You win this round Norse Atlantic Airways, lmao

Foster's Car, 1970. From the Gerry and Silvia Anderson sci-fi TV series U.F.O. which set was in 1980. Paul Foster (seen from behind) was a pilot for S.H.A.D.O. (Supreme Headquarters of the Alien Defence Organisation). The character was played by singer turned actor Michael Billington. The woman with the car is S.H.A.D.O. Colonel Virginia Lake played by British actress Wanda Ventham who is the mother of actor Benedict Cumberbatch. The car was based on a Ford Zephyr Mk IV chassis powered by a Cortina 1600 engine, built by Alan Mann Racing.

watching Gravity Falls and laughing at the fact they're named Stanley and Stanford only to remember that I have identical twin great uncles named Gerald and Garold irl

Ford Capri RS 2600 - Helmuth Koinigg / Jean Vinatier / Gerry Birrell - 24 Heures du Mans 1973. © Remi Dargegen. - source Carros e Pilotos.

I WAS WRONG THERE’S MORE

THE LIGHTING ✨😭😭

Re-Examing Spider-Man 08: The Autonomous Mary Jane

A close-reading of the introduction of #MaryJaneWatson and her impact on Spider-Man comics and how she emerged as the greatest Marvel female character of the 1960s.

The most important character in Spider-Man after Peter Parker is Mary Jane Watson. It’s worth exploring how this was no inevitability. A close-reading from her first mentions and build-up in the Steve Ditko run and then the Lee-Romita era, will establish Mary Jane Watson, not simply as Spider-Man’s great love interest (which she is) but also as a vitally important character who had an effect on…

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Week in Review of Week Nov 26

Sorry I have been a little busy of late. This is what has happened this week… In the past two weeks some powerful pioneers have passed such as Rosalind Carter the beloved first lady. Who was a wonderful humanitarian as well. Henry Kissinger the genius diplomat who lived to be 100 years old and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor the first woman on the Supreme Court. I hope that they all rest in…

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September 11: Reminiscences of a Ground Zero Responder @TheHenryFord

Not automotive related but have to mark the day… Here in the UK we sat and watched the horror unfold on TV The front page of the September 12, 2001, issue of the Detroit Free Press referred to the terrorist attacks of the previous day as “America’s Darkest Day.” This year marks the 20th anniversary of events that have changed the course of American history: the terrorist attacks of September…

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Today in History: October 6, the launch of Instagram

Today in History: October 6, the launch of Instagram

Today in History Today is Thursday, Oct. 6, the 279th day of 2022. There are 86 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 6, 1973, war erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday. (Israel, initially caught off guard, managed to push back the Arab forces before a cease-fire finally took hold in the nearly…

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WELCOME TO THE ULTIMATE BLORBO TOURNAMENT POTATOLORD EDITION !!!!

Today (and for several other days) we gather to vote for the most Potatolord guy ever, our collective favorite specialist little guy of mine.

Left Side

Jason Kolchek vs Dirk Gently

Emma (my gf) vs Arthur Dent

Crowley vs Dirk Gently

Zaphod Beeblebrox vs Otto Chriek

Daniel Jacobi vs Needles

Rincewind vs Ford Prefect

Jon Sims vs Michael Distortion

Moist Von Lipwig vs Ren

Right Side

Gordon Way vs Will Wood

Gerry Keay vs Cecil Palmer

Doug Eiffel vs Mike Crew

Adora Belle Dearheart vs Oliver Banks

Maladict vs William De Worde

All of Bears in Trees vs Jhariah

Alice Dyer vs Elijah Volkov

Brad Smith vs Jack Marston

ROUND 2

Dirk Gently vs Emma (my girlfriend)

Crowley vs Zaphod Beeblebrox

Needles vs Ford Prefect

Jon Sims vs Moist Von Lipwig

Will Wood vs Cecil Palmer

Mike Crew vs Adora Belle Dearheart

Maladict vs All of Bears in Trees

Alice Dyer vs Jack Marston

ROUND 3

Emma my wife vs Crowley

Ford Prefect vs Jon Sims

Cecil Palmer vs Adora Belle Dearheart

Maladict vs Alice Dyer

ROUND 4

Emma my wife vs Ford Prefect

Cecil Palmer vs Alice Dyer

FINAL ROUND

Emma my wife vs Cecil Palmer

EMMA HAS BEEN CROWNED THE POTATOLORD BLORBO OF ALL TIME ‼️‼️

Bonus one from instagram to compare. truly bonkers

An excerpt from The Bezzle

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me next in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Today, I'm bringing you part one of an excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Bezzle, my next novel, which drops on Feb 20. It's an ice-cold revenge technothriller starring Martin Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant specialized in high-tech fraud:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Hench is the Zelig of high-tech fraud, a character who's spent 40 years in Silicon Valley unwinding every tortured scheme hatched by tech-bros who view the spreadsheet as a teleporter that whisks other peoples' money into their own bank-accounts. This setup is allowing me to write a whole string of these books, each of which unwinds a different scam from tech's past, present and future, starting with last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!), a novel that whose high-intensity thriller plotline is also a masterclass in why cryptocurrency is a scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

