On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Pottermore the social site from J.K Rowling for all her Harry Potter fans is now open to the public. You can sign-up now but your invitation might take a while before it lands in your inbox. Once you sign-up however you will notice that you username is forced on you and you might be stuck with the 5 suggested users-names recommended for you. This might be good in one way because it works to protect your identity and since many of users who sign-up will be below 18 years of age this is one option that might actually be important. Users however are not too happy since they would like to signup with their own choice of a username. Once in however there is a whole lot of mystery for you to explore. All the magic of Harry Potter seems to be flying around the website and a whole lot of magical goodies to be discovered and used. There is a lot of exclusive content for you to click on and get. There are also a lot of collections to discover and keep. If you are used to FarmVille and games like...