iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lol. I bet Yun-Ta thinks so. Anyway. Pretty much demonstrates that the remaining personnel on Tesla's Autopilot Team went to the Elon Musk School of Robotics - which only contains incompetence and lies. If we actually had auto safety regulators anywhere globally, hard questions might be asked.

A screenshot of a social media post by [Yun-Ta Tsai](https://www.google.com/search?q=yun-ta+tsai&kgmid=/g/11fyz4n1pz) (@yunta_tsai) on X (formerly Twitter) dated October 7, 2026. The text reads: "After many years in top machine learning organizations, with friends at frontier labs, I still consider Tesla's ML engineers the best—the only ones I would trust with my life. Unsatisfied with theory, they scrutinize every detail until it is proven in reality. They demand real-world miles, not charts. This culture exists nowhere else. This week marks another anniversary at Tesla. I am honored to work with you all for many years to come." The post shows 270.7K views.

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Given the Waymo display above, this is about the most disingenuous thing that could have been presented in defense of Tesla's approach, but here it is... A low-resolution, single-color, two-dimensional, static image of some points on a plot. Incredible.

A social media post by Yun-Ta Tsai (@yunta_tsai) featuring a 3D LiDAR point cloud plot.

* **Post Text:** "Can you tell me what you see here? These are the actual LiDAR points."

* **Image Content:** A 3D spatial scatter plot titled "last stop point-cloud for region of interest". The axes display spatial dimensions in meters: height (Z-axis, 0–25m), Y-axis (0–150m), and X-axis (0–70m). The plot renders a dense cloud of blue data points representing a physical environment, including ground level, surrounding objects, and structures captured by LiDAR sensors.

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Waymo shown below. Also, as an aside, processing a Lidar-produced point cloud through semantic segmentation will classify objects. That means that a processed visualization might purposefully highlight a cat or a light post in bright, distinct colors for tracking purposes.

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Not true. The thumbnail image is AI-generated, but it is not THAT far off of reality, materially. High-resolution Lidar now exists where intensity returns (the reflectivity of different materials to light pulses) which can cause objects with varying reflective properties to stand out.

An X (formerly Twitter) thread discussing the vision vs. LiDAR debate for autonomous vehicles.
The top post is by Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars), which reads: "This guy is such a troll 😂 The Robotaxis are running at night, and will soon be running 24/7. If you can see the cat in an image, a neural network can see it too. These models will be way better than human at avoiding pets, day or night. Just watch, and add it to the long list of things Fred Lambert has been wrong about."
Embedded in this post is a screenshot of an article link from Electrek.co (@ElectrekCo) titled: "Musk explains why Tesla Robotaxi is not running at night, and lidar is the answer." The link features a split image comparing a very dark, low-light street scene on the left with a bright, stylized, neon-green grid overlay on the right, where a cat and a streetlight are highlighted as bright orange blobs.
The bottom post is a reply by [Yun-Ta Tsai](https://www.google.com/search?q=yun-ta+tsai&kgmid=/g/11fyz4n1pz) (@yunta_tsai), which reads: "People who have worked on actual lidar can immediately tell the 'lidar' image on the right is artificially generated. 'Lidar' gives depth returns, not semantics, so the 'cat' would not be brighter than the ground. It would actually blend into the ground. Nor would the streetlight register as a bright orange blob."

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In response to this Electrek story, apparently, one of Tesla's "Senior Autopilot Engineers" (Yun-Ta Tsai) chimed in last weekend with some truly God-tier stupid takes defending Tesla's designs. I grabbed some screenshots. First of all, sensor fusion is a thing that significantly boosts redundancy.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 06/10/2026

A bit late to this one. Musk is being awfully specific on what #Tesla is trying to avoid which, very sadly, probably means that Tesla's Robotaxi's probably struck one or more pets or animals on the roadway. Probably a grey kitten. Probably a pet. And we just don't know about it yet. #robotics

A screenshot of a social media post by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on X (formerly Twitter) dated October 3, 2026. The text reads: "Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm. The main thing we're trying to solve is making sure that we don't run over pets when they're hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark." The post quotes an official Robotaxi account tweet from October 2 that says, "Robotaxi in Austin now available until 11pm." The post has 8.1M views.