Turning financial scams into entertainment is important work. Finance's most devastating defense is the Shield Of Boringness (h/t Dana Clare) – tactically deployed complexity designed to induce the state that finance bros call "MEGO" ("my eyes glaze over"). By combining jargon and obfuscation, the most monstrous criminals of our age have been able to repeatedly bring our civilization to the brink of collapse (remember 2008?) and then spin their way out of it.

Turning these schemes into entertainment is hard, necessary work, because it incinerates the respectable suit and tie and leaves the naked dishonesty of the finance sector on display for all to see. In The Big Short, they recruited Margot Robbie to explain synthetic CDOs from a bubble-bath. And John Oliver does this every week on Last Week Tonight, coming up with endlessly imaginative stunts and gags to flense the bullshit, laying the scam economy open to the bone.

This was my inspiration for the Hench novels (I've written and sold three of these, of which The Bezzle is number two; I've got at least two more planned). Could I use the same narrative tactics I used to explain mass surveillance, cryptography and infosec in the Little Brother books to turn scams into entertainment, and entertainment into the necessary, informed outrage that might precipitate change?

The main storyline in The Bezzle concerns one of the most gruesome scams in today's America: prison-tech, which sees America's vast army of prisoners being stripped of letters, calls, in-person visits, parcels, libraries and continuing ed in favor of cheap tablets that bilk prisoners and their families of eye-watering sums for every click they make:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

But each Hench novel has a variety of side-quests that work to expose different kinds of financial chicanery. The Bezzle also contains explainers on the workings of MLMs/Ponzis (and how Gerry Ford and Betsy DeVos's father-in-law legalized one of the most destructive forces in America) and the way that oligarchs, foreign and domestic, use Real Estate Investment Trusts to hide their money and destroy our cities.

And there's a subplot about music-royalty theft, a form of pernicious wage theft that is present up and down the music industry supply-chain. This is a subject that came up a lot when Rebecca Giblin and I were researching and writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our 2022 book about creative labor markets:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Two of the standout cases from that research formed the nucleus of the subplot in The Bezzle, the case of Leonard Cohen's batshit manager who stole millions from him and then went to prison for stalking him, leaving him virtually penniless and forced to keep touring to keep himself fed:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/leonard-cohen-former-manager-jailed

The other was George Clinton, whose manager forged his signature on a royalty assignment, then used the stolen money to defend himself against Clinton's attempts to wrestle his rights back and even to sue Clinton for defamation for writing about the caper in his memoir:

https://www.musicconnection.com/the-legal-beat-george-clinton-wins-defamation-case/

That's the tale that this excerpt – which I'll be serializing in six parts over the coming week – tells, in fictionalized form. It's not Margot Robbie in a bubble-bath, it's not a John Oliver monologue, but I think it's pretty goddamned good.

I'm leaving for a long, multi-city, multi-country, multi-continent tour with The Bezzle next Wednesday, starting with an event at Weller Bookworks in Salt Lake City on the 21st:

https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

I'll in be in San Diego on the 22nd at Mysterious Galaxy:

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

And then it's on to LA (with Adam Conover), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson), Portland, Phoenix and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

I hope you'll come out for the tour (and bring your friends)!

Between 1972 and 1978, Steve Soul (a.k.a. Stefon Magner) had a string of sixteen Billboard Hot 100 singles, one of which cracked the Top 10 and won him an appearance on Soul Train. He is largely forgotten today, except by hip-­hop producers who prize his tracks as a source of deep, funky grooves. They sampled the hell out of him, not least because his rights were controlled by Inglewood Jams, a clearinghouse for obscure funk tracks that charged less than half of what the Big Three labels extracted for each sample license.

