@Mabbz@hexbear.net @vertexarray@hexbear.net @plantifa@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @notthenameiwant@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Octofad@hexbear.net @MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net @ThePokeYen@hexbear.net @nabana@hexbear.net @LesserCacodemon@hexbear.net @PaX@hexbear.net

Newest installment in the sub-genre intro series, hope y'all enjoy o7

Next video will probably be on Breakbeat Hardcore, planning on doing a single megamix that starts around 135 bpm and works its way up to around 165 bpm.

Discovered this track 'cause its breakbeat was sampled and used in Technical Itch - Touch The Darkness.

For Breakcore artists to check out, Venetian Snares is probably the best one to start with. Pretty big discography and also more on the IDM side of the spectrum.

Igorrr is another good one, especially if you're into Rock/Metal type stuff since their music heavily fuses Metal and Breakcore. There's also Alec Empire's album "The Destroyer," which is what I've usually seen credited as being the first Breakcore album (though from what I've heard, Alec has become a bit of a right-wing shithead in recent years, so probably try not to give him any money if you're gonna listen to it).

I guess the simplest way to think about it is that if stuff like Jungle & DnB are Punk Rock, then Breakcore is Hardcore Punk Rock. So yeah, more abrasive, more extreme, more chaotic & experimental, faster tempos, etc.

Breakbeat is a fairly context dependent term when it's being used to describe musical genres tbh. It can be used as an umbrella term for any type of music that uses sampled drum breaks. I.e. Hip-Hop, Jungle, DnB, Breakcore, Big Beat, etc. are all Breakbeat genres. However, it can also be used to describe a specific sub-section of breakbeat music, usually stuff that's more on the downtempo & midtempo side of the spectrum that doesn't neatly fit into other genres.

Not that familiar artists who make generic Breakbeat, but I think The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were/are both big artists for that type of music. You could also check out The Glitch Mob's latest album Ctrl Alt Reality, which is somewhere in between generic Breakbeat and Breakbeat Hardcore.

@Mabbz@hexbear.net @vertexarray@hexbear.net @plantifa@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @notthenameiwant@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Octofad@hexbear.net @MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net @ThePokeYen@hexbear.net @nabana@hexbear.net @LesserCacodemon@hexbear.net @PaX@hexbear.net

Here's the next part in the sub-genre intro series, hope y'all enjoy o7

Also, here's some demos for an album I'm working on:

• GeoCity Junglist - Metropolis OST Demos

@Mabbz@hexbear.net @vertexarray@hexbear.net @plantifa@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @notthenameiwant@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Octofad@hexbear.net @MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net @ThePokeYen@hexbear.net @nabana@hexbear.net @LesserCacodemon@hexbear.net @PaX@hexbear.net

Second part of the sub-genre intro guide series I'm working on, coving Techstep & Neurofunk this time. Next part will probably either cover Atmo Jungle/DnB or Jungle Tekno & Happy Hardcore. Hope y'all enjoy o7.

Yeah. I was actually listening to Ed Rush & Optical's album "Wormhole" for the very first time the other day, and while it's pretty tame by the standards set by stuff that came after it, I couldn't help but think of how wild it must have been to go from stuff like Dred Bass, Ricky, Terrorist, Maximum Style, etc. to Wormhole in only 3-4 years.

@Mabbz@hexbear.net @vertexarray@hexbear.net @plantifa@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @notthenameiwant@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Octofad@hexbear.net @MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net @ThePokeYen@hexbear.net @nabana@hexbear.net @LesserCacodemon@hexbear.net @PaX@hexbear.net

Here's what I've been mainly working on for the past 2 weeks, first video in a series I'm working on to follow up from the genre guide video I made a while back. Hope y'all enjoy o7

Also, here's a Techstep/Neurofunk track I uploaded 4 weeks ago if anyone's interested:

• GeoCity Junglist - Psionic Assault

@Mabbz@hexbear.net @vertexarray@hexbear.net @plantifa@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @notthenameiwant@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Octofad@hexbear.net @MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net @ThePokeYen@hexbear.net @nabana@hexbear.net @LesserCacodemon@hexbear.net

Finally back with part 2 of the best of 2023 series, hope y'all enjoy o7

Also posted a new track last week:

• DXMTHL - Darkside Dynamics (Dubplate Mix)

It's a free DL on SoundCloud, or pay what you want on Bandcamp.

This post is about masking in the sense of behaviors/coping mechanisms displayed by ND people in order to appear normal to the rest of society. It’s not about Covid.

