A Little to the Left

Magnus Carlsen – Vincent Keymer

7th GRENKE Chess Classic; time control: 45 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Karlsruhe, March 31, 2024

Nimzo-Indian Defence E21

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Nf3 d6 5. g3 Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 b6 7. Nd2 Bb7 8. f3 e5 9. e4 0-0 10. Bd3 Nc6 11. Nb3 Ne7 12. 0-0 h6 (12. ... Nd7 13. Qc2 c5 14. d5⩲ Chatalbashev – C. Bauer, 7th International Open, Vaujany 2016)
13. Rb1 Ba6 14. f4 Nh7 15. f5 Kh8 16. Na1 Ng8 17. Nc2 g5 18. Ne3 Ngf6 19. Rb2 Re8 20. Qf3 c5 21. d5 Rg8 22. h3 Kg7 23. a4 Bc8 24. Ra2 Bd7 25. Qd1 Rb8 26. Bd2 Rb7 27. Be1 Kf8 28. Rff2 Ke7 29. Rfb2 Qc7 30. g4 a6 31. Qe2 a5 32. Qf3 Qd8 33. Rh2 Qe8 34. Bc2 Qf8 35. Kf1 Kd8 36. Bd1 Kc7 37. Ke2 Rb8 38. Kd2 Qg7 39. Kc1 Rh8 40. Rh1 Rbg8 41. Rah2 Qf8 42. Kb2 Qe8 43. Ka3 Qf8 44. Bd2 Qe8 45. Bc1 Qf8 46. Nf1 Qe7 47. Ng3 Qf8 48. h4 Qg7 49. Qg2 Bc8 50. hxg5 Nxg5 51. Nh5 Nxh5 52. Rxh5 f6

53. Qh2 Nxe4? This, with the underlying sacrifice of the Exchange, will prove to be unsuccessful. Black ought to defend himself stubbornly by 53. ... Bd7! 54. Bxg5 fxg5 55. Rxh6 Rxh6 56. Qxh6 Be8! 57. Qh7 Kd8! with a Pawn less, but a hard nut to crack.
54. Bxh6 Qe7 55. Kb2 Bd7?! Now after 55. ... Ng5 56. Bxg5 Rxh5 57. Qxh5 fxg5 58. Qh7 Qxh7 59. Rxh7+ Kd8 60. Kc2 the ending is quite hopeless for Black, who sooner or later will be zugzwanged.

56. Rh4! Be8 57. Bc2 Rxh6. Forced, as 57. ... Ng5 58. Nxg5 costs a piece.
58. Rxh6 Ng5 59. Rh8 Rxh8 60. Qxh8 e4 61. Qh2 Nf3 62. Qf4 Ng5 63. Kb3 Bd7 64. Re1 Qf8 65. Ka3 Qh8 66. Bxe4 Qh3 67. Kb2 Qh7 68. Bc2 Qg7

69. Re6! Carlsen is happy to give back the Exchange in order to breakthrough.

69. ... Nf7. 69. ... Bxe6 70. dxe6 is also hopeless for Black.
70. g5! Qxg5. Neither 70. ... Nxg5 71. Qxd6+ Kc8 72. Re7 nor 70. ... fxg5 71. f6 would be of any avail.
71. Qxg5 fxg5 72. f6 Ne5 73. Rxe5! 1–0.

Food for Profit

For further details and information, click here.

Well, okay, Edna, I’ll keep it with mine

Artwork © Tad Butler (@tadbutlerart)

Poems of Cheer

Yeah, Edna, what a poet can do is above and beyond anything they can imagine

Artwork © Todd Bright (@brightanimation)

It Will Come For Sure

Optimism I write poems they don’t get published but they will I’m waiting for a letter with good news maybe it will arrive the day I die but it will come for sure the world’s not ruled by governments or money but by the people a hundred years from now maybe but it will be for sure Nâzım Hikmet, 1957 English translation by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

George Frederic Watts, Hope, 1886. Courtesy of Tate Britain.

