these things back ordered like the Land-Dweller with ice blue dial. My prediction: the $89 million will be spent on executive salaries, then the firm will close. Tale as old as time.

There is something beautiful about the Allbirds story, however. It is so representative of the Modern American Dream, where you just “make deals” and wait for a bigger fool to bail you out of what you’ve done. Allbirds never really wanted to make shoes, although the shoes were good enough in many cases. They wanted to be a tech firm. And now they are.

Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, writes this of William Congreve:

But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed familiarly with the great (meaning the titled nobility — JB), he wished to be considered rather as a man of fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire, disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him."

Allbirds, as a shoe company you were worth visiting, and indeed I once bought a pair of Wool Runners in your original Soho store. As a tech firm… I wouldn’t bother.

All things considered, it could be worse

From Gemini, with apologies, but it’s correct:

“The following list provides the starting MSRP for each model in the coupe body style, including the mandatory $2,495 Delivery Freight Charge (DFC):

• Stingray: $73,495

• Grand Sport: $88,495

• Grand Sport X (Hybrid AWD): $112,195

• Z06: $121,395

• ZR1: $197,195

• ZR1X: $227,395

• Convertible Models: For most trims, selecting the hardtop convertible body style typically adds $7,000 to the base price. For example, the Grand Sport Convertible starts at $95,495 and the Grand Sport X Convertible at $119,195.

• Trim Levels: Each model (Stingray, Grand Sport, and Grand Sport X) is available in 1LT, 2LT, and 3LT trims, while the high-performance Z models (Z06, ZR1, ZR1X) use the 1LZ, 2LZ, and 3LZ designations.

• Grand Sport Track Performance Package: This specific configuration for the Grand Sport, which includes carbon-fiber aero and carbon-ceramic brakes, is priced at $109,190.”

Once again, I think the Grand Sport is the Corvette to buy. Which makes sense, because since 1996 it’s been the equivalent of the Accord SE. Anyone here remember the Accord SE or SE-i? Basically, at the end of each Accord generation they’d throw the dealers a special edition that had a ton of equipment at a low price. This was to make sure that none of the old Accords stuck around after the new ones arrived. Similarly, with C4, C6, C7, and now C8, Chevrolet builds a great Corvette at a price below the fancy stuff.

The autowriting community, being fearlessly committed to saying the dumbest thing possible in a thundering chorus of mediocre hot-taking, has already landed on the OMG THE GRAND SPORT X IS SUCH A GREAT DEAL narrative. As Katt Williams would say… “No it ain’t, *****” The Grand Sport X is a worthless hybrid two-ton piece of junk. The regular Grand Sport is the one to have. Be thoughtful about spending too much money on the various packages, because the Z06 is a purer and more admirable vehicle. Don’t get too close to a 5.5-liter flat-crankie with your Stingray-motored value vehicle. Thus endeth the lesson.

Speaking of Corvettes, here’s the 427 for cucks

Some of you will recall the greatest C6 Corvette ever, the 427 Convertible This was a Z06 engine in a steel-subframed droptop. Brilliant, brilliant idea — because there was always something a little “off” about the C6 Z06 as a track and street car. I admired the engineering of the vehicle but I never met anyone who really liked driving it and I’m personally aware of two SCCA-event-winning drivers who crashed them on track. The 427, by contrast, let you hear that astounding engine with the wind in your hair. And it cost the same as a hardtop Z06, more or less.

It also looked cool:

This, on the other hand, does not:

There’s a reason that Butzi Porsche gave us a Targa 911 instead of a convertible 911, and it wasn’t just fear of future Euro regulations. With a steel coupe roof, the 911 has always looked purposeful. With a Targa bar, it looks sophisticated, like you’re too cool to go fast. The convertible… looks like a pregnant 1976 Super Beetle.

I have shown this to you and now you will never be able to un-see it. But it’s not just the silhouette. The 911 GT3 sounds awful and has always sounded awful, especially with the non-Mezger engines. Flat-six engines generally sound awful. This has always been a problem with the Boxster — I used to autocross my 550 Edition with the top down for weight distribution and I can vividly remember the thousand times I scrunched my face with displeasure as the thing droned on to the ultimate screech of 7400rpm or whatever — but the Boxster had the advantage of not costing $275,350 plus options and dealer markup.

A Corvette with the top down sounds cool. The only cooler thing is a 4th-generation LS1 Trans Am with the top down, which is like a Miami speedboat for people who have sex exclusively with GED recipients. A GT3 with the top down will sound like a prolonged bout of flatulence mixed with transmission gear noise.

