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...
Skype launched a campaign to bring back humanity into our world of social networking. Called 'It's time for Skype', meaning more face to face is better and brings real conversations back into the lives of people. Unlike staying in touch using 140 characters (think Twitter) and upgrade from a wall post to a first grade conversations. As part of this campaign Skype has launched something called humoticons, this is just like emoticons that everyone is used to with one little difference. You can use your own face and create a Humoticon with your own face and personality. This can be shared on a special page on Skype as well as a sharing option. There is a URL attached to every Humoticon you create so you can share it with freinds. Next time you or your pals are chatting they can use your Humoticon while chatting. Some people think this is quiet Bizarre but if you look at some of the Humoticons people are building they are quiet funny and entertaining. The above pic illustrates...