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

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)

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.

Probably not unless they somehow scored a direct hit into the reactor itself. And even then, the fuel rods are typically under several meters of water while in use, which would probably absorb a lot of the blast.

Depending on how the reactor was designed, there is a chance that the damage could somehow lead to a runaway fission reaction a la Chernobyl. But imo, the more likely worst case scenario of a direct hit (or even near miss) to the reactor is probably that the foundation gets cracked and radioactive water starts leaking into the soil, which would obviously be pretty bad if a significant amount of that can find its way into a nearby aquifer.

Second largest military in NATO

One of the largest militaries in the region

"C'mon people, we need to protest this"

:LIB:

(not that I really expected anything from him to begin with, but still)

Using "wargames" as an excuse for troop movements in the lead up to a war isn't totally unheard of tbh. And given what going on right now, I'd honestly be surprised if Iran wasn't using it as cover to at least put themselves in a heightened state of readiness.