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Heh. Probably not. Firstly, the 3D CAD space has *always* been consolidated amongst 4 big players - Siemens PLM (formerly UGS), PTC, Dassault Systèmes and Autodesk. All four own their own B-rep kernels (Dassault owns both ACIS and Catia's CGM). Parasolid is *ubiquitous* in modern CNC controls.

A screenshot of a post by user em m0shouris (@emm0sh) discussing CAD industry consolidation following the acquisition of PTC.

The text of the post reads:

> "PTC getting acquired is the beginning of the forthcoming great CAD consolidation. what was once a steady source of defensible revenue is now easily reproducible. their moats are drying up
>
>
> what to expect: the fully vertically integrated (owning their own kernels, etc.) companies like siemens and autodesk will be the only survivors in the short to medium term
>
>
> dassault in particular is incredibly vulnerable. autodesk has a research arm that will keep them alive by patent farm, and siemens is diversified enough that they can just bundle CAD with their offerings at near zero cost
>
>
> autodesk will acquire dassault. i know this will happen because it's the funniest outcome of dassault suing them in the early 00s. not only did autodesk win that lawsuit, they will win the game. they'll undo the 3dx fiasco and delight catia and solidworks customers as a great steward of those applications
>
>
> this will only be a temporary fix however. in ten to fifteen years autodesk will probably fall as well. here's the crazy thing with AI and software: patents mean nothing when novelty is only $100 of tokens away
>
>
> i think siemens will eventually acquire autodesk. hardware will be the only moat, and siemens and schneider have already built empires around it
>
>
> buckle in. the future of engineering software is going to get very interesting"
>
>

The post quotes a post by Aditya Raghupathy (@araghupathy_) that reads: "Will be interesting for ABB and Rockwell, who have strong ties to Windchill!" Attached is a graphic announcement stating "Schneider Electric to Acquire PTC" in a proposed $22.6 billion all-cash transaction.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 04/10/2026

Oh no. How horrible. We can't have small manufacturers below 5 employees. Time to deploy dimwitted Silicon Valley capital to crush them.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 03/10/2026

Why not commit to opening up an Amazon *engineering* office in Downtown #Detroit? Detroit has not benefitted much, to date, from the Internet Age. But Amazon is not offering *those* wages, benefits and other high-value economic components. I thought that we were all equals in this together?

2. Providing Jobs & Economic Benefit
We create thousands of skilled jobs between construction and long-term data center operations, supporting local families and helping local small businesses thrive.
We pay nationally competitive wages that often exceed the local and national median, and provide healthcare benefits from day one on the job.
We prioritize local hiring and procurement wherever possible, providing economic opportunity and impact to residents, local contractors and service providers.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 03/10/2026

This was an absolute disaster for the Midwest - and especially for states like #Michigan. Urban freeways wrecked once-wealthy cities and were exclusively used as a racial segregation instrument. None have recovered to pre-WW2 population levels. But Matt Garman at AWS leads with it as a positive.

One of the big lessons that the United States took from World War II was the need for national transportation infrastructure back at home. A system of interconnected highways, bridges, and roads was critical for national defense and would also provide much needed economic prosperity following the war. In 1956, the government began to build the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, an infrastructure project larger than anything the country had seen since the railroads a century earlier—and paid for entirely with taxpayer money.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 02/10/2026

Too few units. Therefore, poor unit economics. That’s why it cannot make ends meet at 96% occupancy and fairly high rents. This new apartment building opened in 2021 has 288 units. The Statler Hotel, opened in 1915, that *used to* sit on the site had 18 floors and something like 900 units.

A news article headline titled "Prominent downtown Detroit apartment building sells for $75M in receivership" above an aerial view of a modern seven-story apartment building in downtown Detroit surrounded by city skyline buildings and streets. Caption reads: "The seven-story apartment building developed on the site of the former Statler Hotel in downtown Detroit opened in the summer of 2021. (CoStar Group Inc.)"

An aerial view of downtown Detroit featuring a large, dark brick historic high-rise building at the center, surrounded by an elevated People Mover transit track curving around the street corner and nearby office towers.

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The Q-Line stops well short of this co-op to the extent that matters (end-of-line is marked in red). So you are asking Downtown, Midtown students and New Center’s lunch crowd to hoof it, big time, for a grocery or lunch run. The Meijer in Lafayette Park works because that area has *some* money.

