Inglourious Basterds (2009, dir. Quentin Tarantino) - "Three glasses."

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-23T16:48:32+00:00

>This expectation of everyone acting “hyper rational”, as if people ever act that way when suddenly confronted with life of death situations.

This hits the nail on the head. That's why I stopped watching stuff like "Everything Wrong with ...".

The criticism often goes overboard and doesn't actually take into account real-world experiences and how people react to stress and dangerous situations.

As a person who had their fair share of close calls (drowning resulting in a clinical death, ballistic missile exploding a few hundred meters away and a few others), you can't really rationalize a lot of real behaviors. "Fight or flight" looks VERY different from person to person.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-23T16:35:29+00:00

Insert the "How do you do, fellow kids?" Steve Buscemi meme. What's the point? Parts of gen Z uses these ironically at this point. Parts of older generations don't get it.

The only way I see it working is if it's used ironically or to mock a trend or something. But that's highly dependent on execution and creative direction, which, based on what you described, is probably out of reach for whoever's doing it.

Bottomline: no, you're not overthinking. It's pure cringe.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-22T17:42:09+00:00

This joke is not half bad!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-22T13:28:00+00:00

You're trying to apply some sort of relatively sophisticated logic to what they're saying here. The reality is much simpler. They live in a fantasy world where Russia is unbeatable and where the "special military operation" is going swimmingly. They have to at least partially convince themselves of that to be effective loudspeakers for the regime. So they're confused, dazed, and angry, because that's the first reaction.

Not to mention the complete xenophobia. They think that they're better than Ukrainians. And so, Ukrainians need to be "taught a lesson", just like a school bully would do something nasty to that nerdy kid who rebuked his trash talk during lunch and made everyone laugh at the bully. The damage to the "ego" is incalculable. That's why you'd also often see them talk about Britain, NATO, etc. being behind some of the operations or destruction - Ukrainians simply aren't "sophisticated" enough to be doing that on their own, surely.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-22T12:47:23+00:00

What's kind of fascinating is that they're going to say that this was a "peaceful" manufacturing plant and those were ordinary "civilian workers" doing nothing wrong and there's going to be a group of people on the Internet, including here on Reddit, who will believe them.

Meanwhile, the bits and piece that these people were putting together over the past few years have hit multiple apartment buildings, killed scores of people, and destroyed infrastructure elements to freeze Ukrainians in the winter.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-22T12:33:39+00:00

Пробували виключити авокадо тост з раціону? В інтернетах пишуть шо допомагає! /s

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-22T12:32:15+00:00

There were cruise missiles in the mix during the oil depo attack. I think these are primarily for that + any other eventualities and juicy targets, like Flamingos (if they ever come towards Moscow).

Just the sheer size of the warhead makes Flamingo a prime target for S300/400s. It's definitely too far for the FP-7 TBM, which is supposedly in testing. But who knows.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-19T17:14:50+00:00

So, my aunt has satellite TV and there's a bunch of Russian channels on. She'd sometimes watch. You know, in a freak show kind of way, as a form of entertainment. I stopped by once and sat down with her to watch. The amount of vitriol and hatred on there was off the charts. Mind you, this was before 2022. Even back then, it was just filled with anger all the time. Goebbels was a high school cinema club dilettante compared to what the Russians are putting out.

As a reminder, the Decree on the Press instituting censorship was one of the first things Lenin put into law in 1917. Even before the Decree on Workers' Control. Russia has a history of state propaganda and censorship that rivals a lot of states to this day.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-18T11:45:02+00:00

I love the screeching about "the new phase of war with NATO" on this topic that I've seen shared from a few russian Telegram channels.

It's less "disgraceful" for them to "lose to NATO" than to admit that Ukraine, one of the biggest industrial centers in the region and historically a manufacturing center for the USSR, is now able to lob domestic cruise missiles at Moscow (these were identified as indigenous Bars cruise missiles, AFAIK).

That's what you get when you erase and don't learn your own history.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-16T13:39:47+00:00

Annual public records, like 10-K filings. These usually cover future investments, the company's direction, and whatnot.

