SpookyVanguard64

Sometime last year or earlier this year, someone in the Jungle subreddit posted a section of a ~~1992/93~~ 1993 issue of some underground rave music magazine from the UK, specifically a section that contained an interview with Pascal & Sponge (who were producing Breakbeat Hardcore/Jungle songs together as Johnny Jungle at the time). The interview was pretty short and not that interesting in the grand scheme of things, but the one thing that stuck with me from it was a brief line from Pascal complaining that the Amen Break was overused lol.

Which is pretty incredible when you consider the historical context. IIRC the first breakbeat to be sampled & used in a song was the Apache Break all the way back in 1980. By contrast, the Amen break wasn't first used until 1986, and only 6-7 years later it had exploded in popularity to the point that some people were already starting to get tired of it. And in the 30 years since then, it's continued to grow in popularity to the point that most casual fans of Breakbeat, old skool Hip-Hop, Jungle, DnB, Breakcore, IDM, etc. are at least somewhat familiar with it & it's history. The Apache Break is still easily within the top 5 when it comes to most sampled breakbeats of all time, and it has nowhere near the same level of casual recognition. Even second most sampled breakbeat, the Think Break, doesn't come close to the Amen on that front.

Edit: Here's the interview, and the relevant quote:

Q: Do you prefer the music of today or the stuff that was around a year ago and what do you see as the future of rave music?

A: I do prefer the music of today. I'm not sure about what the way ahead is though. I do think that everyone should stop using that Amen break because if anything is going to kill hardcore it will be that. People are going to get very tired of it. There are loads of breaks out there, it's just that most people are too lazy to look and find them. Havibg [sic] said that I do think that the Amen breakbeat is the same for Hardcore as the bass drum is to House.

@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

New best of 2023 mix, mainly featuring Hardcore, Darkcore & Jungle Tekno, hope y'all enjoy o7

Also uploaded a couple new tracks since the last mix I posted:

• GeoCity Junglist - Welcome To Metropolis
• GeoCity Junglist - Amen Dreams VIP (WIP/demo, updated from a version I'd posted a few months ago in "Dubplates & Demos Vol. 4")

"Welcome To Metropolis" is part of idea I had to make a fake video game OST inspired by (and frequently sampling from) 90s FPS games, though I'm also not exactly trying very hard to make all the songs work as a FPS soundtrack tbh, so the "OST" part is more of a loose thematic framing device.

@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

New best of 2023 mix, this time for Breakbeat Hardcore, Jungle & Jungle Tekno in the 140-160 bpm range. Hope y'all enjoy o7

@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.

@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

Here's the first of my 2023 Jungle mega-mixes. Hope y'all enjoy o7

Would've liked to have made this back in December, but I had ear surgery to repair a hole in my eardrum that's I've had since I was very young, which made it a bit difficult to do music related things for a few weeks. Also didn't help that my headphones broke a week after the surgery, and I didn't get around to replacing them until mid January lol.

I did make a couple new tunes last month though if anyone's interested:

• GeoCity Junglist - Cyberia '94
• DXMTHL - Power (Wicked & Glad)

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.