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This note is mostly an expository survey, centered on the topology of complements of hyperplane arrangements, their Milnor fibrations, and their boundary structures. An important tool in this study is provided by the degree 1 resonance and characteristic varieties of the complement, and their tight relationship with orbifold fibrations and multinets on the underlying matroid. In favorable situations, this approach leads to a combinatorial formula for the first Betti number of the Milnor fiber and the algebraic monodromy. We also produce a pair of arrangements for which the respective Milnor fibers have the same Betti numbers, yet are not homotopy equivalent: the difference is picked up by isolated torsion points in the higher-depth characteristic varieties., 22 pages

Formality is a topological property, defined in terms of Sullivan's model for a space. In the simply-connected setting, a space is formal if its rational homotopy type is determined by the rational cohomology ring. In the general setting, the weaker 1-formality property allows one to reconstruct the rational pro-unipotent completion of the fundamental group, solely from the cup products of degree 1 cohomology classes. In this note, we survey various facets of formality, with emphasis on the geometric and algebraic implications of 1-formality, and its relations to the cohomology jump loci and the Bieri-Neumann-Strebel invariant. We also produce examples of 4-manifolds W such that, for every compact K\"ahler manifold M, the product M\times W has the rational homotopy type of a K\"ahler manifold, yet M\times W admits no K\"ahler metric., Comment: 22 pages