OK, so here's the poem by Gaoping local poet, Miao Lingcong (苗令琮). Miao was from Fengtai in Shanxi 山西鳳台 and was named juren 舉人 (not jinshi 進士, oops) in 1771, so this is probably a late c18 poem, but is found in the 1880 gazetteer 續高平縣志 (and not in earlier Gaoping gazetteers, fwiw).

It is not a great work of literary genius, though it's a pleasant enough read, but my favorite part is where he basically says "NOT LIKE THOSE STUPID WANGWU MOUNTAINS IN YANGCHENG [the next county over], THOSE COULD NEVER COMPARE TO THE FAME OF OUR QIFO MOUNTAINS!!" Local pride FTW.

How about "What if the Confederacy happened differently?" but I mean the novel The Confederacy of Dunces? click: www.patreon.com/posts/o-fort...

Another key moment in mummy cinema is the 1912 French film L’anneau fatal (En. title The Vengeance of Egypt). A scarab ring stolen by an officer under Napoleon carries a curse that causes a string of tragedies (murder, poisoning, air crash) until it’s replaced on the mummy’s finger a century later.

These are the true sports buffs.

A new addition to the neighborhood over the winter:

Undecided on pre-ordering THE LAST TEMPTATION OF BECK? Allow the publisher's marketing copy (below) to entice you... Then click this link — bit.ly/heartleafbeck — and buy indie from @bookshop.org!!!

Yep. AI summary at Google recently told me that "Rennwagen" was an example for a palindrome. Humanity is working hard on getting dumber.

A banger of a post from @slacktivistfred.bsky.social about a new song from Amy Grant, of all people: www.patheos.com/blogs/slackt...

I was practicing Folsom Prison Blues for my first karaoke outing and I accidentally sang “I’m stuck in Wholesome Prison,” so…

I can't stress enough how weird this book is. written by a couple, there's an entire chapter on "nighttime hierarchies" that supposedly "add color and joy" to life. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

If anyone is interested in the sequel to COHERENCE, we finally landed on a story worthy of the mission. Unless the actors revolt, we will probably do it just like the first one, where they know their own character details, but don't know what the other actors are going to say or do. Like real life.

Go read this lovely translation of a fantastic story now! Pseudo-Science Fiction Stories is such an imaginative collection. It’s a real shame Cui’s work is out of print on the mainland (and that the early 2000s editions used lousy glue are crumbling to pieces).

big news! could not be more excited to be translating《小花旦》by Wang Zhanhei 王占黑. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Old Arthur’s really having a moment. Just this week he shows up as quotesperation alongside Epictetus and Aristotle in a new Gin Lee video, 隨時隨地 www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NC...

Hello. For @reactorsff.bsky.social I wrote about the domestic side of the Fantastic Four and their comic and television roots.

He was walking up and down the line encouraging people to ask him about the rules A woman yelled, "Can you sing us the rules?" He immediately sang, "Don't bring your firearms on the plane/There are signs everywhere that you ignooore"

Studies have found the most logical and fastest keyboard layout is not between key orders like qwerty and dvorak, but one that prioritises the size of keys depending on the frequency of those letters in the language being typed, regardless of the ordering.

Today’s background music: 野孩子 Wild Children’s new album 燃烧的石头 Flaming Rock, adapted from their soundtrack to the animated film 燃比娃 A Story about Fire. Wordless folk rock, a little bit bluesy, a little bit cinematic, with cool instrumentation and quirky rhythms. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

I remember being impressed by the visuals but have absolutely no memory of the plot—what stands out in my mind is the Falungong advertisement inserted mid-way through the .rm file I downloaded via P2P. I ought to give it a proper rewatch.

ok i’ve dealt w all my obligations for the week/day i take a break: i want talk about this web novel—it won an award with the official Chinese Writers Association. that’s a big deal for a web novel published on Jinjiang, a platform meant for women readers only. sci-fi/horror/dystopian/lovecraftian

Fantastic four but it’s parks and recreation references sorry

In an early 1950s Mandarin shortwave broadcast of Kowloon produce prices, would 圆头菜 refer to turnips or cabbage? (The broadcast is essentially a numbers station so the actual meaning has no bearing on the plot—I’m just interested in historical accuracy.)

Lol no, this is a wild mistranslation... Now imagining some shocked Victorian students picking up 肉蒲團 after reading about it in this 1876 guide to Chinese books in the Bodleian and suddenly having a lot of new thoughts about China and Chinese literature... (but not about meat or spinach)

I wrote a radical (full) guide to Wagner’s ring cycle for @vanmusicmag.bsky.social van-magazine.com/mag/wagner-r...

