iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

At first glance I thought this was Sun Wukong.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A recent encounter, not pictured: metallic violet Tesla with badge altered to read 特斯拉bubu.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A-Yue’s “Go With The Flow” bugged me until my brain surfaced Jars of Clay’s “He” (acoustic version). Then that AI portrait dredged up the Omartian’s “Dr. Jesus”. And now m-fing “King of Spain” is driving me nuts a week after returning from Toronto. Not a fan of ancient memories breaking containment.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Talk of Red Lobster and communists calls to mind the classic 1959 stop-motion short 龙虾 by Jin Xi 靳夕: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwH...

Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Feng Xiaogang’s movie I Know Who You Are 抓特务 finally opens today. A Beijing cop plays cat-and-mouse games with his KMT spy neighbor against the backdrop of major events from 1945 to 1984. Had a lot of fun doing the subs for this one.

Promo poster with a retro-looking scene of a bonsai tree growing from an enamel tea mug bearing the words 防奸反特, beside a glass insulated bottle inside a green metal carrier.
Text:
抓特务
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

A Feng Xiaogang Film 冯小刚电影作品
编剧史建全

雷佳音　　领衔主演　　胡歌

Release poster showing a family portrait in front of the entrance to a Beijing courtyard home (土磨刀胡同15号), some time between the ’50s and ’70s. Hu Ge is dressed as an intellectual, Lei Jiayin as a cadre; wives played by Zhang Yao and Chuo Ni stand beside them. In the back row are their children, played by Yang Shuyi, Lin Xiaofan, and Wang Rui.

Text:
抓特务
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE

导演冯小刚　　　　雷佳音　领衔主演　胡歌

6月19日
温暖上映

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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

🎹 Here’s a charming story about a beguiling “new” keyboard album (its first ever release) that I find addictive. It’s quite a ride! Larrison Seidle grows up in the 70s and 80s in Greenwood, Indiana, a working-class suburb of Indianapolis. 1/n freedomtospend.bandcamp.com/album/connec...

freedomtospend.bandcamp.com

Connecters Vol. 1: Original Recordings, 1992–1999, by Larrison

25 track album

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 11/06/2026

📚Introduction free to download📚 It's the official release day of my book and OUP has made the Introduction chapter free to read. academic.oup.com/book/62722/c... Take a look if you're interested in... why do I want to study ideas of 'the west' from without, why do I want to theorize the postliberal

academic.oup.com

Introduction: Constructing the West from the East

Abstract. This book is positioned at the intersection of two lines of inquiry: the co-production of hierarchical difference in world politics and reading t

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Early ’90s, among the ads for printer ribbons, dust covers, and Bible databases in the back pages of inCider/A+, Shan’s Digicorder blew my middle-school mind. Was the actual device as awesome as the copy made it sound? Would it work on my Franklin clone? Did anyone win a trip to Kerala?

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

“Half-asleep half-awake, we face each other.” A poem by Jim Daniels.

Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake

BY JIM DANIELS

at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs
clogged with family from out of town
spending the night after the wake
and the after—wake—cold beverages
have been consumed and comfort food,
leftovers bulging both the fridge
and the mini-fridge. In our fifties, both
half-asleep half-awake, we face each
other. My sister's smile foams white
down her chin at the end of a day
on which no one has smiled. We laugh.
We may never brush our teeth together again.
No mirror down here to see our haggard faces.
We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

There are some gems among ’80s Chinese translations of novels by Fleming and others. John Gardner’s “For Special Services” turns into 007 巧破冰淇淋阴谋 “007 Cracks the Ice-Cream Conspiracy”.

Chinese edition of 007 巧破冰淇淋阴谋. The cover shows a line drawing of a wine glass containing silhouettes of two people engaged in conversation. Image via Douban: https://book.douban.com/subject/2044439/

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I’ve been enjoying Andrew Rule’s posts of Chinese netlit recs from fans, authors, translators, editors, and academics. He’s now assembled the entire project into a single page with lots of links to originals and translations. (I’m in there recommending 废土西游 and 此刻我存在.) substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

[Single-Page Version] The Cold Window Guide to Chinese Internet Literature

Welcome to the Cold Window Newsletter.

