Aerobics instructor appears to capture Myanmar coup in dance video | Hacker News Reader

Aerobics instructor appears to capture Myanmar coup in dance video

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111 pointsdarshanime55 comments

If there were one video we could archive to describe the world as it is right now, this would be it IMHO.

Her shadow cuts off abruptly. Is this a green screen? Since there is already a dead comment about that, I'm guessing I'm wrong for some obvious reason, but I can't place it.

There's at least one or two steps of a stair, so the "top" part is lower than the front part, thus making the shadow get cut off.

You can see the shadow on the bag on the right side in the beginning.

I thought so too, but someone pointed out that she is standing on a raised location with descending steps behind it, causing the shadow to be hidden from view.

its an elevated platform, the shadow is not visible because its falling on the steps.

here is a opposite view, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtNsnSxVEAE6hJo?format=jpg&name=...

Makes you wonder why she chose the road view angle

Otherwise she had to place the camera on the road. And road views are fine specially when the background is the White House or the parliament building in this case.

i think it's a step that cuts it off, does look like it though

Dance like no one‘s watching, or staging a coup.

highly doubt it.

coup happened at 4am local time, sunrise in winter happens at 6:47 am. this video is pretty bright

This is an interesting analysis. Did the coup really happen at 4am?

If so, then there's almost no way this video could be legit.

Coup news takes time to reach the media. If this is not fake more likely this video is from the previous day afternoon, when they raided the parliament.

According to this comment the camera faces westwards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999725

The sun shines from the back towards the right so is more in the east. I'd put it somewhere around 10 to 12 AM local time (UTC+6.5).

https://www.suncalc.org/#/19.7758,96.1326,15/2021.01.31/11:4...

Apparently the original post was done on 15:00 local time so that gives an upper bound: https://www.facebook.com/100005518668726/posts/1569283416598...

This LA Times article notes that the video was taken in the morning: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-01/myanma...

This stated communication blackouts lasted from 3 to 1115 am, with one journalist reporting a loss of service at 4am: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55893736.

The coup didn't happen instantaneously at a given time, so it seems reasonable to say the video was recorded during the coup. At the same time, it's not really clear what specific activities the vehicles were on route to.

She seems to be dancing by the Royal Lotus Roundabout near the Parliament and Presidential Palace [1].

The building in the background of the video appears to be a shrine located just past the road leading to the Presidential Palace. You can see the vehicles turn left just before the shrine, so they were probably up to no good...

[1]: https://goo.gl/maps/NLYW6hDSY4wMQkBH8

Source for 4am caravan-to-the-capital?

But it's so much more click-worthy to pretend the title is true. This is a great example of how misinformation can propagate orders of magnitude further and faster than the truth as long as it's funny, ironic, or reinforces existing bias.

What, 4AM instantaneously? I'm sure they arrested key people at that time, but there's no need to barricade streets etc (as shown in this video) until later when things are under control and you can start worrying about public unrest.

It's such a powerful piece of art (unintentional as it is)

That's very surreal. And would be funny if the situation wasn't so serious.

Can someone from that country or who knows what's going on give some insight?

On the face of it, seems like military leaders who don't want to give up control. Is it more complicated than that? Do they actually believe there will be some kind of revolt by one faction if she stays in power (or at least some excuse like that)? The article I saw was not very insightful.

The military thought they were going to slowly take power back from her, but instead she extended her democratic election mandate.

Plan A failed so this is B.

Their pretense is the "election was fraud"

The dance version of the Iraqi information minister.

perfect meme. However, i found what happens in the background to be too little for it to be actual news.

Yes, it’s “just a convoy”, and you see normal cars passing by too.

Perfect personification of “Ignorance (situational) is Bliss”

It's certainly funny after the fact but how could she, or anyone else, tell it was a military coup?

It looks like some military vehicles politely entering a government complex at a rather brisk pace. Maybe an official wanted a joyride in the latest troop carrier thingy?

It's not ignorance if there's no way you can tell something is up !

Certainly Jan 6th mayhem at the US capitol looked more like "a coup", and the rioters involved probably thought it was going their way for a couple of hours, yet in the end it was nothing but a humiliation for a bunch of angry hillbillies and conspiracy theorists. The military in Myanmar certainly knew where to go and what to do.