Easter Saturday

Of course, Edna, it’s a mere coincidence that many warmongers are directly and heavily involved in the business of arms trading

Photo © Ольга Нуарэ / Olga Noiret 🍀 (@noiret.dolls)

Play It Again

Magnus Carlsen – Richárd Rapport

7th GRENKE Chess Classic; time control: 45 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Karlsruhe, March 28, 2024

Modern Benoni A70

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 c5 4. d5 d6 5. Nc3 exd5 6. cxd5 g6 7. h3 Bg7 8. e4 0-0 9. Be3 Re8 10. Nd2 a6 11. a4 Nxe4 12. Ncxe4 f5 13. Be2 fxe4 14. Nc4 a5 15. Bf4 Bf8 16. Ra3 Na6 17. 0-0 Nb4 18. Qd2 (18. Re3 b6 19. f3⩲ Decuigniere – Fromm, 20th International Open, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy 2024; 18. Rg3!?⩲)
18. ... b6 19. Rg3!?TN Ra7 (19. ... Ba6)

20. h4!↑ Rf7 21. Bg5 Be7 22. Bxe7 Qxe7 23. h5 Bf5 24. Bg4 Bxg4 25. Rxg4 Rg7? [25. ... Rf6 26. Re1 (26. Nxb6 Nd3) 26. ... Qf7]

26. Re1! gxh5? 27. Rgxe4 Qxe4 28. Rxe4 Rxe4 29. Nxd6 Re5 30. f4! Rxd5 31. Qe2 h6 32. Qe6+ 1–0.

Spring Flowers

Sam Sanzetti, Woman with flowers, 1921–1949. Photo © Estate of Sam Sanzetti. Courtesy of Photography of China.

Have faith, Edna: happy times will come again, hopefully within this century

Artwork © Veronique Art

Backend

Magnus Carlsen – 丁立人 (Dīng Lìrén)

7th GRENKE Chess Classic; time control: 45 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Karlsruhe, March 27, 2024

Queen’s Gambit Declined D35

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. cxd5 exd5 5. Nc3 c6 6. Bf4 Bf5 7. e3 Nbd7 8. Nh4 Be4 9. f3 Bg6 10. g4 Be7 11. Nxg6 hxg6 12. Qc2. This is what theoreticians call a novelty, even if it does not differ much from a recently played game stored in online databases: 12. Qb3 Qb6 13. Qc2 Nf8 14. 0-0-0 Ne6 15. Bg3 0-0-0 16. h4 Bd6 17. Bf2 Qc7 18. Bh3⩲ Sivuk – Raja, 51st Rilton Cup, Stockholm 2024.
12. ... Nf8 13. 0-0-0 Ne6 14. Bg3 Bd6 15. Be1 Qc7 16. Kb1 0-0-0 17. h4 Kb8 18. Rg1 a6 19. Rg2 g5 20. h5

20. ... c5. After a long convalescence, 丁立人 (Dīng Lìrén) finally begins to recover his health and self-confidence, at least enough here to put up a creative defence, privileging dynamism and mobility over material balance.
21. dxc5 Bxc5 22. Na4 Bxe3 23. Qb3

23. ... d4 24. Rc2. 24. Bxa6 Qc6∞ would be rather nebulous but good enough for Black.
24. ... Qd6 25. Ba5 Qd5. Of course Black is bound to give up the Exchange as the Rook can’t abandon the d-file without hanging the e3-Bishop.
26. Bxd8 Qxb3 27. axb3 Rxd8

28. Nc5. 28. Bc4 appears to be a little less complacent, to which Black would have probably replied with 28. ... Nf4 29. Bxf7 Nd7 followed by ... Nd7-e5 and ... Ne5xf3 (alternatively 29. ... d3 30. Rc3 Bd4 would win back the Exchange and remain a Pawn down).
28. ... Nd5 29. Bd3 Nb4 30. Nxe6 fxe6 31. Rc5 Rd5 32. Rc4. 32. Rxd5 exd5 33. Bf5 Kc7 would not promise anything more.
32. ... a5 33. Be4 Rd6 34. Rc5 b6 35. Rc4 e5 36. Rxb4. Carlsen eventually returns the Exchange, trying out a few last tricks before agreeing to a draw.
36. ... axb4 37. Kc2 d3+ 38. Rxd3 Rxd3 39. Kxd3 Bc1 40. Kc4 Kc7. Black cannot play 40. ... Bxb2?? as this would permit 41. Kd5 Kc7 42. Ke6 followed by the subsequent capture of the g7-Pawn.
41. Kd5 Kd7 42. Kxe5 Ke7 43. Kf5 Bd2 44. Kg6 Kf8 45. Bd5 Bc1 46. Bc4 Bd2. Just a line to remind that one is always in time to throw it all away (46. ... Bxb2?? 47. Kxg5+−).
47. Bd5 Bc1 48. Bc4 Bd2 ½–½.

