Adam Smith

From a post on Twitter by Maxim Persikov (Panates).
x.com/gyankotsu/st...

"The noise made by the tendons of the fingers."

The murals are approximately contemporary with the famous Yuan and early Ming murals from Henan and Southern Shanxi, many of which are in US collections, including the Penn Museum. The Medicine Buddha and Twelve Divine Generals subject occurs in both.

A Forgotten Milestone in Tibetan Art: The Murals of Gyantse Dzong’s Temple YouTube video by The Met

Lecture on murals at the Gyantse Dzong (which most people have heard of in the context of the 1904 Younghusband invasion.) Raised the interesting question of how Chinese art styles were transmitted and incorporated with Tibetan and Nepalese traditions here.
www.youtube.com/live/P-8pQh-...

If you're new to the Warring States manuscripts, I published a piece with my colleague Li Yumeng which introduces the *Kongzi said and *Zhongni said manuscripts. And it's open access!
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The problem is not the gender of the person wielding the gun.

It's the gun.
The gun is the problem.
It's always been the gun.
It will always be the gun.

The Qianlong Emperor [r. 1735-1799] enshrined his conquests as the "Ten Complete Victories" - he even had a nickname: 十全老人: "The Old Man of the Ten Victories"

He went so far as to have it carved onto his own white-jade imperial seal.

But your "World's Best Dad" mug is cool, too, I guess...

Paste code from here: bbchallenge.org/1RB1RA_1RC1R...
... into this: turingmachine.io
... and chant a buddha-name with each state transition.

The Untold Unspeakably Unspeakables of the Avatamsaka Sutra have got nothing on BB(6).

archive.org/details/TheF...

The grains of sand in eight million kotis of nayutas of Ganges rivers are a tiny handful compared to the number of deterministic steps that this six-state Turing machine starting on an empty tape takes before halting.

www.quantamagazine.org/busy-beaver-...

Cool Sinological question from @michaelerard.bsky.social -- can anyone think of any historical sources that describe young children talking or record their first words?

Congratulations!

China has announced that from next month, Tibetan will no longer be a subject in the annual National College Entrance Examination (高考 gaokao), China's most important test for high school students. According to the announcement (www.scio.gov.cn/live/2025/36...):

Boards of Trustees ***LIKE*** the Trump demands. They ***AGREE*** with them.

They like the idea of putting the screws on activist, lefty, and Muslim students. They like the idea of a whiter student body and conservative curriculum. They want these things and think $200 million is a fair price.

The extremely simple fact is that Jeff Epstein was the most notorious child sex trafficker in history, and the President of the US was his close personal friend for decades

Acting like this is complicated is absurd. The man knew what Epstein did, didn't care, and participated

HONEY

"Sesame oil, milk, honey, [and] syrup are to be cooked in a vessel [so that] half [of it] remains. ... pepper is to be strewed in – this is to be drunk as a medicine against cancer."

cetom.univie.ac.at?m-ioltoch306

Two 17th century Chinese-Portuguese dictionaries digitized The Leiden Library Asian Collection hosts, under the shelfmarks Or. 1929 a and Or. 1929 b two Chinese Portuguese dictionaries. These have now been made available in digital form. María Teresa González...

www.leidenspecialcollectionsblog.nl/articles/two...

The Phillies did the kiss cam thing to Coldplay

Very sad news about Andrew West, an online friend to many of us on here, who had a rare combination of expertises and was always generous with advice on 'Phags-pa script wine advertisements, fake Yuan-dynasty passports, and less-explored reaches of the higher Unicode planes.

giver dot jpg but it’s in chalk. Above the aperture are the words ‘TODOS NOSOTROS ODIO ICE,’ but the art transcends language

Opposing ICE in chalk with sidewalk goatses; what a time to be alive

I am utterly shocked and saddened by the news of Andrew West‘s @babelstone.co.uk untimely passing. He was a huge inspiration, an impressive scholar, and a kind and generous person.
FAMA PER ORA VOLAT
SPIRITUS ASTRA TENET

I've just heard the terrible news that my friend - and friend of many here - Andrew West, @babelstone.co.uk, the incomparably brilliant Sinologist and Tangutologist passed away suddenly but peacefully on 10th July. 1/2

Adam Smith on X: "“If this inscription is actually fake, I'd happily honor the forger as my teacher." 如果此刻石真是作伪，我倒愿意拜作伪者为师。 Fighting words from Liu Zhao 劉釗, Director of the Center for Excavated Texts and Palaeography at Fudan). https://t.co/zxKHlyvLpd https://t.co/wyS2N39r1Y" / X “If this inscription is actually fake, I'd happily honor the forger as my teacher." 如果此刻石真是作伪，我倒愿意拜作伪者为师。 Fighting words from Liu Zhao 劉釗, Director of the Center for Excavated Texts and Palaeography at Fudan). https://t.co/zxKHlyvLpd https://t.co/wyS2N39r1Y

Huadan has the title 副县级驻寺指导员 Deputy County Level Monastery Resident Political Instructor, connected with the "Strengthen the Villages to Lead the Monasteries" 强村带寺 program, a component of the "Make Religion Chinese" 宗教中国化 and "Use Law to Rule Tibet" 依法治藏 policies. (DeepSeek.)

His colleague Huadan [sp?] (R) says he heard about it in 2016, and saw it with his own eyes in 2019.

By my count, this weird inscription has been "discovered" at least four times.

www.nbd.com.cn/articles/202...

www.wenxuecity.com/news/2025/07...

Qinshihuang Kunlun magic herbs inscription latest.
Turns out this so-called uninhabited zone 無人區 isn't quite so uninhabited after all. A local Tibetan guy Dorje Namgyal [sp?] (pic L) used to herd his flock of 3000 sheep there and says he saw the inscription in 1986.

www.nbd.com.cn/articles/202...

Look unlike China we're not running camps I mean unlike China we're not dramatically raising military spending I mean unlike China we're not pressuring private companies to follow a political agenda I mean unlike China we don't have a cult of personality around our paramount leader I mean unlike Chi

cursed chengyu