After several weeks of renewed interest in R. Kelly‘s alleged pattern of sexual abuse against women and girls — thanks in part to producer Dream Hampton’s Surviving R. Kelly documentary, which aired on Lifetime in early January — the R&B singer has been charged with 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse, multiple outlets are reporting. The charges reportedly span from 1998 to 2010.

High-profile attorney Michael Avenatti — who also represented Stormy Daniels in her legal battle against President Trump — said he submitted a tape purporting to show Kelly engaged in sex acts with an underage girl to authorities last week. CNN reports to have seen the tape; according to the outlet, the tape features the unnamed girl “[referring] to her body parts as 14 years old.”

The New York Times reports that last week, two more women came forward to accuse the singer of sexual abuse and misconduct when they were underage. Kelly’s attorney Steven Greenberg has said that his client “denies that he has engaged in any illegal conduct, of any kind whatsoever.”

Kelly was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008. BuzzFeed reporting from 2017 also alleged that the singer was keeping women against their will in the Chicago and Atlanta areas.

In the aftermath of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly documentary, multiple artists spoke out against the singer and past collaborators distanced themselves for their work together. Among them was Lady Gaga, who apologized for their 2013 team-up, “Do What U Want,” and pledged support for his accusers. Chance the Rapper likewise apologized for working with R. Kelly on “Somewhere In Paradise.” Their collaborative songs with Kelly were removed from some streaming platforms.

This is a developing story. We’ll update as more information becomes available.

Rachael got out of her car, crying as she walked through a foot and a half of snow, looking for a paved road that could take her out of the mountains. 

Instead, she found herself staring into the face of a horse wearing a blanket. 

How did Rachael — in a car with four-wheel drive in an extremely popular tourist destination — find herself stuck on an unpaved road in the snow? Apple Maps. 

Recently, transportation officials and highway patrolmen who manage snowy, mountain roads have a new problem to manage, beyond the usual slick roads: the tendency of real-time navigation apps like Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps to send drivers onto potentially unsafe roads in an effort to find shortcuts or avoid traffic. It got so bad California Highway Patrol was forced to put up a sign. 

Rachael and her partner Thomas (the couple asked Mashable to refer to them by first name only), had taken a trip from Los Angeles to the mountains for a President’s Day Weekend ski trip. When it was time to head back down the mountain on Monday, they checked both Waze and Apple Maps — and realized they weren’t alone. Traffic, just getting to the highway from the town of Big Bear, was horrendous. 

SEE ALSO: Google Maps wants to help you avoid that speeding ticket

Mountain towns and some cities across the country have experienced record snow this February. That’s great for skiers, but massive snowfalls and winter storms falling on travel-heavy President’s Day Weekend also ended up causing what the Big Bear Grizzly described as “traffic nightmares.” 

Navigating that very traffic nightmare, Rachael and Thomas decided to consult both Waze and Apple Maps; the latter guided them toward an unconventional route out of town. The road narrowed and became purely residential, and the snow started to build. Suddenly, a sign informed them that they were on an unpaved road. Rachael got out of the car because she and Thomas truly did not know whether to forge ahead, or cut their losses, and turn back.

Real-time navigation apps attempt to game traffic by sending drivers down side roads to avoid jams on major streets. That might be fine (if occasionally treacherous) in snow-free cities. But in inclement weather, these apps can lead unwitting drivers like Rachael down unpaved, unplowed, or unsafe roads — turning an attempt to avoid traffic into a disaster.

“There have been many instances where navigational traffic apps have outdated or incorrect information which may end up routing motorists to unsafe or non-existent routes,” Ian Hoey, an officer with California Highway Patrol (CHP), said. “This has been an issue for years.”

The problem isn’t limited to California. In January 2018, some tourists in snowy Burlington, Vermont, ended up driving into a lake — after they said Waze directed them to drive along a boat launch.

In addition to potentially putting drivers in harm’s way, the bad situations people can get in by following apps can even make traffic worse: if a car blocks a backroad, cars attempting a similar hack end up getting stuck behind the person with the original bad idea.

