The stupidity here is of monumental proportions.

In a column for Slate earlier this week, Aisha Harris wrote that she had always been confused as a child because the Santa in her home had brown skin like her, but the Santa in malls and on television was always white.

So Harris made the case “that America abandon Santa-as-fat-old-white-man” and adopt a penguin in his place.

“For one thing, making Santa Claus an animal rather than an old white male could spare millions of nonwhite kids the insecurity and shame that I remember from childhood,” she wrote.

But on Wednesday, Kelly decided that Harris had gone “off the rails” with her column.

“For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white,” Kelly said. “But this person is just arguing that maybe we should also have a black Santa. But Santa is what he is.”

“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change, you know?” she added. “I mean, Jesus was a white man too. He was a historical figure, that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa — I just want the kids watching to know that.”

Video

More: Fox News Host Megyn Kelly Tells Kids: Jesus and Santa Are Both White Guys

Vimeo

This is the graduation-project made by a group of five students from the 3D design and animation course at Idèfagskolen in Tønsberg Norway. The short film featured here was in production between october 2012 - July 2013. With a few tweaks here and there until the soundscape was in place. The music and sound job was completed in December by a carefully selected third party.

The team behind the production are:
Jonas Martin Larsen
Øyvind Fiksdal
Eilef Sandnæs
Eskild Carlsen
& Yvonne Engbråten

Music Composed by: Joel Forssell
Sound design by: Peder Jørgensen

Image via Shutterstock

As everyone who uses Twitter knows, there’s a limit of 140 characters per tweet. For Twitter API programmers like me, this means your code has to make sure the tweet you’re about to send is not longer than 140 characters, or Twitter will smack you on the knuckles with a ruler and send back the dreaded error message:

Error: 403 - Status is over 140 characters

So what’s the problem, you ask? Just get the length of the tweet you’re proposing to send and make sure it isn’t over 140 characters. Easy, right?

Well, it used to be this easy, but then Twitter started automatically running all links in tweets through their own custom URL shortener (t.co) — even if they’re already shortened with another service.

(Note: when you look at a tweet on Twitter, you won’t necessarily see the “t.co” URL, either; Twitter automatically expands these links when it displays a tweet. But it’s stored internally as a “t.co” URL.)

This change made correctly calculating the length much more complex; now your code has to scan the tweet text to find URLs, and adjust the overall length to account for what happens when Twitter’s URL shortener does its thing.

Continue reading…

Video

If you can’t see the MP4 video, click below:

Comedy Central

Vimeo

In their first animated music video, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings face off against a pack of mischievous wolves in a psychedelic dance battle.

For more information about the making of “Retreat!” go to:
slanted.org

FULL CREDITS:
Artist: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Label: Daptone Records

Production Company: Slanted Studios
Executive Producer: Michelle Higa Fox

Director: Lizzi Akana
Art Director: Erin Kilkenny
Technical Director: Michelle Higa Fox
Additional Design: Josh Goodrich
Animation: Josh Goodrich, Shixie Shi, Tim Beckhardt, David Hobizal, Leah Shore, Gabriel Pulecio, Nika Offenbac
Watercolor Animation: Leeanne Brennan
FX Animation: Matt Timms
Special Thanks: Futurestack, Merlin, Olive, and the Fig Tree

October 2013

Some hand shakes and other hair raising associations through the years.

Margaret Thatcher and Robert Mugabe

“2012 GOP presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, shaking hands with Yasser Arafat should not be misunderstood!” pic.twitter.com/3Ln9gj0EbF

— Gus (@Gus_802) December 10, 2013

Republican President Richard Nixon shaking hands with communist “mass murderer” of all time, Mao Zedong* (1972). pic.twitter.com/cbTSau6t0t

— Gus (@Gus_802) December 10, 2013

Continue reading…

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