And this “Street Style” package with stupid-ass “hash mark” stripes and retro plaid interior is such a try-hard bit of cringe. ICONS OF COOL. It will only make sense in the hyper-evolved world of intra-Porsche-Club-and-Monticello-days people. It’s kind of like wearing a Daniel Roth Venice Man watch: the five ultra-sophisticated watch nerds in the world who can almost afford one will think of you as a god while the perfect barista girl will be actively worried about being within surprise-bricking distance of you in public.

I can’t wait to see them upside in the mobbin’-canyons with dazed trust-fund kids and IPO beneficiaries scuttling out from beneath them like cockroaches exposed to sudden light.

Nothing to see here (and it’s dangerous to see it)

Autoblog has raised the bar for embarrassingly submissive storytelling with their report on the BYD fire:

Fire Breaks Out at BYD EV Facility—but Batteries Weren’t to Blame

No casualties were reported, and the parking area stored only non-production vehicles.

There’s a longstanding concern around electric vehicles catching fire, and a recent incident at a BYD facility in China underscores those worries. According to CarNewsChina, BYD’s Pingshan facility in Shenzhen experienced a fire on Tuesday, with dense smoke seen rising from a multi-level parking structure.

Fortunately, no casualties were reported in the incident. BYD clarified that the parking area contained only “test and scrapped vehicles,” meaning no customer cars were affected, and that production continued without disruption. Despite the fire, authorities and the Chinese automaker sought to ease public concerns over EV safety, maintaining that the incident was isolated.

Given that improper external construction operations are believed to be the root cause, this incident should not raise significant concerns among BYD owners or prospective buyers. While Chinese automakers remain largely restricted in the U.S., North American neighbors Mexico and Canada have taken different approaches, with the latter allowing an initial quota of up to 49,000 Chinese EVs per year at a lower tariff under a new arrangement.

The incident comes as BYD continues to expand its ultra-fast charging infrastructure, known as Flash Charging. It supports charging rates of up to 1,500 kW, enough to take an EV from 10 to 97 percent in as little as nine minutes. The company aims to grow the network to 20,000 Flash Charging stations by year-end, up from around 5,000 currently.

You kind of have to admire “Rex Sanchez”, which I assume is a porno name, and the rest of the Autoblog team for seamlessly pivoting from “a whole building of Chinese battery crapwagons went up in flames” to “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about” to “Our neighbors are much more sensible on EV imports” all the way to “Flash Charging is a real thing!”

Just for fun, I’ve written a report in a similar style about the 1968 rapes and murders at My Lai, in the style of Rex Sanchez:

There’s a longstanding concern about junior officers lining up innocent civilians and shooting them after gang-raping the women and children. Fortunately, no American officers were harmed in the incident. Lieutenant William Calley clarified that the dead people were “collaborators and VC”, and that the root cause was a series of pre-dug ditches into which it was worrisomely easily to trip and then die.

Given that improper ditch conditions are considered to be the cause, this incident should not raise concerns among Vietnamese civilians. While American soldiers still face significant restrictions on how many women and children they can murder on a daily basis, our Afghan allies will eventually take a very different approach, with an unlimited amount of “bacha bazi” is permitted for the sake of morale.

The incident comes as the United States continues to expand the availability of IMR powder, rather than Winchester 231 ball, in the 5.56mm service ammunition used by the M16 rifle. It supports fire rates of up to 25 rounds per second, without the clogging of the gas tube that happened with ball powder in the past. The Lake City plant aims to grow the number of women and children shot with stick powder to 2,500 women and children a year, up from just 504 at My Lai.

How deep is your love, how deep is your love, I really mean to LEAR

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I delivered my Toro Titan lawn mower to an ACF reader north of Minneapolis, then had dinner with another ACFer in the city itself. Strictly speaking, this was a stupid idea, because the cost of running my F-250 almost 1,800 miles while missing a few hours of available contract labor exceeded any value I got — but to me it was far from unjustifiable. I had the privilege of meeting two men whom I tremendously envy for entirely separate reasons. Really, I don’t deserve any of you. Every single ACF reader I’ve met in real life has been a better person than I am. It was also really nice to get two different perspectives on what’s been happening in Minnesota over the past year.

Speaking of… I had about half an hour to kill before delivering the mower so I decided I would visit one tourist attraction in Minneapolis. I thought about going to the amazing “Electric Fetus” record store downtown but I also knew that would only put more red ink on the books from the trip. Which left just one choice:

The Quality Learing Center.