A mobile map application screen showing a satellite map view centered on "Detroit People's Food Co-op". A red map pin marks the location near the intersection of Euclid St and John R St. A red highlight covers a portion of W Bethune Ave and E Bethune St. Search and navigation overlays appear at the top and bottom of the screen.

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Market capitalization does not mean that a firm has liquid cash to readily invest. Ditto for net worth. That said, of course I have heavily criticized GM for not investing in #Detroit when it came to advanced work (GM built a Silicon Valley hub instead). And the stupid GM buybacks.

A social media post by Dave (@DE_Gifford) quote-tweeting another post.
The main post text reads: "Same old story in Detroit when it comes to big developments like stadiums, office buildings & housing. @BedrockDetroit (Market Capitalization: $34.40 billion) @GM (Market Capitalization: $73 billion) Asking for $548,000,000 in public subsidies and tax incentives."
The quoted post by JC Reindl (@jcreindl) states: "“In a majority Black city, moving half a billion of public support into private ownership is not philanthropy — it is public wealth extraction” freep.com/story/money/bu..."
The post is timestamped 9:48 AM · Sep 30, 2026 and shows 3,118 Views.

This is largely false. Michigan Central did get public support around 1/4 of its total investment… and, in my understanding, has failed to meet every one of its financial goals thus far. A payback for Michigan Central is out of the question for the foreseeable future. It will see years of losses.

$A social media post by \text{PJ}^3 (@PaulTheUrbanist). The post text reads: "Ford built the rencen with its own money back in the 70s AND recently renovated the train station without public help. Detroiters really need to be asking why GM is always coming to the city with their hands out!" The post is timestamped 11:04 AM · Sep 30, 2026 and shows 7,445 Views.$

And Herb can fuck all the way off, frankly. After the shit he pulled on that I-375 removal project. Scaling back that project further eroded Detroit’s ability to attract investors. Instead of dropping an ad, why hasn’t Herb found a buyer for the *whole* RenCen in the past two years? I know why.

A social media post by Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) featuring a video clip.
The post text reads: "Local businessman Herb Strather is here at the public meeting arguing with a representative of GM that the towers should be saved. He’s purchased a radio ad opposing Bedrock and GM’s plan, he says."
Below the text is a video snippet showing three men standing and speaking to one another in an indoor hallway setting. A man on the left in a suit faces two men on the right, one wearing a suit and glasses and the other wearing a baseball cap and jacket. Video player controls show a pause button, a timestamp of 0:14, and a muted audio icon. The post is timestamped 7:57 PM · Sep 29, 2026.

I am not going to defend Dan Gilbert, Bedrock or GM at all, but Detroiters need to start recognizing how much deep shit #Detroit is in economically. *Very* deep shit. The city is virtually uninvestable today with no advanced economy and household incomes, accordingly, are in the toilet.

A social media post by Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) featuring a video clip.
The post text reads: "Dwayne Hoffman of the grassroots coalition Detroit People’s Platform at a public meeting questions whether GM and Bedrock have tried to sell the two towers at the Renaissance Center they are proposing to demolish. GM spox tells Hoffman to let them know if he finds a buyer."
Below the text is a video snippet showing Dwayne Hoffman speaking into a microphone at a public meeting while holding up a flyer that reads "SAVE THE [REN CEN]" featuring pictures of the towers. Another man in a suit stands next to him. Video player overlays display a caption reading "Who's headquartered in New York" and a timestamp of 1:54. The post is timestamped 7:22 PM · Sep 29, 2026.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 30/09/2026

Yes, but much more than that... we should not be mischaracterizing Level 2-capable vehicles as capable of "self-driving" as this article does. The below is not true. Whether the vehicle is equipped with "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" or Comma, the vehicle is at *no time*, "driving itself".

Over the weekend, a man going by Mike LaBarbera on X posted a video of his Tesla Model Y driving itself using Comma Four, the latest version of Comma AI’s self-driving hardware.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 29/09/2026

And we don’t even get the high-value, permanent work component from it. Silicon Valley keeps that. So when a datacenter is dropped on the far outskirts of everything… And Saline is showered with new tax revenue… And when Michigan cannot hope to afford its sprawl today… We got big problems.