Don't have any ideas/feedback for the comm, but I figured I'd take the opportunity to talk about something I've had to deal with recently since I don't know where else to talk about it:

::: spoiler [TW: Surgery, open wound that's gross but not too serious] Had surgery on December 1st to repair a small hole in my left eardrum that I've had for most of my life. Surgery itself went well, and it seems like the hole in the eardrum hasn't reopened, which is nice. It was a pretty major disruption my normal schedule though, due to temporary hearing loss & nausea, not taking my meds for a few days afterward, and not really getting any physical activity due to heavy lifting being off the table for the time being (cardio is fine, though I've barely done any outside of walking around at stores). Basically, it feels like my ADHD has been noticeably worse the past few weeks, though it's been getting better as I've recovered.

More recently though, I had a problem with one of the incisions from the surgery opening back up. During the surgery, the method they used meant that almost everything could be done through the ear canal, but they had to make two incisions on the outside. One on the back of my ear to get a piece of cartilage, and one on the scalp just above & behind the ear to get a bit of muscle fiber, both of which were used to help repair the eardrum. Those incisions were both sealed up with dissolve-able stitches that were supposed to last for around 5 weeks iirc. And the ones on the back of my ear are still holding up fine, but the ones on my scalp came undone.

Not entirely sure why they came undone, though I caught a cold a couple weeks ago that's been causing me to cough more than normal, so that's the most likely reason. Regardless, I realized it had opened back up at the beginning of last week. Wasn't too concerning at first 'cause it was covered by a scab, but that slowly fell out and I was basically left with a gaping wound by Christmas Eve (about 1 inch long, and about 1/8 of an inch wide & deep). Fortunately it didn't get infected, it wasn't really bleeding/discharging in any noticeable amount, I still have plenty of the the antibiotic ointment they gave me to put on it after the surgery, and it seems like it was starting to slowly close itself back up over the past couple days. So it honestly wasn't that bad aside from the general grossness of it.

I did get it checked out at an urgent care facility on Christmas Eve, and the Nurse Practitioner there gave me some oral antibiotics but said that it'd be risky to try and stitch it back up due to possible abscess build up. Today I was finally able to go back in for an appointment with the ear specialists (though not with the surgeon herself unfortunately), and they decided it was best to go ahead and stitch it back up, this time with regular stitches instead of the dissolve-able ones. Not going to declare my problems with it to be over yet, but hopefully it'll continue to remain uninfected and heal better/faster now.

:::

Other than that, I'm actually doing pretty okay all things considered, just bit more tired & stressed out than usual. Also been working on my music more lately, probably mostly out of boredom tbh, but I've at least managed to make some pretty cool ideas. Was able to turn one of them into an almost fully complete track in under 24 hours, and a few others are half complete in a similar amount of time, which is more than I'm usually able to do lol.

Someone else had actually uploaded this track to YT a while back. Then about 4-5 years ago it just disappeared for some reason and no one re-uploaded it until this channel did 6 months ago (which tbf, it's a vinyl only release from 1995, so you can basically only get it through discogs nowadays). Don't remember how many views the original upload had, but judging by similarly old Jungle videos, I think it would probably be closer to 10k at this point if it hadn't been taken down.

Not 100% sure, but I think it's the Think Break. Sounds a bit weird, so likely timestretched and/or repitched. Also probably has a low pass filter over it in order to cut out the two extremely loud & high pitched peaks in the 10-20 kHz range that are coming from the shaker, 'cause those will start hurt your ears if you don't tone them down at all lol.

This conflict has gotten me interested in learning more about the early history of Islam & how it expanded to become the dominant religious force in the middle east, but one thing I've inadvertently learned along the way is that Amman, the capitol city of Jordan, used to be named Philadelphia until the 630s AD. The city was originally the capitol city of the Ammonite Kingdom, but was renamed to Philadelphia after the Macedonians conquered the region, and then renamed again to Amman once the Muslims conquered it.

(I guess this is all just to say that I never really realized that Philadelphia was a Greek name and/or that I never realized that there were other cities named Philadelphia before the one in the US lol)

I tried search for it for a bit last night, but it either happened more recently than I remember (I was thinking it was sometime between 2016-2020), or it's just been lost in the noise of all the threats Israel & Hezbollah have thrown out at one another over the years. It's kinda frustrating looking for it, 'cause searching up anything along the lines of "Hezbollah threatens Netanyahu" just returns a bunch of articles about Netanyahu threatening Hezbollah.

Hezbollah definitely has spies deep enough within the Israeli government to at least be able to get an idea of what Israel's planning to do.

