The creative part is that the AI needs to create compelling stories that resonate with people. Joel's story shows something that could happen to a couple living on being popular.

There are 12 stories requested in musical form. The form isn't the issue. The content of the "mattress" section requires telling stories that people can accept as "real".

Prolog. Because rule-based programs used to matter.

Common Lisp. THE most important language to learn. It is all here.

Math. Especially Linear Algebra

APL. Learn the true power of array-like thinking and strong use of symbols.

Assembler. Learn the language machines speak.

Forth. Learn how to program with self-created, minimal tools to create great things.

Bash. Learn how to use the full power of the machine in a terminal.

Emacs Lisp. It's not a language, it is everything you'll ever need.

C. Because it is everywhere, usually as a glue language between systems.

Python. So you can see how badly a language can be designed.

Verilog. Learn to fashion hardware in a language.

LEAN. Write provably-correct software.

HTML. Because you wouldn't be reading this otherwise.

Javascript. Because you occasionally have to make useful web pages.

Java. Because you can do network programming.

X11/Wayland. Because you can reach out and show things.

Regex. Because you can't parse without it.

Erlang. Because things break and you need to survive.

CUDA. Because you need to know how to write kernels.

SNOBOL. Patterns are programs. Programs are patterns. Plus 3 way branching.

Latex. Because you need to communicate to other meat-things.

SQL. Because databases underlie it all

OCAML. Because Type-correctness matters

Lambda Calculus. Because you need to know how it all works in theory.

Haskell. Because you need to learn a real higher level language.

C++. Because you need to see cancer in its raw form

Swift. Because you can make the stone in your hand do things.

Qiskit. Quantum computers are coming

Of course LLMs are going to make all of these languages so rarely spoken that they will be like COBOL. The future of programming is maintenance programming. Legacy systems won't be rewritten, they will be "maintained". If you know what a PROCEDURE DIVISION you'll always have a job.

Jim Farley doesn't understand what is actually happening. The majors are all in denial. (Rory Sutherland on selling an electric car: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OTOKws45kCo )

I just drove from Pittsburgh to Louisianna to Florida to Pittsburgh without touching the steering wheel. The car planned the route, planned the charging stops, and backed into the charging spaces.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke (I had a career in vision, AI, and robots yet it still feels like magic)

The price of electricity to "fill up" was about 1/4 the price of gas for equivalent miles. "Fill up" times at chargers averaged about 10 minutes.

I have had my car for 15 months. I rotated the tires and added wiper fluid. "Lower total cost of ownership always wins" is basic economics.

And now Grok listens to my trip stops and updates navigation. Talk to Grok, touch "start full self driving" and relax.

"The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed," -- William Gibson

Tablet that reads text-to-voice using local AI. Download a .txt book or a PDF and it reads it to you.

I bought FSD on Sept 19th, 2025. I have not driven my Tesla on a public road since then. It is all done by FSD. I just completed a trip from Pittsburgh to Louisianna to Florida and back to Pittsburgh without touching the wheel. Perhaps the author ought to try it.

I went from San Francisco to Vegas and back last week, and it's still not quite there, but it almost there. It had problems navigating parking lots, making turns too early or too late, but the problem with it is that there's no tiny windshield wipers on the cameras. When dirt from driving accumulates on them, it can't self drive, and then you're totally lost and confused. The real problem with it though, is that because it's Tesla, it's under extreme scrutiny, so the driver monitoring is non-trivial to hack, and if you don't, you get strikes for not watching the road and then it doesn't self drive any more. Comma.ai gets to be a bit more forgiving because of how they're positioned in the market.

"Still not quite there"?

Imagine common operation of vehicles without windshield wipers!

"you get strikes for not watching the road"

What does Doctorow call this risk: where you confuse a requirement for your vigilance to a machine with liberation?

Another risk looms as vehicle occupants are officially required to be back-seat drivers for a system that allows no driving experience...

Everywhere you look at AI applications you see the hazard of mechanical mad-cow disease.

"Kenyans don't talk like AI!"

Ecology is a dirty word to many people.

They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. "Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet!"

They retreat into death games and other violence, "hiding their awareness from the terrifying necessities of this moment.

If any human sees a clear choice between life and death, then chooses death, we call that insane. Why do we accept it when it happens on a world scale?

We must shake the sleepers—gently and persistently, saying: "Time to get up."

— FRANK HERBERT

I spent my 53 years in robotics and AI. I started at Unimation doing robot research, joined IBM doing robot research, worked at CMU doing robot research. I worked at IBM doing AI research (using neural nets from PDP Rumelhart), did graduate work in machine vision, etc.

It turns out that it was all a waste of time (but great fun).

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262680530/parallel-distributed-...

Simple. If Democrats take the House then they will impeach Trump. Therefore Republicans need to falsify the premise. Texas hopes to add 5 Republican seats which will swing House to a safe majority. They tried a special session to vote on changing voting maps. Democrats left the state so there could be no quorum and thus no vote. Special session ends so the Democrats have returned to the state. Another special session will be called. There needs to be a guarantee that Democrats have to show up to vote. Each Democrat had to agree to be paired with police escort 24/7. One Democrat said she wouldn't agree to that so she can't leave the building. A modern-day Rosa Parks moment.

It won't matter. Might makes right.

I don't think impeachment is the top priority. They may well impeach, but he won't be convicted, just as he was the last two times. It's not much of a threat; it wouldn't even be a distraction.

At least, not for the White House. The Congress could waste a lot of time and change nothing, instead of doing things that could make a difference -- most notably, controlling the budget.