Not influenced by the price of cheese: China ‘evaluating’ US offer to engage in trade negotiations Comments come a week after Trump claimed talks were already taking place Amy Hawkins Fri 2 May 2025 06.55 EDT Share Beijing is “evaluating” an offer from the US to engage in trade negotiations, the Chinese government has said, a week after Donald Trump claimed talks were already under way. China’s commerce ministry said on Friday: “The US has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China.” On Thursday, influential commentators in China said the country was ready to engage in talks. The suggestion that Beijing was potentially willing to negotiate with Washington – along with a better than expected report on US jobs - sent markets higher on Friday on both sides of the Atlantic. Ren Yi, a nationalist blogger who writes under the nickname Chairman Rabbit, wrote that he had learned from sources that the US had “frequently and proactively contacted the Chinese side through various channels, hoping to negotiate with the Chinese government on economic and trade issues”. China has denied claims made by US officials that talks were already under way, or that China had initiated them. Trump said last week that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had called him. China’s foreign ministry accused the US of “misleading the public” on the status of negotiations. Ren wrote: “If China had given in and taken the initiative to give in to the United States, then naturally there would not have been the United States taking the initiative to contact China.” Containers are stacked on the deck of cargo ship One Manhattan in New Jersey. Why is Trump ending the ‘de minimis’ tariff loophole on low-value imports? Read more The commerce ministry said on Friday that Washington needed to show “sincerity” in negotiations and that it should not engage in “coercion and extortion”. China has repeatedly accused the US of bullying in its approach to trade policies. The two countries have been at loggerheads since Trump launched a new US-China trade war in early April, with US tariffs on Chinese goods now at 145% while China’s retaliatory tariffs have reached 125%. But although neither side wants to be seen to blink first, the US and China have already introduced a number of exceptions to their respective tariffs to soften the blow of a trade war that risks upending the global economy. Chinese factory activity slowed in April. The statistics bureau blamed “sharp changes in [China’s] external environment” for the decline. This week Xi called on officials to adjust to changes in the international environment, although he did not mention the US by name. Elsewhere, Chinese propaganda has been more explicit. This week the foreign ministry released a video that accused the US of bullying and said that bowing to such behaviour would be like “drinking poison”. A US executive order to close a multibillion-dollar tariff loophole, known as “de minimis”, came into effect on Friday. The ending of the de minimis regime, which allowed low-value goods to be shipped to the US without paying customs fees, primarily affects Chinese exporters. Scott Bessent said this week he was confident that China would want to reach a deal. The US treasury secretary said: “First, we need to de-escalate, and then over time, we will start focusing on a larger trade deal.”
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I am wondering though are there physicists who say time is completely man made and is not real. Thought for 6s Yes — some physicists say that, but almost none mean “time is a made-up calendar like money.” They mean the flow, the global now, or time as a fundamental ingredient is not in the basic laws. Clocks, aging, and change still happen.Einstein already wrote that for physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is “only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He meant there is no single moving present for the whole universe. He did not mean clocks are fake. physicsworld.com Julian Barbour is the blunt case. In The End of Time he argues there is no flowing time and no hidden time axis. Reality is a heap of complete “Nows.” What we call history is structure inside a Now (a “time capsule”), not travel along a line. Motion and passage are how we read differences between configurations. That is as close as a working physicist gets to “time is not real.” It is a minority view, taken seriously as a research program, not as settled fact. en.wikipedia.org Carlo Rovelli is the most visible living voice. He has written that time does not exist at the fundamental level: loop-quantum-gravity equations need no time variable; past and future look the same in microscopic laws; the “flow” is largely how a coarse-grained, heat-sensitive brain sits inside rising entropy. He also says our experience of time is not a mere error — it is real for us, like the sky “turning” because Earth rotates. So: not fundamental, not man-made from nothing, but perspectival. theguardian.com Others nearby, not identicalPage and Wootters: in a globally frozen quantum universe, “evolution” is entanglement with a clock subsystem. Nima Arkani-Hamed and many quantum-gravity / holography people: spacetime itself is probably emergent, not basic. Lee Smolin often disagrees with full timelessness and defends a real present; useful as a contrast. What almost nobody in physics claims: that seconds, cesium clocks, or “Tuesday” are arbitrary social inventions with no physical correlate. Units and calendars are human. Duration, causal order, and proper time along a worldline are not.So the accurate map is:Claim Who Status No universal flowing now Einstein, most relativists Mainstream Time not in the deepest equations Rovelli, some quantum gravity Active research Time is only an illusion; only static Nows Barbour Minority, discussed Time is a human convention like money Almost no physicist Not a physics position Your “time doesn’t exist” slogan sits nearest Barbour and popular Rovelli. The field’s careful version is: the thing we feel as a river is not a basic piece of the world; change and clocks still are.
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For decades, the mainstream Jewish community and conservative Christians often found themselves on opposite sides of domestic cultural issues. However, the aggressive overreach of radical activist networks in public education has shattered old political divisions, forging an unprecedented, highly effective coalition [10.1].This unexpected alliance works in practice through three major common interests:1. A Shared Stand for Parent Rights and TransparencyThe underhanded tactics used to advance curricula like San Francisco’s Voices—such as midnight votes and copyright shields—alienated Christian families just as much as Jewish families.Breaking the Monopolies: Conservative and Christian legal networks have joined hand-in-hand with Jewish advocacy groups to mandate total educational transparency. They are deploying joint resources to demand that public school boards publish every single reading list and lesson plan online, permanently dismantling the ability of radical administrators to hide their work.Electoral Force: In suburban communities like Fremont and across Silicon Valley, Christian, Jewish, and immigrant parent groups (such as East Asian and Indian coalitions) are combining their voting power [10.1]. They are pooling campaign funds to systematically remove radical progressive officials from local school boards and replace them with moderate, transparency-first candidates.2. Uniting Against the "Oppressor vs. Oppressed" FrameworkTraditional Christians and Jewish advocates share a fundamental rejection of radical identity-based theories that divide children into rigid moral categories based on race or religion.Defending Basic Values: Both communities view the "Liberated" framework as an assault on universal values, meritocracy, and individual character. Christian parents refuse to let their children be taught that their faith or traditional values are inherently oppressive, while Jewish parents refuse to let their children be targeted by biased political dogmas.3. Bipartisan Legislative and Federal EnforcementThis alliance has successfully elevated local school board grievances into historic federal and state-level protections.The Right to Worship Act: Just days ago, on August 6, 2026, a major bipartisan, bicameral coalition led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced the federal Right to Worship Act. Backed heavily by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), this bill establishes strict 100-foot protective buffer zones and heavy civil fines to stop hostile activist crowds from blockading or harassing congregants outside houses of worship.The Federal Crackdown: The Trump administration’s upcoming 15-city DOJ task force and FBI deployment is heavily cheered by red-state conservatives. They view the federal audits into deep-blue California municipalities as the ultimate enforcement of civil rights, proving that local progressive immunity expires where federal law begins.The progressive establishment completely miscalculated. They assumed they could isolate Jewish families by using anti-racist language, but their reliance on secrecy and radical tactics instead forced a historic real-world alignment. Mainstream Jews, traditional Christians, conservatives, and diverse immigrant communities have formed a massive, united front—permanently forcing the radical movement into a corner as the legal guardrails close in [10.1].
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