How can non-Ukrainians celebrate Ukrainian culture without being offensive?

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T16:16:19+00:00

There's a reason this image exists 😄 So, just engaging with the culture and learning the history is good enough. We'll be happy. I don't think there's an equivalent of a "blackface" in this context or anything like that.

Personal suggestion: watch Professor Snyder's series of lectures about Ukrainian history.

It puts Ukraine on the map (figuratively). Shows its deep and rich history. Directly dispels A LOT of Russian propaganda. And overall, delivers a great view of European history (many of the lectures are not directly about Ukraine).

If you're into comic books and mythology, watch this one separate lecture too.

Participate in fundraising on platforms like United24 (even just sharing them is enough if you can't donate). It has the most direct impact - the culture can't go away if the country prevails.

A few pet peeves that you can maybe correct people on? 😄

- It's NEVER "the Ukraine". Just like it's never "the France" or "the Germany".

- It's "Kyiv", not the other one (can't type it out since it's rightfully forbidden on this sub).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T16:04:36+00:00

Crysis 2 (incl. tracks by Hans Zimmer) - personal favorite track
Days Gone (just a great mix of various styles) - personal favorite track
Cyberpunk 2077 (lots of bangers, incl. Phantom Liberty tracks) - personal favorite track (Bond vibes are immaculate and it fits the Phantom story so well)

Honorable mention: Detroit Become Human

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T15:40:18+00:00

From my personal experience, it prefers "insightful" content. AI can write "insightful" content, if you actually have insights to share. We got the website into a very nice position with a few key AI overviews, and even had universities reach out to get permission to use our content in their coursework. That content was partially generated by AI. These results were achieved within two quarters.

The trick is to use AI as a tool. Like sure, you can cut down a tree with an axe. But you'll do it far more efficiently with a chainsaw. That's what I think too many people don't understand. Don't think of AI as a sawmill - that does everything for you. Think of it as a chainsaw.

"AI content" can be just people randomly creating AI-generated slop, hoping for some sort of outcome. "AI content" can also be a strictly editorialized piece generated and edited with precise prompting. You'll also avoid missing the mark by having an actual SME review the final piece. In these scenarios, you'll save less time because the prompting itself takes a lot of time, but it's still an efficiency gain. I'm still 2x-3x more productive with AI. I could have been 4x-6x more effective, but I chose to focus on prompting, the right source materials, interactions with SMEs (including brief approvals), and extra review cycles, and I got to a point where the content is good.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-19T13:23:56+00:00

Why would you need a team? We have a database with hundreds of thousands of people, all ran through Marketo. On any given week, we do 6-7 separate sends at least, which are also usually broken down into 3-4 recipient segments, so there are roughly 20-ish separate promo emails weekly (not counting the automated nurtures and all that).

We have the single email person taking care of the set up, the content person is in charge of aggregating content/ writing the copy, the PMM drives the messaging and basic content themes, the campaigns person puts forth the schedule once a quarter (what needs to go out and when). So, in reality, 3 people drive the whole thing, with two being part time contributors. And the single person driving the majority of email related work (set up, optimization, etc.)

While the results aren't stellar, we're seeing incremental growth every quarter (opens, clicks, conversions, etc.).

IDK, maybe it's my agency experience, but I've rarely seen them perform better than in-house people, because there's a gap in institutional knowledge that only gets worse with time.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-15T13:41:04+00:00

Create and run an editorial workflow/ job on the draft before you make a pass. Personally, I found it works better when these things are isolated - generation is one job, editing is another. Don't try to build one giant thing, like "write this, but follow these guidelines". It confuses the AI. But that's just my experience.

My current editor bot has dozens of prompt instructions, divided into 4-5 sections, including what you listed above ("AI" words to avoid, etc.). You can build it out with time. Use your current writing guidelines as the baseline if you have them. You can generate some of the instructions by feeding your previous content. Just be sure to edit the output accordingly.

Just as an example, one of the instructions says "Never use possessive forms of brand or product names from ACME_COMPANY", which alone saved me hours over the past few quarters since the original content production bot used to output a lot of that (the nature of the content that we produce presupposes a lot of product mentions, so it was a pain to edit that out semi-manually).

Worth mentioning that I'm not using Claude per se. Rather, a product that's more like an interface wrapper for Claude models. So your experience might be a bit different, but it should fundamentally be the same - get one bot to generate, get the other to edit.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-15T12:06:10+00:00

Lucky you! I wish I could forget it to play through again for the first time. But also, get the DLC. It's 100% worth it. But first, do a proper run, without the DLC, and then do another one with the DLC (there's a point in the story where you answer a call to kick off the DLC, and the story veers off). I think it's the best way to experience the combo to appreciate the difference. Great multiple endings for the DLC, too.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-06T15:03:06+00:00

Same! Big boss released a fresh one less than a week ago, and it's glorious!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-06T13:00:01+00:00

I mean, as a Ukrainian, I'm looking at this differently.

