R. Kelly was sued in 2010 for allegedly sexually harassing his maid, according to a Page Six item in the New York Post. So if you thought the days of him potentially ruining the lives of girls and women through alleged acts including but not limited to rape were long behind him...yeah, no.

Says the Post:

Page Six has exclusively learned that Kelly was accused of sexual harassment as recently as 2010 by a 36-year-old housekeeper, but he settled the case out of court for $100,000 to avoid litigation.

According to sources, the woman worked for Kelly for about a year, beginning in 2008 when the "Bump n' Grind" singer did just that: talked dirty and groped his employee.

A source close to Kelly further told us that there's been discord in the singer's inner circle lately, and further secrets about him are "starting to float to the surface about the millions he paid out over the years to a wide variety of women."

Last year, a Village Voice interview with the Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis reexamined the allegations against Kelly that started surfacing in 2002. In it DeRogatis, who basically reported on the case single-handedly, claimed that Kelly had ruined "dozens" of lives. (Key DeRogatis quote: "The saddest fact I've learned is nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody.") Something people swept under the rug for years as Kelly racked up hits and made an insane musical soap opera was newly impossible to ignore. That interview effectively killed the momentum of his Black Panties album and his single with Lady Gaga, "Do What U Want," a video for which was filmed (with Terry Richardson, no less) but mysteriously never released.

If "further secrets" indeed emerge, things could only get worse for the singer who has said his next album is going to be called White Panties. Listening to R. Kelly sing about sex could only get harder to stomach.

[Image via Getty]

Powered alcohol—a.k.a. "Palcohol"—due to be unleashed upon an unprepared, very drunk world this fall, may turn out to be a fading dream. The federal agency that approved the product now says that approval was an error.

The U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a division of the U.S. Treasury, seemingly issued approvals for 7 different kinds of Palcohol last week, but those approvals were for labels, not for the product itself.

Even that level of endorsement was a mistake, the TTB is now saying. Palcohol has surrendered all 7 approvals back to the agency.

"We have been in touch with the TTB and there seemed to be a discrepancy on our fill level, how much powder is in the bag. There was a mutual agreement for us to surrender the labels," Palcohol's website now reports.

"This doesn't mean that Palcohol isn't approved. It just means that these labels aren't approved. We will re-submit labels. We don't have an expected approval date as label approval can vary widely."

That's a shame. Alcohol that you can snort or sprinkle on your food seemed like such a smart and safe idea.

[H/T Animal]

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army (retired), had a really tough time after he was pushed out of the workforce. Would you like to hear about it? He would like to tell you about it. Welcome to LinkedIn's Career Curveball® confessionals!

McChrystal, you may recall, was busy running the not-terribly productive Afghanistan War when he was fired for 1) giving Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings complete access to his staff, and 2) acting naturally around said reporter. Getting fired is just as hard for a general officer as it is for a civilian working joe, if a civilian working joe was fired and handed a $12,475 per month pension for life.

Stan McChrystal feels you, American worker! And now, as part of LinkedIn's series of testimonials from once-unemployed successes, he'd like to share his inspiring story of vocational reinvention, that it may inspire you:

In June 2010, after more than 38 years in uniform, in the midst of commanding a 46-nation coalition in a complex war in Afghanistan, my world changed suddenly – and profoundly. An article in Rolling Stone magazine depicting me, and people I admired, in a manner that felt as unfamiliar as it was unfair, ignited a firestorm.

A firestorm so vast, not even a C-17 Globemaster full of Bud Light Lime could quench it. So unfair!

Even seemingly mundane details like where we lived and what I was called had shifted suddenly.

Stan. I think you'd be called Stan. Also: anywhere. That's where you could live, debt-free, on your savings and continued income of $12,475 a month for life, Stan.

Most importantly, my very identity as a soldier came to an abrupt end. I'd been soldiering as long as I'd been shaving. Suddenly I'd been told I could no longer soldier, and it felt as though no one really cared if I ever shaved again. I'd caught a curveball directly on the chin; I wanted to find a corner of the dugout, away from TV cameras, to rub my head and maybe sniffle a bit.