A smartphone screen displaying a satellite map view centered on Southeast Michigan in a mapping application. A red pin marks the city of Saline near the bottom left, with neighboring labeled locations including Ypsilanti, Kensington Metropark, Dearborn, Royal Oak, and Monroe.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 28/09/2026

You ain’t kidding. Caught this gem the other day. (Lower-right is the City of #Detroit.) It is outrageous. #Michigan either starts charging these suburbanites at the true cost of their externalities or this state is done done. It is that serious now.

A social media post on X (formerly Twitter) by user Mr. Cyrus Wheeler (@mrCyrusWheeler) presenting housing market statistics for Independence Township, MI over the last 12 months. The post lists a median sale price of $417,250 (flat YoY), a median DOM of 10 days, 396 homes sold, and a sale-to-list ratio of 100%. Data is cited as of Sept 16, 2026 from Realcomp II Ltd. Below the text, a link preview card from metrodetroithomes.com lists property taxes for Independence Township MI at 32.48–35.08 Mills.

A smartphone map interface displaying a satellite view of the metro Detroit, Michigan area, with "Independence Township" entered in the search bar. A red pin enclosed in a dashed square highlights Independence Township near Village of Clarkston and Interstate 75. Nearby labels include Lake Orion, Auburn Hills, Pontiac, Rochester Hills, Troy, Bloomfield Hills, and Royal Oak. Major highways and local roads are highlighted in green, with red dashed lines indicating closed road segments near Royal Oak and Dearborn.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 28/09/2026

Lol. No. This is bullshit and “AI” was just crammed in there for the business community. No amount of automation can possibly reverse the sharply-declining ROI involved here. It’s not like the existing sprawl is providing any economic benefits to #Michigan whatsoever. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 28/09/2026

It cannot be understated how much trouble Michigan is in. #Michigan cannot afford its roadway network. Now, Metro #Detroit cannot afford its sprawling, bloated water system. To bail this system out would be to endorse the highly-destructive sprawl that created the issue. A downward spiral.

"Michigan’s water systems face up to $85 billion in water infrastructure needs over the next two decades for more than 1,300 water systems, according to a recent study conducted by Public Sector Consultants and commissioned by the GLWA as pipes deteriorate." The phrase "face up to $85 billion in water infrastructure needs" is highlighted in red text.

"Southeast Michigan saw runaway growth both in the early 1900s as the auto industry grew and in the post-World War II years as suburbs boomed. Much of the region’s underground water and sewer lines date from those periods. Federal grants paid for most of the work, at least 60% of the cost by most estimates, but now federal money accounts for less than 10% of the cost to upgrade the system. Cash to make repairs and replace aging infrastructure comes from a patchwork of local money, state grants, bond sales, and the like, but there’s never enough. 'Decades of underinvestment have led to kind of where we are now,' said Kelly Karll, manager of environment and infrastructure for the regional planning agency SEMCOG."

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 27/09/2026

We have zero safety here (the same thing that killed the massive circa 2016 hype around self-driving cars). Homebody's own researchers noted that the "fingers" on the Unitree G1 robot began overheating over extended operational periods. The impressiveness of the software part is moot as it stands.

Scope and limitations
Real2Sim reconstruction adds setup time and API costs. Task length is also constrained by the humanoid’s reach, manipulation capabilities, and hardware endurance, including finger-servo overheating during extended operation. GPT Astra’s reasoning latency introduces pauses between skills. The current local stack requires an RTX 4090 laptop GPU. Adding heavier perception models or skills may require more compute.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 27/09/2026

Human labor is surprisingly competitive - and that will surprise many in the years to come I predict. Decades of industrial research on that. Anyway... even after all of that pre-staging, this system still requires a considerable pre-mapping stage that relies on a host of sensor modalities.

How to Deploy
Step 1. Explore
First, we give the humanoid context about its role and let it explore an unseen environment. HomeBody collects 0.5× iPhone video, D435i camera observations, LiDAR scans with SLAM, joint poses and waypoints chosen by Astra. Exploration captures the room from the humanoid’s own viewpoint, grounding its spatial context in what it can see as it moves and interacts with the space. HomeBody retains this context when objects leave the ego view.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 26/09/2026

So if this building in red has to come down… which it probably should… are we going to reserve the land for a residential tower of at least equal height? Or are we just going to allow any ol’ developer to put whatever they want there just to fill up the space, no questions asked? #Detroit

Oh? A library of basic movements? So, fundamentally, the same as a conventional, multi-axis fixed #robotics? Sure sounds like it. I see just about zero possibility that the total cost of ownership of one of these robots, let alone a fleet, will be competitive in a general factory setting.

