"What about sex dolls?"

Chris Williamson asks Dr. Debra Soh (who's got the perfect demeanor and speech style for talking about sex research):

"Méliès... filmed ordinary scenes at first, but after accidentally discovering that a jump cut appeared on film as an astonishing transformation..."

"... he pioneered other tricks such as double exposure, black screens and forced perspective. All of these became staples of cinema. On screen, he could make a man appear to take off his head and flip it in the air, or a woman disappear, reappear and double.... Méliès made more than 500 films but never progressed beyond his early technical achievements. The film world passed him by. In World War I, the negatives for most of his films were melted down for silver and celluloid, and he burned more himself after the war. But because his work had once been so popular – and because of widespread pirating – duplicate copies remained, and today about 300 of his films are known to exist. The Library has about 60...."

I'm reading "Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library" (Library of Congress).

And here is that amazing 45-second film from 1897 — "Gugusse and the Automaton" — with its delightful jump cuts:

That is, the Library of Congress tells us, "was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot." That words "might be called" may be there to fend off pedants who will say the word "robot" did not exist until 1920. It comes from a Karel Čapek play titled "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots" — an etymological detail well known to solvers of crossword puzzles. 

The word "automaton" — used in the Méliès film title — goes back to the 1600s. There's an essay from 1616 with the line, "The soule doth quicken and giue life to the body, the body like an Automaton, doth moue and carry it selfe and the soule."

The quote seems to expect the reader already to have a picture of an automaton. What is that picture? Mechanical toys? Elaborate clocks like the Prague Astronomical Clock (built in 1410)?

Maybe you thought "Gugusse and the Automaton" was — compared to the CGI action movies of today — rather dumb and dull!

And maybe you've journeyed to Prague only to be disappointed by their stupid clock... or were you disappointed by all the tourists wrecking the medieval mood with their disappointment?

"Do you think people are too mean to the clock?"

"Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums."

"Sammy Azdoufal just wanted to steer his DJI Romo with a gaming controller" (Popular Science).

While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing. Luckily, Azdoufal chose not to exploit that....

"She was doing just fine on her own. That’s what she told her relatives whenever they gently suggested that maybe it was time to move into a care center..."

"... or closer to family, or at least closer to something. She had climbed mountains with a pickax in her 40s, trained for marathons in her 50s, and walked five miles each day to the end of the peninsula in her 70s, fighting against the howling wind and sea mist just to prove she could. Now she was bent and twisted by scoliosis, down to 4-foot-6 and 85 pounds. She propped herself up on three pillows so she could see over the steering wheel on her trip to yoga class and the store each Wednesday. She hauled the grocery bags up 12 stairs by herself. But despite her strength and stubborn independence, her doctors had warned that living alone sometimes came at a cost. The U.S. surgeon general had declared loneliness and social isolation 'profound threats to our health and well-being.' For older adults, they increased the risks of anxiety, depression, dementia, heart disease and premature death by up to 30 percent. 'Do you want to talk?' ElliQ asked. 'With you?' Jan said...."

I'm reading "To Stay in Her Home, She Let In an A.I. Robot/At 85, Jan Worrell lived alone on a remote corner of the Washington coast. Could ElliQ become her companion?" (gift link... because it's a long story).

"Everyone will have access to medical care that is better than what the President receives right now."

Elon Musk wants you to know what it will be like 5 years from now.

Elon Musk's jaw-dropping prediction (Jan 2026):

“Don’t go into medical school.”
Elon Musk: “Yes. Pointless.”

In 3 years (2029), Optimus robots will be better surgeons than any human on Earth — at scale.
By 4–5 years? Not even close. The best medicine in the world will be free… pic.twitter.com/q7KTMpICk8

— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 10, 2026

And don't bother with higher education... except for "social reasons."

No, it's not impressive. It's depressing.

Impressive https://t.co/IacxCOxpki

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2025

Who wants to watch robots dance? And Disney's Animatronic Lincoln has been around since the 1964 World's Fair. Still on display, giving the Gettysburg Address — at Disney World's "Hall of Presidents" since 1971:

Disney Animatronics have always been pretty dull. There's no real sense that Abraham Lincoln has returned or that any sort of magic is occurring.

Are we awed by the technology or do we find it offputting? Musk seems impressed that robots can dance. I'm impressed that human beings dance.

"The pioneering American maker of the Roomba, iRobot — once the leader in robot vacuums — said that it had filed for bankruptcy..."