I mean, I could probably motivate myself to shave and wear a nice shirt to the mailbox, if it contained a $12,475 monthly check from DFAS. (Sniffle!)

I'd never been more tempted to feel like a victim – an emotion that could have easily consumed me. Many would have supported, even welcomed me in the victim role; pundits would have let me rant, and a tell-all would have been an instant bestseller.

Thank God you didn't go that route.

How did you claw your way out of this abyss of meaninglessness, Stan? Laid-off mid-career professionals want to know!

While momentous at the time, the question was actually quite simple: what am I? And what do I want to be next?

...in the end, the answer was simple. My business, and my life, has been people. Like leaders in many walks of life, my business has been to serve with, and for, others. By focusing on this simple truth, and allowing it to guide my decisions through a difficult time, this curveball ultimately opened as many doors as it closed.

Simple questions have simple answers. Stan lives simply now, by simply living for people. Like the people who are with him on the board of directors of JetBlue. And the the people who are with him on the board of Navistar International. And the people who work beneath him in his capacity as chairman of the board of Siemens Government Technologies. And the people in the UAE who profit from his work for their arms brokerage. Or the people who hire his consulting firm, McChrystal Group LLC, and its nearly 50 employees to do whatever the hell it is they do. Or the 1.3 million people who listen to his TED Talk, "Listen, Learn... Then Lead."

See, people? It's simple! Now you go do it.

[Photo credit: AP]

A whopping 21 percent of Americans are "extremely or very confident" the Big Bang happened. 51 percent are not too confident or not at all confident the Big Bang happened. I just... no. NO. Quit it. SIT. Bad America. Science good. Don't make us call Neil again.

Human exclamation point Billy "On The Street" Eichner is sprinting through New York again, helping another celebrity friend ambush and delight unsuspecting pedestrians. And this time, it's Pitbull! No, it's not Pitbull! It's Amy Poehler!

Judging by this small sample, most Manhattanites are much more excited to see Billy's Parks and Recreation costar (He's recurring! He's recurring!) than they would be to meet Mr. Worldwide.

Try the same thing at a Walmart in Alaska and it might go differently. But honestly, as long as Billy keeps running and screaming, we'll just keep freaking out.

[H/T Tastefully Offensive]

Meet Pancho the chihuahua. As you can see in the above video, Pancho is pretty good at yoga. Cobra pose, downward dog, various stretches: this little guy can do it all.

Sure, there are some yoga dog truthers out there, who say things like "It's not yoga but it's cute" and "They're definitely just holding treats up to his face." But what do they know? We believe in Pancho.

And here's Pancho's first yoga video, from last year.

After helicopter rides to the Hamptons, surge pricing, and snide Facebook posts, we shouldn't be surprised when Uber displays contempt for the species. But using post-terrorism "BOSTON STRONG" mania as an advertisement might be a new low.

The last time a company tried to cash in on Boston's mix of ad hoc patriotism, coping mechanisms, and sloganeering, that company was shamed into retreat. Granted, Chevy's attempt at co-opting a city's trauma was much closer to the actual bombing—but was there anything better about Uber's "BostonX" promotion, even a year later?

Before the runners and supportive swarms lined up along the marathon course yesterday, Uber sent the following email to certain users:

This weekend, people will come together from all over the globe to celebrate human perseverance in the city of champions.

In the spirit of the Boston Marathon, we'd like to show appreciation to some of the amazing drivers that have been helping Bostonians get around the city over the past year.

Introducing BostonX:

Get picked up by a local hero within the Boston community, yet another reason that our city has always been revered as the City upon a Hill.

• Saturday, 4/19, from 9am to 5pm EST, you'll be able to request a ride on BostonX.
• Simply open up your app and swipe all the way right to the "BostonX" view and request a car.
• All BostonX rides are at uberX rates.

Who's Driving You:

• Police officers
• Firefighters
• Soldiers
• Teachers
• ...the list goes on! Learn even more about your heroes here.

