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The seven largest tech firms in the world—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla—collectively hold around $597 billion in cash, surpassing the foreign exchange reserves of most developed countries. However, financial institutions dominate the top 50 companies with the largest cash reserves, with 13 banks, brokerage houses, and insurance giants serving as the lifeblood of the global economy. Unlike big tech companies, these banks maintain substantial cash reserves, allowing them to act as a "lender of last resort" during crises.

On November 14, 1963, the world received a rare living experiment — Surtsey. It took its name by analogy with its "father." By its twenty‑fifth birthday, because of its exceptional origin, it was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. It became the youngest site on that list. The story of Surtsey is not about the past. It is about how life is colonizing new land right now.

Every day, we walk on a thin layer of asphalt without knowing that a mechanical heart of civilization beats just beneath our soles. Let us look into titanic concrete cathedrals, into bunkers that store humanity's digital immortality, and into laboratories where scientists try to unravel the universe's secrets. This is a journey into the depths of the Earth, where engineering genius meets the primeval silence of rock. The scale alone takes the breath away.

Long before the first human blueprint was ever drawn, nature itself had already mastered the principles of 3D-printing, passive climate control, and earthquake resistance. In that realm, instinct replaces an architecture diploma, and the building materials are sand, saliva, and wax. This article is about brilliant engineers whose mega-structures are visible from space — yet whose names will never be written in design textbooks.

Fasten your seat belts. Extreme landings await. These are airports built on mountain slopes, squeezed into busy streets, or swallowed by the tide. Gravity, geography, and common sense clash here. A landing looks more like a circus act under the dome of the world. Below, there are the most audacious runways, where there is no room for a go‑around, and one mistake becomes tonight's headline.

If China was once primarily associated with being the "world's factory" producing cheap goods, today, it is gaining ground in the technology space. In 66 out of 74 technological areas, Chinese scientists are the most active. The speed at which China mobilizes resources and implements breakthrough solutions is truly impressive.

We trust our eyes. They show only the surface of reality. This article invites you on a journey where the familiar becomes strange, and a microscope replaces a space telescope. These worlds and landscapes lie at arm's length. Real discoveries often do not sit millions of light-years away. They hide under a lens and turn the everyday into an exciting alien landscape.

Chess is perhaps the only game in the world where the design of the equipment matters as much as the rules. Over one and a half millennia, the look of the pieces changed with human culture: from abstract Arabic shatranj to detailed medieval knights. For the modern collector and aesthete, a chess set is not just a tool for play but a sculptural ensemble that reflects the spirit of its age.

Everything that can be described as "luxury" shares one trait — it is always put on display. In some countries, this idea embraces jewels, palaces, and private islands. In others, it is temples, dynastic institutions or architectural influence passed down through the centuries. Some cultures flaunt wealth as a form of power. Others weave it into ritual, religion, and national heritage. It is not so much the object's price that matters but the message that luxury sends to the world.

This article explores the most intimate space in a home — the bed. We spend about a third of our lives there, so the importance of a place for sleep and recovery cannot be neglected. A bed is more than furniture: it is humanity's oldest ally in the struggle against the chaos of the world. Below are five key transformations: once, the bed used to serve as a passive resting place, but became an active participant in human destiny.

The Earth is a great illusionist. It creates spectacles that seem to break physical laws. Rare optical effects, eternal storms, red ice—these are not scenes from science fiction. They are real terrestrial processes where science meets magic. Such phenomena are rare and ephemeral. They require a precise mix of altitude, cold, chemistry, or geology. While nature shows its secret craft, science supplies the key to explanation.

Human history is not only a chronicle of wars and scientific breakthroughs. It is also a grand gastronomic thriller in which the way calories were obtained dictated the conditions for our species' survival. We are used to crediting our dominance of the planet to advanced intelligence. That intelligence itself became a byproduct of major dietary transformations.