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He Became A Celebrity For Putting Science Before God. Now Lawrence Krauss Faces Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct.

BuzzFeed News has learned that the incident with Hensley is one of many wide-ranging allegations of Krauss’s inappropriate behavior over the last decade — including groping women, ogling and making sexist jokes to undergrads, and telling an employee at Arizona State University, where he is a tenured professor, that he was going to buy her birth control so she didn’t inconvenience him with maternity leave. In response to complaints, two institutions — Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario — have quietly restricted him from their campuses. Our reporting is based on official university documents, emails, and interviews with more than 50 people.

Many of his accusers have requested anonymity, fearing professional or legal retaliation from Krauss, or online abuse from men in the movement who have smeared women for speaking out about other skeptics. A few allegations about Krauss made their way onto skeptic blogs, but were quickly taken down in fear of legal action. So for years, these stories have stayed inside whisper networks in skepticism and physics.

In lengthy emails to BuzzFeed News, Krauss denied all of the accusations against him, calling them “false and misleading defamatory allegations.” When asked why multiple women, over more than a decade, have separately accused him of misconduct, he said the answer was “obvious”: It’s because his provocative ideas have made him famous.

So excited to be meeting Chairman Kim Jong-un of North Korea. For a Summit about denuking -- denuclearization -- very important. Something no President has ever done. Time & place TBD, we'll do it by May. It will be a great meeting. And the menu will have American food.

UPDATE: going to check with my Staff about this. More info later!

Her "International Woman's Day" emojis have sparked an online backlash

Kim Kardashian's decision to launch a "women's empowerment" add-on to her personal emoji collection for International Women's Day has received a considerable online backlash.

The collection features slogans such as "nasty woman", "my body, my choice" and "full time feminist".

Some on social media celebrated the move as positive promotion of ideals of equality. Others accused the personality of hypocrisy because her other products and emojis are provocative and sexualised.

I am for them and I think a lot of them understand that. You know, I won many categories of women and the women vote in the election, and people were shocked to see it. I was running against a woman and I’m winning all of these categories. So many women came out to celebrate my inauguration. Very big march in Washington, one of the biggest crowds ever for an inauguration. And I think I would do even better right now.

Women have the best unemployment numbers that they’ve had in 17 years. And they’re doing tremendously in business, they’re doing tremendously in so many ways. And people are starting to see that.

I also think they want to feel safe at the border. I think they want to see our military get much stronger. Women want to see strong law enforcement. I’m very much a law-and-order person. There’s nobody better than me on the military. I think women really like that. Very proud of our women soldiers and pilots. I think they want to be safe at home, in many different respects. They want us to win the war on opioids. And above all they want us to be energy independent. So we don't go into so many wars in the Middle East.

I think we have to evolve. If we don’t evolve, there’s something missing. But I have tremendous respect for women. You see all of the women I have working around me and working with me. Tremendous respect for women.

But I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone. I think people have to go out, they have to go out and really do it, and they have to win. And women are doing great, and I’m happy about that.

Good news, folks. I'm moving very strongly on DRAINING THE SWAMP. Because I asked Gary Cohn to resign as my economic advisor. He's registered as a Democrat. And he has a long, sad history with Goldman Sachs, part of the global power structure, the global special interests, that have total control over Crooked Hillary, Lyin' Ted and so many of our politicians. Globalization has made the financial elite, who donate to politicians, very, very wealthy. I used to be one of them. I hate to say it, but I used to be one. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache. Gary wouldn't play ball on my beautiful new tariffs. He stood with the elites.

We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements and cheat in every way imaginable, and our politicians did nothing about it. Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result. I have visited cities and towns across this country where one-third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years. Today, we import nearly $800 billion more in goods than we export. We can’t continue to do that. This is not some natural disaster, it’s a political and politician-made disaster. Very simple. And it can be corrected and we can correct it fast when we have people with the right thinking. Right up here. It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism. This is a direct affront to our founding fathers. America wanted to be strong. They wanted this country to be strong. They wanted to be independent and they wanted it to be free.

