Society - The Parnassian (Page 14)

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The 61st Venice Biennale is due to open on 9 May, this time wreathed in scandal, protest and cancellation

The 61st Venice Biennale is due to open on 9 May, this time wreathed in scandal, protest and cancellation. Allow me to recall a brief chronology of unprecedented contradictions and squabbles. 💀In February 2026 the Biennale's curator, Koyo Kouoh, dies at the age of 57, without having brought

NB! · Observations · Society · Humour

If only one could now be cheerfully applauding the wise policy of Lenin and Stalin, instead of all this

Archive · Faith · The East · Society · People

Saint Gabriel (Urgebadze) of Georgia burns a 12-metre portrait of the godless Lenin during a May Day demonstration in Tbilisi in 1965

After he burned the portrait of Lenin, he was arrested, beaten and declared mentally ill, then dispatched for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1995 and was later canonised as a saint.

Observations · Science · Society

On 28 April the Trump administration dismissed the entire US National Science Board with a single letter: 22 scientists who oversaw the National Science Foundation, with its budget of 9 billion dollars a year

On 28 April the Trump administration dismissed the entire US National Science Board with a single letter: 22 scientists who oversaw the National Science Foundation, with its budget of 9 billion dollars a year. The NSF has been without a director since the spring of 2025, and Trump's

Observations · Society

What Exactly Are We Celebrating Today?

What exactly are we celebrating today? It is a question to which, by and large, nobody has a coherent answer. In the calendar the day is called “Spring and Labour Day”. To quarrel over spring seems odd, particularly since everyone marks its arrival on 22 March already, while the notion

The East · Observations · Society · Humour

With a Light Wave of the Hand, Donald Trump Becomes an Elegant Turkmenbashi, Whose Face Stood at Once on Banknotes, School Textbooks and State Documents, and in Whose Honour the Months of the Calendar Were Renamed

For the 250th anniversary of the United States, the State Department will issue a special print run of passports bearing Trump's face and signature on the inside cover, over the text of the Declaration of Independence. American passports have never before carried a living president. Trump's

Society · Humour

“Mr President, you recently said that if it were not for the United States, Europeans would be speaking German

“Mr President, you recently said that if it were not for the United States, Europeans would be speaking German. I venture to suggest that if it were not for us, you would be speaking French.” When playing the Anglo-American game of the subjunctive mood, the main thing is not

Archive · Moscow · Society · People

Fidel Castro and the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya after a performance of Swan Lake

On 27 April 1963 Castro flew secretly to Murmansk in a Tu-114 and spent forty days in the USSR, the first visit by the Cuban leader to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev needed to mend relations after the Cuban Missile Crisis: six months earlier Moscow had withdrawn its missiles from

Archive · Monarchies · Society · People

"And should God change the Horde..."

This remarkable phrase appears in the testament of Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy. The whole sentence runs thus: "And should God change the Horde, my children shall not be obliged to give the tribute to the Horde, and whichever of my sons takes tribute in his own appanage, to him

Moscow · Observations · Society · People

Remembering Election Night in March 2018

I remember Election Night in March 2018. It was his sixth presidential defeat, yet Zhirinovsky climbs onto the stage without any visible disappointment. A short speech on how the political landscape would change in the years ahead. We applaud more out of inertia: the result has been announced, though everything

Architecture · Cinema · Observations · Heritage · Society

Trump Plans to Rebuild the Reflecting Pool, the Very One Between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, Along Which Forrest Gump Ran to Jenny and Around Which a Crowd of Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Listened to Martin Luther King

I've probably built more than a hundred pools in various buildings. Over the years I've had three or four good pool guys. I took the best of the three This is not a quotation from a developer's interview; these are the words of the

Architecture · Observations · New York · Society

Have you come across reels criticising the new skyscraper in New York, which is being berated for blocking the view of the Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue?

Have you come across reels criticising the new skyscraper in New York, which is being berated for blocking the view of the Empire State Building from Fifth Avenue? These lamentations have been turning up in my feed for a week now, and New Yorker acquaintances confirm that everyone is indeed