Vague allusions to a terrorist act? Check. Using "local heroes" as marketing materials? Check. A "Boston strong" tag in the accompanying blog post? Of course. What's left unexplained about this celebration of human perseverance and the unyielding determination of the New Englander to stare fear in the face and... something something something... is why anyone would want a local hero to drive them around. Wouldn't a more fitting tribute to Boston's police officers, firefighters, and so forth, be giving them the rides?

The startup tossed in a self-interested donation to The United Way—For every new Uber Bostonian that applies and rides with that code between now and April 28th, we're contributing $20 to United Way on behalf of the rider community!—but this is still plain marketing, dressed in a Red Sox uniform.

Actual Bostonians aren't so impressed:

Eeesh. "Have Boston heroes drive you around! They're so heroic they need 2 jobs to afford to live in the city!" http://t.co/nVhcAA2oJg

— Tara! (@aforgottentune) April 18, 2014

Today, The Atlantic has published a long story by Roy Klabin in which Klabin writes about shadowing several drug dealers as they do business. But some of the numbers in his story do not seem to add up.

The premise of the piece provides lots of color: Klabin follows New York City dealers as they make the rounds delivering ecstasy, coke, weed, and other goodies to their upscale clients. But then there's this, bolding ours:

Carlo pulled out a handful of small plastic bags. Each one contained five or 10 pills, prepackaged selections for various customers. It was a silent reminder that he was on a busy schedule. The man on the phone finished his call and greeted Carlo warmly. They exchanged pleasantries, while Carlo laid out a bag of MDMA pills and two 100-gram bags of cocaine. The phone man handed over $600 that Carlo wouldn't count until leaving the apartment.

Either Carlo is New York's most affordable drug dealer, or something is off here. Two hundred grams of coke and a bag of five or ten ecstasy pills... for $600? Even if the pills are only, say, $100, 200 grams of coke is, uh, more than seven ounces of coke! Almost 60 eight balls of coke! At retail prices, that should be $10K or more, if I'm not mistaken. [People who buy drugs, please chime in in the comment section]. Maybe the guy bought two eight balls of coke and a bag of pills, which makes much more sense. But that's a pretty big mistake to make in a story that is all about drugs.

And then there's the author's description of "Viktor," a man he calls "one of the largest distributors of marijuana on the East Coast."

From our conversation, I surmised that Viktor serves a large segment of the East Coast and personally takes in $24,000 to $32,000 per month after all his other costs are covered. Most of the cash I saw would go toward business costs like employee payments, marijuana purchases from California, security, and transportation.

"One of the largest distributors of marijuana on the East Coast" only clears around $300K per year? That would seem to be, at the very least, a dubious use of the descriptor "one of the largest distributors of marijuana on the East Coast."

Illegal drug dealers, please voice your thoughts below.

UPDATE: The Atlantic has corrected the paragraph about Carlo's drug deal to read, "Carlo laid out a bag of 20 MDMA pills and two one-gram bags of cocaine."

[Photo: AP]

Michael Egan III and his mother take questions from the media during a news conference on Monday. Egan, who previously accused X-Men director Bryan Singer of sexually abusing him when he was a teen, has sued former TV programming executive Garth Ancier, accusing him of abuse when Egan was 17. Image via Nick Ut/AP.

An Oberlin professor has accused another professor of trying to murder him. In response, the alleged would-be murderer is suing his accuser for sullying his good name. Life in academia can be killer.

Oberlin professor Ali Yedes filed suit last week against another professor for defamation and emotional distress. You'd be distressed, too, if your colleague accused you of plotting murder. According to the lawsuit, another professor, Samir Amin Abdellatif, accused Yedes of making threatening comments to yet another professor, Eunjung An. Yedes reportedly said that he was bringing in a relative from Tunisia to kill An, although Yedes denies making the comments.

Abdellatif also reportedly claimed that Yedes helped forge another professor's academic credentials and got involved in an interfaith campus group to "spy on Jews." And also that Yedes tried to bribe a teaching assistant to marry him. Just run-of-the-mill academic stuff.

