City. A conglomerate of concrete, glass and asphalt, heated to the point of a giant frying pan. In this artificial savannah, where air conditioners howl like guard jackals, the annual spectacle of thermoregulation takes place. Homo sapiens, a biologically curious creature, is forced to adapt.

If Peter I had not built his city on the swamps of the Neva, a city would still have arisen here. Not the capital, of course, but a port - inevitable, like fate. Geography, that eternal dictator, would not have left the mouth of the Neva without human fuss. And here is the time to remember Arnold Toynbee: any civilization is born from a “challenge”. Swamps, climate, hostile environment - this is a challenge. And the city on the Neva is an attempt to answer.

That night, Tenochtitlan smelled not of lake water but of copal smoke. He smelled of sweat, fumes and the greed of the white Teule gods. The captive Tlatoani Montezuma II lay on a mat in the chambers of the palace of Axayacatl. Behind the stone walls, Spanish armor rang dully - this sound reminded the leader of the rustle of dry snake skins.

On the night of September 3, 1658, as the wind howled outside, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, knew he was finally dying. Not the way he had died hundreds of times before in his hypochondriacal panics - with a pounding heart and icy sweat, confident that God had already stretched out his hand over him - but for real. Renal colic twisted his body into the fetal position.

Boris Nikolaevich woke up because someone was persistently pouring ice water into his right ear. He opened his eyes. The ceiling of the presidential residence in Barvikha, covered with embossed wallpaper imitating old party brocade, slowly rotated clockwise, turning into a funnel. Lefort sat on the edge of the crater in a Malvina denim uniform and winked. “Again...” Boris Nikolaevich exhaled hoarsely, groping for the crystal pottery on the bedside table.

(Conspiracy guide for those who are still moving to the beat) The Milky Way Sapiens nightclub resembled an incubator for alien life forms that hatched, looked around and began to master the budget allocated for light music. Acid green neon pulsed to the beat of a track that didn't even try to be a melody. Mirror balls* hung not only from the ceiling, but also in the toilet - so that when you vomit, it would be beautiful.

Laurel Canyon: Lizard Lair and Lost Plans (Conspiracy guide for music lovers and experienced cryptanalysts) “Something is happening, but it’s not entirely clear what” Buffalo Springfield "For What It's Worth ", 1967 “Musicians, singers and composers suddenly begin to gather in Laurel Canyon, as if summoned there by some invisible Pied Piper.” David McGowan "Laurel Canyon" (He introduced himself as Max.

Imagine: Freedom is not a bird, but a quantum particle. It exists in a superposition - both right and illusion, until it encounters an observer in the form of your credit history. We are all cats or Schrödinger's cats in the box of capitalism, and the box is about to be opened by the collectors. Once upon a time, aristocrats hovered in a vacuum of impunity, like Higgs bosons in a field of permissiveness.

In St. Petersburg, books are still read. It's an ontological gesture on top of nostalgia. The smartphone offers a flow, a slide, an endless scrolling of the feed, where one message displaces another with the same inexorability with which the water in the Neva washes away the ripples from falling raindrops. The book is resistance to entropy. She stands in the thickness of the fluid. In it, time is captured by the binding, like an insect in amber. The smartphone is a tool of the present.

Modern Turkish screens are shrouded in the haze of the Ottoman syndrome - phantom series, where sultans cut Janissary knots with the scimitar of drama, and harems flicker like holograms of lost luster. Intrigues, conspiracies, executions, war and politics, love. Everything is as it should be in pseudo-historical films, where every camera turn is a milestone.

Rome greeted him with the drunken whisper of fountains. Vladimir, a man with a face that looked like it had been cut out of the evening news, sat at Trevi's, drinking espresso that cost as much as a barista's daily salary. He's tired. Not from cameras or microphones, but from himself - from the voice that had flowed out of him for years like water from a rusty tap. “Truth”, “justice”, “greatness” - words that became coins thrown into dark water.

Three "philosophers", one bar and an attempt to crack the code of reality Scene: bar, half full or half empty, depending on the mood. On the wall is a poster of Neil Armstrong with the caption “He was the first, even if he wasn’t.” Behind the counter is a star chart with the Moon labeled “Area 51-bis.” Characters: — Venya (alcoholic with a notebook with cognac stains instead of notes).

St. Petersburg, like a living organism, is permeated with sensors. Its pavements absorb data, its infrastructure emits digital steam, and its networks of cameras record every movement. Against this background, a street photographer with a camera seems anachronistic.

Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov has written a new book, “Russian Cyberpunk.” It contains all the current practices of the Russian special services in spying on citizens and more. Zakharov talks about the personal data market, about the breakdown, about the Moscow “Big Brother” system, about telephone scammers and the cyber war between Ukraine and Russia.

Government contracts have always been an important source of data for investigative journalists, especially when it comes to corruption. But in recent years, the authorities have classified most government contracts. It has become much more difficult to find them, but it is still possible. For example, our colleague, journalist Andrei Zakharov, recently found contracts from the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Chechnya, Amur Oblast, and Kamchatka Krai for the purchase of the Insider system.