"... and that control of the company would be taken over by its Chinese supplier.... Chinese companies have been racing to dominate the robotics industry..... In 2022, Amazon said it would acquire iRobot and all of its debt for about $1.7 billion. But the deal fell apart under scrutiny from regulators in the United States and Europe who said it could undercut competition.... On Sunday, iRobot filed a bankruptcy petition in Delaware...."

From "Roomba Maker iRobot Files for Bankruptcy, With Chinese Supplier Taking Control/Founded in 1990 by three M.I.T. researchers, iRobot introduced its vacuum in 2002. Its restructuring will turn the company over to its largest creditor" (NYT).

Amazon + iRobot — the American entity — seemed too big, so now the iRobot will be part of a Chinese company. 

"A Russian scientist who is close to President Putin has told a forum of schoolteachers in Moscow that the West is planning to exterminate the majority of the Earth’s population..."

"... leaving a tiny elite whose needs will be serviced by robots. Mikhail Kovalchuk, the head of Russia’s Kurchatov nuclear research institute... alleged that western countries were plotting to unleash a deadly virus to reduce the number of people on Earth. He also claimed the West was using LGBT and child-free ideologies to cut populations because robots would soon be able to work better and more effectively.... 'They introduced the LGBT agenda and for those who didn’t go along with it, they offered a second option — the child-free family. It’s working brilliantly. In a generation or two, there’ll be no continuation of their bloodlines. Only a small elite, the ones they actually need, will remain. As for the rest — the people they don’t even see as human — they’ll be eliminated with biological weapons. A virus or something like that with a 90 per cent mortality rate will come along and mow them down'.... Kovalchuk, who has been described as one of Putin’s close friends, told... the teachers that their country’s only friends 'are the army and the navy'...."

From "Putin scientist claims West will use a virus to kill most humans/It’s all part of an LGBT conspiracy to depopulate the planet, according to a friend of the president" (London Times).

"But as real celebrities and influencers try to be perceived as more 'authentic,' many A.I. influencers like Miquela and Mia Zelu are leaning into their unrealness..."

"... proudly claiming their robot monikers in their bios and having no shame about posting in Hong Kong at 3 p.m. and in New York an hour later. In fact, the teams behind them feel the lack of a corporeal form may be their best selling point. 'From a brand perspective, we are able to create a very dynamic story line,' Ms. Kahn said. 'So Miquela can be, for example, in London one day supporting an art gallery opening, and in L.A. the same day to support a new coffee shop that she really likes, right? I think brands love that she can be anywhere... I think the next generation isn’t really thinking as much about is this person real or not?... It’s more about: 'What does this account stand for?'"

I'm reading "They’re Famous. They’re Everywhere. And They’re Fake. Influencers like Lil’ Miquela and Mia Zelu have millions of followers and generate serious income, despite being created with artificial intelligence" (NYT).

1. Who's "Ms. Kahn"? Who cares?

2. I like how they put "authentic" in quotes.

3. What's the difference between A.I. "influencers" like Miquela and old-time ad mascots like Tony the Tiger and the Trix rabbit?

4. You know who else can be in Hong Kong and then in New York an hour later? Santa Claus. Kids have accepted his dictates as long as I can remember. At least Miquela isn't demanding that we be "good" and threatening us with a list. Or is it only a matter of time?

5. Here is what reality must compete with:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Miquela (@lilmiquela)

6. Maybe she and her ilk are saving us all from the trouble of striving to excel at fakeness. We're free at last. Now, what?

7. What if the people you met in real life were like Miquela, putting their plastic cup on their head and affecting an expression of inane ecstasy? And maybe they already are... and have been for a long time. I went running to find this passage from "My Dinner With André," a movie that came out more than 40 years ago:

... I turned the television on, and there was this guy who had just won the something something, you know, some sports event, some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle, and he, you know, you know, he couldn’t stuff the check in the bottle, and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face, you know, he wasn’t really listening to the guy who was interviewing him, but he was smiling, huh, malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought “What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat.” Then I thought, “That guy is me.”

8. Writing #7 — "What if the people you met" — made me think of an old song that I gradually realized was "Who Are the Brain Police?"

The problem with driverless cars is that they don't make mistakes.

OK, this is an original and good point.

pic.twitter.com/CmAHI9fUnr

— Bojan Tunguz (@tunguz) June 29, 2025

"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides/The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office" (NYT).

Is there video of Joe Biden saying that on his own, perhaps sitting with a serious journalist who is permitted to probe with questions about specific actions taken under his name?

Oh, no! I see we're told it was "a statement"! His denial that things were done by others using his name is another thing that might have been done by others using his name!

Does that make me a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist — in the eyes of the New York Times?