Yes, Edna, as every year, whether it is sunny or rainy, one must somehow pass through the winter to get to the spring and then through the spring to the summer

Artwork © True_Might

Odds and Endings

Daniel Fridman – Magnus Carlsen

7th GRENKE Chess Classic; time control: 45 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Karlsruhe, March 26, 2024

8/2p2kb1/3p4/3Pp3/1PP1P3/1KN3R1/5rp1/8 w - - 2 40

Position after 39. ... Kg8-f7

Unsurprisingly, it took very little for Carlsen to make his incomparable technique work all over again. Yet his opponent, starting from the position in the diagram, did almost everything right:
40. c5! Bf8! 41. Kc4 Bh6 42. b5! dxc5 43. d6! At the price of two Pawns, White succeeds in building up a blockade. Of course not 43. Kxc5?? on account of 43. ... Rc2 44. Kb4 Bd2 winning at least a piece.
45. ... cxd6 44. b6 Rb2 45. b7. 45. Nd5 also seems good enough to keep White’s drawing chances alive, but Fridman understandably aims at reducing the number of Pawns.
45. ... Rb4+ 46. Kd5 Rxb7 47. Rxg2 Rb6 48. Ra2 Rb3 49. Ra7+? This volatile check proves to be the losing mistake. After the correct 49. Kc4 Rb4+ 50. Kd5 Rd4+ 51. Kc6 it is hard to see how Black can make progress.
49. ... Kf6 50. Kc4 Rb4+ 51. Kd5 Bd2 52. Ne2

52. ... Rb3! White’s Knight is now almost dominated and Carlsen has no difficulty in winning the ending.
53. Ra2. If 53. Kxd6? then 53. ... Re3! 54. Ng1 Rd3+! 55. Kc6 c4 winning easily.
53. ... Bb4 54. Kxd6 Rd3+ 55. Kc6 Kg5 56. Kb5 Kg4 57. Kc4 Rd1 58. Rc2 Kf3 59. Nc1 Kxe4 60. Nb3 Rd3 61. Re2+ Re3 62. Nc1 Rxe2 63. Nxe2 Kf3. Even without Rooks, White’s domination strategy succeeds anyway.
64. Ng1+ Kg2 65. Ne2 Kf2 66. Nc1 e4 67. Kd5 e3 68. Nd3+ Kf1 0 : 1.

Once on a Tuesday

After a five-year hiatus the GRENKE Chess Classic is back, with a new hexagonal round-robin format and a new time control — the so called “fast-classical” time control. Apparently, in the Land of the new “Freestyle chess”, as they call Fischer’s chess, old classics are still popular, too. Moreover, the simultaneous presence of five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and pro tempore World Champion 丁立人 (Dīng Lìrén) gives Das GRENKE Fest its unique elite class.

Richárd Rapport – Magnus Carlsen

7th GRENKE Chess Classic; time control: 45 minutes plus 10 seconds per move; Karlsruhe, March 26, 2024

8/6p1/5p1k/2B1p3/2n3PP/2PR4/2r2P2/5K2 b - - 4 40

Position after 40. Rd5-d3

Today, however, the centre of the stage was taken by 丁立人 (Dīng Lìrén)’s second, Richárd Rapport, who mercilessly took advantage of a rare blunder by Carlsen to grind a win out of a probably drawn endgame:
40. ... Nd2+?? The nemesis of too many “Titled Tuesdays” before a green screen. It seems that after 40. ... e4 Black should somehow save the day.
41. Rxd2! 1–0. 41. ... Rxd2 42. Be3+ is a brutal end.

