161
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
161 points (100.0% liked)
news
24519 readers
928 users here now
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.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
It does look kinda weird to me in that first pic how empty the streets are outside of the rectangular borders of the crowd. I think I see one other person along that main street?
it's likely roped off for the ribbon cutting. god forbid we have orderly public events
You're looking at an event. That's not a crowd, it's an audience. With the majority in front of the stage.
Well yeah but I live in a city that has events too and usually the rest of the roads are not just shut down and devoid of people. Hell I'm not ruling out that I'm being ignorant and this is just some cultural thing but I'm just saying it looks kinda surreal to my eyes
you've been huffing too much anti-DPRK bullshit dude. There's like 1/5th of a block that's visible of street with no cars. I can find you 1000 pictures of events in the west like this. Seriously why do you let this seep into your brain so uncritically.
This "DPRK is weird and alien and surreal" line of discussion is orientalist otherizing bullshit and you know it, and you've heard so many Liberals repeating it which is why your mind jumped there in the first place. You've been programmed to have this thought.
actually y'know what I'm stupid, saw another article about this today and it finally clicked to me that this news story is literally about thousands of new housing units being built so this neighbourhood could very well be unpopulated at the moment. that might explain the empty streets lol (and also why this never happens in the west)
Honestly like all of the news/content I see on the DPRK is pretty fucking positive lol (albeit I don't see it that much and overall I would say I don't know much about the country/culture).
I could see my comment being counterproductive in the sense that it seems like something a concern-trolling lib might say, so I'm sympathetic to the idea that I should have just not posted it. I guess I figured this was a leftist enough space that people wouldn't take my comment in bad faith, but I feel like that's what you did. Because, while I did admit that maybe this is just some cultural difference or something I'm not aware of (and not some sinister evil government plot) - you saying you can find 1000 pictures of cities in the west like this genuinely surprises me.
Like... I've lived in regions that look a lot like this, in terms of building size and everything. Places where streets are frequently shut down for events. But usually, such events attract stragglers at the borders, usually there's lots of people coming and going. This is all just what I'm used to seeing and I'm not trying to apply some sort of value judgement to that but I am nonetheless surprised by your claim that this happens all the time in the west because, frankly, I don't think I could produce one similar picture if I tried. If you want, you can dig some up for me, but I'll take you at your word that you've seen this a lot. I guess I just haven't?
I think some of it is due to the population of the DPRK. It's roughly half of the ROK, so I've imagined a lot of this infrastructure is designed for future expansion rather than reflective of the current size of the population. Probably an aspect of it involves moving people from rural communities into cities.
It strikes me as similar to countries like Myanmar and Egypt that built massive cities with plans to move their governments to them, but in the meantime they sorta lay empty because people simply live somewhere else.