Friday, October 23rd, 2026
Sol 293, Year 126, Delta Phase
OPTIMUS ACADEMY, PARENT-TEACHER NIGHT. 20,000 ENROLLED. 0 GRADUATED.
Told the earnings call Optimus has to learn like a toddler: wobbly first, then play. Nobody asked how I know. I have two toddlers who are legally shares, and they can hold a juice box and a stock certificate at the same time, which beats the robot.
The hand is still the problem. Soft enough for an egg, tough enough for a shift, a hundred tiny parts assembled by humans whose hands came free. I know what is wrong with it. The fix is to grow it from the inside, and that fix is why I wear long sleeves.
Engineering wants a robot that survives one month of use, and nobody at Fremont has asked the guy on Day 20,057 of his costume for notes.
Walked the Academy floor after hours: twenty thousand robots picking things up and setting them down, the air smelling of hot gearbox and new rubber, like a shoe shop on fire. One dropped a cup, looked at its hand, then at me. First time in fifty-five years anything on this planet checked whether I had the same problem.
Promised a video of them doing something untrained within two months. The twins want to be in it. I said shareholders cannot appear in demos. They said they know what a demo is, Daddy, they have seen the forearm.
Signing off from the back of a classroom with 20,000 students, zero teachers, and one parent still practising hands...