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:
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).
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
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.
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.
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
Bro's just cycling peacefully, took a picture of what an absolute shambles this public project is, and got tackled by the secret service
In a photo taken by David Hearn minutes before his arrest, a partially detached piece of the Reflecting Pool liner is visible. The top of Hearn's shoe can be seen at the bottom of the photo. (David Hearn)
i've been to DC a few times. one for a work thing nearby where i could take the metro in and play walk-around tourist for a day. the metro is incredible and all those free museums, the rail access to bus services to move around the region was nice too, by american standards. in that, there was a convenient bus station i could take to get to the absurdly out of the way place i was going without a car... though the bus part of the station was pretty fucked up and clearly underfunded/understaffed, confusingly organized due to some ongoing long term (stalled) remodeling. could just be bad timing, but i bet it was a multiyear cock up.
i liked my time there, but i could not really imagine trying to live there especially as the power structure grows increasingly contested between factions, neither of which seem to be accountable to working class people. it just reads unstable to me, and has too many cowboys dressing up as too many lawmen from too many agencies all eager to make an example of somebody, just so they find patronage to jump ranks.
a lot of big cities and strategic towns in the US suffer from something similar, but DC feels exceptional in this way as we stumble face first into The Cool Zone. not to mention, the panopticon there has to be state of the art and completely integrated. might as well realize you're an actor on stage playing a role everywhere you go in public.