Hasta La Gadget!

The film The Circle actors Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, and Patton Oswalt sat down for a chat today live on Twitter. Right this minute we’ve got a recap of that chat, including the full chat as re-posted to Twitter through Periscope. This film is essentially about a single company that represents such tech titans as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, … Continue reading

A homeless shelter in New York has become a source of sisterhood, thanks to a new Girl Scouts troop formed for the girls living there.

Troop 6000 is made up of 22 girls who live in the Sleep Inn in Queens, which has been turned into a shelter for homeless families. The youngest scout is in kindergarten, and the oldest is a sophomore in high school. Every Friday they come together, the older girls being mentors for the younger ones and leading the meetings, which are also held at the Sleep Inn.

Meridith Maskara, chief operating officer of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, told The Huffington Post these girls are helping others look past the stigma of homelessness.

“There’s a stereotype we’ve all had consciously or subconsciously about when we hear the word ‘homeless,’ and all of a sudden there’s a shattering of this stereotype with this troop,” she said.

The Girl Scouts of Greater New York collaborated with the Department of Homeless Services to form the group after New York City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer thought of the idea. He joined a group of Girl Scouts in November to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter for women, which sparked the idea for Troop 6000. He hopes to expand the troop throughout New York City. 

“I’ve met the members of Troop 6000, who all live in a shelter in my district, and I can tell you that they have big dreams,” he said in a statement. “They are our future engineers, fashion designers, athletes, doctors, activists, and community leaders. With Troop 6000, these girls now have a place to realize these dreams, find stability, make lifelong friends, and discover the strength they have inside to be whoever they want to be. Troop 6000 is just about the most right thing I’ve ever been a part of, and I’m committed to its expansion all across New York City.”

Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks echoed Van Bramer’s dedication to bringing the troop and its values to more girls in the city. 

“These scouts embody the heart, smarts, and spirit of New York, which is fundamentally compassionate, and we look forward to expanding this partnership to other shelters across the City to empower and uplift more young New Yorkers,” he said.

Troop 6000 is also led by women who live in the shelter, including Giselle Burgess, a single mom who helped form the troop for her daughters and brought it to the Sleep Inn shelter.

Thanks to the Girl Scouts of Greater New York (which accepts donations), the girls in Troop 6000 have all their costs covered so they can have vests and earn badges and do everything that other troops do. Troop 6000 did not participate in selling cookies this year since it was formed after cookie sales began, but the girls’ other programs focus on outdoor skills and life skills as well as financial literacy and advocacy. 

Maskara has seen firsthand what the consistency of the Friday meetings and the social setting have brought to the girls. She told HuffPost that being a part of Troop 6000 has been “transformative” for all of them. 

“They are amazing young women who have incredible dreams and goals and aspirations,” she said. “They start believing that they can do this in spite of their home situation right now. They’re supportive of each other, and they are a group of sisters that will be in each other’s lives forever. I can confidently say that.”

Learn more about Troop 6000 from the Girl Scouts of Greater New York.

The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting. 

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What a tool.

Last week, Samsung posted a photo of its latest phone release, the Galaxy S8, on its Twitter page. In the caption, the company encouraged its fans to share the first photo they took with the new phone.

Many of the tweets were pretty cute.

Then that guy, who goes by the Twitter handle, @savEdward, decided to pipe up and make a that joke.

But Samsung wasn’t having any of that. The company decided to respond to @savEdward with a simple yet effective emoji.

Needless to say, Twitter was quick to sing Samsung’s praises.

Well played, Samsung. Well played.

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May 14 is Mother’s Day, and if your mom wants a way to celebrate her favorite fandom, we’ve got some ideas.

Whether she proudly wears her “Harry Potter” Hogwarts house colors or just can’t get enough of “Star Wars,” moms wanting some geeky gifts this year are in luck. 

Here are 17 Mother’s Day gifts and cards for moms to rep their fandoms:

All prices reflect what was advertised at time of publishing.

The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting. 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Just three days before the French would cast their votes in the first round of an election with potential drastic effects for the future of the country, a French national from an eastern Paris suburb shot dead a policeman and wounded two others on Paris’ famed Champs Elysées.

The gunman, identified as 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi, was well known to authorities and had been arrested earlier this year, suspected of planning an attack on police. The so-described Islamic State was quick to claim responsibility for the shooting, although it remains unclear to what extent the militant group was involved.

