LW writes: Chile got rid of Pinochet, Syria got rid of Assad.

A link to a long video, perhaps an antisocial post for that reason. Interview with al Sharaa, Syria's new president by two thoughtful if flawed Brits: New President of Syria: Ahmed al-Sharaa

I thought that it was interesting that he mentioned Brazil and Rwanda among countries whose transitions he had learned about. He grew up Golani. Maybe I am too eager for something positive, good words easier than good deeds, but this conversation left me with some hope.

Heebie's take: I'm all for reading hope into anything these days.

Also I did hunt for a transcipt but it appears that the episode hasn't been out long enough.

Mossy Character sends in: Indians become biggest international student group in U.S., surpassing Chinese for first time since 2009

New data released by the State Department in conjunction with the Institute of International Education shows that there are now 331,602 Indian international students in the U.S. (a 23% growth from last academic year), compared with 277,398 Chinese international students (a 4.2% decline).

Huh, interesting. Why?

The change is owed to the lingering impacts of pandemic-era travel restrictions and the U.S. government's changing climate toward China, experts say, as well as the pull of engineering and computer science programs at U.S. universities.

Makes sense. Also I think that India has a larger population than China now, so there's a little of just plain demographics.

I'm worried about my man Drum.

I can barely breathe, and even the slightest exertion gives me chills and gasping

Sounds like he's not in a position to hear that he was wrong about how everyone is overreacting. Despite all that, he's the person whose work I send most often when friends are falling for right-wing bullshit ("no chargers are being built" being the most recent one) or debunking some vapid WSJ trend piece. I hope he recovers well soon.

Josh Marshall has also been very good lately. To Heebie's point, it's such a failure of the media that most people have no idea what's happening to the government.

I know the mainstream media is awful, biased, complicit, etc etc. But I'm really scared that these lawsuits (like the CBS one) are going to turn them all into Fox-style fawning syncophants, the way the tech giants have semi-recently capitulated. Like, Zuckerberg hasn't ever been good, but he still seems to have pivoted hard in the last few months. (I can't even process Musk as a person because I'm so blinded by rage and disgust.)

But anyway: if the media capitulates hard, that seems like a real accelerant to this downward spiral we're on.