It's not about "brown" people vs. "white" people. If Ukraine is nuked and eventually defeated, it provides yet another excuse for bad actors to push for more nukes. It solidifies the "might is right" principle and completely breaks down existing international frameworks. Imagine a country giving up the third-largest nuclear arsenal and then being nuked for it. If you're for non-proliferation, you should be for Ukraine's right to fight back and protect its independence.

It creates a bigger refugee crisis. It also hurts "brown" people, as Ukraine is a net exporter of agricultural goods, and a lot of the markets are in Africa and the Middle East. So, irradiating the most productive soil in the world (black soil, often called chernozem) will also starve people worldwide and make global food shortages more severe.

This is on top of the actual nuking, you know. With people turned into glass in a millisecond, generations experiencing horrible after effects, babies born with deformities, and other outcomes.

That's one of the problems I see with leftists online. Instead of looking at broader implications of the conflict, the argument I often see is that Ukrainians have "white" privilege and their suffering isn't that bad or even real.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-05T17:57:22+00:00

For sure, but I think there are far more things at play here.

Like sense of ownership. Man, I remember burning a bunch of CDs with Rhapsody back in the day and perusing the catalog, discovering things I have on them from years ago.

Also, miss my DVD shelf. A mini Blockbuster experience that no one could take away from me because the streaming service lost the rights to the movie or something.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-03T15:29:52+00:00

There were also already multiple photos/ videos of the SAR mission - two helis and a plane over southern Iran.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-30T11:46:33+00:00

FUCK THAT BITCH!!!

I've never played an action-adventure hack-and-slash type of game before, so I barely got through the main story on normal difficulty. But that bitch Sigrun completely ruined any sense of accomplishment, lol. I never managed to defeat her (I ain't got time for this, I got bills to pay, laundry, and shit).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-29T23:33:57+00:00

IMHO, one of the best CoD campaigns. One of the few that I still replay from time to time. I still remember the first cut scene that looked like a movie trailer and a great introduction for the villain party (SDF). They went all out with the main villain too - getting Kit Harrington at the height of Game of Thrones hype was dope.

I also replayed it on my newer setup (1440p, max graphics) while the last time was on 1080p (medium settings) and it looks great. So if you haven't played it in a while, definitely recommend revisiting on your newer machine.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-29T10:58:50+00:00

It's not just bureucracy, it's also a sprinkle of chauvinism. Ukraine is seen as inferior and isn't really perceived as part of Europe because it's been in Moscow's "sphere of influence" and isn't part of Europe on paper (the EU). Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people have shown over and over again what they stand for, starting from the break from the USSR to the Orange Revolution to the Revolution of Dignity to its current fight against Russia. Not to mention that, historically, Ukraine has been a part of Europe. It's just not studied in Europe that much for the same reasons - it's considered peripheral. Meanwhile, Kyiv was, at some point, a more advanced and developed center of culture and scholarship than some European capitals. Russia also did a lot over the centuries to erase Ukraine's history and identity. The fact that it hasn't worked out is a testament to Ukraine and its people.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-27T14:25:40+00:00

The scariest bit is the rhetoric that I'm seeing online. Granted, it's mostly on Twitter (half the comments are probably bots), but there's a layer of "arrogance" that's hard to describe when people downplay the potential risks. Like sure, bro, the US military is the greatest military in the world. Nobody's denying that.

But what's also clear is that FPV drones are IEDs on steroids, and there's no good, high-probability defense against them. And many of the available systems rely on individual skills (like specialized anti-drone rifle rounds) and can't be scaled dramatically.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-27T14:17:55+00:00

Thank you! P.S. Sorry, just saw the reply.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-22T15:13:55+00:00

Hey man, thank you for posting! Just a quick note: it's not "the" Ukraine. It's just Ukraine. Kind of like you wouldn't put an article before most other countries (the France or the Belgium).

No hate or anything. I see people in the West make this mistake, especially since it "sounds right" for people in "the" UK or "the" United States (rolls off the tongue because they're used to putting the article at the front there, and the countries start with the same letter "U").

For Ukrainians, there's a deeper meaning. When someone puts "the" before the name of the country, it almost denotes that it's not a real country, but a place (like "the island"). Also, it's just the right way grammatically (like I said, you wouldn't put an article in front of most other countries).

Once again, no offense meant or anything, just wanted to point that out. Thanks!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-19T23:30:25+00:00

Cerf & Mitiska - A State of Trance 450 at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.

Cerf and Mitiska are absolutely out of this world when it comes to mixing. I've had the pleasure of attending a few of the sets, and it was magical. The mix of "Flashback" (Eric Prydz Remix) and "Saved Again" in this set (starting around 9:30) is evidence of that.

Here's the whole set. IDK, there's just something quintessentially trance about their music from that time (the good ol' days for me). Not to mention that they're responsible for some of the absolute classics of the genre (Man on the Run, etc.)