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Daisy Rockwell @shreedaisy.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Today, ironically, my essay for @grantamag.bsky.social on his Narcissus Complex is out, one month after his death. I was unable to bring myself to change the tenses during the final copy edits. Present still seems right to me. granta.com/the-narcissu...

granta.com

The Narcissus Complex

‘He knows who we are, and he reads the New York Times every day, although he doesn’t retain much, except the horror of it all.’

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

A youth-oriented music festival has adopted the brick-wall graffiti aesthetic for its own (or that earlier piece was a test-run). They’re apparently still tweaking the messaging, though. I don’t know—I’d say CHANGPING IS DOPE is no worse than Chaoyang District’s 潮有范儿 CHAOFUN branding.

Graffiti-style art of guitarists, a keyboard, and what could be a cello on the brick wall and closed metal gate of a parking lot, with the words:
VIBE
IDOL我来看你了
北京昌平千帆音乐季

Graffiti-style lettering on a brick wall beside a sidewalk:
未来科学城
北京昌平

Graffiti-style art of vinyl records and music notes on green corrugated-metal fencing, with the words:
北京昌平 DOPE

Graffiti-style art of vinyl records and music notes on green corrugated-metal fencing, with the words:
北京昌平 HOPE

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

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).

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

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.

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buy my book @nmamatas.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

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

patreon.com

O, Fortuna! A performance piece | Nick Mamatas

O, Fortuna! A performance piece by Nick Mamatas on Patreon. Join Nick Mamatas's community for exclusive content and updates.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

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.

Ad page from The Moving Picture News, VI.15, 12 October 1912:
You Cannot Evade
recognizing the merits of
THE VENGEANCE
OF EGYPT
Its mighty realism will hold audiences in a hypnotism of attention

States Rights
3 Reels
Heralds—Posters, 1, 3, and 6 Sheet
This is the first advertisement of this film. Wire to-day and you will beat out the other fellow. If you don’t, you take chances. Play safe—wire now, NOW.

GAUMONT

A trail of tragedy that followed the stealing of a ring from an Egyptian mummy. The relentless avenger that brings death by plague, the strangler, poison, bullet, in airplane and automobile. Covering a period of 115 years it traces the grim course of a curse that knew only one end.

Copyright protects all our films. Infringements will be vigorously prosecuted.

GAUMONT CO., Flushing, N.Y.
In writing to our advertisers please mention “MOVING PICTURE NEWS”

Suited man standing before an open mummy sarcophagus in a museum hall.
Caption: After an absence of more than a century the ring is about to be restored

Two women and one man console a seated young woman.
Caption: Her adored dead from the plague! But was it not in accord with the ring of the dreadful dreams?

The Moving Picture News, VI.15, 12 October 1912, p9.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

These are the true sports buffs.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

A new addition to the neighborhood over the winter:

Graffiti on a gray brick wall next to a sidewalk: orange 北京 with black shadowing over an orange and yellow starburst, as well as a few other random tags in black.

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Josephine beckbook.com Riesman @josie.zone · 25/02/2026

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!!!

About the Author

Josephine Riesman is the New York Times bestselling author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America and the Hugo finalist True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. She was a longtime staffer at New York magazine and its culture site, Vulture, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. She is trans and lives in Portugal with her spouse and their cats.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Ringmaster and the Hugo finalist True Believer, a propulsive and stylish account of Beck, who was received as a pop messiah in the 1990s, but whose closest friends and most devoted fans never knew his buried secrets.

Once upon a time, there was a man who made himself into a myth.

He went by a single name: Beck. He sang songs that didn’t make easy sense in plain English, but which were somehow urgent and undeniable to those who heard them. He mined a dizzying array of musical styles from the past to construct albums that were eminently of the zeitgeist. Before and after the smash success of his 1993 single “Loser,” he was the hardest-working slacker in America. He went platinum multiple times over. And for a time, he was regarded by journalists and devoted fans alike as the “pop messiah”—a title that referred not just to the new energy he brought to the radio and MTV, but to the devotion he inspired.

But something happened to Beck Hansen, right at the turn of the millennium. His music, once defiant and bombastic, turned morose and inward-facing. It was more than just a musical shift. Beck destroyed the online forum where his devoted fans had gathered. He cut ties with the small collective of LA-based bohemians he’d come up alongside, surrounding himself instead with sycophants and celebrities. Beck had been born and raised in the Church of Scientology; many in his orbit feared he’d been pulled back to the faith.