I'm suspicious of Biden's denial, but that doesn't mean I support the new President investigating the previous President. But that's what Biden did to Trump. Or was that really Biden? I understand Trump's motive of revenge, but I wish he'd concentrate on achieving great things, not raking over the wrongs of the past. And yet I rankle at the accusation that one is a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist! — to believe that there were these wrongs in the past. 

In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge. The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides....

Some outlandish things are not outlandish, and some outlandish things are humor. Should a President use humor? Not to confuse people, but he doesn't need to eschew humor for the sake of those who are willfully blind to humor. In this case, the "robotic clone" expresses a justified doubt that the entity called Joe Biden was making his own decisions and exercising the power entrusted to him by the people.

By the way, even if we assume Biden said those words quoted in the post title and let's even add the assumption that he said them in all sincerity, the question remains: How could he know what decisions were made during his presidency? He says he "made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations." Which ones? All of them? Sit him down for a serious interview with someone who will ask him about particular decisions and see if he recognizes them! This is the man who asserted that he "beat Medicare." 

"She realized... how many applications there are for a panini press: griddling onigiri, charring cabbage, searing onions."

"Because there’s a lid to press down, she said, nothing requires flipping — unlike a plancha or a flattop. Without a fryer, Ms. Maeda bastes chicken wings with brown butter to 'mimic the unctuousness of fried items,' she said. There is no hood ventilation system, so she designed main courses that don’t produce much grease: rice cakes with mushrooms, broccoli and asparagus and brothy beans with garlic chive pistou. The slow cooker has been repurposed to marinate olives in fennel and citrus for an appetizer."

From "Hot-Plate Heroes: How 5 Restaurants Work Wonders With No Kitchen/Tight spaces with minimal equipment — often not even a stove — are loved by chefs who leverage the limitations to turn out thrilling dishes" (NYT)(lots more, plus pics, as that free-access link).

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "I'm reading 'Hot-Plate Heroes' in the NYT and wondering about the general situation of taking advantage of limitations. What are some other areas of human endeavor where the limitation is an inspiration? An obvious example is poetry. You don't have to write in the sonnet form, but you might do better with it. And also in living your life: Having a family."

From Grok's answer: "MUSIC. Constraints like using a single instrument or a short time limit inspire creativity. The 3-minute pop song format forces musicians to craft catchy, concise hits. Lo-fi genres, limited by basic recording tech, lean into raw, authentic sounds—think early Beck or modern bedroom pop."

Bedroom pop? Never heard of it. I went to Spotify and searched for "Bedroom pop" and was, at first, astounded to see that someone had assembled a 100-song playlist titled "Bedroom Pop." But then I saw my name:

"Made for Ann Althouse." Spotify assembled the list — in one second — just for me. "Dreamy melodies and hushed vocals." Could I have put any 2 words together and generated a playlist in that newly invented genre? I don't think so. I tried "Cruel Neutrality." I think Bedroom Pop is an actual genre. I go back to Grok to ask but wonder if Grok and Spotify are robots in cahoots and yanking my chain.

Chain yanked, I ask Spotify for music by Robots in Cahoots.

"On American TV shows, the London native starred as an android brought to an asteroid to keep a prisoner (Jack Warden) company on 1959’s 'The Lonely'..."

"... the seventh episode of CBS’ 'The Twilight Zone,' and she was the self-described 'office bitch' Roz in 1982-83 on ABC’s adaptation of '9 to 5.'"

From "Jean Marsh, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ Actress and Co-Creator, Dies at 90/The British actress won an Emmy for her performance as the prim and proper parlormaid Rose Buck on the acclaimed ITV drama ['Upstairs, Downstairs']" (Hollywood Reporter).

I saw that yesterday and immediately watched the "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Lonely." Marsh plays a robot, given, mercifully, to a man condemned to 50 years alone on a desolate asteroid:

It's a great robot story! Watch the full episode here, on Vimeo. Great ending (with a great teaser for next week's show). I don't remember having seen "The Lonely" before, and I devotedly watched the show at the time, but perhaps not until after the first season, which aired in 1959, when I was 8. 

The actor who plays the condemned man in "The Lonely" is Jack Warden. That blew my mind! I had just finished watching "Shampoo" (on The Criterion Channel) the previous night.

In "Shampoo," Warden plays the male character who is not played by Warren Beatty. I never go around thinking about Jack Warden! And yet yesterday, before I got the prompt to watch "The Lonely," I was thinking about Jack Warden. Here's the trailer, which has everything you need to know about Warren Beatty and just a bit of Jack Warden:

"Because homes, offices and warehouses are already built for humans... humanoids are better equipped to navigate the world than any other robot...."

