NB! · Observations · Science · Ethnography · Humour

What talent and imagination Soviet scholars must have possessed to contrive to insert a quotation from Lenin into, say, an article on the social anthropology of pre-class societies

NB! · Archive · Art · Monarchies · Humour

When She Put On All Her Best at Once

When she put on all her best at once. Photographs of Elizabeth II from 1986, when she was 60, taken by Curtis Hoopper for work on the Queen's portrait. These pictures were found in the artist's studio after his death.

Observations · Society · Humour

The number of people who congratulated me on Culture Worker's Day equals the number of people whom I congratulated on the occasion

The number of people who congratulated me on Culture Worker's Day equals the number of people whom I congratulated on the occasion. But this identity is easily altered. I congratulate all my colleagues, the workers of this most vital sphere, whose efforts and talents, alas, too often remain

Moscow · Museums · Observations · Humour

Garage Museum made a video on how endowments, or museum target funds, work

Garage has made an excellent video on how endowments, that is, a museum's designated funds, work, with the help of Garage the cat, pumpkins, and examples from ancient Greece, modern America and Sweden. It at once made me want to eat a Garage doughnut, otherwise known as a

NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour

"You're looking well." "Thank you, you too."

NB! · Geography · Maps · Moscow · Observations · Humour

Am I mistaken, or does Ryazan on this map of 1556 really enjoy a more attractive situation than Moscow?

NB! · Archive · Science · People · Humour

The manuscript of an article by Yury Valentinovich Knorozov, co-authored by the cat Asya

Photograph of a book page in pre-revolutionary spelling with two words covered by white patches.

NB! · Observations · Humour

Readers are asked to identify a Russian ruler from an excerpt of an old book

Guess who is being described. Several names come to mind at once, do they not?

NB! · Art · Mores · Humour

A Crinoline Mishap

A crinoline mishap. Poor girl, one longs to offer her a hand. But the fellow, instead of helping, has raised a finger and stands there looking gleeful.

NB! · In the Press · Books · Pop Culture · Humour

News from the World of Books

News from the world of books. Nastya Ivleeva and the Parnassian Mockingbird 🥰

Faith · Observations · Ethnography · Humour

Absolution prayer in the hands of the dead and a 17th-century foreigner's report on Saint Peter

That's just the sort of people we are. Saint Peter reads on a slip of paper that the departed is a Russian, and at once admits him to heaven. A modern priest reports that a note bearing the so-called prayer of absolution is placed in the hands

Observations · Mores · Humour

There Is No More Absorbing Novel Than Notes on the History of the Fatherland

There is no more absorbing novel than notes on the history of the fatherland. The wife of Grishka Otrepyev, False Dmitry I, Marina Mnishek, became so convinced that the second resurrected Dmitry was her husband, though in appearance he was not in the least like the first, that she received