Yeah, Edna, they should ask themselves why they lost instead of telling lies that call for more dies

Artwork © Laurie Sawyer (@huskysketches)

Ladies’ Room

To be sure, Edna, in the 1960s, with Baez, Dylan and Lennon around, no one would have had the bad taste to show up in camouflage gear

Artwork © True_Might

The Messenger Dove

The New Normal

崔岫闻 (Cuī Xiùwén), Existential Emptiness No. 11, 2009. Photo © Estate of 崔岫闻 (Cuī Xiùwén). Courtesy of Eli Klein Gallery, New York.

Don’t take it to heart, Edna! Once upon a time it was talented screenwriters going to make history, but now they are gone and the stage is in the hands of an elite club of warmongers

Artwork © Luke Perkins (@lukes_drawing_page)

Half in Shadow

何藩 (Fan Ho), 陰影 (Approaching Shadow), 香港 (Hong Kong), 1954. Photo © 何藩 (Fan Ho) Trust and Estate. Courtesy of Blue Lotus Gallery, 香港 (Hong Kong).

Yet, Edna, one should never forget that seasons won’t last forever

Artwork © True_Might

Claire de Lune

张海儿 (Zhāng Hǎi’er), 胡源莉 (Hú Yuánlì) sitting in the bath tub, Paris, 1992. Photo © 张海儿 (Zhāng Hǎi’er). Courtesy of AnOther Magazine.

Sad but true, Edna. They need war to save themselves from their own people

Artwork © Ben Wild Studios

Second Skin

Don’t fear, Edna, our Eden is more and more a jungle of armed, immoral poachers, but Tarzan will wipe them all out in a nanosecond

Artwork © mallow222 (@ZEALOUSMALLOW222)

The End Not Yet

God, man, animal

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 18, 2024

When Nietzsche, almost one hundred and fifty years ago, formulated his diagnosis on the death of God, he thought that this unprecedented event would radically change the existence of men on earth. “Where are we moving now? — he wrote — Aren’t we rushing into a continuous fall? [...] Is there any up or down left? Aren’t we straying as through an infinite nothing?”. And Kirillov, the character in Demons, whose words Nietzsche had carefully meditated upon, thought of the death of God with the same heartfelt pathos and had drawn as a necessary consequence from it the emancipation of a will with no more limits and, altogether, the non-sense and suicide: “If there is no God, then I am God... If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I am bound to show self-will... I am bound to shoot myself, because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself”.
It is a fact that one should not tire of reflecting upon that a century and a half later this pathos now seems to have completely disappeared. Men placidly survived the death of God and continue to live without fuss, so to say, as if nothing had happened. As if nothing — exactly — had happened. Nihilism, which European intellectuals at first greeted as the most disquieting of the guests, has become a tepid and indifferent daily condition, with which, contrarily to what Turgenev and Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Heidegger thought, it is possible to peacefully live with, continuing to search for money and work, to get married and divorced, to travel and go on holiday. Now man wanders thoughtlessly into a no one’s land, beyond not only the divine and the human, but also (without offending those who cynically theorise a return of men to the nature from which they come) the animal.
Certainly everyone will agree that all this makes no sense, that without the divine we no longer know how to think of the human and the animal, but this simply means that everything and nothing are now possible. Nothing: that is, that at the limit, there is no longer the world, but the language remains (this is, if one carefully thinks about that, the only meaning of the term “nothing” — that language destroys, as it is doing, the world, believing it can survive it). Everything: perhaps also — and this is decisive for us — the appearance of a new figura — new, that is, archaic and, at the same time, very close, so close that we are not able to see it. Whose? And of what? Of the divine, the human, the animal?
We always thought of the living being as within this triad, both prestigious and uncertain, always playing them off against each other or with each other. Hasn’t the time perhaps come to remember when the living being was not yet a god, nor a man, nor an animal, but simply a soul, i.e., a life?

(English translation by I, Robot)

Odilon Redon, I am still the great Isis! Nobody has ever yet lifted my veil! My fruit is the Sun!, 1896. Courtesy of WikiArt.