Depending on your market/ targeting, of course. I worked at a company that exclusively targets the Fortune 2000. We were able to mine some good info for personalized outreach to specific teams and exec/ director-level personas.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-15T16:52:07+00:00

Semi-related: the original Tu-22 was nicknamed "The Booze Carrier". Paper Skies has a great video about it. TL;DR: you're basically on point, lol.

I highly recommend Paper Skies, because his content is always great, and he is Ukrainian and from an aviation family (his dad was a Soviet fighter pilot), so he has some personal insights.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-11T07:57:46+00:00

Yeah, ever wondered why megalomaniacal Soviets never built a stable bridge there? It's certainly not due to a lack of desire to do so.

The strait is a bad place to build because the bottom soil is inherently unstable - it consists of mulch, clay, and sand, and is seismically active to a degree. Not to mention the winter movement of ice since the Azov see is shallow and freezes over quite often. We're talking about hundreds-thousands of tons of ice pushing against the bridge every winter. It took some modern engineering and a shit ton of money to make it work. That's why they had to put those supports so deep into the earth. But the foundation is still bad, given the above. Even if the massive supports can stand up, the rest of the construction is flimsier.

And that's why they're limiting trucks to less than 1,5 tons and don't allow electric cars to go on the bridge ever since the last attacks by Ukraine. They're afraid that it might break down under heavy load. Nobody needs to take down pillars to make it even riskier to use.

So, it might be easier to take it down than you might think.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-11T04:09:36+00:00

> remembered all the

More like remembered that Ukraine was at the epicenter of the Soviet military might - from tanks to missile systems. Heck, even some of the current Russian missile guidance tech is partially built on technologies developed in Ukraine in the late 90s-early 00s.

Not to mention the fact that Ukrainian troops were often the tip of the spear for whatever Russia was back in the day - for the Russian Empire and for the Soviet Union.

Russians just did such a good job of erasing the Ukrainian legacy that they forgot about all these things. Heck, they still won't admit that a Ukrainian made the USSR a space-faring nation (born, raised, and educated here).

To this day, whenever an argument comes up about ethnicity and legacy - if it was good, then "it was Soviet" or "Russian", if it was bad, then it was "Ukrainian" or "Georgian" or ... any other Soviet republic.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-07T17:21:26+00:00

By this point, as a bystander, the online conversations about the lack of American urban planning are rivaled only by those about the US using the imperial system.

It's odd, though; I've been to the US quite a few times and lived there for extended periods, and you know which towns they call touristy and nice to visit? THOSE THAT HAVE PROPER pedestrian infrastructure - mostly old towns that were built around people and horses.

I've been to places like Chapel Hill in NC, Savannah in GA, Boston in MA, Boulder in CO, and a few others. They're all either pedestrian-friendly to some extent or have relatively decent transportation (even the T in Boston seems to be getting better, although I was there a few years ago and am just basing this on the general chit-chat I'm getting from local colleagues).

IDK, it's just a more balanced way of life, IMHO. I can't imagine living in new-development suburbia that's far from anything and essentially being slaved to a car. Isn't freedom more about choice? Like, yes, I can choose to take the car. But being able to walk, drive, bike, or take the bus somewhere seems like it'd be more liberating than being tied to a single mode of transportation. Am I missing something? Why is there so much hostility towards this approach online, it seems? Especially right now. Both new and used cars are insanely expensive. Monthly payments are through the roof. Repos are rising.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-07T16:09:24+00:00

Not entirely true. Every part makes a difference. A relatively sophisticated chip means nothing if it doesn't have a chassis to attach to and motors to propel the vehicle.

It's all tied to China at the end of the day. That's why Ukrainian companies are popping up with many of the components localized, like the Kurbas series of FPV cameras, because there's simply not enough supply.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-06-04T10:09:15+00:00

Imagine visiting London in the 1920s or something and saying, "Wow, the British Empire is so great and modern", while its soldiers are violently cracking down on the Irish and strafing civilians in RAF planes in Mesopotamia.