The recruitment of espionage agents in Israel for Hezbollah is associated mainly with the Arab population in Israel, including former Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara, who was suspected of supplying various intelligence information to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War in 2006; an IDF officer of Bedouin origin at the rank of lieutenant colonel who supplied intelligence information to Hezbollah early in the 2000s; and ordinary residents in various areas of Israel (Kulick, 2009). However, there are not only agents from minority Arab or Bedouin groups, but also Jewish agents who have supplied intelligence information to Hezbollah as part of drug deals (see below, Criminal case 36/03 State of Israel vs. Said ben Jamil Kahmouz).

The information that the agents in Israel have supplied to Hezbollah is diverse, including the location of critical civilian and military infrastructure, orders of battle, border points, and information on IDF weapons. In addition, Hezbollah has sought to gather social information on diverse issues, including political rivalries, government systems, social struggles, social trends, and more, in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of Israeli society, military vulnerabilities, and future targets, and even in order to understand the mood in the country (Zeitoun et al., 2021; Kulick, 2009). The Israeli agents were recruited into Hezbollah service based on various motivations, including ideological and economic reasons (Kulick, 2009).

https://www.inss.org.il/strategic_assessment/intelligence-agents-in-israel-hezbollahs-modus-operandi/

Also IIRC, a few years back they posted a photo they took of Benjamin Netanyahu in his office (from the outside looking in, probably from an adjacent building), with the message basically being that they're deep enough inside to potentially assassinate him while he's at work.

I just noticed that at around 34 seconds into the video, the dust finally clears enough to reveal another Merkava that's facing almost directly at the bomb guy. Imagine how insane it would be to have an enemy tank just appear right in front of you like that.

Better optics & FCS is completely fine, and even some level of AI assisted target ID could be useful (like for example what @Frank@hexbear.net said with AI scanning & marking nearby heat signatures).

My problem is more that they seem to want the AI to be able to identify, classify & prioritize targets, which given the current level of AI technology & the type of war(s) Israel is fighting, seems like it would be fraught with errors. The IDF already seems extremely jumpy & prone to friendly fire incidents as is, and I'd imagine that there's a very large risk that an AI target ID system could make that problem much worse. It's also probably going to wind up being useless once the enemy figures out ways of spoofing it, 'cause then they can just overload the system with false positives.

Was made aware today that Israel has been working on a new Merkava model, the Merkava Mk.5 "Barak," which at a glance seems to best be described by an overconfidence & over-reliance on technology.

Article: https://www.edrmagazine.eu/israel-starts-delivering-the-5th-gen-merkava-barak-tank-to-its-armoured-units

A first major improvement came from sights; the commander got a new panoramic sight while the gunner’s sight is also brand new, Idan Tavor underlining that these are one or even more generation ahead of previous ones. Improvements came in electro-optic performances, which provide better imaging, “but the main step forward is that they have integrated AI into those sight that have now autonomous behaviours, and are capable to identify targets and objects by themselves.”

I seriously doubt that current AI technology is going to be better at identifying targets than a well trained crew working in conjunction with infantry support who can function as additional eyes for the tank (granted Israel's target acquisition only need be as sophisticated as to be able to determine whether someone is Palestinian or not). Best case scenario, it occasionally manages to pick out threats faster than the crew can, but I imagine the average experience using AI target acquisition is going to sifting though a lot of false positives.

The Fire Control System (FCS) has also been entirely upgraded. “The new version is faster and has better performances,” we were told, adding that the Merkava Barak is able to shoot on the move, day and night, with increased accuracy.

Being able to accurately fire on the move at both day & night has already been standard for most tanks made in the past few decades, so while it is probably an improvement over current FCS systems, I'm willing to bet it's not significant enough to really be notable.

Human-machine interface has also be completely reviews, adapting it to the young conscripts experience, multi-touchscreens with smartphone-like interface being now adopted. “We worked on it pretty hard for the last two years in order to make it very approachable for young soldiers who are used to their cell phones and playstations and now need to fight in a tank and we developed for them a very nice and new HMI.”

It's like a vibeo game!!!

But seriously, what's the obsession with making everything touch screens nowadays? Especially in a military context where you'd think it'd be useful to have tactile controls that can be operated on muscle memory during high stress situations.

There's probably more stuff to pick apart, but overall it just feels like they're trying to use technology to compensate for the fact that they're frequently having to use their tanks in situations that tanks really shouldn't be used in, namely that they're being operated by under-trained conscripts to fight in urban guerilla warfare.