Perhaps the aerobics video is more like a picture of competence in staging a successful coup? :-)

well, imagine the military is with Trump, and says to the civilians: It's okay we'll take it from here and then a bunch of military vehicles show up to arrest all of congress who is against Trump. It's kinda like that a more "professional" coup.

I think this is also the road featured in Top Gear a while back.

I know nothing about Myanman politics so I won't wax poetic about anything

I haven't even seen that Top Gear episode but I'm sure it's the same one. This, the main highway in Naypyitaw, is very famous for its incredible width and underutilization. Trip Advisor rates it the #2 best place to visit in the capital city: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g2036450-d1213...

I've been there. It is awesome. Myanmar, I mean.

If you want to feel like someone in the movie Passengers Naypyitaw on a national holiday is an awesome place to do it. There is this vast swaths of infrastructure working and rarely a soul to see. Build for 20 million with barely one living there.

Amazing place, amazing people (when you get to find them) and amazing food.

The video appears to be taken from this spot, facing roughly due west:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/19%C2%B046'33.0%22N+96%C2%...

After the vehicles pass through the roadblock, they can be seen to turn left, heading towards the Presidential Palace.

> Myanman

Is there an adjectival form of Myanmar? I've been assuming we were stuck with "Burmese" regardless of whether we called it "Burma".

Yes: it's Myanma, so it's the Myanma government.

That's the official adjectival form according to the Myanmar government. However, in practice I've never seen it used (even in Myanmar). People tend to either say Burmese or simply use Myanmar as both noun and adjective, as in, "the Burmese language" or "the Myanmar language".

Tediously complicated explanation:

Burmese is tonal, and has both the noun "Myanma" and the related but not identical adjective "Myanma". The noun has a low tone and a long "a", which reflecting British pronunciation was spelled "Myanmar". The adjectival form uses the creaky tone with a short "a", hence it's supposed to be spelled "Myanma" without the r.

In practice, though, nobody cares and everybody says "Myanmar" for both, even the official English translation of the constitution, which says "Myanmar language".

"Myanman" or "Myanmarese" are both wrong though.

I think the point of these super wide and straight underutilized roads is to be usable as landing strips. I think the swiss have some highway stretches like that too, but not in the middle of the capital.

The city itself is pretty sparse.

Here’s the footage on YT: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1p47H8HuLtY

This video is edited. The background music is not the original.

Here is the original in a tweet: https://twitter.com/VonKoutli/status/1356278671267557382

The song is "Ampun Bang Jago".

I didn't expect it to be hilarious. No wonder it went viral.

But as someone else pointed out, the coup may have happened in the middle of the night at ~4am or so. Is this really showing the actual coup, or just the aftermath?

I mean...what is the precise moment when a coup happens? I would argue that a military caravan to a central govt building is still pretty coup-esque.

I agree that a coup doesn't happen instantly - but this video has captured a unique moment of history if it's showing military forces bloodlessly capturing a government checkpoint. On the other hand, if it's merely showing military vehicles passing through a military checkpoint? There are probably hundreds of videos showing that.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/100005518668726/posts/1569283416598...

This is making rounds on the web but please have a look at her shadow, this looks like a fake.

Looks just like 1/6

Brazil 2: Myanmar

Dance dance revolution!

(Reference to a Terry Gilliam movie about normal life occurring over a surreal government-vs-revolutionaries backdrop.)

Too perfect. I’d bet it’s psyops propaganda.

Is there really someone who believes this video was not planned / manufactured? Are you that gullible?

Lots of things happen in the world. Some of them are hard to believe. If there is 1 billion cameras in the world they are bound to catch some 1 in a billion events

Exactly! We seem to process “unlikely” as “impossible”, but very unlikely events happen all the time. Just because there are also many, many opportunities for them to happen.

It’s also funny to see skeptics who think they cleverly avoid being manipulated when they see a cut off shadow fall into that trap because they are not skeptical enough of their own hypotheses.

I'm okay with them downvoting us now. Hopefully these comments will jolt something awake a few months (years?) from now when the story is "corrected".

They're at one of the biggest attractions in the capital city of a country. It's not exactly a stretch to think someone would capture this in the background.

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