news
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
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To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
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To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
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Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
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Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
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Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
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Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
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Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
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Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
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American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
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Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
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AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
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I am once again stating that deserts are incredibly important biomes that contribute to the existence of fertility of green areas world-wide. We need deserts for actual global sustainability with the ecosystem we have now, they are hubs for global distribution of minerals that all life needs.
The Amazon rainforest would be significantly diminished if the Sahara desert were to be 'green'ed tomorrow. We can't just eliminate deserts willy-nilly and claim we have done a good thing.
However, China is for the most part doing re-forestation, rather than converting areas that were always deserts. So it's not a real issue in this case. This program in fact, seems to have been ongoing since 1978 to prevent further desertification. So it's Ws all the way down in terms of their actual strategy.
Yeah a lot of "greening the desert" headlines are actually about regreening former areas that used to be green like 100-400 years ago. Like large parts of the Sahel were lost to the Sahara, even in like 17th century there were european reports about kingdoms that are now lost to the sands. The Kingdom of Yam is an famous example from ancient egyptian times.
The entire Sahara being eliminated would be a fruitless endeavour anyway, re-forestation and green projects in places like Argentina, Rockies and Central Asia are way more successful because they're often not fully deserted