Dear hearts, some terrific news that I can now share❗️I got a book deal❗️YAS! I am overjoyed that my next book, ABUNDANT BLACK JOY: THE LIFE AND WORK OF PATRICK KELLY, will be published by @AmistadBooks @HarperCollins in Fall 2023! 💜💜💜💜❤️❤️❤️🎊🎉😍🥰🙏🏿✊🏿

There’s much more work to do, but those who know me know that I’m a gratitude girl, so right now I want to pause and sit fully in this moment and just be grateful and express that gratitude.
I’m so grateful to my agent, Tanya McKinnon, & Carol Taylor, editorial director at @McKinnonLit ,for their wisdom, kindness, & artful guidance in process, but also in the ways they’ve inspired me to be open to new ways to think about my work as a scholar, writer, & creative.
I’m grateful to my Soul Sister, @alexispauline, for connecting me w/Tanya. I’m grateful also for ways Alexis & @SangodareJulia, also my kindred and who I consider my pastor, have been a loving presence beside me & encourage me in this ancestrally held work. I love y’all so much.
I’m excited to work w/ my editor, the other Patri(c)k, Patrik Henry Bass. To be shepherded through process by a longtime & proven talent in publishing, and someone who knows books and fashion/beauty industries through his years as an editor at Essence, is a dream come true.
I am excited also that this book will be published by @AmistadBooks, a legacy imprint that has, from its inception, dedicated its list to publishing books about Black diasporic life, culture, and history.
I’m grateful to my partner David Glisch-Sanchez and Stephanie @RhythmKeene, who’ve helped me at research sites, read chapters, listened to me throughout process, as well as my sis @JLDeShields22 who has listened & supported me. I love y’all so much.
I will give greater acknowledgement in book, but thank you to people I interviewed, archivists, librarians, & photographers who have and continue to be so generous with their time. I hope to make best book possible from the knowledge resources you’ve volunteered and provided.
Thank you to my friends, colleagues, & all folks who have been enthusiastic about book. I’ll need your support to keep being the wind at my back and to finish what I’ve started. I’m doing everything in my power to place the very best book I can in your hands & on your bookshelf.
I am grateful forever to Patrick Kelly. I hope that the book I am writing pleases his spirit and that of all of my ancestor helping spirits. ❤️❤️❤️🙏🏿
And for those who have a thing you want to do and you just can’t see way forward, what Patrick Kelly would say is that “Nothing Is Impossible.” I had a seed of this book at age 9. Began working on it at 29. And got the deal to publish it at age *none of your business.* 😂💯💅🏿💜
My message is this — As Glinda sang to Dorothy, and mama sang to be “believe in yourself” and keep pushing forward. Onward! With love and always gratitude, e. 💜💜💜💜

More from Culture

I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.