Hasta La Gadget!

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Suspended President Dilma Rousseff will make a last stand in Brazil’s Senate on Monday in an impeachment trial that is widely expected to remove her from office and end more than a decade of leftist rule by her Workers Party.

Rousseff, who is being impeached on charges of breaking budget laws, has denied wrongdoing and denounced the nine-month impeachment process that has paralyzed Brazilian politics as a conspiracy to overthrow her and roll back policies that have favored Brazil’s poor during 13 years of Workers Party governments.

But a deep recession that many Brazilians blame her for and a huge corruption scandal involving state-run energy company Petrobras have undermined Rousseff’s popularity since she was re-elected in 2014.

Her vice president, Michel Temer, has been interim president since mid-May, when Rousseff was suspended after Congress decided it would continue the impeachment process that began in the lower house.

If the Senate convicts Rousseff on Tuesday or Wednesday as expected, Temer, 75, will be sworn in to serve out the rest of her term through 2018. His business-friendly government vows to take unpopular austerity measures to plug a growing fiscal deficit that cost Brazil its investment-grade credit rating last year.

“She will appeal to undecided senators to respect democracy and stop the coup that is under way,” a spokesman for Rousseff told Reuters. “She is in good spirits.”

In her 30-minute speech, the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Rousseff, 68, would point to a lifetime fighting for democracy, from her arrest and torture by a military dictatorship for belonging to a left-wing guerrilla group to election as Brazil’s first female president.

Twenty of her former Cabinet ministers will support her from the Senate gallery, along with her political mentor and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, founder of the Workers Party.

With the odds stacked against her, Rousseff’s testimony appears to be aimed at making a point for the history books that her impeachment was a travesty rather than a bid to sway the 81-seat Senate to block her eviction from office.

FIFTY-FOUR VOTES NEEDED TO CONVICT

Temer is confident he has the two-thirds of the chamber needed to remove Rousseff, and he has planned an address to the nation on Wednesday before heading to China to attend the summit of the G20 group of leading economies.

“We need 54 votes, and we expect to get at least 60,” Temer’s press spokesman, Marcio de Freitas, told Reuters.

He said the more votes Temer got, the stronger would be his mandate to take the difficult measures needed to restore confidence in Brazil’s economy, caught in a two-year recession.

A survey published by O Globo newspaper on Sunday showed 53 senators would vote against Rousseff and only 18 would back her – 10 short of the 28 she needs to avoid being ousted. Ten senators have not stated a position or were not polled.

Even senators not convinced the accounting charges brought against Rousseff warrant her impeachment have decided to vote against her because they see her return to the presidency prolonging Brazil’s political crisis.

“I will vote against her even though I think it is a tragedy to get rid of an elected president, but another 2-1/2 years of a Dilma government would be worse,” centrist Senator Cristovam Buarque said in a phone interview.

Rousseff has lost her base of support in Congress and can no longer run the country effectively, he said.

Senator Helio Jose, who was the Rousseff government’s deputy whip in the Senate, has not declared his vote. But he said in a telephone interview that Temer was doing a good job restoring stability since he took over from Rousseff.

“I don’t think the return of President Dilma would be good for the country. Temer has built support in Congress to pass austerity measures we need to recover confidence and draw investment to Brazil,” he said.

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ANKER is pleased to release their newest Bluetooth speaker, the SoundCore mini. Measuring only W67mm x D67mm x H67mm and weighing just 215 grams, this palm-sized wireless speaker is equipped with a built-in noise-canceling microphone for hands-free calls, an FM radio, a microSD card slot, a micro-USB charging port, an AUX in port and a passive subwoofer.

Powered by a built-in 1800mAh battery (up to 15 hours of continuous music playback), the SoundCore mini can deliver a maximum power output of 5W and makes use of Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity (up to 20 meters of connection distance). The ANKER SoundCore mini is available now for 2,999 Yen (about $29). [Product Page]

The post ANKER SoundCore mini Bluetooth Speaker Released appeared first on TechFresh, Consumer Electronics Guide.

The title of this post is already going to get me in trouble–anyone who tries to speak of “millennials” as an homogenous population is already engaging in a ridiculous level of reductionism. So let’s posit at the outset that the phenomena I am about to describe apply to some not-very-clearly defined sub-set of this not-very-clearly-defined generational cohort.

Now let’s talk about two polls that came out in the past few weeks. The first one got a flurry of attention. This was the Pew Research poll that asked respondents to choose between one of two propositions: “Significant obstacles still make it harder for women to get ahead than men” or “Obstacles that made it harder for women to get ahead are largely gone”. This was a poll carried out by a highly reputable agency with a large and scientifically selected sample (N>2300). The results were startling, and not for the reasons one might expect. 56% of men and 34% of women overall chose the “largely gone” answer. Among self-described Republicans these numbers were 75% of men and 50% of women, among self-described Democrats the numbers were 39% and 23% respectively. Nothing too startling there.