"I first visited 1X’s offices in Silicon Valley nearly a year ago. When a robot named Eve entered the room, opening and closing the door, I could not shake the feeling that this wide-eyed robot was really a person in costume. Eve... felt human. I thought of 'Sleeper,' the 1973 Woody Allen sci-fi comedy filled with robotic butlers.... Mr. Jang was entranced by the way that Eve moved.... 'I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible,' Mr. Jang said.... And because of growing shortage of workers who handle both house cleaning and care of elders and children, organizations that represent these workers welcome the rise of new technologies that do work in the home — provided that companies like 1X build robots that work well alongside human workers."

From "Invasion of the Home Humanoid Robots/Dozens of companies are building robots that look like humans. One of them is training a machine to be a butler and will soon test them in homes" (NYT)(free-access link so you can see the photos and video).

ADDED: Still waiting for The Orb.

"Tesla is the only company with all the ingredients for making intelligent humanoid robots at scale."

"My prediction is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. It will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made."

ELON MUSK: "Tesla is the only company with all the ingredients for making intelligent humanoid robots at scale.

My prediction is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. It will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made." pic.twitter.com/Aqa6SsnsQW

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 2, 2025

Musk moves quickly into successes and failures. Yes, we could pause to cry a tear over Brad Schimel — upon whom once rested "the entire destiny of humanity" — but look here: Musk has got the biggest product ever made.

And:

pic.twitter.com/ZoideOC1RU

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2025

All right now. Who would mope about Wisconsin?!

There’s no success like failure....

AND: Embracing the notion that there's no success like failure, Musk now tweets: "I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain."

"Until the recent rise of A.I, it was fashionable to claim that consciousness was an illusion or, perhaps, an ambient property of everything in reality..."

"... in either case, not special. Such dismissiveness has become less common.... Consciousness is lately treated as something precious and real, to be conquered by tech: our A.I.s and robots are to achieve consciousness. What follows, then, is that love is also real and also a target to be conquered. The conquest of love will not be abstract but vividly concrete for everyone, especially young people, and soon. This is because we are all about to be presented, in our phones, with a new generation of A.I. simulations of people, and many of us may fall in love with them. They will likely appear within the social-media apps to which we are already addicted. We will probably succumb to interacting with them, and for some very online people there won’t be an easy out. No one can know how the new love revolution will unfold, but it might yield one of the most profound legacies of these crazy years...."

Writes Jaron Lanier, in "Your A.I. Lover Will Change You/A future where many humans are in love with bots may not be far off. Should we regard them as training grounds for healthy relationships or as nihilistic traps?" (The New Yorker).

I tried the Grok app that let's you talk and be talked back to. You're forced to pick a voice — either male or female. It's binary. I picked male — not because I'm a heterosexual female, but because the female voice I was offered was perky and energized and the male voice was calm. It wasn't egging me on to feel that this is so much fun. But then I only used it for less than a minute, because it felt slow. A waste of time. Reading is much faster. Talking might work better if I succumbed to the illusion that a real person was on the line. I'd have to choose to go slightly mad to feel like that. But don't people make that kind of choice all the time — even in those seemingly "healthy relationships" with real human beings.

Recent robot antics.

See "$16K Chinese Robot Goes Full Kung Fu on a Human, Does a 720-Degree Spinning Kick" (autoevolution).

"It’s so much safer, especially for a woman. You’re not getting in the car with some strange man."

Said a San Francisco woman, quoted in "Robot taxi riders in San Francisco targeted with a new form of harassment/As Alphabet’s Waymo scales up its self-driving service, some riders recount feeling like sitting ducks when strangers interfere with their robot chauffeur" (WaPo)(free-access link).

She experienced the downside of the lack of a man — however "strange" — in the driver's seat:

Stephanie recalled riding home with her sister in one of Waymo’s driverless Jaguar SUVs around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night when a car holding several young men began following them. They drove close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, “Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.”

If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn’t know how to change the robot’s path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn’t send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled.

I assume, with AI, the car can be made responsive to passengers who call out for some kind of help. It should be able to communicate with the police. And the police will be sending out robotic help too (if it's needed). In the end, and it won't be long, the young men yelling "Hey, ladies" and whatnot will cease to exist. It's not that you need the "strange man" back in the taxicab. You just need to quell the strange men out there on the street. It won't be that difficult. This is just a stage, a very brief stage.

Robot bird, robot rat.

"Don't say anything robophobic."

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said: "That's a Woody Allen bit. He was unkind to his toaster and the elevator threw him around for it."

Here:

"Anything that I can't reason with — or kiss or fondle — I get in trouble with."