I’ve been thinking about this because California appears to be doing pretty well with their efforts to advance “The Stop Nick Shirley Act” into law. This act will allow rubber-stamp penalties of $4,000 per incident to be assessed against anyone who publishes the images or information of “immigrant support service providers” online. This is absurd. It’s already illegal to harass or incite violence online — well, it depends on the target, but it’s definitely supposed to be illegal. The obvious purpose of the bill is to use compliant judges to bankrupt anyone who tries to expose fraud or shady dealing in the twelve-figure immigrant-scamming industry.

While over a billion dollars in Somali fraud has been discovered by Republican and Democratic administrations, the “Quality Learing Center” showcased by Nick Shirley in his famous video was never formally cited for fraud, it was cited for well over 100 separate violations between 2022 and 2025. If you read the violation reports, as I have done… well, they are terrifying. Or they would be, had a lot of children been in the facility. Because what I mostly see are inspections where there are no kids around but the place is noncompliant about 40 different dangerous ways.

Which would be morally fine, were there no children there. And there’s not much evidence that there were ever a lot of children there. The facility received millions of dollars from the government without delivering much in the way of child care.

I figured I would go myself and just take a look. The first problem was parking an F-250 with a trailer in the immediate vicinity — but I quickly realized that the Somalis around there just park in the street. So I parked my F-250 in the middle of the street behind the block containing the Learing Center and walked the rest of the way. The area is, frankly, scary, and that is coming from someone who has been in some “Mayor of Kingstown”-style facilities during his life. There were obvious drug addicts all over the place. I didn’t see anyone who wasn’t either Somali or Arab in ethnicity. I don’t believe in violence so I left my Ben Tendick trench knife in the truck and just carried the Leatherman Arc I use to open boxes and whatnot.

No more than two minutes into my walk, I bitterly regretted that decision, because there were two dudes in a shoving match and I had to walk by them with as much nonchalance as possible. I couldn’t understand a word they said, obviously. Maybe one of them is really bullish on the Allbirds move. So I gave them plenty of space, because I’m upset about the Allbirds thing, too.

I arrived at the Learing Center, which has no windows and a blacked-out door. It looks like a massage parlor or biker club. As I took photos, some African fellow popped out to address my behavior. Happily, he could see my total commitment to nonviolent discussion so after a few moments evaluating each other he went back inside to get some friends so we could all talk about the new Corvette Grand Sport together. I didn’t have time to do that so I speed-walked away at the maximum pace that didn’t make me look like I was running in terror. On the way around the block I saw an Asian food place that no longer allows visitors. They’ll meet you at a window with your food.

Two right turns and a bit of 4.1-mph striding later and I was almost at my truck. I saw a lovely orange cat sitting in an open tenement window at ground level. I also saw a dude giving his woman hell in front of two kids. The children saw me and cowered up against a wall, presumably because they are Atlantic subscribers and understand that all the violence in America comes from old white men such as myself. For reasons I will never understand, I found myself saying “Tranquilo, tranquilo” to them, like del Toro in “Sicario”. They didn’t understand Spanish, because they were Somali, so I think it just frightened them more. The dad looked up from shoving his woman around and I think he was going to talk to me but then he realized that there was still a lesson to be taught to his broad.

Did I mention that this whole spousal abuse incident was happening in the opened driver’s door of, like, a 2004 Corolla?

I arrived at my F-250 to find a man who was obviously a fan of Toro Titan mowers examining my strap and lock arrangement on the trailer from about a ten foot distance. “Friend,” I told him, “I’m so happy to meet you. Please back away from the mower before you are accidentally injured by my driving, which everyone knows is awful. Why, I once hit a concrete pole with an Alpina B6, at the Thermal Club.” That’s more or less what I said, anyway. He had never heard of the Thermal Club, but he did scatter away when, as I’d feared, my inept backup maneuver almost whacked him with a polished aluminum fender.

All in all, it was top fun, it was like the cantina scene at Mos Eisley Spaceport. I would absolutely go back, any time, with five Blackhawk helicopters, an M249 SAW, and a group of dudes who are much tougher than I am. I hate to sound like a coward but I am a coward, I’m an old man with an aversion to being killed on the street by people who will end up gibbering gleefully over your dead body in a glottal-stop-heavy foreign tongue like the little dinosaurs did to Newman in “Jurassic Park”. Nick Shirley deserves serious credit for confronting these people. I didn’t see anyone who looked like they were going to be easy to talk to.

Bottom line — if the Quality Learing Center wasn’t a small scam in the middle of a much larger and horrifying web of scams designed to embolden and empower an actively hostile foreign menace in the American heartland, it will sure do until the real one comes along.

See you watch nerds tomorrow, when we will talk about that Rolex Datejust.