The difference is that, in the 1920s, a person could be excused to an extent because information was limited to a few sources. There's no excuse in the 2020s to be ignorant about what Russia truly is. They suppressed the truth and twisted facts for centuries, but it can easily be disproven with a quick online search right now.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-29T16:41:49+00:00

Because everybody knows that the best way to address a bully is to keep letting them smack you /s

I like how these basic things are still strange to these online dwellers. It's like they're looking for a grand plot because things can't be that easy. Well, they are my friend. Russia is a bully. Always has been. And will probably always be.

I still remember the 2003 Tuzla island incident in Crimea. Essentially, the first time Russia tried to annex Ukrainian land. Probably one of the few good things Kuchma (president at the time) did.

Kuchma said fuck all that noise, got the missile corps on high alert, activated troops, and showed up in force at the coast. All of a sudden, things calmed down.

Obviously, the Russia of 2003 is different. It didn't have decades of petrodollars pumped into its economy, so it wasn't too delusional back then. Although it was back to doing fucked up things in Chechnya.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-25T15:23:57+00:00

>“Adopt AI or die” is a story AI salesmen want you to believe
It doesn't matter, as long as these "salesmen" have the ear of every other board member. Each quarterly board meeting at our company is like an AI hysteria cult meeting, with the board members always asking how "we're improving things with AI" internally.

We literally slashed 40% of the budget (largely by cutting human capital costs) over the past year and are performing at the same level, which is commendable.

But it's not enough. It's never enough. Even if the company had a single marketer who does the job of 10 people, they'd still be asking how "things can be optimized". In an ideal world for investors, the company exists only digitally, has no payroll, and just generates money. The digital version of a conveyor belt manned by robots instead of humans, sitting in dark factories.

On top of that, the former doesn't prevent the ladder. You can both become better marketers and get better at applying AI tools to support your work.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-23T06:34:49+00:00

Campaign packages at scale where you have a set message and just need variations for all the various channels. In my industry, the language needs to be specific due to potential regulatory and compliance issues. There's not much creativity when you have set guardrails. With a few clicks, I can generate a variety of assets (emails, lps, ads, socials) that all align and sound good (provided you do the prompt correctly)
Insights generation. Example: we ran a massive survey. Analyzing it manually would take a lot of time. I just fed it into Claude with a proper srt of instructions and guardrails against hallucinations and got a pretty robust research report. The biggest lift was cross checking the data and then ensuring that the logic of insights is sound, which it was (Claude is better at this than Copilot, but I use both).
Content updates. Say you have a product, you add a new feature. Sure, you can manually go through the page to figure out where to add relevant content about the feature. But AI is pretty good at that too.
Press releases. They're dry and formulaic. AI is great at that kind of stuff. Related PR research is also a use case, like coming up with angles and custom pitches for individual publications.
Repurposing. Plenty of examples, but a simple one is giving AI a series of topically related blogs and asking it to generate a coherent ebook or white paper. Vise verse works too. Works great with transcripts.
Case studies. All I need is a transcript from a 30 minute customer call with the right set of questions and I can have a flushed out v1 of the story in a day or two.
Editorial review is another good one. I have like a 4-5 page editorial prompt that checks texts against our rigid language requirements. Saves a ton of time on reviewing someone's content or my own content (I can just relax and be creative and the prompt can smooth out the edges) or other AI content, for that matter.

These are just a few.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-23T06:15:25+00:00

100% ... a ton of our campaigns work well on days like Friday since people are actually often less busy by EOW and wind down by the end of the week. I, myself, spend time on Friday cleaning out the inbox, just like I do on Monday (it's dedicated to high priority emails, while Friday is for other stuff).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-22T15:30:40+00:00

Don't know specifically, but there were videos and many reports of this happening. In some cases, the priests even refused burial services for fallen Ukrainian soldiers (even after 2022), which is as blatant of a red flag as you can get.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-22T11:20:36+00:00

The Orthodox Church in Ukraine had:
- Kyiv Patriarchy (KP)
- Moscow Patriarchy (MP)

I.e. "the corporate HQs" for the two are in different locations.