Even at that lower rate, those license payments would have set Stefon up for a comfortable retirement, especially when added to his Social Security and the disability check from Dodgers Stadium, where he cleaned floors for more than a decade before he fell down a beer-­slicked bleacher and cracked two of his lumbar discs. But Stefon didn’t get a dime. His former manager, Chuy Flores, forged his signature on a copyright assignment in 1976. Stefon didn’t discover this fact until 1979, because Chuy kept cutting him royalty checks, even as Stefon’s band broke up and those royalties trickled off. In Stefon’s telling, the band broke up because the rest of the act—­especially the three-­piece rhythm section of two percussionists and a beautiful bass player with a natural afro and a wild, infectious hip-­wiggle while she played—­were too coked up to make it to rehearsal, making their performances into shambling wreckages and their studio sessions into vicious bickerfests. To hear the band tell of it, Stefon had bad LSD (“Lead Singer Disease”) and decided he didn’t need the rest of them. One thing they all agreed on: there was no way Stefon would have signed over the band’s earnings to Chuy, who was little more than a glorified bookkeeper, with Stefon hustling all their bookings and even ordering taxis to his bandmates’ houses to make sure they showed up at the studio or the club on time. Stefon remembered October of ’79 well. He’d been waiting with dread for the envelope from Chuy. The previous royalty check, in July, had been under $250. The previous quarter’s had been over $1,000. This quarter’s might have zero. Stefon needed the money. His 1972 Ford Galaxie needed a new transmission. He couldn’t keep driving it in first.

The envelope arrived late, the day before Halloween, and for a brief moment, Stefon was overcome by an incredible, unbelieving elation: Chuy’s laboriously typewritten royalty statement ended with the miraculous figure of $7,421.16. Seven thousand dollars! It was more than two years’ royalties, all in one go! He could fix the Galaxie’s transmission and get the ragtop patched, and still have money left over for his back rent, his bar tab, his child support, and a fine steak dinner, and even then, he’d end the month with money in his savings account.

But there was no check in the envelope. Stefon shook the envelope, carefully unfolded the royalty statement to ensure that there was no check stapled to its back, went downstairs to the apartment building lobby and rechecked his mailbox.

Finally, he called Chuy.

“Chuy, man, you forgot to put a check in the envelope.”

“I didn’t forget, Steve. Read the paperwork again. You gotta send me a check.”

“What the fuck? That’s not funny, Chuy.”

“I ain’t joking, Steve. I been advancing you royalties for more than three years, but you haven’t earned nothing new since then—­no new recordings. I can’t afford to carry you no more.”

“Say what?”

Chuy explained it to him like he was a toddler. “Remember when you signed over your royalties to me in ’76? Every dime I’ve sent you since then was an advance on your future recordings, only you haven’t had none of those, so I’m cutting you off and calling in your note. I’m sorry, Steve, but I ain’t a charity. You don’t work, you don’t earn. This is America, brother. No free lunches.”

“After I did what in ’76?”

“Steve, in 1976 you signed over all your royalties to me. We agreed, man! I can’t believe you don’t remember this! You came over to my spot and I told you how it was and you said you needed money to cover the extra horns for the studio session on Fight Fire with Water. I told you I’d cover them and you’d sign over all your royalties to me.”

Stefon was briefly speechless. Chuy had paid the sidemen on that session, but that was because Chuy owed him a thousand bucks for a string of private parties they’d played for some of Chuy’s cronies. Chuy had been stiffing him for months and Stefon had agreed to swap the session fees for the horn players in exchange for wiping out the debt, which had been getting in the way of their professional relationship.

“Chuy, you know it didn’t happen that way. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when you signed over all your royalties to me. And you know what? I don’t like your tone. I’ve carried your ass for years now, sent you all that money out of my own pocket, and now you gotta pay up. My generosity’s run out. When you gonna send me a check?”

Of course, it was a gambit. It put Stefon on tilt, got him to say a lot of ill-­advised things over the phone, which Chuy secretly recorded. It also prompted Stefon to take a swing at Chuy, which Chuy dived on, shamming that he’d had a soft-­tissue injury in his neck, bringing suit for damages and pressing an aggravated-­assault charge.

He dropped all that once Stefon agreed not to keep on with any claims about the forged signature; Stefon went on to become a good husband, a good father, and a hard worker. And if cleaning floors at Dodgers Stadium wasn’t what he’d dreamed of when he was headlining on Soul Train, at least he never missed a game, and his boy came most weekends and watched with him. Stefon’s supervisor didn’t care.

But the stolen royalties ate at him, especially when he started hearing his licks every time he turned on the radio. His voice, even. Chuy Flores had a fully paid-­off three-­bedroom in Eagle Rock and two cars and two ex-­wives and three kids he was paying child support on, and Stefon sometimes drove past Chuy Flores’s house to look at his fancy palm trees all wrapped up in strings of Christmas lights and think about who paid for them.

