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...
playfish has quietly and without much fanfare launched a new Facebook game called My Empire. Here you are the empire in a Roman Setting. Guess you'd be able to change theme settings as the game grows. From Roman to Ancient Greek etc. Here you are the Emperor and need to build an entire empire all your own. You are king and collect taxes and look after your people. Pretty interesting and please Click here to play now . This is the description provided on their Facebook page. The sunlight stings your eyes as you lead a handful of the emperor's best men and women up the beach onto the island. Your footprints in the hot sands may be washed away at high tide but the mark you stamp on history will be forever. This is your island now. Your people march up the beach ready to do your bidding, setting to work building the rock solid foundations of the finest city the world has ever seen. The untouched soil is rich with gems and precious metals ready to be mined. Growing numbers of wor...