Yedes is asking $25,000 for "loss of opportunity, humiliation, embarrassment, damage to reputation, loss of self-esteem, physical damages and emotional and psychological distress." The Council on America-Islamic Relations, which has previously denounced Abdellatif, has asked for a thorough investigation by Oberlin. Alleged victim An is also suing the college for failing to deal with the reported harassment.

[Image via AP]

Senior Gawker columnist a dog takes on the difficult questions of canine substance abuse in a new column today. "I hate to tell you this, but once I had beer. Right in my bowl." A dog maintains a blog at dog.gawker.com.

Are you from Talladega? Do you like guns? But I repeat myself. The point is: Your conservative state representative likes guns. A lot. He's a big fan of big guns. With big barbecue smokers inside of them. Now, who are you voting for in November?

Via Alabama Statehouse reporter Jim Stinson, here's the big gun Hurst is rolling out in his campaign for re-election to the state Legislature:

The District 35 Republican from Talladega gets his message across at parades in a very unmistakable way: He uses a giant revolver as a parade float. (And a barbecue. The gun is actually not a balloon but a large barbecue shaped like a handgun.)

"A picture of the large revolver has drawn notice on social media," Stinson writes, linking to this tweet by a local attorney.

Hurst said the parade float has two purposes: For one, it reminds people Hurst is a small business owner. He owns a fencing company and also Haynes Street Pawn and Gun Shop. He sells guns with his business partner.

And two, the gun-shaped barbecue, often attached to his truck, reminds people he supports gun rights. Hurst pushed for and won a change in Alabama law that no longer requires homeowners to flee from an intruder. Now Alabamians can shoot an intruder, a right often referred to as the "castle" doctrine.

Hurst, a 16-year veteran of the Legislature who flipped from being a Democrat to a Republican in 2010, boasts a winning, uh, grimace and has impeccable academic credentials: he graduated from high school! But most important, he's standing up for gun rights at a time of unparalleled peril for gun owners, who have been victimized by the constant expansion of their rights under anti-gun Imperial Overlord Obama.

This will likely stand him in good stead with voters heading into a June primary against Steve Dean, a local GOP leader who has tea party backing and a college degree. Dean says he loves the Second Amendment. But hey, where's his trailer-mounted Saturday Night Special? Real Alabamians deserve real results. And parade floats. With a slab of ribs.

Meet Brandon, a "pro basketball player," who was somehow roped into getting married on the RuPaul's Drag Race stage while wearing female drag (his wife was in a tux), all the while voicing his extreme discomfort with the situation and his teammates' potential responses. And then, during judging, when everyone onstage and sitting on the panel laughed at this discomfort, he left the stage to throw up.

He later explained on Drag Race's behind-the-scenes companion show Untucked that he was hot onstage and standing there made him "dizzy." Ooooh, girl, you got vertigo! Or gay panic. Or a producer in your ear. Or whatever. Brandon eventually came around and said, "Like I can go to a locker room now and I can tell people about this experience and maybe they'll accept gays." Maybe. It's hard to say what'll happen or what's real, even in these very scenes, but man, what an arc.

The New York Times' new data-driven explainery site, The Upshot, currently estimates that Democrats have a 51 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate. Bold projection, or not-too-subtle "FU" to Nate Silver? Or both? It's definitely not neither.

The osprey, Pandion haliaetus, is a bird of character. The ancient poets knew this, and the Maryland Transportation Authority is discovering it the hard way. Last week, a pair of ospreys decided to build their nest on a platform overlooking the approach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, where the MDTA keeps a traffic camera.

This past Friday, the MDTA removed the nest. The ospreys started rebuilding it. Yesterday, the MDTA removed it again. This morning, the live feed showed the ospreys getting to work for the third time, wrestling sticks into position to build anew.

Ospreys are no strangers to oppression. The lazy and thieving bald eagle, symbol of the United States of America, habitually steals fish from the smaller, harder-working birds. The ospreys just catch more fish.

