Also, your characterisation of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organisations is wrong - they are political / resistance groups. Not one of their stated goals is to impose shariah law on any of the countries in West Asia - but even if it was, what business would it be of the US regime, or the West? The primary goal of the resistance is to end the presence and malign influence of the West - specifically the US regime - in the region. They want the countries of West Asia to be ruled by the people of West Asia, and not US regime proxies or puppets. And also you describe "the Houthis" (I think you mean Ansar Allah) as wantonly destroying ships "because, why not?" - in fact Ansar Allah have made it very clear that they will attack any ships looking to transport goods to Israel as long as the Zionist genocide continues. Ansar Allah are one of the only countries actually standing up to the Zionist regime - and Western hegemony in general - and actively trying to stop the genocide.

You seem to be confused - what you refer to - mass rapes and other atrocities - have been thoroughly debunked. Nobody was raped on October the 7th. Soldiers were killed and hostages were taken, but all of the claimed rape stories were debunked, initially by the Grayzone, the Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and eventually by Israeli media outlets such as Haaretz. The hostages taken were to be used in exchange for the thousands of hostages taken by Israel - women and children that have suffered torture, rape, starvatiion, and other forms of abuse at the hands of the criminal Zionist regime. It is the Israelis that are the rapists - indeed they seem to be obsessed with sexual violence. We have seen ample evidence of Israeli sexual violence committed against their prisoners, but have yet to see one shred of evidence of the claims made about Hamas. Israel is a sick society that is built upon European-style settler-colonialism and ethno supremacism. And of course Israel is a terrorist state - indeed it was founded upon terrorism. It is a mad dog doing the bidding of the US regime in West Asia to further the imperialist and hegemonic goals of the US regime.

That's not what they're doing; it says this clearly in TFA (and, indeed, the summary). What they're asking for is a cut of the revenues that would be paid by the ad companies to the aggregator. Yes, the ad company would be handing over the cash (or its virtual equivalent), but the cash they'd be handing over would be taken from the account of whomever ran the page.

Sounds like a damn fine idea to me, with one possible caveat; it would legitimise the practise, as they aggregators would essentially be paying for the privilege of doing nothing. One could look at this as an 'everybody wins' situation; the original sites get money, the aggregator gets money, the ad company gets clicks. However, it essentially amounts to 'money for nothing' on the part of the aggregator. It also allows them to say to anyone who complains 'just join the alliance', giving them, if not the moral high ground, then at least a position that isn't below sea level.

"Will the net ultimately spread American democracy, or just American entertainment?"

Let's hope neither.

J.K.

Have a look at this.

J.K.

This is fascinating. I know it is all very theoretical, and based on computer models of how a material behaves under extreme pressure.

But frankly, I fail to see any practical applications for this. We are talking about 1,5 million atmospheres and 3000 Kelvin - hence not a typical lab environment.

The point isn't that they act differently under high pressure; it's that they act differently. Whenever we've got a model that's proved wrong - and it happens all the time - then new theories come forward to explain the new behaviour. It's those new theories that lead to breakthroughs (or breaks through).
And even if it doesn't, it doesn't matter. We still know more than we did before.