Days to learn a basic task
The bigger issue is the brain. Three people familiar with the system told The Information that Optimus’ AI can’t yet reliably handle a wide range of tasks, and that its behavior can be unpredictable in situations it hasn’t been trained on.

Tesla is trying to build a library of basic movements the robot can recombine for new jobs. But it still reportedly takes several days for Optimus to learn even basic tasks.

Shocker. Confirming what I said about a week ago with respect to humanoid #robotics. I just do not see it outside of a very small subset of human activities. Deployment in a general factory, where there is ample opportunity for already-highly flexible, domain-specific robotics is a non-starter.

The hands are the hard part
Musk has promised human-level dexterity for Optimus. Getting there at scale is proving painful.

Per The Information, the hand and forearm contain over 100 screws and small components that workers still assemble by hand. Fixtures on several stations, including hands, joints, and electronics testing, can’t consistently line up parts that are far smaller and tighter-tolerance than anything on a car. The result is more robots needing rework after coming off the line.

Durability is its own problem. Some of the hand’s touch sensors have had reliability issues, and Tesla’s fix is a replaceable “sensing glove” that it plans to add next year so it doesn’t have to swap the whole hand.

Then there’s the supply chain. Tesla relies on outside suppliers, many in China, for motors and the precision gears that drive the joints. Some of them can make good parts in prototype quantities but struggle to keep quality consistent at higher volume.

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A note. If Musk is talking about the so-called "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" version... you know, the one where #Tesla pretends like the vehicle is "driving itself" but throws all of the liability upon the human driver on the backend in the fine print... That won't fly in trucking.

The company aims to ramp production of the Semi to high volumes by next year and has promised the trucks will feature a version of Tesla’s self-driving systems in the near future.

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The issue here is that we needed Cadillac Tower *in addition* the towers (as housing) that were planned way back in 2017 (below). Since 2017, our peer cities have lapped us on downtown housing - particularly in Columbus. So our need to compete on that front has only increased over a 10 year lag.

The Monroe Blocks development planned in 2017 in Downtown Detroit.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 24/09/2026

In today's Crain's Detroit. Minimum requirements to turn it around: - FAR more paid summer technical internship capacity in Downtown #Detroit. Existing industries in Michigan won't cut it; - A BIG boost in housing stock in Detroit's core; - A commuter rail line from Downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor.

A news article screenshot under the category "POLITICS & POLICY" with the headline "Gilbert: Top goal for Detroit, Michigan must be holding on to our college graduates." Below the headline, a photograph shows four panel participants seated on chairs on a stage in front of a dark blue backdrop: from left to right, Dan Gilbert, Hilary Doe, Grant Gilbert, and Dennis Archer Jr. The photo caption reads: "From left: Dan Gilbert, Hilary Doe and Grant Gilbert talk with Dennis Archer Jr. at Detroit Homecoming at Cosm in Detroit on Thursday. (Nick Manes)."

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 24/09/2026

Just amazing levels of dumbassery on the Everything App these days.

Original Post by Ryan Petersen (@typesfast): "Proposal for American high schools: Replace geometry and trigonometry with economics and statistics."

Reply by kdrecon (@kdr_econ): "If the schools can't teach geometry and trigonometry, how are they going to teach statistics and economics appropriately? Stats and econ require not just technical competence, but also judgment."

Reply by Ryan Petersen (@typesfast): Highlighting the text, "You may be surprised to learn that, in fact, you do not need trigonometry to understand economics."

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 24/09/2026

Lengthy domestic price caps on fuel in China are causing considerable and extremely costly market dysfunctions. China can’t tough it out forever.

BEIJING, Sept 24 (Reuters) - China's gasoline and diesel inventories have fallen to their lowest levels in more than a decade as exports surge and domestic demand recovers seasonally, according to GL Consulting.
Low stock levels ‌appear to have raised Beijing's concerns, increasing the prospect of tighter export controls in October, according to Rystad Energy. GL Consulting said it expects exports to fall in October as state refiners prioritise domestic energy security.