ETA: Here's part two!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Ford Mustang Mach I

A Cammer-Powered 616 HP Ford Mustang Mach 1 – “The Sin City Shaker”

This unusual Ford Mustang Mach 1 is fitted with a rare Ford 427 “Cammer” engine, a V8 with single overhead cams per bank allowing higher RPM operation. Ford originally developed the engine to take on Chrysler’s 426 Hemi in the world of NASCAR.

A Mach 1 Mustang fitted with the 7.0 liter Ford pushrod V8 is a quick car by any standard, particularly in a straight line, but the use of the Cammer 7.0 liter V8 with its SOHC takes it up a few notches – from 335 hp to 616 hp.

Fast Facts – The Mach 1 And The Mighty Cammer V8

Ford developed the “Cammer” V8 in just 90 days in the early 1960 using their existing 427 FE pushrod V8 as a starting point. Their goal was to take on the Chrysler 426 Hemi V8 in NASCAR.

The final production Cammer engine had a single overhead cam per bank spun by a 6 ft long timing chain, and they produced 616 hp at 7,000 rpm and 515 lb ft torque at 3,800 rpm – up to 657 bhp with improved carburetors.

The Ford Mustang Mach 1 was introduced in 1968 as a higher performance version of the standard Mustang. It came with competition suspension and front and rear spoilers, but much of the package was focussed on the car’s looks.

No Cammer V8 engine was fitted to a production car by Ford in period, but this hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from doing their own engine swaps. The car you see here has been professionally converted, looking like a factory-built Cammer Mach 1 might have, had Ford ever built one.

The “90 Day Wonder” – Ford’s Cammer V8

When Ford engineers set out to develop a new V8 to challenge the Chrysler 426 Hemi V8 in the fiercely competitive world of NASCAR racing they knew they had their work cut out for them.

To both simplify and speed up the development process they started with a preexisting engine block – the race-proven 427 FE pushrod V8. The block was modified and a pair of new heads were designed that, very unusually for an American V8 at the time, had a single overhead cam per bank.

Single and double overhead cam engines had largely been the realm of the Europeans, specifically the Italians, Brits, and Germans. Compared to pushrod engines, overhead cam engines typically tolerate higher RPM operation, opening up additional power when designed well.

It was this additional power that Ford engineers were chasing. They took the FE block and modified it to accept the new heads they have developed, the overhead cams would be powered by a 6 ft (1.8 meter) long timing chain and a slew of other minor changes would be made to the engine to safely permit higher-RPM usage.

The length of that timing chain would quickly become a problem for the engine, it necessitated that one cam be a mirror of the other, and under high-RPM usage the cam timing could vary by 7º or more due to the chain stretching.

Sadly, before the engine could even turn in a single lap, it was banned by NASCAR along with the Chrysler Hemi engine as part of a crack down on “special racing engines.”

The Cammer Goes Drag Racing

Rather than dump the Cammer project Ford continued to develop the engine in the hopes of changing the minds of those making decisions at NASCAR, in the meantime they sent the engine off into the world of drag racing – where it proved wildly successful.

Many of the big names in 1960s drag racing were putting the Cammer to good use, including Bill Lawton who won the AHRA and NHRA Winternationals in 1966. Other Cammer pilots included Mickey Thompson, Gerry Schwartz, Tommy Grove, Tom Hoover, Pete Robinson, Connie Kallita, and many others.

1967 would see Connie Kalitta’s Cammer-powered “Bounty Hunter” slingshot dragster win the Top Fuel events at the AHRA, NHRA, and NASCAR winter meets – becoming the only “triple crown” winner in the history of American drag racing.

These successes should be no great surprise, as many drag racing outfits were getting over 2,500 hp out of their supercharged Cammers.

The Cammer Mach 1 Shown Here – “The Sin City Shaker”

The car you see here was nicknamed “The Sin City Shaker” thanks to its combination of a Ford Cammer V8 engine and a shaker hood.

The shaker hood was offered as an option on the Mach 1, it comprises of a hole in the hood and a special air scoop mounted directly to the top of the engine. The air scoop rises through the hole in the hood when the hood is closed, and when the engine is running the scoop can be seen to be shaking – hence the name.

Power is provided by a rare, original Ford 427 cubic inch Cammer V8 producing 616 hp at 7,000 rpm and 515 lb ft torque at 3,800 rpm. Power is sent back through a 4-speed manual transmission to the rear axle.

As a Mach 1, the car has that distinctive livery on the outside, including side stripes, a matte black hood with hood pins, a front lip spoiler, and a rear trunk lid spoiler. Inside you’ll find a black-on-black interior and a Hurst cue ball shifter.

