Archive · Observations · Saint Petersburg · Humour
Noses in their iPhones
Photograph by Vladimir Baranovsky, 1970s, Leningrad
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Science · Mores · Humour
Mercury is an ingredient of the cosmetic creams “Metamorphosis”, “Celandine”, “Spring” and “Youth”, and of the medicinal ointments “White Mercury” and “Yellow Mercury”
These are not your Granny Agafya's recipes
NB! · Books · Observations · Humour
Alas, "The Art of Trolling" Turned Out to Be a Book About Fishing from a Moving Boat
Faith · Ethnography
An Evening in Christmastide
Vladimir Zhdanov
Books · Mores · Humour
Pushkin on obligatory family visits at Christmas in Chapter IV of “Eugene Onegin”
Hm! hm! Noble reader, Is all your kin in health? Permit me: perhaps you would care To learn from me just now What relations, properly speaking, are. Relations are people of this sort: We are obliged to caress them, To love them, to respect them from the heart, And, according
Faith · Art
Alexander Ivanov's sketch of the 1850s with an angel above shepherds and their flock
The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds to Announce the Birth of Christ. Sketch by Alexander Ivanov, 1850s.
Art · Museums · People
Pavel Nashchokin's Christmas Present to Pushkin, 1832
I send you your forebear with inkwells, which open, and in opening I discover that he was a man à double vue (clear-sighted) Inkwell with a figurine of a little blackamoor: Russian work of the 1830s, collection of the Pushkin Museum-Apartment. Beside the figure of the youth stand
Faith · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations
The Nativity in Ilya Repin's 1890 painting from the Tretyakov Gallery collection
Merry Christmas! Heavenly grace, happiness and the light of the Star of Bethlehem to you all! Always strive towards the perfection of the Lord, and remember that there is no Saviour but Christ! Ilya Repin, The Nativity of Christ, 1890. State Tretyakov Gallery
Observations · Science · Humour
Karl Marx and the subject of artificial intelligence
The new era differs from the old one chiefly in that the whip begins to imagine it is a genius. Karl Marx on artificial intelligence
NB! · Archive · Museums · Heritage · Saint Petersburg
A restorer at work in the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve in 1984
A restorer at work in the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve in 1984. Photo by Vsevolod Tarasevich
Archive · Mores · Society · Humour
On 26 January 1522 the city council of Amsterdam decreed:
"…that no one shall throw snowflakes, neither woman nor man, on pain of a fine of one pound."
Archive · Books · People
Leo Tolstoy at his desk in the study at Yasnaya Polyana in 1908
Photograph by Karl Bulla