Commercial gasoline inventories have hit their lowest level since 2011, while diesel inventories have fallen to their lowest since ⁠2015, according to data provided by GL Consulting, a consultancy owned by Mysteel, a leading commodity information provider.

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 23/09/2026

In the article cover image alone, there are several massive parking garages that choke prime city real estate that *could be* 3,000-4,000 apartment units. That would double the available space downtown. And, for MoveDetroit, you now ACTUALLY have space to actually put people.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 23/09/2026

Arguably, Detroit added roughly 9,000 people. Not 15,000. In the most recent census year, #Detroit sued the fed. government as it believed that they undercounted Detroiters. Revisions were made which adjusted up the population by 5,696 residents. So those folks were already here, just uncounted.

Recent estimates show Detroit has added about 15,000 people over the past three years, bringing its population to roughly 649,000. Michigan has seen positive net migration and ranks fifth nationally on a measure of accelerating young-adult population growth, MoveDetroit President and CEO Hilary Doe said

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 23/09/2026

Article in Crain's about an effort called MoveDetroit - a privately-funded, nonprofit (largely by Dan Gilbert) that seeks to get people to move to Detroit. I love Detroit, but the habitual inaction of #Michigan and #Detroit is palpable. It is crunch time and we need to be honest about the numbers.

A news article screenshot titled "After 3 years of population gains, business-backed effort aims to reinforce Detroit’s growth," featuring an elevated cityscape view of downtown Detroit with modern skyscrapers and historic buildings under a clear blue sky.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 22/09/2026

Yup. #OpenAI out for high-quality #manufacturing and physical design data. But that space is so huge, not formalizable and riddled with unwritten competitive advantages that I am deeply skeptical that this will make a dent in advanced industry. But, again, this was a natural step as predicted.

A post by Caleb (OSH Cut) on X (formerly Twitter) with the handle @OSHBuilt, featuring a screenshot of an email from OpenAI.

**Post Text:**
"Very interesting email from OpenAI.

* Yes, we have lots of data.
* No, we won't share. We keep all customer information private."

**Email Content in Screenshot:**

* **From:** An OpenAI representative on the Research Data Partnerships team (name redacted)
* **To:** OSH Cut Support
* **Message:** The sender introduces themselves and expresses interest in exploring a data partnership with OSH Cut. They state they are looking for engineering material (designs or project examples) for research and model development related to sheet-metal manufacturing and design-checking software. They offer to sign a mutual confidentiality agreement before sharing sensitive data.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 22/09/2026

Over-automation and Creativity Collapse. And I would not be surprised to see this commonplace in tech and finance these days.

A screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the user voxium (@v0xium), posted on Sep 20, 2026. The text reads:

"I am done with this shit. It is over. The state of engineering right now is horrible. It has been half a month since I started a new role at a big company. Nobody knows anything here. The specs, code, tests, PRDs, tickets, resolution of those tickets, reports, etc., everything is made by Claude Code. Nobody on my team likes this. They are being forced to ship as much as they can. I have heard multiple times from higher management that pushing code is not a bottleneck, so why are we slow? People are working 12 to 13 hours a day just to press enter. Nobody is reading anything. Humans in corporate are doing nothing on their own. Everyone, literally everyone, from an L1 to an L7 engineer here is doing the same thing. Talk to Claude. There is no sense of victory. Nobody is resolving bugs. In reality, nobody is thinking anymore. Everything is done by LLMs. It is so soul-sucking. I would not mind it, to be honest, if we were at least given the time to check out the code and see what is going where. But no, the goal is to just ship. No matter what happens."

