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...
There is at least one Meme that has caught on that the Olympics has helped create. Know as 'McKayla not impressed'. Started out on a Tumblr called McKayla is not impressed. The meme over the last few days has been seeing a spurt of growth and Mckayla Maroney has given the meme her blessing with another photography of herself and two other Olympians doing a scowl when they discover the pool is closed. This pic was posted on McKayla's Twitter . The pool is closed.. # notimpressed instagr.am/p/OMsVFpKieZ/ — McKayla Maroney (@McKaylaMaroney) August 11, 2012 Origin of McKayla is not impressed: McKayla Maroney is an American gymnast who on August 5th performed a nearly flawless vault at the London 2012 Olympics. Her second vault however turned into something of a tragedy when she failed to get enough height and consequently fell on her backside. So instad of the gold everyone though she would get after the first vault she ended up getting a silver medal. While standing on the...