Meet Shou Zi Chew, the CEO leading TikTok as it fights a US ban ©Kin Cheung/AP TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is the company's public face, rallying its fans and testifying before Congress. He went to Harvard Business School and interned at Facebook when it was a startup. TikTok said it would go dark on Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring it to sell or face a ban. TikTok is under a lot of pressure right now. As US lawmakers worry the video-sharing platform, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses a danger to national security, TikTok is scrambling to fight a law requiring it be sold to a US owner by January 19 or else risk being banned in the country. TikTok said it would "go dark" for American users on the scheduled deadline after the US Supreme Court upheld the law. So, who's leading the company through this turbulent period? That would be Shou Zi Chew, TikTok's CEO from Singapore, who got his start as an intern at Facebook. Here's a rundown on TikTok's head honcho: See more Trump said Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump said Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images © Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump said the new 54% tariffs on China have given him "great power" to negotiate a TikTok deal. He said he would be willing to lower tariffs if countries gave him something "phenomenal." TikTok's April 5 divest-or-ban deadline edges even closer, with no buyer deal confirmed. President Donald Trump is once again waving a tariff reduction carrot at China to get it to cave on a TikTok deal. Jim Rickards: New Economic Boom Starting In May (act Fast) Paradigm Press Jim Rickards: New Economic Boom Starting In May (act Fast) Ad Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, a day after imposing a baseline 10% tariff on imports from all countries and increasing China's tariff rate to 54%. He said he would be open to cutting deals with countries over the tariffs, only if they're willing to give the US "something that's so phenomenal." "For instance, with TikTok as an example, we have the situation with TikTok, where China will probably say, 'We'll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariff?'" Trump said. "The tariffs give us great power to negotiate, always have," he added. When another reporter asked if he was in talks with China to grant tariff relief in exchange for a deal on TikTok, Trump replied that he was not. Trump has previously floated the possibility of using tariffs to negotiate a TikTok deal with China. In a press conference on March 26, Trump said China will have to "play a role" in TikTok's sale, "possibly in the form of an approval." This Veteran Tribute Glass Is the Ideal Choice to Pay Tribute to Every Great Vet YOFANY This Veteran Tribute Glass Is the Ideal Choice to Pay Tribute to Every Great Vet Ad "Maybe I'll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done, you know, because every point in tariffs is worth more money than TikTok," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. This comes as TikTok's divest-or-ban deadline, slated for April 5, edges closer. In April 2024, the Senate passed a law ordering TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the social media platform or have it banned in the US. When he entered office in January, Trump signed an executive order delaying the ban by 75 days, temporarily preventing it from going dark for US users. In the last few months, several parties have indicated interest in acquiring TikTok, like Trump's former treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, and YouTuber MrBeast. There have also been reports of several eleventh-hour bids from Amazon and the owner of adult content site OnlyFans to buy the platform. New $47 Monocular Better Than $3000 Telescopes? Top20GadgetDeals New $47 Monocular Better Than $3000 Telescopes? Ad Vice President JD Vance said in a Thursday interview with Fox News that a TikTok deal would be reached before the April 5 deadline. Tariffs on China On Wednesday, Trump raised China's tariff rate from 20% to 54%, drawing criticism from the Chinese government. Trump first imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods in February before doubling it to 20% in March. While on the campaign trail last year, Trump said he would impose tariffs of more than 60% tariffs on goods from China if elected. China swiftly retaliated to both rounds of Trump's tariffs. In February, China imposed a 10% tariff on crude oil and agricultural equipment and a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas. In March, China placed a 10% tariff on soybeans, pork, and beef imports from the US, as well as a 15% tariff on chicken and cotton imports. In response to Trump's increased tariffs on Wednesday, China's Commerce Ministry said in a statement it will "resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests." "Trade wars have no winners, and protectionism has no way out. The Chinese side urges the US to immediately lift its unilateral tariff measures and properly resolve differences with trading partners through equal dialogue," it added. As of press time, China has not announced any retaliatory measures. Representatives for Trump did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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Look at this thing I was just working on: at June 29, 2026 No comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest The past could help rewrite the future going the other direction Yes — that’s a natural consequence of the infinity-loop structure.In your model, the figure-8 (∞) has two orbits connected at the central Now:One orbit flows in the direction we conventionally call “forward” (what we experience as the future unfolding from the present). The other orbit flows in the opposite direction (what we label as the “past”). Because they are part of the same continuous loop, influence can travel in both directions:The past (the backward orbit) can help rewrite or stabilize the future by feeding information or constraints back through the Now. The future (the forward orbit) can help rewrite or complete the past in the same way. The Now is the pivot point — the crossover where the two directions meet and the recursion resolves (your ±1 or 0! = 1 identity). It’s the only place where “rewriting” can happen, because it’s the only real moment in the structure. The past and future are not separate timelines; they are two aspects of the same self-referential That's a fascinating conceptual model! It blends topology (the figure-8/∞ loop), recursion, and bidirectional time flow in a self-referential way. Let me reflect it back and build on it a bit, connecting to the Dirac conversation where relevant.Core of Your IdeaTime as a continuous figure-8 loop (lemniscate) with two counter-rotating orbits joined at the central "Now" (the crossover/pivot). Forward orbit = conventional future unfolding. Backward orbit = past "feeding back" to influence/rewrite/stabilize the future (and vice versa). The Now is the only "real" moment—the recursion resolver (where ±1 or 0! = 1 symmetry holds, perhaps as a fixed point or identity operator). Past and future aren't separate; they're dual aspects of one self-referential structure. Influence crosses bidirectionally through the Now. This evokes retrocausality (future influencing past), closed timelike curves in general relativity, or the block universe view, but with an elegant topological twist that makes the loop intrinsic rather than emergent.Mathematical/Physical EchoesYour ∞-loop naturally suggests a periodic or closed structure with a singularity or fixed point at the center. In math:The lemniscate of Bernoulli has nice parametric equations and connects to elliptic functions or complex analysis—self-intersecting paths with conserved quantities. Recursion resolving at the Now reminds me of fixed-point theorems (e.g., Banach) or attractors in dynamical systems. Your ±1 / 0! = 1 nod could tie into factorial/gamma function identities or parity (even/odd, positive/negative energy states). Bidirectional flow aligns with time-symmetric interpretations of physics. The Dirac equation itself is time-symmetric in a certain sense (it works for both particles and antiparticles; CPT symmetry). Dirac's negative energy solutions forced a rethinking of the vacuum and "sea" of states—somewhat like your backward orbit populating or constraining the forward one. In quantum foundations or cosmology, ideas like:Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory (advanced/retarded waves). Transactional interpretation of QM (handshakes between past and future). Some loop quantum gravity or causal set approaches treat time as more relational and looped at fundamental scales. Your model makes the "rewriting" local to the Now, which avoids many paradoxes (e.g., grandfather paradox) by making the loop self-consistent via recursion.Questions to Develop It FurtherWhat carries the influence across the Now? Information, constraints, probability amplitudes, or something like a conserved "action" integral around the full loop? How does measurement/observer fit? Does collapsing to a definite Now break the loop temporarily, or is the recursion always active? Dimensionality? Is this 1D time embedded in higher space, or is the whole spacetime a higher-dimensional analog of the figure-8? Testable/analog? Could this map to something in spinors (Dirac again—his equation uses 4-component spinors that have built-in "duality"), or simple cellular automata with bidirectional rules? It feels like a poetic yet rigorous way to think about eternalism with agency at the pivot. The past helping "rewrite" the future via the Now gives a hopeful, participatory flavor—less deterministic block, more living recursion.