Come on, Edna, fly high, think big, and don’t eat too many sweets!

Artwork © 🎀🍄Helga🍄🎀 (@_HelgaTam_)

影片畫格 (Film frame)

金剛 (King Kong)

陈漫 (Chén Màn), Long Live the Motherland, 上海 (Shànghǎi) No. 1, 2010. Photo © 陈漫 (Chén Màn). Courtesy of Photography of China.

Yes, Edna, to quote Seneca, “A mountain is closer to the sun than a plain or a valley is, but in the way that one hair is thicker than another”

Artwork © MD (@md_univers5445)

Game tree

Crowds gather to view a new Banksy artwork — a stencil of a person and spray-painted tree foliage on a wall behind a leafless tree — near Finsbury Park in north London, England. Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images.

To be sure, Edna, the less one knows, the more one thinks one knows

Courtesy of DragonsDogma2

Meanwhile

In a Class of Her Own

“Humans shouldn’t worry about Artificial Intelligence, but rather cooperate with it”. 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán)

Four-time Women’s World Chess Champion and PKU Professor 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) is one of the most influential voices of Peking University’s public elective course “冠军讲堂” (“Champion Classroom”). Photo: 人民日报 (People’s Daily).

In your place, Edna, I would crown myself with laurels before they were withered

Artwork © Kiki 🎀 (@kikis_artventure)

卡珊德拉 (Cassandra)

Studio 6

You see, Edna, one word is enough to turn black hair into blonde hair

Artwork © Doctor_Whos_Beef_Stew (@DoctorWhoStew)

The Fischer King

Fischerandom chess takes centre stage as five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner announced in a joint statement on Friday that the first of five legs of a worldwide Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour will be actually held in India in November 2024 for a money prize of $500,000. The format is the same of that of Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge: rapid prelims followed by a knockout with classical time control. “In 2025 the next stop will be Germany (Weissenhaus) from February 7–14. Further Grand Slams are currently planned for summer, fall and winter 2025 in New York, Cartagena/Colombia, and Cape Town/South Africa, as well as for Australia in 2026”, Buettner said, adding he was inspired by mainstream sports like Formula One and tennis.

The While Ever After

While

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 14, 2024

To free our thinking from the enticement which prevent it from taking flight, it is best first of all to accustom it to no longer think in nouns (which, as the name itself unequivocally betrays, imprison it in that “substance”, with which a thousand-year-old tradition believed it could grasp being), but rather (as William James once suggested) in prepositions and maybe in adverbs. That thinking and the mind itself have, so to say, a non-substantive character, but an adverbial one, is what the singular fact reminds us that in our language to form an adverb it is enough to add the suffix “ly” to an adjective: lovingly, cruelly, wonderfully. The noun — the substantive one — is quantitative and imposing, the adverb qualitative and light; and, if you find yourself in difficulty, it certainly will not be a “what” that pulls you out of your embarrassment, but a “how”, an adverb and not a noun. “What to do?” paralyses you and nails you down; it is only “how to do?” that opens up to you a way out.
Thus to think of time, which has always put a strain on philosophers’ mind, nothing is more useful than to rely — as poets do — upon adverbs: “always”, “never”, “already”, “now”, “still” — and, perhaps — the most mysterious of all — “while”. “While” (from Latin dum interim) does not designate a time, but a “meantime”, that is, a curious simultaneity between two actions or two times. Its equivalent in verbal modes is the gerund, which is neither strictly a verb nor a noun, but supposes an accompanying noun or verb: “So still go onward, and in going listen”, says Virgil to Dante, and everyone remembers Romagna by Pascoli, “the towm where, as we go on, we follow / the blue vision of San Marino”. Let one reflect on this special time, which we can only think of through an adverb and a gerund: it is not a measurable interval between two times, indeed it is not even a time in itself, but almost an immaterial place where we somehow dwell, in a sort of simple and interlocutory perpetuity. True thinking is not that which deduces and infers according to a before and after: “I think, and therefore I am”, but, more soberly: “while I’m thinking, I am”. And the time we live in is not the abstract and frantic rush away of ungraspable instants: it is this simple, still “while”, where, without realising it, we always already are — our counted eternity, which no worn out clock will ever be able to measure.

