Articles of Interest: Sex Dolls, Sex Arms, Sex Bots, Sex Gods, Sex Movies and Pivotal Trash

Today in It Can Only Get Stranger news: sex dolls, sex arms, sex bots, sex gods, sex movies, AI-calibrated vaginas, and "one of the most pivotal pieces of trash of the 21st century."

Jim Vorel of Jezebel reports:

"Enrollment of Black students at Stanford has been down since the Supreme Court axed affirmative action, but it has plenty of fake AI students [of color]."

I missed this Vanity Fair interview with Gregg Araki when it originally ran in Vanity Fair last month. It would be hard for teenage me—fresh off of buying The Doom Generation on VHS from Newbury Comics—to fathom that a 60-something Araki would one day be featured in Vanity Fair. In the piece he says:

“I don’t want to lecture anybody. I don’t want to tell anybody what to do, [but] it’s like, what is wrong with you guys? [Gen Z] is all about FOMO, but you don’t care about missing out on the sexual prime of your life. You’re gonna be 45, 50, and are you going to look back with regret?”

Only halfway related, I love this one-line Letterboxed review of The Doom Generation: “I've waited the whole time for the 2 guys to fuck..."

Speaking of which: Did you know that the first time scientists witnessed two humpback whales having sex, it was two males.

Whale B had inserted his penis into Whale A’s genital slit, the opening that sheathes the penis when it is not extruded for mating. The penetrations were very shallow because “the humpback whale’s penis is quite large,” Stack says.

If first encountered this fact in a Midcoast Villager book review of an illustrated book about animal sex. The book is called Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn from Animal Sex and BoingBoing takes a closer look:

For years, when the scientific community was almost exclusively composed of straight (or closeted) males, it censored itself when studying and reporting on animal sex about how wildly diverse it is. If animal sex isn't a male copulating with a female for the sole purpose of having babies, nobody wanted to know about it.

In fact, animal sexual behavior can have many purposes and forms: gay sex, polyamorous sex, recreational sex, gender fluidity, etc. Perrin particularly focuses on rarely reported female animal active participation in, and enjoyment of, sex: the female of so many species have clitori and orgasms.

Did you know that male octopuses have a sex arm?

And speaking of pervert cinema, the great Amy Nicholson reviewed Primetime for LA Times:

Looking back, “To Catch a Predator” feels like one of the most pivotal pieces of trash of the 21st century. Although only 7% of child sexual assaults are committed by strangers, Hansen peddled the paranoia that the boogeyman lived next door, elevating suspicion, vigilantism and public shaming into a moral duty. Our country has been a little more psychotic ever since. Sex offenders were suddenly everywhere, from pizza parlors to bad B-movies.

[...]

There’s not a single shot of a healthy human being in the movie, only wraiths filmed in sickly shades of pink, red and blue.

Madison Griffiths of The Guardian went deep on sex dolls:

Central to the industry’s rise is sophisticated technology. Lifelike sex dolls are now increasingly customisable. Prospective buyers can render themselves an ideal companion from scratch, courtesy of 3D printers. In 2017, the sex-doll brand RealDoll paved the way for the future of AI-generated sex robots by introducing “Harmony” to their coterie. In its newest model, which its website says will be available this year and for which it is running a waitlist, buyers can assign personality traits – attributes like “spiritual” or “insecure” – from an app on their phone. “She’s far more than a beautiful body. Harmony listens to you,” the website reads.

[...]

The new Harmony also has an AI vagina – described on the RealDoll site as “an electronic insert that pairs via Bluetooth to the X-Mode App. It detects touch, movement, and speed, transitioning naturally from mild arousal to climax, with synchronised vocal responses that make every moment feel real.”

Dan Gentile of SF Gate reports that the Nathan Fielder directed Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" is reportedly rated R "for graphic nudity."

In Solar System vore news, Venus' moon may have been swallowed by Venus.

Ben Ditto of VICE interviewed Tanner O'Donnel who, among many other things, "hunts" AI flirt bots.

A short while back I shared a link to a video essay about Georges Bataille and Hellraiser and a few of you asked if I had seen The Morbid Zoo's dissection of Hellraiser, Bataille, the cenobites, pain, BDSM, body modification and more. I hadn't seen it then, but I have watched it since and if any of these topics is of interest to you I suggest you do the same.

And finally, here is a list of love and lust deities, including but not limited to:

• Tlazōlteōtl is an Aztec deity of sex, sexuality, lust, carnality, sin, vice, impurity, temptation, fertility, purification, absolution, steam baths, and a patroness of adulterers.
• Baimei Shen is a Chinese[clarification needed] god for prostitution and brothels.
• Albina is a legendary princess in the Matter of Britain... she and her sisters were exiled to an uninhabited island after killing their spouses, who attempted to force them into obedience.

UPDATE: 09/25/2026, 6:29 a.m. PT: An earlier draft of this post inadvertently referred to Elizabeth Holmes as Elizabeth Holes. This typo has since been fixed.