So where ordinary Americans have learned to submit to the panopticon, the ospreys of the Bay Bridge fight on. The transportation authority wants to give the public an unobscured view of the often-clogged bridge, as the season for beach-bound traffic draws nigh. The ospreys likewise want a clear view of the bay, so they may more easily dive for fish and bring them back to their future nestlings. A spokesperson for the MTDA reportedly explained that the birds "have been captured attacking the camera" when it moves.

The live feed of the standoff can be seen here. As of midday, the sticks were gone again—for now.

Daybreak on Monday brought a surprising story of survival with news that a teenage stowaway miraculously survived in the wheel well of an airplane after a six hour flight from San Jose, California to Maui, Hawaii this weekend. The story is notable because the vast majority of airplane stowaways die long before the aircraft reaches its final destination.

Stowaways hide out in the most easily-accessible part of an airplane to someone running across the tarmac — the landing gear bay, or wheel well. Airplanes are pressurized for your survival (not for your "comfort," as they like to say), but the wheel well doesn't benefit from this pressurization, so the folks trying to hitch a ride usually wind up dying in the process.

The reason behind airplane stowaway deaths comes down to the basic structure of the atmosphere.

1) Most Air Is Near the Ground

Air in the atmosphere is not evenly distributed. The troposphere — the lowest level of Earth's atmosphere — is only 5-10 miles deep but contains 80% of the total volume of all of the gases in the atmosphere. A huge amount of the troposphere is again condensed to the first few miles above the earth's surface.

This principle is displayed by the Skew-T/Log-P charts that meteorologists use to graph observations recorded by weather balloons. Air pressure in the atmosphere drops logarithmically with height; in other words, air pressure starts dropping extremely fast the higher you get off the earth's surface.

On the Skew-T chart above, I've highlighted each of the pressure levels in the atmosphere. Standard air pressure at sea level is 1013 millibars, and the jet stream is typically located between 200-300 millibars.

Airplanes flying on long-haul routes (such as the California-Hawaii route in question) routinely fly as high as 36,000 feet. In the chart I posted above, 36,000 feet would correspond to about 225 millibars, a level at which the amount of oxygen is well below what humans need to survive. In fact, most stowaways would suffocate and die even before reaching cruising altitude. There's just not enough oxygen in the upper-atmosphere to survive.

2) It's Really, Really Cold

The weather balloon sounding over Oakland, California last night (shown in the Skew-T chart I used as an example above) recorded temperatures of almost -60°C (-76°F) at 36,000 feet. At these extremely low temperatures, exposed skin will experience frostbite in just a few minutes, and one's body temperature would quickly drop until hypothermia (and eventually death) set in.

These are the two main factors that contribute to almost all deaths in people who try to hitch a ride in an airplane's landing gear bay. If the lack of oxygen doesn't kill them, the cold usually does. But like the 16-year-old boy from California this weekend, some of them manage to survive against all odds.

Even if a stowaway manages to survive the harsh atmosphere, there is one more hurdle they have to make it through to arrive alive.

3) It's Not the Fall...

Another particularly gruesome fact about stashing away in the wheel well of an airplane is that some stowaways fall out once the pilots extend the landing gear when the aircraft is on final approach.

If you're not familiar with how the landing gear on commercial aircraft operate, the above photo shows the landing gear of a Boeing 777 aircraft. When they're retracted, the wheels fold up into landing gear bays that are closed off by a door. When the pilots extend the landing gear, the bay doors swing open and the landing gear extends into position.

When the bay doors open, the deceased body of the stowaway can fall out of the airplane if it's resting in the wrong location. The bodies of stowaways falling from airplanes on final approach has happened a few times in recent history, including on flights from Angola to London and from Charlotte, N.C. to Boston. The FAA lists several instances where a stowaway managed to survive the extreme temperatures with little oxygen, only to fall to his or her death when the airplane started to land.

