August 31, 2026

SPOILER: She is unwilling to learn the difference.

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF AI VAGINAS? AI vaginas, customizable personalities and fake bruises: the sex doll market is booming. Does it matter how the dolls are treated?

Two weeks ago, two distressed citizens stumbled across what they assumed was the mangled corpse of a woman, stuffed into a suitcase in a small town about three hours south of Sydney. They called the local police, who in turn issued a statement that a body in a suitcase had been found. The wider public waited sombrely for Australia’s tally of dead women to tick up by one.

But instead, a day later, after forensic analysis, it was determined that the woman in question wasn’t a woman at all. The “body” was that of a sex doll, marked with fake bruises, left to rot on a lonely dirt road. In Australia, as in the UK and some other European countries, it is not illegal to own a sex doll unless it resembles a child. Given the doll’s seemingly mature presentation, police investigations were called off.

The sex doll trade is flourishing. A 2026 market analysis estimates that the global market was valued at US$6.6bn in 2025, with a projection that it will more than double, to US$13.4bn, by 2033. As the market booms, and involves increasingly lifelike facsimiles of women, does how these dolls get treated matter?

And when a sex doll with “bruises” and rain-matted hair is tucked into a suitcase and left on a roadside, should we be concerned?

Yes, actually. Very much so:

As the above image illustrates, the Tyrell Corporation wouldn’t lose much collective sleep over the current quality and sophistication of android sex dolls. Meanwhile, Skynet isn’t yet bringing its A-game, when it comes to robotics. Jeremy Clarkson writes: I don’t fear AI but a robot hyena’s no laughing matter.

We are told that the next major financial crash will certainly be caused by AI because while it’s very clever, it doesn’t understand insanity. So when there’s panic selling, it will panic sell and never once think “hang on a minute, this is madness”, which is what a human would do. And has done many times over the years. Or would it do that? And if it could, why would it, because if it gets rich, what’s it going to buy? A Ferrari? And how’s it going to drive that, when it’s in a box?

It’s going to need some kind of body. And it’s the same story when it comes to this business of taking our jobs. Because while it may know what’s wrong with a patient by examining his blood work, it needs form to be able to lift him on to the operating table. It also needs form if it wants to mend your fuse box or paint your front door or make a pushchair. It’s all very well being super clever, but it’s a bit pointless if you live in an iPhone and you don’t have opposable thumbs, or even arms.

of which brings me on to the robot Olympics that were held last week in China. Now I touched on the hilarity of robot sport back in April when I wrote about some robot running races, but, on the amusement-o-meter, the Olympics were in another league.

Yes, one of them broke Usain Bolt’s 100m world record but they had to put crash pads on the finish line because it couldn’t slow down. And then there was the football, which was like watching a bunch of eight-year-olds. They all ran after the ball constantly and only very occasionally did one of them land an actual kick. In the right direction? Not usually, no.

With the athletics, they all looked like humans but only humans that had ingested large quantities of LSD. They were so uncoordinated that frankly, I wouldn’t allow any of them to so much as load my dishwasher.

Also in news of robotics: ICE Is Eyeing Another Huge Tech Purchase. The purchase in question:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT: Responding to Their Customers, Gun Stores Take Down Their Flock Cameras “The​ir ire is but the latest manifestation of a nationwide privacy-rights backlash against​ ​Flock’s artificial intelligence-powered cameras discreetly installed on street corners, in parks, parking lots, neighborhoods or on drones buzzing overhead.”

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

IF ONLY THERE HAD BEEN SOME SORT OF WARNING, SOMEHOW:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

More on the Anaconda Strategy here.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MODERATE DEMS HAVE BEEN HUNTED TO NEAR-EXTINCTION:

Posted at 12:26 pm by Stephen Green

THAT SEEMS LOW: $65 Billion In ObamaCare Fraud? “Remember back when Democrats swore up and down that ObamaCare was going to solve all our health care problems? That prices were going to fall and we could all keep our doctors? Those were lies meant to let them cartelize medicine and generate record profits for Big Medicine. One effect: A huge jump in fraud.”

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green

KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY:

And keep lots of powder.

Posted at 11:24 am by Stephen Green

GULF OF AMERICA: The Next Wave of American Innovation Isn’t Being Built in Silicon Valley. Here’s Where It’s Actually Happening.

The most important shift in global capital right now is not about which sector is hot or which market is recovering. It is about how the system itself is being reorganized. While much of the investment world remains fixated on AI and software, the next wave of opportunity lies where technology intersects with physical infrastructure — from energy and logistics to manufacturing and defense. Those industries are being reshaped by innovation, and the Gulf South is emerging as one of the places where that future is being built.

The Gulf South sits at the intersection of American productive capacity and global demand in a way that very few regions in this country can claim, and that positioning is not yet reflected in how institutional capital is allocated here. The gap between what this region represents structurally and how it is currently valued is, in my assessment, one of the most significant mispricings in American economic geography.

Go South, young man.

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

DEAD HEAT DECLARED IN ZEPPELIN RACE:

Related: Dolly Parton Was America. “Dolly died the most beloved American. An April 2026 poll revealed that the singer was the most popular person in the country, with a net favorability at +65. She was a runaway favorite, too—second to her was Barack Obama at +14.”

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

JUST THE 20TH CENTURY’S SECOND-GREATEST MASS MURDERER…:

…being honored by a medical school.

Posted at 10:22 am by Stephen Green

DON’T GET COCKY: Iran Is Facing Its Soviet Moment and Possibly Its End.

On September 13, 1985, Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani announced that his country would stop propping up the price of crude. Prices collapsed, and the Soviet Union lost roughly $20 billion a year in hard currency—“money without which the country simply could not survive,” in the estimate of Yegor Gaidar, later Russia’s acting prime minister. Gaidar dated the collapse of the Soviet Union to that announcement.

Tehran is now in a weaker position than Moscow was in that autumn. The Islamic Republic is exporting almost no oil, its currency has lost nearly a third of its value since March, and it is rationing water and electricity to its own capital.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a sweeping new sanctions campaign last week, Operation Economic Outcast, aimed at what remains of the regime’s revenue, with the stated objective of severing “every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.”

I guess we’ll see how much lifeline Beijing and Moscow can get to Tehran under the new sanctions.

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY…:

Posted at 9:20 am by Stephen Green