Hasta La Gadget!

Verizon has announced the launch of a new Unlimited Plan for its prepaid customers. This builds upon the company’s recent launch of an Unlimited plan for post-paid customers; through it, Verizon prepaid subscribers receive unlimited data, text and minutes. The service isn’t without fine print, however, and those contemplating a transition to this new prepaid plan should read carefully before … Continue reading

Streaming set-top-boxes and sticks are available widely on websites like eBay, and many of them are preinstalled with ‘piracy add-ons’ that make it easy to watch content outside the bounds of legal sites. A particularly popular example is the Amazon Fire Stick jailbroken with Kodi installed, which is itself used to access illegally-provided TV shows and movies through various repos. … Continue reading

Go watch the video of Rodney King being beaten. Really watch it. You’ll see eight brutal minutes of an unarmed black man being kicked, clubbed, and tasered within an inch of his life by LAPD officers ― men sworn to protect and serve.

When the clandestinely shot video of King’s beating came out in 1991, it sent shockwaves throughout the entire country, sparking a conversation about racial bias and police brutality. The four police officers charged in the King beating were acquitted, and the city saw one of the most destructive riots in American history. 

April 29th will mark the 25th anniversary of the LA riots, 25 years since a mirror was held up to the face of America and revealed a grotesque reflection. Anniversaries are about looking back. They are about legacy. But what is the legacy of the three days of carnage that ensued back then, sending much of Los Angeles into a deluge of violence, looting, and burning buildings? 

In their new National Geographic documentary “LA92,” filmmakers T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay go in-depth to explore the legacy of the riots, forgoing the usual talking heads and experts and using only raw, unedited archival footage, leaving it up to the audience to make up their minds about the meaning of the riots. 

There’s a moment in the documentary, one day into the deluge, where a Korean shop owner defiantly defends her store from a band of black and Latino looters.

“This is America!” She screams at the crowd. “This is America!”

The moment, is the film, and the riots themselves, in microcosm. In other words ― the riots were complicated, and messy. They weren’t just black-and-white. The underlying tensions weren’t just about the beating, but the racist justice system that allowed the cops to go free and, just a year earlier, Korean shop owner Soon Ja Du to go free in the senseless killing of Latasha Harlins. 

I spoke with T.J. Martin and Dan Lindsay about what they learned about the riots in retelling this story on film ― and what America has yet to learn. 

HuffPost: The film opens and closes with black-and-white footage from the Watts Riots on 1965, which juxtapose in such a stunning way with the LA Riots which took place decades later. There’s this sense of history repeating itself. Why do you think this keeps happening ― the beatings and killings of unarmed black folk, and the subsequent unrest?

Dan Lindsay: Our country has never reconciled the inherent contradictions of its founding. The people that wrote the document that said all men are created equal owned human beings. That’s just mind-blowing. As a country, we’ve never been able to reconcile that. And as long as we continue to have marginalized communities that don’t have a voice, as long as that happens, you shouldn’t be surprised if uprisings or unrest happen. It’s happened throughout all human history, throughout all of the world, from the same circumstances.

HP: The film is derived entirely from archival footage of news broadcasts, court videos, aerial footage and so on. What was the reasoning behind that, and what was the process like to organize all those hours of footage into a cohesive narrative? 

T.J. Martin: We wanted to take a unique approach that would maybe inspire a unique perspective, and ultimately create a new way of thinking about these events. We didn’t want the the filter of an expert telling you what you think. It was less about deconstructing the anatomy of the events. It became much more immersive as an experience.

DL: We wanted to challenge the audience to begin thinking about these things, to have conversations, to ask the question: What do we need to do to make it so this never happens again? Because clearly we tend to have these cycles of things. We deal with it for a little bit, then everybody goes back to their lives.

HP: There are a lot of interesting moments with the media in this film, little vignettes where we see anchors right before going live, adjusting their hair and doing their makeup before launching into somber broadcasts. What do you think the role of the media was, and continues to be, in conversations about police brutality?

DL: That was a really intentional device because we had concerns that, not all of this, but a lot of this, was created by the media. The media was complicit in creating the events that led to this. We wanted to find a way to imply the idea and that was showing the getting ready. It indicates the facade of the media. It’s presentation. It’s business as usual. To us, that’s representative of America. We have this facade, this image we sell, that we don’t necessarily live up to. 

