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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1110 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Transnational Media Thread

Any local art, music, film, etc you've been consuming from far-flung parts of the globe? (No, anime doesn't count, that shit has been thoroughly mainstreamed and globalised by now.)

For my part, I've been enjoying quite a lot of Mande music as of late (basically the folk musical tradition of Mali that began with the 13th century Mali empire). They developed a highly polyphonic music style independently from Western traditions, passed down through the centuries by hereditary griot storytellers; their music was modernised in the 1970s, fusing quite a lot with other styles. One of my favourite artists to play in this tradition is Toumani Diabate, a ridiculously prolific musician who specialises in the kora, a 21-stringed instrument that falls somewhere between a lute and a harp. Here is a particularly nice example of traditional kora music from him, and here and here are examples of some of the fusion he has produced. I find there's an exceptionally atmospheric, almost mystical sound to a lot of this music I can't get enough of.

When it comes to art, traditional Song Dynasty handscroll paintings are just incredible. Yes, I am continuing my recent trend of Sinoposting, deal with it. They were painted on these massive pieces of silk meant to be slowly unravelled from right to left, revealing different parts of the painting as it went along. Probably the most famous one in existence is Zhang Zeduan's impossibly detailed 12th century Along The River During The Qingming Festival, depicting the commotion in the Song capital Kaifeng during the Tomb Sweeping Day. Other art in this vein is the extremely fluent 13th century Nine Dragons handscroll by Chen Rong, Composing Poetry on a Spring Outing by Ma Yuan, and Water Map by Ma Yuan, a uniquely liminal painting focusing on the rendition of water textures. (For Water Map, here are all the panels in the handscroll presented individually; I can't find it in the University of Chicago's archive of scrolls, and the one on Wikimedia is so large that it's capable of causing your browser to stall, and zooms in too much).

EDIT: A funny detail in the Nine Dragons scroll is the overabundance of Emperor Qianlong's massive seals and even poems throughout the body of the painting. While it's actually desirable to place seals on paintings - in fact Chinese paintings often leave spaces for stamps for collectors to leave their mark, with seals being a sign of history and provenance, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and Qianlong was unfortunately a prolific art connoisseur who had no sense of taste himself. I'm pretty sure I've heard him called "Stamp Demon" before in Chinese.

I have a soft spot for classical Chinese poetry. Of course, I can only read the translations. It says something about me that my favorite is:

Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man.

Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Hey. I'm not trying to be an edgelord. I just like it.

Alternatively:

Night after night you used to massacre rats

Guarding the grain store so ferociously

So why do you now act as if you live within palace walls

Eating fish every day and sleeping in my bed?

(Very different authors)

I do not own a cat, though I my attitude towards them is mildly positive. But if I imagine a dog instead, it warms the chilly cockles of my heart. There's one lying on my feet, warming them while taking up half my bed. He snores and is very gassy, and I will sleep poorly, but I do not have the heart to move him. If that is not love, what is?

(I can imagine my future wife describing me in those terms.)

Fine, back to being an edgelord again:

Stroking the sword while lamenting the social realities

Though that's more of a seal than a poem. The calligraphy looks sick.

Then:

"Oh great sea, you are made of water."

"Oh horse, you have four legs."

"Oh beauty, you have large eyes and a mouth!"

I promise that this is very hilarious in context. Go read Reverend Insanity.

Stroking the sword

Ya doing that with your left hand or your right hand?

¿Porque no los dos?

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