It’s supposed to be both: “to anyone” and “twenny-one”, if that makes sense.

Gizeh is my fave Birkenstock style. I have a snazzy new red pair that I wear everywhere that isn’t the office. I also had my eye on a black snakeskin texture pair and a silver pair, but decided to exercise some restraint and just go with the red. They are so comfortable, it’s ridiculous. My feet love them.

Those Beyincé eyebrow genes are strong as hell. I remember a while back Beyoncé posted a picture of her grandfather or greatgrandfather or something and he had those same brows. They just don’t quit.

You can get Shea Moisture at WalMart and Target though, and my hair loooooooves some Shea Moisture.

I’m not loving the song. I’ve found that over her past couple of albums, Alicia’s songs have felt like she’s jumping on a trend and doing it slightly too late and this is another instance of that. But I love how she looks in that photo.

Yes, I am aware.

Because talking bunnies, I guess.

I’m in Guyana, where that’s the case, but when black people here talk about somebody having “Indian hair”, they’re generally talking about a black person or a person who’s mixed (black and some other ethnicity). Like Indian hair on an Indian person isn’t “good hair”, it’s just hair, the kind of hair you’d expect an…

I thought that was maybe the case, but I wasn’t sure!

But “good hair” in the context of this song doesn’t mean that kind of good hair. It means the kind of curly-not-kinky hair that is still seen by many black folk as superior to “regular” afro-textured black hair, what my aunty calls a “good grade of hair”. Like the kind of hair that Tatyana Ali or Jasmine Guy or the…

I remember one of my profs said basically the same thing as NDT when I was doing my post grad in environmental studies. It was really cynical and really reassuring at the same time. Even if we screw up the environment so badly that we (and many other species) are driven to extinction, the planet and its ecosystems…

Chiming in on the tiredness thing. I usually stay awake until ridiculous hours for no good reason. I began making an effort to get to bed before 10, and after 2 nights of that, my face looked so much better. Like I couldn’t believe what a change there was. Getting more rest really makes a difference.

My understanding of the new meaning of “mixtape” was that a mixtape was a digital compilation of music by a professional/aiming-for professional musician that was distributed for free/not through the usual mainstream commercial channels. But then I started seeing “mixtapes” for sale on iTunes and the like. So my…

Aww, that first friend story made me smile so hard!

My initial thinking was that Tatyana could be part Panamanian and have the same racial mix as if she were 100% Trinidadian (especially since, as you say, Trinis are mixed to the highest order). So the idea of someone being like, oh, I had a feeling she wasn’t 100% Trini because of her features was like, huh?

I know about Trinidadians, I’m from the Caribbean, I have Trini relatives and plenty of Trini friends. (I’ve never thought about the mix in T&T as “weird” though.) I just didn’t understand the comment about it making sense that Tatyana is part Panamanian “given her features”.

I ... don’t get this. So if she were just Trini, her features would make less sense relative to her nationality?

You’re welcome. (I think this might legit be the best one, just for “Galileoooo, Galileoooo...” That got me bobbing in my chair. )

Thanks for the added clarification. That was exactly what seemed unusual about it to me.

Anohni uses “transgendered” consistently in the original Pitchfork essay. It gave me pause as well, because I’m not familiar with that usage.