Ben Branch

Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.

Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

2 and a half weeks until JC passes Cactus Jack!

It took me a little bit to figure out what you were referencing, but yes, Jimmy Carter will pass John Nance Garner as the longest-living President or Vice President in American history on September 18th. And if he is still with us on October 1st, Carter will be the first President or Vice President in American history to celebrate their 99th birthday.

And since I'm a huge dork who finds this stuff interesting, here's the big, complete list of longest-living to shortest-living Presidents and Vice Presidents in American history: (Presidents are in bold text, Vice Presidents are in italics, and those who served as both POTUS and VP are in bold italics.) John Nance Garner: 98 years, 351 days Jimmy Carter: 98 years, 337 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Levi P. Morton: 96 years, 0 days George H.W. Bush: 94 years, 171 days Gerald R. Ford: 93 years, 165 days Ronald Reagan: 93 years, 120 days Walter Mondale: 93 years, 81 days John Adams: 90 years, 247 days Herbert Hoover: 90 years, 71 days Harry S. Truman: 88 years, 232 days Charles G. Dawes: 85 years, 239 days James Madison: 85 years, 104 days Thomas Jefferson: 83 years, 82 days Dick Cheney: 82 years, 216 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Hannibal Hamlin: 81 years, 311 days Richard Nixon: 81 years, 104 days Joe Biden: 80 years, 287 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) John Quincy Adams: 80 years, 227 days Aaron Burr: 80 years, 220 days Martin Van Buren: 79 years, 231 days Adlai E. Stevenson: 78 years, 234 days Dwight D. Eisenhower: 78 years, 165 days Alben W. Barkley: 78 years, 157 days Andrew Jackson: 78 years, 85 days Spiro Agnew: 77 years, 261 days Donald Trump: 77 years, 81 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) George W. Bush: 77 years, 59 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry A. Wallace: 77 years, 42 days James Buchanan: 77 years, 39 days Bill Clinton: 77 years, 15 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Dan Quayle: 76 years, 211 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Charles Curtis: 76 years, 14 days Al Gore: 75 years, 156 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Millard Fillmore: 74 years, 60 days James Monroe: 73 years, 67 days George Clinton: 72 years, 268 days George M. Dallas: 72 years, 174 days William Howard Taft: 72 years, 174 days John Tyler: 71 years, 295 days Grover Cleveland: 71 years, 98 days Thomas R. Marshall: 71 years, 79 days Nelson Rockefeller: 70 years, 202 days Elbridge Gerry: 70 years, 129 days Rutherford B. Hayes: 70 years, 105 days Richard M. Johnson: 70 years, 33 days William Henry Harrison: 68 years, 54 days John C. Calhoun: 68 years, 13 days William A. Wheeler: 67 years, 339 days George Washington: 67 years, 295 days Benjamin Harrison: 67 years, 205 days Woodrow Wilson: 67 years, 36 days William R. King: 67 years, 11 days Hubert H. Humphrey: 66 years, 231 days Andrew Johnson: 66 years, 214 days Thomas A. Hendricks: 66 years, 79 days Charles W. Fairbanks: 66 years, 24 days Zachary Taylor: 65 years, 227 days Franklin Pierce: 64 years, 319 days Lyndon B. Johnson: 64 years, 148 days Mike Pence: 64 years, 88 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry Wilson: 63 years, 279 days Ulysses S. Grant: 63 years, 87 days Franklin D. Roosevelt: 63 years, 72 days Barack Obama: 62 years, 30 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Schuyler Colfax: 61 years, 296 days Calvin Coolidge: 60 years, 185 days Theodore Roosevelt: 60 years, 71 days Kamala Harris: 58 years, 318 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) William McKinley: 58 years, 228 days Warren G. Harding: 57 years, 273 days Chester A. Arthur: 57 years, 44 days James S. Sherman: 57 years, 6 days Abraham Lincoln: 56 years, 62 days Garret A. Hobart: 55 years, 171 days John C. Breckinridge: 54 years, 116 days James K. Polk: 53 years, 225 days Daniel D. Tompkins: 50 years, 355 days James Garfield: 49 years, 304 days John F. Kennedy: 46 years, 177 days

Gerry Ford we could use you about now

Formula Ford at Mallory Park, 1969. Picture by E. Gerry Stream. - source Moto Vitelloni - Wheels n' wings.

this visual is so funny to me

just a vintage yellow car, lil rinky-dink jalopy, strolling cheerfully through EXPLOSIONS and FIRE