In the years since, Beck’s music has continued to win accolades, including multiple Grammys. But the true story of Beck in the nineties and beyond has never been told.

With sensitivity and an arrestingly original style, New York Times bestselling author Josephine Riesman offers a vivid and multifaceted look at a singular artist and the Generation Xers for whom he became a reluctant spokesman. Drawing from interviews with those who’ve been closest to Beck, as well as troves of never-before-published documents, Riesman offers a story about authenticity and irony, paranoia and belief. Situated at the last gasp of the millennium, it’s more than a simple biography—it’s a riveting drama about the blurry lines between fandom and worship; between myth and lies; and between the old world that is dying and the new one that still struggles to be born.

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Hilk @hilk.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

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

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Lore Sjöberg @loresjoberg.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

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

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 19/12/2025

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...

press.princeton.edu

Just Hierarchy

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political

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Jim Byrkit @jimbyrkit.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

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.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

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).

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Dave Haysom @spittingdog.net · 27/08/2025

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/...

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

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...

Video still: text card reading:

人所愛的，不是對方，而是自己意志的反映。
“What one loves is not the other person, but the reflection of one’s own will.” —Arthur Schopenhauer

你所愛的,記得它只是暫存在,不是屬於你。
“Remember that what you love is only temporary, and it does not belong to you.” —Epictetus

彼此以對方的存在為快樂,這是愛最純粹的形式。
“Pleased by what is good for the other, and return it in kind.” —Aristotle

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Shaenon K. Garrity @shaenon.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

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"

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Nanoraptor @nanoraptor.danamania.com · 02/08/2025

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.

A photo of an Apple keyboard with the alphabet keys changed depending on the frequency of letters in English in this case. the E, A, D, T, I, O, L and N keys are quite large, while Q, X, Z, K, and V are quite small.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

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...

youtube.com

燃烧的石头 - YouTube

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

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.

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ti zhang @solarizedtitanium.gg · 21/06/2025

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

cover of book by You Hua Zai Ye (There Are Flowers in the Wild) it is stick figure drawings and very cute and casual, does not give an idea of the lovecraftian environmentalist end stage capitalism horror at all

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5 foot Home Depot skeleton @redderbeanpaste.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Fantastic four but it’s parks and recreation references sorry

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

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.)

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

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)

from A catalogue of Chinese works in the Bodleian Library by Joseph Edkins: "72 肉蒲團 Jǔh p'o poo. Garden of Meat and Spinach. A novel. No date of composition or author's name. 4 vols. Reprinted, 1810."

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https://stephenjones.blog/ @stevejonesblog.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

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

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Sascha Stronach🏳️‍⚧️, The Sunforge out now @understatesmen.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

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

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Yangyang Cheng @yangyangcheng.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

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...

madeinchinajournal.com

Lost and Found: The Unexpected Journey of the MingKwai Typewriter | Made in China Journal

It began as an innocuous inquiry on Facebook. Nelson Felix, a resident of New York State, posted in the group ‘What’s My Typewriter Worth?’ about a curious find he made while clearing out the basement...

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025

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)

hc.jsecs.org

UK-30045 | WS2024v2.0

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025

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.

Proof sheet for the lost 1932 edition of 《走到鏡子裏》(“Through the Looking-Glass”) prepared by the Commercial Press in Shanghai, with Yuen Ren Chao's hand-written annotations. The 1932 edition of the book was destroyed when the Commercial Press building was bombed during the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in 1932.

Image source: https://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/item/cuhk-2023559

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Bouba's Delivery Service @fernmonkey.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

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

youtu.be

Kitchen Floor

YouTube video by Lore Sjöberg

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 11/04/2025

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,

screenshot of a douban post that says listening to podcast makes one feel a deep rift in the world.

screenshot of xiaoyuzhou. a discussion of whether podcasting is a platform for elites to showcase their privileges

a xhs blogger criticizes podcasts being too middle class and elitist.

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Joel Martinsen @jdmartinsen.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

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

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Lavie Tidhar @lavietidhar.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

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!

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