A stimulating Chinese review of my film stephenjones.blog/2025/05/29/g...

maybe I am digging too deeply into this but "recommending the name of a company even though it makes no grammatical sense" feels like a bad sign

The lone long-lost MingKwai typewriter, invented by Lin Yutang in 1947, has resurfaced in a NY basement. How did it get there? Where might it go next? The journey of the groundbreaking invention embodies the search for modernity and Chinese identity. My latest: madeinchinajournal.com/2025/05/02/l...

The Chinese characters that Chao devised for his translation of Jabberwocky are currently in the process of being added to Unicode (here's the submission entry for ⿱卧尨)

I did a long twitter thread on Chao's Jabberwocky translation and his invented Chinese characters, including an image of his annotated proof of the lost 1932 edition of 《走到鏡子裏》("Through the Looking-Glass") prepared by the Commercial Press in Shanghai but blown up by the Japanese.

I would like to think that @loresjoberg.bsky.social predicted the Pope's last words to JD Vance.

I've been intrigued by the criticism of 'podcast' as an elite/elitist cultural phenomenon that has become palpable on social media lately. a viral post on Douban sparked much debate. complaints are typically from young people in lesser known cities and towns,

Some great titles here I’ve already read, and lots more I’m eager to dive into.

Just three days left! storybundle.com/scifi 10 books, $20, a collection of international speculative fiction, supporting independent publishers, no Amaz*n, and some great stuff! Re-posts much appreciated - as if everyone who's purchased so far!

I liked halfbakery dot com, it was the website for half-baked ideas back when half-baked just meant silly rather than unhinged fascist plans to create a global recession and sacrifice billions to the machine god, back when it meant like "a dorsal arm"

It's wild that this is turning up right at the point when I'm polishing up the draft of the Arthur book that ends on *exactly this material*, which isn't just from the Vulgate Merlin, but from specifically from the very end sequence that sets it in a very curious relationship with the Livre d'Artus.

For my money, the best Zhuangzi joke is Ants Riding Sea-Doos from Letterkenny www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdvp...

This has got to be the worst index I’ve ever seen. Let’s start with Z because the first English entry is “account”=zhànghào. Then C, because the next entry on the English list that doesn’t start with z in pinyin is ”Actions menu“=cāozuò càidān. Then G, because “ad”=guǎnggào.

In then 1980s, there was a guy who traumatized us in South Africa on TV every day.

I know I said this more than once on Twitter (remember when Twitter used to be a thing?), but I don’t seem to have said it here yet: It’s not staying light later; it’s getting late earlier. 🌇

Taking Beijing Subway’s spiffy new Line 12, I was reminded (by its absence) of the DC Metro’s characteristic hum. Not on VPN, I asked Bing, and both morning and evening summaries are garbage: irrelevant, incorrect, and incoherent—and presumably contradicted by the TripAdvisor link that IP blocks me.

Very sad. And infuriating that the proposal for a Webb Centre for Public Transparency to be hosted by HKU was rejected by the university's senior management, despite donors standing ready to fund its endowment.

This is very sad. David Webb’s collection of data has been a treasure trove for journalists and HongKongers alike. Thank you, Mr Webb, for all your hard work. Godspeed! webb-site.com/articles/shu...?

Every Employee of the Startup in Douglas Coupland's 1995 Novel Microserfs and What Kind of Fascist They Would Be in 2025: A List

Some 乙巳年 listening: 蛇 Serpent, from 海龟先生 Mr. Sea Turtle’s latest LP 赛浪20. Half the album is folk pop that reminds me of Bobby Chen; the rest is more eclectic—tho no ska or reggae this time. Also check out 旺旺 woof woof, a sarcastic indictment of online echo chambers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBYE...

Cool to see 周二下午谁没来 Tuesday Absentees revisiting their Beijing noir concept album 七七连环杀人调 with a new version of 杀人爱的独剧调, a modernized adaptation of the Su San trial scene from the Peking opera 玉堂春. It really realizes the potential of the old demo version. youtu.be/cFz457-Yyfc?...

New year, new museum. Gates for a Tank Garden 坦克公园 and Tank Museum 战车博物馆 have sprung up along an unopened stretch of road next to Beijing Chateau Laffitte. Nothing to see so far—I think there’s just one lonely tank way back among the trees.

Imagine finding a Mingkwai typewriter while clearing out a basement! Detailed photos at this writeup of Nelson Felix‘s post to the “What’s My Typewriter Worth?” Facebook group. www.ithome.com/0/827/089.htm @tsmullaney.bsky.social

When I stay with my parents, I get to play bagatelle, the tabletop game my great-uncle brought back from England well before I was born. We only played it with company—I guess visiting them counts now. This time I satisfied my curiosity about the endorsement: Walter Lindrum, billiard champion.