The CHP and California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) have been attempting to dissuade travelers from straying from main routes. It’s become a problem for drivers, as well as law enforcement, because when a traveler gets stuck in the snow after following unconventional GPS routes, it often falls to CHP officers to save them. 

“There have been many occurrences of the CHP being called to assist stranded motorists who were ‘just following (my) GPS,‘” Hoey said. 

To get the word out about what these agencies see as the dangers of straying from government-approved routes, multiple CalTrans agencies have been tweeting out advisories to not follow the potentially wayward advice of some GPS services. 

Waze (a Google subsidiary) is duly aware of the issues posed by inclement weather. Google Maps  did not respond to Mashable’s request for comment on this story, and Apple declined to comment on why these predicaments can happen with Apple Maps.

Waze says that its model as a crowd-sourced platform actually has an advantage for navigating in bad weather. It works with state agencies, mapping partners, and users to imbue the app with up-to-the-minute information. 

“Weather situations are very dynamic,” Maiyan Bino, Waze’s crisis response lead, said. “They’re fast moving and unpredictable. So Waze being crowdsourced, we’re able to update the map in real time, and from information from our local map editor community.”

A Waze spokesperson emphasized this capability further.

“Our goal at Waze is to deliver a smooth driving experience to help drivers get anywhere safely and on time,” a Waze spokesperson said. “We have a network of more than 115 million monthly global active users inputting updates directly into the app in real-time. During a crisis or weather-related situation, Waze takes a thoughtful approach to optimizing route planning by taking a number of factors into account — driver input, road conditions, real-time speeds, historical traffic data and more —  to direct drivers to the most efficient, safest route.”

However, this reliance on crowd-sourcing can have its downsides.

“Part of the advantage that we have is that we’re able to get a more wholistic view of the situation,” Bino said. “But if it wasn’t reported, we’re not going to have it.”

This is, of course, perfectly reasonable — there’s no way for an app to be omniscient. In the case of Rachael’s car, perhaps the road would have been a great (if bumpy) alternative if Big Bear hadn’t just experienced an uncommonly heavy snowfall.

“Those apps are great, but unfortunately the weather can change at any given moment,” Inland Division CHP Officer Steve Carapia said.

There are fundamental differences in the way a GPS app, and a government agency, approach navigation. 

The advantage of Waze and other services is that they look at every road, and try to find the most efficient way through. Ordinarily, it can tap alternate routes, as well as community information, to make driving both more “safe” and “efficient.” 

On the other hand, government agencies only advise people to go down the roads that they know are passable. 

In other words, on Waze, if it’s not reported as bad, it’s good. But with CHP, if they don’t know it’s a good road, don’t even try it. 

“If someone needs an alternate route, it is usually because of less than ideal conditions,” Hoey said. “This can result in motorists unknowingly putting themselves and their passengers in harm’s way by traveling into impassable roads with little or no motorist services available.”

Waze says that its goal is to never send people down an unsafe road, and it has extensive partnerships to layer road conditions information into the app. But it still might not be enough in extreme conditions.

“All of these different road qualities are supposed to keep Waze from doing that,” Bino said.

“It’s supposed to keep the user safe.”

CalTrans, the CHP, and experienced mountain navigators don’t eschew technology. Participants in a forum about the Big Bear Area (a major ski location just outside of Los Angeles) keep each other constantly updated on road conditions in a robust (if retro-looking) forum. These participants rely on live video feeds and even satellite images from Google Maps; they do, however, occasionally advise drivers to not rely on apps like Apple Maps.

CalTrans has its own GPS system it recommends to travelers in these situations, called QuickMap. Both an app and a website, it uses a Google Maps interface to surface route and road information directly from CalTrans, and it even incorporates information from Waze. Plus, CalTrains maintains a digital network of signs, and closed circuit cameras that anyone can livestream. Crucially, QuickMap supposedly won’t take you down those snowed-in mountain roads.

“While the Department does not support one company’s navigational traffic application over another as far as accuracy or usefulness, the CHP does endorse the real-time traffic application QuickMap, which is the official California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) traffic information app,” Hoey said.