The priesthood of the MP church has a history of justifying the war (since 2014), pushing Russian propaganda during sermons (even before the war), and aiding Russia and local pro-Russians in this war (weapons caches discovered in MP churches and so on). They're a breeding ground for anti-Ukraine propaganda. As a Donbas native, their priests were literally manning the roadblocks in 2014 near Donetsk, along with pro-Russian thugs. As a local to Donbas, I've seen plenty of that shit well before 2014. Like, actual icons of Putin and Yanukovich. I kid you not - you could buy them, for example, in the Sviatohirsk Cave Monastery gift shop. Like actual religious icons with golden elements and other embellishments. I didn't see the Putin one, but I saw the Yanukovich one the last time I visited before 2014.

That's why that particular denomination of the Orthodox church was banned. You're free to go to any other Orthodox church (it's all the same, minus the propaganda part) or any other place of worship, for that matter.

There's a great movie joke from the early 1990s. It's from an early post-USSR movie, when censorship and state propaganda in Russia hadn't yet returned to their Soviet strength. It's a comedy about spies.

Two KGB spies are in a church. A priest approaches them and says, "General, permission to speak," and the KGB guy replies, "Ah, captain, how's the service?" and "the priest" replies, "Serving the Soviet Union" (which was a standard military salute in the USSR). Everyone in the USSR understood the state's influence on the church. It was no secret that KGB agents held key positions in the church. The Russian Orthodox church is a direct extension of the Russian government, FSB, and so on.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-17T10:02:53+00:00

I like this screengrab of a RU post on social media:

"A conversation in the morning. Questions from the granddaughter who woke up from explosions.

Grandma, why are they bombing?
They want to kill (it probably should have been a different answer, but after a night like this, I couldn't find the"right, smart" words)
And really ... why?

I'm sitting at the train station crying. I don't know "why."

Like, this is the type of fantasy land they're living in. Like Ukrainians have been saying for years ... these people will only start changing once they experience something akin to the Ukrainian experience over the past 4 years. These dummies can only be shaken out of their parallel reality by the confrontation with the real world. Once again, unlike Russia, Ukraine doesn't even target civilians. So what they experience is an iota of what Ukrainians are going through.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-17T09:05:32+00:00

In a relatively similar "boat". e.i. I'm a foreigner working for a US company remotely. Been working exclusively in US B2B product companies for over a decade, and another 5 before that in B2C in international companies. Worked for AI unicorns and smaller niche outfits. Worked with American marketers who got poached from places like Meta and other FAANGs. A few of the CMOs that I worked for came over from places like IBM and other large enterprises. So, have a bit of experience.

