Through the Looking Glasses

Be confident, Edna: he will raise tariffs against everyone except you, without demanding, in return, any of your conscious attentions

Artwork © addictedtodisney.uk (@addictedtodisney.uk)

Giraffe Reflections

Oh yes, Edna, they know that without you, there is no realm. No throne. No crown. Without you, their only hope is to live as servants to a feudal tenure — or as courtiers, or worse

Artwork © TAnimation777

A Crown of Wishes

The Women’s World Chess Championship 2025 will take place in 上海 (Shànghǎi) and 重庆 (Chóngqìng), China, April 3–21. Will 谭中怡 (Tán Zhōngyí) regain the crown she won in 2017? Or will 居文君 (Jū Wénjūn) win the match, and her fifth consecutive world title?

Take easy, Edna! All your worshippers shall hope to see you one of these days in 静安区 (Jìng’ān) — if not at Zin’oe Zy, at least at the breakfast buffet table in the dining room

Artwork © Jose-Ramiro

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

A woman is going on a bike ride around downtown 南京 (Nánjīng), 江苏省 (Jiāngsū province), China. Photo: 王文瀾 (Wáng Wénlán).

No, Edna; no one can guess which way the answer will be blowin’ in the wind

Artwork © DobleT

A Dragon’s Witch

罗洋 (Luó Yáng), 斋藤丽罗 (Layla Saito), 2018. Photo © 罗洋 (Luó Yáng).

A Summer at Sea

Esteban Canal – Alex Crisovan
2nd International Festival; San Benedetto del Tronto, July 1953
French Defence C01

Notes by G. Z., Het Vaderland, Saturday, November 28, 1953, p. 14.

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5. The Exchange French often leads to arid and dull play, and hence it is sometimes called “a draw variation”. However, it can also be lively, as this game shows.
3. ... exd5 4. Nf3. 4. Bd3 is usually played here.
4. ... Bd6. Black readily deviates from the symmetry (4. ... Nf6).
5. c4! White leaves the c3-square free for the Knight, which stands better there than on d2, and at the same time “dictates” Black’s next moves:
5. ... c6 6. Nc3 Ne7 7. Bd3 0-0 8. 0-0 Bf5. This offer of exchange, which deprives the d5-Pawn of a defender, does not seem advisable to us. 8. ... Be6 was preferable.
9. Bxf5 Nxf5 10. cxd5 cxd5 11. Qb3 Nc6 12. Qxd5 Nfxd4? The intent of Black’s manoeuvre now becomes clear: the exchange of the d5-Pawn for the d4-Pawn. However, what he has overlooked is that he will end up losing a piece.
13. Nxd4 Nxd4 14. Rd1. It is obvious that White cannot immediately take on d4 — 14. Qxd4 — because of 14. ...Bxh2+.
14. ... Re8? Can Black have been so naive as to rely upon the checkmate 15. Rxd4 Re1#?
15. Bg5 1–0. Black resigns. After 15. Bg5 Qc7 16. Rxd4 Black could still console himself with a Pawn (16. ...Bxh2+), but defeat would be certain in the long run.

Don’t be deceived by their tricky equivocations and linguistic lies, Edna: labyrinths are not mazes!

Artwork © Ihoi

Earth and World

Castles of Sand

After all, Edna, it comes to this: where there is a public there is a featured performer — who, as in your case, makes more public

Artwork © Alessandra Granieri (@sogni_di_fimo_art_creations)

Time and Space

罗洋 (Luó Yáng), 斋藤丽罗 (Layla Saito), 2018. Photo © 罗洋 (Luó Yáng).

It goes without saying, Edna, that if all the world’s a stage, they can’t be anything but the audience, can they?

Artwork © Gilvan Abreu

Sirens of the Lambs

No, Edna, there’s no dress code in heaven — no bouncer god not letting you in because you don’t look like a beguine

Artwork © MeJustMe

Eyes to the Sky

The Paradoxes of Freedom

Chinese national and social media influencer 刘振亚 (Liú Zhènyà) (centre), known as “亚亚在台湾” (“Yàyà in Taiwan”), is escorted by Taiwanese police officers after her press conference in Taipei. 刘振亚 (Liú Zhènyà) received a deportation notice for allegedly making several social media posts advocating cross-strait unification by force, violating regulations for Chinese residents in Taiwan, according to the National Immigration Agency. Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo/EPA.

To be sure, Edna; a true champion shows fair play and respect for opponents, whether winning or losing

Artwork © tanasweet123

Time Out of Joint

Of course, Edna, a question arises spontaneously at this point. How come they waste time searching for goddesses all around the universe, when they have one right under their noses?

Artwork © Pshunya

Divinely Enough

Only a God can save us

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 21, 2025

Heidegger’s abrupt assertion in his 1976 interview with Der Spiegel: “Only a God can save us” has always aroused perplexity. To understand it, one must first to return it to its context. Heidegger has just spoken of the planetary dominion of technology which nothing seems capable of governing. Philosophy and other spiritual powers — poetry, religion, arts, politcs — have lost the ability to shake, or at least to orient, the life of the peoples of the West. Hence the bitter diagnosis that they “are unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world” and the inevitable consequence according to which “only a God can save us”. That what is at issue here is anything but a millenarian prophecy is confirmed immediately afterwards by the clarification that we must prepare ourselves not only “for the appearance of a God”, but also, and rather, “for the absence of a God in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline”.
It goes without saying that up to now, Heidegger’s diagnosis has lost none of its topicality; indeed, if possible, it is even more irrefutable and true. Humanity has renounced the decisive rank of spiritual problems and has created a special sphere in which to confine them: culture. Art, poetry, philosophy and other spiritual powers, when they are not simply extinguished and exhausted, are confined to museums and cultural institutions of any kind, where they survive as more or less interesting leisures and distractions from the boredom of existence (and often no less boring).
How then should we get on with the philosopher’s bitter diagnosis? In what sense “only a God can save us”? For almost two centuries — since Hegel and Nietzsche declared its death, the West has lost its god. But what we have lost is only a god to whom it is possible to give a name and an identity. The death of God is, in truth, the loss of the divine names (“holy names are lacking”, Hölderlin lamented). Beyond the names, the most important thing remains: the divine. As long as we are able to sense a flower, a face, a bird, a gesture or a thread of grass as divine, we can do without a God that can be named. The divine is enough for us; we care more for the adjective than the noun. Not “a God” — rather: “only divine can save us”.

(Emglish translation by I, Robot)

Magnus, Marlene Dietrich & Betty Boop, 1985.

Make love, not war

陈漫 (Chén Màn), No. 10 1942 ISAAC ASIMOV WRITES THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS, 2016. Photo © 陈漫 (Chén Màn).