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 20/09/2026

Pretty interesting that ZETA signed this… All but confirming that Musk is terrified of the US automotive market becoming like the Chinese market - the latter of which #Tesla is being squeezed out of. Looks like it is not just the Big 3 that refuse to compete and innovate anymore…

Text excerpt reading: "The letter, dated Thursday, was signed by leaders of the following groups:" followed by a bulleted list:
* Alliance for Automotive Innovation
* American Automotive Policy Council
* MEMA (originally the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association)
* Autos Drive America
* National Automobile Dealers Association
* Zero Emission Transportation Association (highlighted)

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 19/09/2026

Oh. I had no idea @abdulelsayed.bsky.social has this position with respect to the Mackinac Policy Conference. Indeed. It is an annual meetup of do-nothings. Just days and days of bullshit. If El-Sayed didn’t have my vote, which he already did, he would have it now just on this alone. #Michigan

The Detroit Regional Chamber PAC nod, in particular, is a big pickup for Rogers, but it was not a necessarily unexpected endorsement. As the premier business group in Detroit, the chamber also organizes the state’s annual Mackinac Policy Conference, which El-Sayed has been hypercritical of during his current bid and also during his 2018 gubernatorial run.

In its endorsement of Rogers, the chamber noted that El-Sayed did not respond to an invitation for an endorsement interview. In May, when El-Sayed attended the chamber’s policy conference for its Democratic primary debate, the candidate told Michigan Advance that the policy conference represented everything that was wrong with Michigan’s political culture.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 18/09/2026

Yup. The myriad of small things that we take for granted. Also, crucially, the pain-response mechanism in humans. People are unaware of how much serious injury we avoid with many common interactions because we (mostly) involuntarily pull away from pain. That is open-ended damage in real robotics.

An educational diagram illustrating a reflex arc pathway. On the left, a hand touches a cactus, triggering a pain stimulus detected by sensory receptors in the skin. A red sensory neuron carries the signal through the dorsal root ganglion into the spinal cord's gray matter. There, it connects to a green relay neuron, which splits: one path ascends to the cerebral cortex ("sensation relayed to the brain"), while the other connects to a blue motor neuron that signals the muscle tissue to contract, causing the hand to pull away ("response").

Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 18/09/2026

I am very bearish on humanoid #robotics and this basically crystalizes why. The oft-used pushback from humanoid robotics crowd is that "the world is designed for humans and, therefore, we need a human-like body". But, they conveniently gloss over the anatomical differences and the capability loss.

Anatomical page titled "Wrist and Hand" featuring two detailed diagrams. The upper illustration focuses on the ligaments and carpal bones from a dorsal view, including labels for the ulnar and radial collateral ligaments and metacarpal bones 1 through 5. The lower illustration presents a coronal section (dorsal view) revealing the internal bone structure, wrist joints, interosseous intercarpal ligaments, radius, and ulna.

Medical illustration titled "Bones of Wrist and Hand" showing detailed skeletal views of a right hand. The top illustration demonstrates the anterior (palmar) view, labeling carpal bones, metacarpal bones, and proximal, middle, and distal phalanges. The bottom illustration shows the posterior (dorsal) view with similar labeling and red highlights surrounding the carpal bones and the bases of the metacarpals.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 18/09/2026

I challenge anyone to find a more worthless organization than the @detroitchamber.bsky.social. The chucklehead of all pictured below. The #Detroit Regional Chamber wouldn’t know what an advanced economy looks like if it bit them in the ass, let alone, a passable one. Rogers barely lives here.

Screenshot of a Detroit Regional Chamber webpage featuring a portrait of Sandy K. Baruah above a quote endorsing Mike Rogers for U.S. Senate.

"Mike Rogers is a proven public servant with a deep background in federal policy who will represent Michigan well in the U.S. Senate as our state and nation faces major economic headwinds. Over the years, he's been willing to defend our state's industrial base while drawing on tremendous foreign policy experience to understand the global forces challenging our top industries."

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 17/09/2026

Level 2-capable vehicles, as the #Tesla Cybertruck is, are designed with the explicit requirement that the human driver is the *entire* safety net for the *vehicle* - NOT the opposite. So, the responsibilities of the human driver are *at minimum* no different if you were in a 1995 Dodge Neon.

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Adam Cook @motorcityadam.com · 16/09/2026

Near as I could tell, this was the extent of Coinbase’s public awareness campaign. This was taken in Detroit shortly after the presidential election. It was up for months then never seen again. Not sure how Detroit “voted for [it]”(Slotkin maybe?), but I guess the ask was to call your senator…

A vertical photograph taken from ground level showing a large blue billboard mounted on the flat, light-gray exterior wall of a stepped-top urban building under a clear blue sky. The billboard features white text that reads, "DETROIT VOTED FOR CLARITY. IT'S TIME FOR THE SENATE TO ACT."