HP: It’s been 25 years since the riots, and while we haven’t had anything as destructive as that happen again ― there’s a sense that it’s only a matter of time. What, to you, is the legacy of the riots?

 T.J.:  I think what came out of it was for a short moment, an engaged conversation on race and class. But that same short engaged moment of conversation happened after 65 Watts. That same short engaged moment of conversation happened during the race riots in Detroit. These spurts operate as fads. It’s a symptom and also an extension of the problem. I don’t know about legacy. To me I just think of [the L.A. riots] as one chapter of an ongoing story.

 HP: What’s stopping us from bringing this story to a close then?

T.J.: We haven’t figured out the tools of how to talk about this thing where it becomes a constructive conversation. The moment you bring up race and class, it becomes a debate. But it’s not about a debate. There are marginalized communities. This is real. 

DL: But we’re trying to activate the audience’s own realization of these things, right? Near the end of the film, you see Bill Clinton watching Bush give his address after the riots, and you realize the riots were at least part of what made Clinton president. And then you think of today, when you hear phrases like “law and order,” the [fear-mongering], and then Trump becomes president. It’s our collective society’s reaction to things, these shifts. 

HP: There are moments in this film that are difficult to watch ― the looting of businesses, especially Korean-American businesses. The beating of the white truck driver Reginald Denny. When we talk about riots and unrest, there’s always criticism about rioters destroying their own communities, or resorting to violence instead of peace. What would be your reaction to someone who saw this film and felt the black and Latino rioters weren’t justified in their acts?

T.J.: If anyone were to come with that type of argument, they are neglecting the visceral violence that happened to Rodney King. What we try to do, at the very least, is set context. King just happened to have a video. These atrocities, these abuses of power have been happening since the birth of the country. So by isolating members of a community (who were rightfully so angry) and dismissing 400 years of horrible treatment of one specific community…. that alone is an unfair analysis of the situation, period. We are not watching the same movie.

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Phoebe Kannisto and her six sons made their latest haircuts a true (and charitable) family affair after deciding to grow their hair out together and donate it.

Kannisto’s oldest son, Andre, is 10 years old. She also has 8-year-old identical twin sons named Silas and Emerson; 5-year-old fraternal triplets named Herbie, Reed and Dexter; and a 2-year-old daughter named Marah Taylor.

On Monday, Kannisto and her six sons visited a local salon, Hizair Hair Salon, to have their hair cut. In total, the family got rid of 17 feet of hair and donated it to Children with Hair Loss, an organization that provides hair replacements for kids with medically related hair loss. 

Kannisto told HuffPost the motivation behind the haircuts was personal for the whole family. 

“Three years ago, my friend lost her son to cancer,” she said. “He was a twin and very close in age to my twins. On the first anniversary of his passing, my three oldest boys donated their hair in his memory. Since their donation two years ago, our lives have continued to be touched by cancer. It’s everywhere. My boys want to help, and donating their hair is how they do it.”

Kannisto, who lives outside of Buffalo, New York, with her family, has been donating her hair on and off since she was a teenager. Before this month, her last donation was in 2014. Her three oldest sons participated for the first time in 2015. The donation a few days ago marked the first time her triplets were able to contribute. Kannisto told HuffPost they waited until everyone’s hair reached the minimum length for donations before they all got their haircuts. 

“Obviously, everyone’s hair grows at different rates,” she said. “So it took quite some time for everyone to be ready.”

Andre grew his hair out for a year, the twins grew their hair for almost two years and the triplets grew their hair for five years. They’re already planning their next donation, too, since their little sister wants to participate. Her hair wasn’t long enough to donate this time, but she was able to sit in the salon and watch as her brothers got their haircuts. 

“She watched in awe,” Kannisto said. “[Her brothers] are great role models.”

Kannisto told HuffPost Hizair Hair Salon brought the family in after hours and refused to accept payment for the haircuts.

“They insisted on donating their time since we were donating our hair,” she said.

She said her sons have been teased a lot for their long hair since they decided to grow it out and donate it. 

“One son has been teased more than the others,” she said. “He and I have had many tear-filled conversations over the last several months. He explains the process of hair donation to his peers, and some of them just don’t get it.”

