The Economist.
Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.
I'm your host, Jason Palmer.
Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
Australia's teenagers are about to have one more reason for angst.
In a year, under 16s will be banned from using social media.
For their own good, of course.
It's a bold bit of legislation, but it's not easy to see how it can be enforced.
And the role playing game Dungeons and dragons is turning 50.
We ask how it made the jump along the way from nerd culture to popular culture.
But first, there's this idea in physics called an unstable equilibrium.
Forces are balanced, but only a slight nudge can change the situation entirely.
That's out of view.
Syria.
For 24 years, Bashar al Assad ruled it, 13 of them, during a brutal war of his own devising.
From Russian firepower backing Mr.
Assad to American backed Kurds in the north, rebels in the south, Islamists, the regime's Alawites.
All these various forces were balanced.
Then 10 days ago, the nudge, a rebel group called Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or hts, took Aleppo, then Hama, then Homs.
And over the weekend, the capital, Damascus, fell.