A gymnast in a dark leotard does a split handstand on a mat. Beside her sit a round wheel of cheese on a stand and a cut wedge, with a dim gym hall behind.

NB!

Gymnast in a handstand split beside a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano in a gym

NB! · Pop Culture · Humour

The maker of Parmesan has become a sponsor of the Olympic silver medallist, the Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa, and the athlete now poses so organically with enormous wheels of cheese

Page from an old book with two poems dated 19 February 1861, signed by Bobkov and P. Weinberg.

NB! · Observations · Society

The day serfdom was abolished in Russia still has no state status

There is something odd, after all, about the fact that 19 February (O.S.), or 3 March by the new style, the day serfdom was abolished in Russia, still has no official status, just as it had none in Soviet times. This is, in truth, a great festival for the

The Moscow River with a bright green patch of algae along the embankment under a stormy sky.

NB! · Geography · Moscow · Observations · Nature

Patches of algae bloom in the Moscow River and their possible causes

I have many questions about the Tiber and the Seine, as ever; the Moskva, by comparison, is of course very clean, but even it has such pockets of "blooming". I suppose the accumulation of algae may be connected with the high solar activity this summer, with temperatures and

NB! · Art · Moscow · Observations · Humour

And what is this novelty on Kaluzhskaya Square?

And what is this novelty on Kaluzhskaya Square? Some floating fir trees beside Lenin. Interesting symbolism, something between Giuseppe Penone's sculpture in the courtyard of the Hermitage and René Morin's work with the floating orange tree in its shell in Tel Aviv, but I should not

Aerial view of children on a blue playground, casting long shadows, with an orange ball nearby.

NB! · Art · People

German photographer Katrin Korfmann and her images of people in public spaces

A photograph by Katrin Korfmann. A German photographer, Korfmann specialises in pictures of how people interact in public spaces

NB! · Art · Museums · New York

Oedipus and the Sphinx, Gustave Moreau, Metropolitan Museum

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Pop Culture · Humour

Lady Gaga Has Died

Lady Gaga has died. At least, so we must believe if we trust a letter reporting on a Lady Gaga who lived in ancient Babylon

NB! · Aristocracy · Observations · Mores · Pop Culture · Humour

I don't see anything funny here, by the way: the lady might have stood up for the birds that had taken up residence in her wig

I don't see anything funny here, by the way: the lady might have stood up for the birds that had taken up residence in her wig. A pity that in 1775 mercy was not in fashion to the same degree as extravagant coiffures. Still, the aristocrats of the

NB! · Art

A Bear by an Unknown Sixteenth-Century Artist

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · Education · People

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford

Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, eldest daughter of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, born in 2001, has graduated from Oxford. How quickly other people's princesses grow up

NB! · People · Pop Culture · Humour

The French freak-singer Philippe Katerine as a drunken Silenus, or perhaps the embodiment of the allegory of alchemical mercury, which refers to Mercury and personifies both the passage from the higher to the lower and androgyny?