A metal iron shaped like a rooster, with an open beak, a patterned tail and a wooden handle, stands in a display case.

NB! · Humour

Iron shaped like a rooster with an open beak and a wooden handle

The Iron: Don't worry, I won't tell a soul, a secret is a secret. The same iron, a moment later:

A carpet with two wrestlers at the centre and three musicians in arched niches above, framed by a broad ornamental border.

NB! · Archive · The East · Art · Ethnography

The carpet “Olympiad” of 1979 by Arif Gandi oglu Ismailov

"Olympiad" carpet, 1979. Designed by Arif Gandi ogly Ismailov

NB! · Architecture · Geography · Moscow · Observations

And in front of the Manege, a train is parked

NB! · Aristocracy · Observations · Mores · Humour

The phrase "old money style" I take to mean "my ancestors were poor and I am embarrassed about it"

NB! · Art · Monarchies · People

Catherine II at 33, still Grand Duchess, in mourning for Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1762

Catherine II at 33, still Grand Duchess, in mourning for Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1762. Portrait by Vigilius Eriksen, who was one of Catherine's favourite painters.

A woman with an elaborate headdress of leaves and branches peers over a large dark shape. Behind her lies a savanna with acacia trees, a giraffe and dark animals on the grass.

NB!

Woman in a foliage headdress against a savanna with a giraffe

NB! · Architecture · Monarchies · Moscow · People

Catherine the Great and Her White Hands at the Entrance to the Grand Palace at Tsaritsyno

NB! · Art · Books · Observations

Officially in Love with the 1965 Cover of "Fathers and Sons", Borrowed from a Nineteenth-Century Russian Songbook

Archive · Books · People

Dostoevsky on nihilists in his letters to Maykov and Meshchersky

"There is nothing to be said about nihilism. Wait until this upper layer, torn away from the soil of Russia, has rotted through entirely. Do you know, it occurs to me that many of these very same scoundrel-youths, these rotting youths, will end by becoming genuine, firm adherents

Art · Mores · Humour

Throw out the junk ✔️ Invite old friends round ✔️

Jules Le Roy, 1900

NB! · Books · Observations · Humour

I don't know about you, but for me the titles of Lenin's works are literally a selection of moods for every day

Archive · Books · Monarchies · Science · Nature

Butler's bee hierarchy with a queen at the head, an aristocracy and a plebs

The Hierarchy of Bee Society: An Illustration from The Feminine Monarchie, or The History of Bees, the 1609 Scientific Book by the English Naturalist Charles Butler. That bee society is headed by a queen was news at the time; this fact had been discovered only at the end of the

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