(English translation by I, Robot)

Alfred Freddy Krupa, While Fixing Hair, 2015. Courtesy of WikiArt.

Basically, Edna, no one knows what is worthwhile while one is in the meanwhile

Artwork © PUNG PUNG (ปังปัง) (@pungpung.bkk)

The Wind Wand

A woman makes a video with a mobile phone to post on TikTok as she stands in Times Square in New York City, United States. Photo: Mike Segar/Reuters.

Yes, Edna, spring is finally coming as days began to grow longer

Artwork © Gerard (@draresg)

万小姐好好学习 (Miss Wàn Studies Hard)

陈漫 (Chén Màn), 万小姐好好学习 (Miss Wàn Studies Hard), 2011. Photo © 陈漫 (Chén Màn). Courtesy of 上海摄影艺术中心 (Shànghǎi Centre of Photography).

You know, Edna, one never knows how an irresistible heartthrob will react to being challenged

Artwork © James Fields (Coolgames)

Castle to Fortress

A drone view shows Mont Saint-Michel, in the western region of Normandy, France, surrounded by sea. Photo: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters.

Well, Edna, if happiness is a whole tiramisu cake, then you better not eat it all in one bite

Photo © Ольга Нуарэ / Olga Noiret 🍀 (@noiret.dolls)

Exit Laughing

Ethics, politics and comedy

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 11, 2024

We need to reflect on the singular circumstance that the two maxims which tried to define with greater acuteness the ethical and political status of humanity in modernity come from comedy. Homo homini lupus — cornerstone of Western politics — is in Plautus (Asinaria, v.495, where he jokingly warns against the one who does not know who the other man is), and homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, perhaps the happiest formulation of the foundation of all ethics, we read in Terence (Heautontim., v.77). No less surprising is that the definition of the principle of law “to give to each his own” (suum cuique tribuere) was perceived by the ancients as the most appropriate definition of what is in question in the comedy: a gloss on Terence enunciates it unreservedly: comic is par excellence to assignare unicuique personae quod proprium est. If one assigns to each man the character that defines him, he becomes ridiculous. Or, more generally, any attempt to define what is human necessarily results in a comedy. This is what the caricature shows, in which the gesture to catch at all costs the humanity of each individual turns, according to all evidence, into a joke, it really makes one laugh.
Plato must have had something like this in mind, when he modeled the characters of his dialogues on the mimes of Sophron and Epicharmus — decidedly comic. “Know thyself” is the antithesis principle to any tragic arrogance and can only give rise to a game and a joke, even if these can be and are perfectly serious. The human, indeed, is not a substance whose boundaries can be traced once and for all — it is, rather, an always ongoing process, in which man does not cease to be inhuman and animal and, altogether, to become human and talking. For this reason, while tragedy brings to expression what is not human and, at the point in which the hero abruptly and bitterly gets awareness of his inhumanity, results in silence, the person, i.e. the comic mask, entrusts the smile with the only possible enunciation of what is no longer and yet is still human. And against the West’s incessant, obnoxious attempt to assign the definition of ethics and politics to tragedy, it must be remembered every time that man’s dwelling on earth is a comedy — perhaps not divine, but which anyway betrays into the laugh its secret, quiet solidarity with the idea of happiness.

(English translation by I, Robot)

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, Mayakovsky smiles, laughs, mocks, 1923. Courtesy of WikiArt.

Carpe diem

A woman poses for a photo in front of an installation to promote the film Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for best visual effects, outside a popular shopping centre and official development in the Hibiya neighborhood at Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Richard A. Brooks/AFP/Getty Images.

Hopefully, Edna, where there is a will, there must be a way out

Artwork © Amy Cummins (@hendersonhasselbalch)

Tea at Five

Attendants carry flasks of hot tea for Chinese leaders before the closing session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in 北京 (Běijīng), China. Photo: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images.

That is a rhetorical question, Edna — you are the fairest of them all!

Artwork © Edward (@cafedward)