France was already on heightened alert that week. Last Tuesday, in the port city of Marseille, authorities detained two young men, both French nationals, suspected of planning to carry out a violent attack related to the presidential campaign. Police found guns and bomb materials, as well as a video in which one of the men claimed allegiance to ISIS.

With polls indicating a neck-and-neck race between four front-runners, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and conservative contender François Fillon jumped on the incidents to highlight their hawkish proposals on national security.

Le Pen doubled down on her anti-immigration argument, vowing that if elected she would reinstate border checks and expel foreigners who are on the watch lists of intelligence services. Fillon, who had steered to the right throughout the campaign hoping to woo some of Le Pen’s supporters, said the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be at the top of the next president’s list of priorities. 

Even U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in. “Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.  

But in fact, last week’s attack and arrests had little or no effect on the results in the first round, according to previous poll predictions, and experts say that should come as no surprise.

“I don’t think that attack had any electoral effect,” Mabel Berezin, a professor at Cornell University who writes on European politics, told HuffPost on Monday. “The polls were remarkably consistent.”

With 97 percent of votes counted, centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron decisively won Sunday’s first round with 23.9 percent of votes. Macron will meet hardliner Le Pen in the runoff on May 7. Le Pen took home 21.4 percent of the votes. Conservative Fillon and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon were eliminated, with 19.9 and 19.6 percent respectively.

The results were in line with predictions prior to the terror incidents. An Ipsos poll released 10 days ahead of the vote, predicted Macron and Le Pen would each win around 22 percent, Mélenchon 20 percent and Fillon 19 percent.

While some research suggests that conservative or right-wing parties could benefit at the polls following terror attacks, Ignacio Lago, an associate professor of political science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, told HuffPost that only a few of the variables that usually play a role in shifting public perception actually applied to France’s case.

Lago pointed to three main factors. First, research suggests voters usually rally around the flag after a terror attack, and that effect generally benefits the incumbent, regardless of his or her political affiliation. “Terrorist attacks are good for incumbents, that’s the rule,” Lago explained.

Think back to November 2015, when a group of gunmen stormed bars, restaurants, a soccer stadium and a concert hall across Paris in an ISIS-plot, killing up to 130 people. President François Hollande, who was deeply unpopular at the time of the attack, saw his support grow in the aftermath.

Secondly, Lago says, how an incumbent responds to the tragedy is a critical factor in voters’ opinions. When the Spanish ruling party initially responded to the 2004 Madrid terror attack by mistakenly blaming Basque separatists, rather than al-Qaeda, voters turned against them at the polls.

In France, incumbent President Hollande was not running, nullifying both the rallying effect and the importance of his response.

Thirdly, size matters. While a tragic event, the extent of Thursday’s shooting in Paris was small compared to some of the massive attacks France has suffered in recent years. Since January 2015, individual terrorists and groups of militants have attacked the offices satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people; taken hostages at a kosher supermarket, killing four; carried out a large coordinated assault in Paris, leaving 130 dead; attacked the home of a policeman, killing him and his partner; and mowed down at least 84 people celebrating Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice.

“At a certain point with these collective traumas … you reach a kind of threshold and people have taken their emotional position on it.” Berezin, the Cornell University Professor, said.  

Finally, the frequency of threats also played a role in the way voters responded at the polls on Sunday. Professor Christophe Chowanietz, an expert on France’s response to terrorism, suggested in a 2009 University of Montreal research paper that there’s less of a rallying effect if attacks occur on a regular basis. Opposition parties will begin to openly criticize the country’s leaders for failing to stop repeated attacks.

In the case of France this week, Chowanietz said, criticizing the government’s approach to the attacks did not win the candidates an edge over one another. “The incumbent isn’t running, so you can’t score points attacking Hollande for not keeping France safe. He doesn’t care, he’s out of a job in five weeks anyway,” Chowanietz said.   

Instead, candidates like Le Pen and Fillon hammered voters with their own plans for addressing security, but few of those proposals were actually new to voters. In addition, there were serious questions whether border controls, like Le Pen would like to see, would do much to stem the tide of attacks by radicalized French nationals. “It becomes empty rhetoric: close the borders and things like that. It’s nothing new,” Chowanietz said.

Le Pen and Macron will face off in the final round of voting on May 7 and while France’s security and history of terror attacks will be an issue for the campaigns, analysts say it would take a much larger terror attack to have a chance at swaying the vote.

“Had it been a massive attack where 10, 20 people were killed then the dynamic could have been different,” Chowanietz said.

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