And listen to this. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln -- nobody knows this, but he was a Republican -- warned that "the abandonment of the protective policy by the American government will produce WANT AND RUIN among our people." He understood it much better than our current politicians, that’s why he was Abraham Lincoln, I guess. Right?

Our founding fathers understood trade much better than our current politicians, believe me. When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians have proven, folks, have proven they do nothing. We need to be one team, one people, one American family. Because all the other Countries are against us. I'm getting a fair deal for the American people. Now, it’s time for the American people to take back their future. Going to take it back. The era of economic surrender is finally OVER!

Coca-Cola plans to launch its first alcoholic drink

Coca-Cola is planning to produce an alcoholic drink for the first time in the company's 125-year history - with an alcopop-style product in Japan. It is keen to cash in on the country's growing taste for Chu-Hi - canned sparkling flavoured drinks given a kick with a local spirit called shochu. The product is typically between 3% and 8% alcohol by volume.

A senior Coke executive in Japan said the move was a "modest experiment for a specific slice of our market". "We haven't experimented in the low alcohol category before, but it's an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas," said Jorge Garduno, Coca-Cola's Japan president. It was unlikely the drink would be sold outside of Japan, he suggested.

Some BBC commenterds want to ban alcopops.

Also at NPR and CNBC.

Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2018?

Which version of XKeyscore are we running on?

This one is probably going to catch me a lot of heat from both the extremes, as it touches on that most sensitive and landmine-laden of topics: gender identity and the expressions thereof.

First, the parts which are going to piss the TERFs off: I am a proudly cisgender, XX-chromosome-having ("womyn-born-womyn" as they'd say) lesbian, with a strict policy of dating only other lesbians (after some bad experiences with bisexual women)...and I am also trans-inclusive. This is going to draw the usual predictable howls of outrage, and might even get me called "traitor to the lesbian race."

*Again.*

Because yes, that is a thing that happened once. Satire sometimes writes itself.

Incidentally, if someone knows where the lesbian race lives, please by all means send me a couple of plane tickets; I'm getting married soon and would love to have the reception there. Hopefully it's somewhere with nice beaches!

And now the parts which are going to annoy non-TERFs: some of the TERF arguments hold more water than their detractors give them credit for. In particular:

1) There are biological differences between the sexes. Note that this does *not* mean I believe transwomen and transmen are deluded or faking their lived experiences; it means that gender is not purely a "social construct," that one's brain structure and hormones play heavily into it. Incidentally, this is *not* an anti-trans argument. If anything, this is the reason I support trans* people in their transitions. Nature screwed up somewhere and put the wrong sort of mind/brain in the wrong sort of body. I can't imagine what that's like, but I can take their word for it, and having seen the real, positive changes in trans* friends of mine once they started hormones only cements this support.

Again: not being a gender essentialist here, and certainly not committing that stupid "physical sex and/or chromosome cohort *is* gender" fallacy. I'm on your side, I'm just not going to fall for the stupid, mush-headed "thinking" that attempts to reduce something as complex as gender to "just a social construct." Real data has borne out that this is not the case.

2) Trans* people do not have the lived experiences of cisgender people of the sex they are attempting to pass as. Transwomen: you do not bleed, you did not go through female puberty as a child/young teenager, you will never be pregnant, and you were not seen by society at large--this is different from "not seen by molesters and paedophiles!"--as potentially and primarily objects of convenience, sexual and otherwise, for men.

3) Expanding on 2 above, I support cisgender-women-only spaces. This does not mean I don't view you, transwomen, as "real women." Your experiences are your own, and if you feel so badly mismatched to your body that you want to change it, to me, that is enough to qualify you as "real women." Just...not cisgender women. Again, different life experiences.

So please, if some of us want *some* space that's not dealing with trans* issues, please, please, give us that. You can be in the inclusive spaces, and even start transwomen-only spaces; I will not intrude on those, because I do not have your lived experiences, and can't imagine what you've been through. I only ask that you extend us the same courtesy.

4) Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist. I am a lesbian. I like ladybits. This means I'm not going to date a pre-operative MtF, no matter how well she passes otherwise. We can be friends, but we're never going to have sex. Of course, this one is a moot point *anyway* since I'm already taken, but even hypothetically, it's not going to happen. It's not personal, but it's also not negotiable.

5) Surgery does not change your chromosomes or your lived experiences. This is actually not anywhere near as important as TERFs make it out to be, since at least to my mind, most of gender and gender identity is performative anyway. I'm also not saying to feel invalid or less of a human because of who and what you are. But at the same time, understand that history is history, and it can't be retroactively changed.

Just understand that the social transition is going to be bigger than the physical one for you. We can spot otherwise well-passing early-stage transitioning MtFs very well based not on any physical cues, but based on behavior. It takes time to lose that male privilege, and understandably, some of you are going to be reluctant to let it go. It sucks on this side of the gender divide sometimes.

6) Please understand that much of the backlash from the TERF camp is because women have always, always, always been marginalized and shoved aside for mens' interests, and some of us feel that men are intruding *even as they become women.* There's hardly any discussion of FtM people compared to MtF, and I don't hear hardly anything about FtMs having trouble integrating into groups composed of cisgender men the way MtFs tend to kind of stomp all over womens' spaces sometimes (in my observation, mostly early in transition).

The reasons for this are probably complicated. They likely have something to do with male being the "default," so FtMs are basically going from other and different to default, if not "normal." And the MtF friends i have, both of them, both told me there was a tremendous backlash against them for abandoning being male, mostly backed up by "WHY would you want to be a chick?!" with the unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck."

I am, again, not a TERF, and I will defend you against them in all arenas. In return, please keep the above in mind.

This all sounds reasonable enough, right? In the end, doesn't it just boil down to the golden rule, treating others as they want to be treated, taking their basic humanity (a level well below gender expression, mind you!) into account? But I'm sure this is going to catch me more flames than a California wildfire. So be it; I'm wearing my asbestos nightie. Have at it.

So here we are, once again being the alternative to the "other site", which seems to have crapped itself, but we still have our own problems. Yes, I have gone on about them for maybe way too much, but I wanted to bring up one nicety of SoylentNews that is honored in the breach. Notification of submissions rejected.

For Example:

We're sorry, your submission "Here’s How an Alt-Right Troll Auditions for Survivor" was declined for the following reason:
Journal for this - not worthy of the front page--JR

Now I love JR, or janrinok, he is my favorite editor, he tries to stay true to the ideal that was SoylentNews, but I have to ask, not worthy, why? Us submitters could use some more constructive criticism! Is it just that once again, I was critical of the alt-right? Knowing that would help. Or was it that the submission was about broadcast TV? Was that the reason? Not enough to go on, even for a 2400 year old philosopher!

And then there is the boilerplate:

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

For some reason, in my particular case, I feel that this is less than sincere. I have resubmitted, with the limited guidance given by the eds, and had the re-submission also rejected. Oh, poor aristarchus! Doomed to a level of Dante's hell where the editors are the authorities, and they can make decisions based on things we know not of. So I guess I will put something about how there are boobies, a la TMB, on Survivor, with the alt-right rejected because there are never any boobies in alt-right things at all because it is just like the scene in the Blues Brothers, where the Illinois Nazis were plummeting to their death, and the second in command, cmn32480, says, "I have always loved you." So, there is that.

Now is the time for all good Soylentils to come to the aid of their news aggregating website! We need more balance, more inclusiveness, less right-wing fanbois bubbling! We could use an aristarchus submissions, not because he will just submit more and make us look like a bunch of right-wing dweebs, but because there is a viable, majority, sane and everyday position out there that thinks the alt right needs to be hung out to dry. Let the racist bastards speak, I say. And my submissions are the one way to do so. If the eds reject them, they have made the bed in which they will lie. Not a good bed. Roll over, and there is Milo? Do you really want that?

Exclusive: Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast

Crystal River teacher hosts white nationalist podcast, HuffPost reports

Meanwhile:

Here Are 911 Transcripts of Some of the Times Apple Employees Walked Directly Into Glass Walls