Gray metal sculpture of shapeless boulders stacked on top of each other in a square, with a yellow lift beside it and a white arched building and passersby behind.

NB!

Monumental sculpture of stacked boulders in front of a building with arched windows

NB! · Pop Culture · Humour

You on the Internet vs You in Life

NB! · Monarchies

The King Is Coming

Ochre house facade with green shutters and a marble plaque recording Napoleon's birth on 15 August 1769, seen from below.

NB! · Architecture · Museums · People

Facade of the house in Ajaccio, Corsica, where Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769

The house in which Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769. Ajaccio, Corsica

A twelve-metre aluminium sculpture of stacked, irregular lumps on a square, with a mobile crane and a lift beside it.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations

Urs Fischer’s sculpture “Big Clay” installed at the GES-2 building on Bolotnaya Embankment

Beside the VAC Foundation for contemporary art, that is, by the GES-2 building on Bolotnaya Embankment, the installation of a work by Urs Fischer has been completed. It looks striking. We shall see how long this 12-metre aluminium surprise remains standing, and yes, I am aware that the

NB! · Humour

A Keepsake for the Crush ✔️

NB! · Cinema

The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed

NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Humour

An insert in the collected works of Stalin asking that the book bearing this personal label be returned should any defect be found in it

An insert in the collected works of Stalin asking that the book bearing this personal label be returned should any defect be found in it. One does not, of course, envy the inspector after whose check a flaw or error turns up in a book by Stalin. Oh, one does

A painting from 1937–1939 in a frame on a dark museum wall: workers assemble a large metal tank in a factory hall.

NB! · Coming Up · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Exhibition marking the centenary of the GOELRO plan at the Museum of Moscow

It is a hundred years since our country was blessed with electricity, GOELRO-style. The exhibition is about just that. Everyone to the Museum of Moscow

NB! · Archive · In the Press · Science · Nature

One might consider it a prophecy of catastrophic climate change from 1912 come true, although humanity has pushed nature to the brink of existence and extinction not over centuries, as the futurologists of a century ago supposed, but in merely…

A fallen oak lies on the ground, its split trunk with a broken root end and moss-covered bark set against green foliage.

NB! · Observations · Nature · Saint Petersburg

The oldest oak, aged 160 years, falls in the botanical garden of Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg Live reports that the oldest oak in the botanical garden has fallen. The 160-year-old tree, with a crown 24 metres across and a height of 18 metres, which had witnessed the abolition of serfdom, could not survive climate change, or, quite as likely, a fungal disease.

NB! · Observations · Humour