Traffic and treacherous conditions aren’t something you can necessarily get around — a mindset that’s difficult to accept in our Waze and Google Maps era of shortcuts. But when the reality of getting in trouble to save time sinks in, traffic might just sound like a better option.

“I would have rather gone the paved way for sure,” Rachael said. “I wouldn’t care how much longer it would have taken, because there was really a point when I was like, we’re not going to get off this mountain.”

“He said, well, it’s not my fault if you die.”

After looking the horse square in the face, Rachael returned to her car, where she and Thomas planned to turn around, head back into town, and brave the main, bumper-to-bumper route to the highway. But then, a caravan of more cars approached; apparently their GPS applications had taken them down her wayward road, too. 

Among the caravan was someone Rachael described as a “mountain man.” He sized up the situation, and realized it might be more treacherous to turn back, given the pile-up. So, in a snow tire-equipped Jeep, he forged a path for Rachael, Thomas, and the rest of the cars to make the “shortcut” passable — but not before leaving Rachael with a final word of advice.

“He got us out of that, and wished us well,” Rachael said. “Before he let us out, after he helped us turn back around, he said, well, it’s not my fault if you die.”

Meanwhile, the wild February weather continues, with snow coming down in Las Vegas and even Los Angeles. Remember Waze users, being stuck in traffic isn’t always the worst thing in the world. 

Bill Hader’s assassin-turned-actor Barry Berkman continues to unravel in the Barry Season 2 trailer. 

He’s working on a new play while still keeping his dark past a secret from love interest Sally (Sarah Goldberg) and acting coach Gene (Henry Winkler), whose girlfriend he may or may not have killed in the Season 1 finale. It also looks like he’s teamed up with Noho Hank to form “Team Badass.” 

The trailer has references to Charles Manson, Ariana Grande’s thank u, next, lots of laughs and violence. In short, I’m excited.

HBO’s acclaimed comedy, which earned Hader and Winkler their Emmy awards last year, returns on March 31. 

We may not have flying cars but sex robots are definitely a thing that exist and they’re becoming increasingly popular, even in porn searches. according to the adult website xHamster, there is an  upward trend of searches for sex robots on its website. 

In 2017, the site saw 21,402 total sex robot searches, a 60 percent jump over 2016’s total of 13,339. December 2017 was that year’s biggest month, with over 3,900 searches. 

And in 2018, there were 36,709 total sex robot searches on xHamster, an increase of 72 percent over 2017 and an increase of 175 percent over 2016, quite a healthy jump in a short amount of time. January 2018 is the biggest single month for xHamster and sex robot searches so far with nearly 6,200 total searches.

Alex Hawkins, VP of xHamster, noted that even though 2018 saw the highest number of total searches, 2017 was the biggest year for sex robot searches as a percentage of overall searches on xHamster. “We have seen a small decrease in 2018-2019, but expect searches to remain increased from the searches in 2016.”

Still, it’s a pretty clear upward trend that looks like it’ll continue to grow.

SEE ALSO: I went on a date with a CES robot. He was nice.

This may all seem a bit out of left field but it’s actually a growing trend that’s slipping more and more into the mainstream. Match’s 2018 “Singles in America” survey found that 31 percent of men and 15 percent of women would have sex with a robot. Additionally, 56 percent of women and 39 percent of men who responded to that survey said they’d consider their partner having sex with a robot to be cheating. 

Sex robots are also becoming a business tool to reckon with in the sex industry. A proposed sex robot brothel in Houston, Texas ran head-first into controversy in 2018 and was eventually banned by local government. But that particular corner of the market is still finding traction elsewhere: by late 2018, there were already two of these establishments open in Toronto.

And then there’s the growing number of tech companies that are focused on actually creating and building the robots, an arms race to create the best sex robot experience. 

This doesn’t even take into account the ongoing — and growing — debate about the moral and ethical issues surrounding the sex robot industry, from what actually constitutes a sex robot, to the stigma attached to the idea of sex robots, all the way to (ugh, deep breath) builders being able to create their own childlike sex robots.