But then the researchers reported a further breakdown by age cohort. Here’s where things get weird. Among Democratic-leaning men ages 35-49, 34% chose the “largely gone” answer. Among Democratic-leaning men ages 18-34 – in other words, Millenials – 52% chose the “largely gone” response.

That result is semi-astonishing. The researchers hypothesized that the results reflect lack of life experience: thus as men and women get older and spend more time in the workplace, they observe more examples of obstacles to women’s advancement. It’s a perfectly plausible partial explanation and it is consistent with the rest of the results that showed for both men and women and across party affiliations older respondents were more likely than the youngest group to select the “significant obstacles” answer. So there’s that. It is also possible that there is a certain defensiveness involved (“if I got that promotion it’s because I deserved it more than she did”)which declines when one is less actively competing for advancement.

The problem with either of those explanations is that they imply that the only source of perceptions about sexism or presumably a broad range of other social phenomena is personal experience. Peer interactions, social media, news stories, movies and TV programs, education … none of these have any influence at all on perceptions of societal sexism? Or is it that these are the elements preventing that recognition, that are only overcome by long exposure to the harsh realities of life on the ground?

Then there’s another poll that deserves discussion. This one was privately commissioned by Pershing LLC and carried out by Harris. Again, this was a poll with a large sample (N>2000) conducted by a highly reputable polling agency. The purpose of the poll was to study attitudes toward leadership in business. The results were interesting: across the board, respondents indicated a preference for styles of leadership that in earlier eras might have been coded “feminine”. Leaders should be good listeners, take advice, work collaboratively, be sensitive to the feelings and needs of those around them, etc. And 77% of respondents identified these as characteristics associated with women.

Then the survey asked another set of questions. Respondents were asked whether they were “comfortable” with the idea of women in various positions of authority. Among 18-34 year old men, for example, 79% said they comfortable with women as teachers. But only 43% of men ages 18-34 were comfortable with women as U.S. Senators (43%). And even smaller numbers of Millennial men were comfortable with the idea of women as Fortune 500 executives (39%), President of the United States (35%), or engineers (34%).

The President response has obvious political implications. Senators is strange given that there are no fewer than 20 women in the Senate right now (there have been 46 throughout our history). But … engineers? Two thirds of Millennial men responding to this survey were not willing to say they were comfortable with the idea of women as engineers?? Keep in mind that these are the same people who previously stated a preference for leadership attributes that they, themselves, associate with women.

Once again, let me acknowledge that it is wrong to speak of Millennial men as an homogenous category. (I showed these two studies to one Millennial man I know; his response was “I hate my species.” Which I thought was a little strong, but certainly made his feelings clear.) And analyzing the sources and consequences of these attitudes goes way beyond this blog post. But I think there exists at least a segment of the Millennial generation who can be described as having a bro problem.

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Rihanna started off the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards with a bang and lots of bubblegum pink. 

The “Work” singer started off the show with four of her classic pop hits, “Don’t Stop the Music,” “Only Girl In The World,” “We Found Love” and “Where Have You Been.”

She slayed. 

For her second performance, Rihanna brought the crowd to the club with a remix of her 2009 hit “Rude Boy,” followed by “What’s My Name” and a complete performance of “Work.” 

Yes, this is what we came for: 

Rih opened her third act of the night with a pitchy rendition of “Needed Me” and a massive black coat. She ditched her coat and turned things up with “Pour It Up” and “Bitch Better Have My Money,” accompanied by backup dancers in thigh-high black boots and and straight jacket-like tops. 

Stay tuned as we update this post after the rest of Rihanna’s performances. 

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Raise your hand if you don’t know how to react to Kanye West’s speech at MTV Video Music Awards:

This year, MTV allotted four minutes of the ceremony to Kanye, as if that would’ve stopped him from taking over the VMAs however he saw fit. West didn’t provide updates on his presidential plans (pls save us), but his speech did check most of the Kanye’s public speaking boxes: Taylor Swift, a shoutout to Kim, musing on his own importance, bros galore, a Beyoncé compliment and a reminder of how “blessed” we all are. 

After explaining the concept behind his controversial “Famous” video, West used some startling statistics about Chicago’s homicide victims to put his whole feud with Taylor Swift in perspective. 

“Last week there was 22 people murdered in Chicago,” he told the audience. “You know, like, people come up to me like, ‘Man, that’s right… Take Taylor? I love all y’all. That’s why I called her!” 

But before he outstayed his welcome, he introduced his new music video for “Fade,” featuring a sweaty workout session, apparently a theme for this year’s ceremony.

“Tonight, we’re here to have fun. I’m standing in front of my idol Puff Daddy. I’m standing in front of my wife Kim Kardashian West. I’m standing in front of the future, Chance the Rapper. 2 Chainz. Jayden Smith. Bro. We are undeniably the influence, the thought leaders. I’m gonna play y’all a piece of my art. And I just hope you all have a good time.”

The video is now exclusively on TIDAL. 

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