People stowing away in the wheel well of aircraft have to be incredibly desperate (and incredibly uneducated) to attempt such a lethal feat. The BBC lists dozens upon dozens of cases in recent years where stowaways were found on (or left behind by) aircraft around the world, and over three-quarters of them died in the process. Stowing away is incredibly risky and often not worth the outcome.

[Images: AP / U. of Wyoming (with annotations by author) / Oliver Cabaret via Flickr]

As actress/guru/collection of abdominal muscles Gwyneth Paltrow works through a split with husband Chris Martin, her aspirational lifestyle brand appears to be consciously uncoupling with a whole lot of money.

RadarOnline reports that U.K. corporate filings from 2012, the most recent year on record, show that GOOP owed creditors $1.2 million, and had racked up net losses of $298,512.

That's despite bringing in $1,893,065 on sales, commissions, and Groupon promotions (remember Groupon?). The company website, the eminently hate-readable GOOP newsletter, and total product costs ate up around $500,000. A much larger $1,564,995 went to "administrative costs."

That includes $587,653.25 in salaries for Paltrow and GOOP CEO Sebastian Bishop, who unexpectedly left the company just days ago. He owned 20 percent of the company to Paltrow's 80 percent.

Paltrow and Bishop both took interest-free "loans to directors" from the company in 2012— $49,025 for Paltrow and $83,617 for Bishop. At the time of the filing, Paltrow hadn't paid her loan back.

Despite losing money, being in debt, and taking out personal loans, though, they somehow scraped together enough be positively inspiring by donating about $12,000 to various charities.

None of the documents specifies how much GOOP spent on gold-covered wingtip brogues (actual thing) in 2012.

[Photo: Getty Images]

British Pathé, the enormous newsreel archive that has previously shared reported clips on everything from Beatlemania to Arnold Schwarzenegger, uploaded its entire collection of historical footage to its YouTube channel this week, all digitized in pristine HD format for your viewing pleasure.

"Our hope is that everyone, everywhere who has a computer will see these films and enjoy them," says Alastair White, General Manager of British Pathé. "This archive is a treasure trove unrivalled in historical and cultural significance that should never be forgotten. Uploading the films to YouTube seemed like the best way to make sure of that."

The footage, which doesn't simply include clips from Britain, includes the World's Fair Parade of 1939, clips from WWI, the Miss World Pageant of 1969, as well as a number of reports and stories from across the globe from 1896 to 1976.

The full archive can be accessed at this link, when you have the time to scroll through and process that all of this is available at a click. A few, as well, are posted below for browsing.

Is this how our children will learn in the future? No more text-based teaching—only video footage that shows (though biased) the actual events?

Sports highlights from 1958:

A cabinet meeting in New Delhi, India (1946):

A commercial for Victorian nighties in 1955:

For years and years, the NBA, which depends on the labor of black athletes and the goodwill of black fans, has tried to ignore the well-documented fact that Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, is unambiguously and actively racist (in addition to being a lawbreaker and all-around degenerate).

Now TMZ has posted a recorded conversation in which the billionaire berates a girlfriend of his because she has brought black people to Clippers games and has posed with black people on Instagram. It's a direct window into Sterling's bigoted, psychosexually twisted psyche: The heart of his complaint is that by "associating with black people," his girlfriend (who identifies herself as mixed-race), is preventing herself from being "perceived as either a Latina or a white girl."

This is "painful" to him, Sterling says. "It bothers me a lot," he says.

Sterling is specifically outraged because his girlfriend posted a photograph of herself with Magic Johnson. "Don't bring him to my games!" he says, of the Los Angeles Lakers legend.*

This is where things stand, because the NBA has kept avoiding the problem of Donald Sterling's racism: You can now listen to the longest-tenured owner in the NBA saying he is ashamed to have his girlfriend seen with Magic Johnson, because Magic Johnson is black.

Sterling's Clippers are scheduled to tip off their next playoff game, against the Golden State Warriors, at 3:30 Eastern time on Sunday afternoon.

[Image via AP]

Great! Now do it wearing all of Chandler's clothes!

[H/T Uproxx]