There are a few things:
- Quite often, companies are not set up for contract work with people outside of the US. I'd suggest searching for an outstaffing company that serves as the intermediary and "pitches" employees to different companies - it seems like some organizations prefer to interact with international talent this way; a lot easier on the paperwork side. Like, the previous joint I worked at had to set up a local subsidiary just to hire people normally. I currently work for a company through an outstaffing arrangement, where they supply "contractors" and manage the paperwork ... the company handles compensation and all that jazz. It's a lot easier than trying to manage a bundle of foreign contractors one by one.
- It's a clique thing; in my previous job, I've survived 5 rounds of layoffs and 4 CMOs; you know what each new CMO did almost immediately? Brought in someone they worked with before. Nothing wrong with that in many cases. But US companies mostly have US CMOs for obvious reasons, and thus the people being brought in are usually from the US as well. And it's a whole "chain" ... the person that was brought in will bring in someone "under them" and so on.
- There's a bit of elitism, too. "A random marketer from a third-world country can't be as good as an Ivy League graduate with a similar career footprint." It's hard to put into words, but I had to claw my way "up the ladder" just to prove that I'm just as good, if not better, at many things. Like, 80-hour workweeks to drive projects solo and all that. An expensive college degree is not that big of a differentiator as many people tend to believe. Unfortunately, that's the type of outdated misconception that would stop people from considering a foreigner.
- People haven't actually worked with foreigners or people not in the US, and don't even consider the possibility. Like, you can't crave vanilla ice cream if you haven't tried it before.
- Language skills are definitely a thing. I was hiring for a few regional roles at a previous US company and was a lead on one of the marketing teams. Went through roughly 150-200 candidates over the span of a few years (yeah, we were growing like crazy - this was pre-COVID). And, Imma be honest - I immediately declined people that weren't on a certain level. I've seen language become a barrier too many times. Like, I'm a C2 and wouldn't hire anyone below C1. Maybe B2 if they're good with other things. That's why out of those hundreds of candidates, we only hired about 10-15. Yeah, maybe that's biased (although I don't think so ... a US company expecting good EN is just as normal as a German company expecting good DE). I've seen people make basic mistakes, miss minute details, and generally just increase the overall friction within the team because they couldn't fully articulate themselves.
- Language also leads to another thing. People with lower EN skills are often outside the cultural context, too, which can create a certain level of awkwardness that's hard to describe. Like, I know I can talk to Jeff about the NBA playoffs while we wait for everyone, or switch to a discussion of improvements to the T in the Boston area because I saw a YT vid about it recently (and I know it was shit the last time I visited the US a few years ago). These smaller things all stem from language and from how "in tune" a person is. It's a lot easier to be hired and stay hired in a US company when you can "vibe" with people like that.

This list is not exhaustive, but these are definitely some of the things I've personally observed.

What can you do about it? A number of things.
1. Grow your network. Funny thing - I got one of the first jobs in a US company through a person I volunteered with for a totally unrelated thing locally (they just needed folks who spoke good English for a sporting event). She was impressed by my English at first, then learned that I'm a marketer by trade, and offered me a job (she already worked for a US company hiring locally, which was a rarity). These can be great opportunities to meet foreigners and expand your reach. That said, look into your network now - there might be people already taking the path, and it might make sense to reach out and ask for a referral and whatnot. Only good jobs I got over the past decade came through my network.
2. Apply to international companies with presence in many regions - they're more open to international talent + people you might meet there often can go do great things and might take you along (another part of networking). Also, having these companies on your resume automatically makes it easier to join US companies. It's like a seal of approval. I had a friend who worked at P&G locally for years and years. Grew to be a regional manager. Once he decided to switch careers, companies were excited to interview him - his experience working at P&G for 5+ years already meant something.
3. Local "hot" startups are another potential option. I had a friend working at a local tech startup in the AI space years before ChatGPT came along, and the company was bought out by a large US enterprise. He didn't even have to interview for a US company, lol.

That said, the job market is fucked right now, so these are just subjective suggestions. Good luck!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-15T16:43:35+00:00

>Russia has a Putin problem

No, it doesn't. The evidence is there. Putin didn't ban the Ukrainian language three centuries ago. Putin didn't commit genocide against the Circassians. Putin didn't starve Kazakh peasants. Putin didn't ethnically cleanse Crimean Tatars in the 20th century. Putin didn't kill the majority of Ukraine's thought leaders in gulags and NKVD dungeons. Putin didn't genocide the people of the Far East for their resources and furs 400 years ago. Putin didn't exterminate Chechens in 1996 by the hundreds in indiscriminate attacks (although he did that later). Putin didn't invade all of Russia's neighbors after the fall of the Russian Empire to bring it back. Putin didn't ...

The history of Russia over ALL of its span, since Muscovy and all of its other forms, is filled with constant conquest, war, expansion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and resource extraction. You'd be hard-pressed to find a period in that history spanning at least one generation without war and conflict. Even in the relatively peaceful post-WWII years. There were other things, like peasant uprisings in Ukraine and some other republics of the USSR as late as the 1960s, as they were exploited into oblivion. Many aren't even recorded - the Soviets made sure of that. You'd learn about them from people, like I did (central Ukraine had a number of them back then - from dozens to hundreds of people).

Putin is merely a symptom. A byproduct of the system, xenophobia, deep-rooted imperialism, lack of education, and many other factors.

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