NB! · Observations · Humour

Not the most obvious pose, perhaps, but a rather familiar one: you have been sitting in some waiting room for ages, and you begin to slide down the faux-leather armchair to ease your back, while the people around stare at you as though you had done…

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

I noticed this work: in 2010, I think, I painted a picture in exactly the same style, but with a man in the bushes, and my mother always begged me to get it out of the house. It now stands somewhere in the garage, wrapped in a hundred layers of polythene

Art · Observations · Society Pages · Humour

I walk up to this stand and say: honestly, people have no shame, it is an exact copy of the Khomich brothers, only in a different technique 😡

The caption on the label reads: Yakov Khomich. Does this ever happen to you? ps Olga Sviblova, who was standing nearby, said at the end of the scene that one of these works ought to be bought

NB! · Pop Culture · Humour

A Dutch Bilbo Baggins in a Green Cloak Bids You Good Evening

Art · Observations · Humour

Girolamo Induno’s “Sad Presentiment” of 1862 and the Bust of Garibaldi

A girl pines for her beloved and scrolls through their photos together on an iPhone. Girolamo Induno, 1862. On the wall, as a tribute to romantic memories, hangs a reproduction of Francesco Hayez's "The Kiss". So that is how it goes: they wander about kissing, and

NB! · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Humour

Louis-Philippe was such a mediocre ruler that he had to be reborn as a gel polish before anyone would say a good word about him

NB! · Cinema · Pop Culture · Humour

Saruman, on hearing that some hobbits intend to destroy the Ring of Power

Archaeology · Archive · The East · Observations · Mores · Humour

The text of a clay tablet: a letter to his mother from a son who complains that she does not buy him fine clothes, while the clothes of the other young gentlemen grow finer with every passing year

The boy cites the son of his father's assistant, who has two new sets of clothes. "Even though you bore me, and his mother merely adopted him, his mother loves him, and you do not love me!" 3,500 years have passed, and so little has

NB! · Nature · Humour

The cat, upon learning what her food costs

NB! · Architecture · Heritage · New York · Humour

The Statue of Liberty in 1886 and Now

The Statue of Liberty in 1886 and now. Live with that.

Aristocracy · Architecture · Art · Observations · Humour

Ceramic pavilion “Wedding Cake” by Joana Vasconcelos at Waddesdon Manor

The 12-metre ceramic pavilion "Wedding Cake" by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos. The present day. Waddesdon Manor in the English county of Buckinghamshire, property of the Rothschild Foundation. The author calls her work a building, an immersive sculpture. At first glance it appears a rather striking structure,

Miniature of a teacher in an orange robe seated in a courtyard, surrounded by pupils with books and sheets on a patterned carpet beneath white domes.

The East · Art · Books · Education · Humour

A schoolroom scene in a miniature from Saadi's “Gulistan” manuscript, 1567/8

Disorder in the classroom. A pupil does not obey his teacher. A tale as old as time. From a manuscript of Saadi's «Gulistan», 1567/8, attributed to Mir Ali Husayni of Bukhara