Luckily, her sons have developed “a thick skin” and ignore the criticism, knowing they’re helping others in need. Kannisto said she’s “so proud” of her boys and thinks that their mission is “amazing.”

“I love that they want to help other children,” she told HuffPost. “They’re already making predictions on how long it will take them to grow their hair out to donate again.”

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

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It should come as no surprise that Americans hold strong opinions about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as “food stamps.” But there appears to be more of a bipartisan consensus on the matter than heated rhetoric on the matter might suggest.

According to a study released Wednesday by the Voice of the People, a nonpartisan polling group, and conducted by University of Maryland researchers, an overwhelming majority of American voters of both parties favor restricting SNAP benefits from being used to buy soda and candy, as well as incentivizing fruit and vegetable purchases and increasing the overall amount of SNAP benefits available.

The study found that of the 7,000 voters polled, 76 percent of respondents agreed that SNAP benefits should not be used to buy candy. For Republican respondents 85 percent approved of banning the sweets, while 68 percent of Democrat respondents agreed.

Poll respondents expressed a similar level of support — 73 percent — for banning SNAP recipients from using their benefits to buy soda. Eighty-two percent of Republican respondents and 67 percent of Democrats agreed with soda restrictions.

Interestingly, an overwhelming majority — 88 percent — of respondents of both parties also favored the discounting of fruits and vegetables purchased using SNAP benefits. And about 80 percent of respondents favored increasing SNAP benefits under two separate scenarios that described a typical recipient’s benefit level that were presented by the pollsters.

The scenarios included cases detailing recipients earning income less than $550 a month and for single mothers earning an income of $760 on average per month.

Steven Kull, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland and the the study’s director, said the bipartisan support for both restrictions and expansions of SNAP benefits didn’t particularly surprise him. Respondents heard detailed arguments from both sides of the issue prior to providing their own opinions, which appeared to reveal shared concerns for Americans living in poverty.

“When you watch Congress, you get the impression the country is fundamentally polarized, and yet when you see what average citizens do when they get a chance to think an issue through, they actually do find a fair amount of common ground,” Kull told HuffPost. “It’s a lot more than Congress seems to find.”

The study’s findings are timely in light of recent media coverage surrounding new research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture detailing what SNAP recipients buy with their benefits and how those purchases compared to non-SNAP shoppers.

The federal data indicated that SNAP recipients purchased more soft drinks than any other category of grocery good, but also found that there were “no major differences” between what SNAP households purchased at the grocery store and what non-SNAP households bought.

Nevertheless, outlets like The New York Times still went ahead with stories painting SNAP recipients as buying soda by the cartload, a characterization that SNAP experts widely panned and the Times’ public editor, Liz Spayd, seemed to agree was at least somewhat misleading.

While the idea to shrink or otherwise restrict SNAP is not a new one, the new USDA report and its ensuing coverage seem to have inspired fresh scrutiny of the program.

In February, the House Agriculture Committee convened a hearing considering the merit of new SNAP purchase restrictions. The hearing was one of dozens the committee has held as part of an ongoing review of SNAP.

Lawmakers in some states — including Maine, Arkansas and Tennessee — are also moving forward with their own attempts to restrict SNAP purchases, and appear to be hopeful that the Trump administration will be more amenable to their efforts than the previous one.

In Maine, state officials are requesting a waiver from the USDA that would allow the state to ban its SNAP recipients from purchasing candy and soda using the federal benefits.

Under Obama, the USDA denied a similar waiver last year and the agency might do so again. The influential New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle noted this week that Trump’s USDA is seeking more details about the state’s request.

Federal law gives states hardly any leeway to tinker with eligibility standards for food stamps, so that’s why Maine and other states ask for waivers. But Republicans in Congress are using the Agriculture Committee’s hearings to lay the groundwork for eventual changes to SNAP, which could include giving states more freedom to modify the rules of the program.

During the previous reauthorization, Republicans and Fox News made a mascot out of a San Diego food stamp recipient who used his benefits to buy lobster and had no shame.

With nearly 43 million recipients, SNAP represents one of the federal government’s most significant anti-poverty programs, and congressional Republicans have frequently lamented growth in SNAP enrollment and spending over the last 15 years.

Democrats have fiercely defended the program and criticized efforts to restrict food options or add drug tests as efforts to stigmatize poverty.

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