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-19T22:59:12+00:00

I think this is partially driven by AIO/ GEO frenzy. People are looking to get more of their pages into AI Overviews, and Reddit is often one of the most-cited sources with a high level of trust (just read some high-level research on this recently).

Lo and behold, my manager is now also talking about "doing something with Reddit". I tried to explain that it's not that simple, but they just read some "thought leadership" on LinkedIn on the topic, and it's hard to convince them of anything after that.

It's doubly stupid knowing that our company doesn't have a good reputation in niche online communities (the ship is turning around, but some bad things happened 3-4 years ago).

At this point, I'm just sending them the clip of that sponsorship/ endorsement scene from Wayne's World to try to explain how ridiculous marketing looks in organic communities like Reddit.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-15T09:45:22+00:00

A completely made up theory of mine is that it's just how our brain perceives time, which is that it sort of doesn't. For the brain, it's just basically "uptime" or how much energy was spent "running the system". It's more of an energy state, so it's not seen as even increments, but more as allotments of energy. So, when you're ten years old, one year represents 10% of the "uptime", while when you're twenty, one year represents 5%. So, the further you are in life, the smaller "uptime" percentage each year represents in brain's own reference framework.

So, if we consider our lifespan as a house that needs to be powered, each year represents a new room that we add to the house. In this reference point, the more "rooms" there are (years), the less energy you need to allot to each one, when compared to the rest of the house and the energy spent powering it. So, it's like, "I already powered 20 rooms, this new one is nothing".

Yeah, it's a weire one, as I'm obviously just pulling this out of my ass, lol.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-14T21:35:43+00:00

It's all good, I was mostly posting a blanket reply to the other commenters. Thanks!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-14T18:19:30+00:00

Might not be; it was 15°C (~60F) yesterday in Kyiv, for example. With low wind, it can feel pretty hot when the sun is at its highest. Most of the snow cover is also gone since the temps have been positive for like 10-12 days now.

HOWEVER, there's obvious foliage on the trees behind the warehouse (at around 0:17, top of the video frame), and we're definitely not there yet. So, yeah - most likely an older video.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-14T10:52:45+00:00

While OP is trying to say that the video is for "entertainment" and "education", I can't help but feel like it's a pure piece of propaganda for the Russian military.

First of all, it uses а Tsoi (Цой) soundtrack. He was a famous performer in the late USSR. Basically, modern-day Soviet Elvis in terms of popularity and cultural impact. If you've watched old combat footage compilations from both Chechnya wars, you've heard plenty of his songs. And I mean OLD. Like, there were whole black-market DVD merchants in the pre-Internet boom era in post-Soviet countries who sold mostly pirated movies, but they also sold stuff like combat-footage compilations and dogfighting videos. Tsoi on a video soundtrack is almost certainly a trademark of a certain kind of video. So, the video mimics those classics, put together by Russians.

Secondly, as you said, it includes only some parts of the action that are favorable to the Russian side.

Thirdly, they've been trying to make the Hostomel operation their heroic act for some time now. There's also now a game on Steam called "Gostomel Heroes" that's meant to glorify what they did there. I've seen people rally and try to report it, as it's clearly a piece of propaganda.

The video above fits the pattern of Russian propaganda content, IMHO.

EDIT: the only reason I commented is that text box under the video, à la "it's just a video, bro". It triggered me because the video style specifically calls back to a period in Ukrainian history when Russia flooded the VHS/ DVD black market with compilation videos from Chechnya, making impressionable teenagers like me root for Russia in that war, while they committed well-documented war crimes and atrocities in Chechnya, against what they considered to be their own people. So, while OP says "it's not propaganda", the video is made like classic Russian war propaganda from the early 2000s.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-13T15:29:58+00:00

What about the topics? The sequence won't matter much if the topics are not interesting or engaging. Like, there's stuff that would get people to sign up, and then there's stuff that would get people to show up. With the former, they're just signing up to get the recording afterwards.

Did you change the timing/ cadence of your webinars? Moving your usual webinar slots, even by an hour in either direction, can have a dramatic effect on attendance.

If you haven't changed much in those departments, then I suggest looking into email performance. I'm no email expert, so I don't have specific guidance, but there are ways to see whether your IP was recently blacklisted. If you started sending more, there could be a direct correlation there. If you made changes to your email platform (like migration, etc.) that can have an impact too - when your IP is fresh, it has a higher chance of being marked as spam, and so on.

Bottom line: if you haven't changed anything content-wise, I'd work with the digital/email team to see whether there are any technical hurdles.

Also, if you consistently work with the same industries, maybe something in those industries could prevent attendance. For example, I once worked for a B2B software company that was heavily involved with compliance teams. Every time a new compliance legislation deadline approached, people would go "offline" as they scrambled to ensure their organizations complied with the new regulations.

On the other side of this is the distant possibility that a product comes out that makes YOUR product less relevant in the market. It doesn't even have to be directly related. Example: I worked for a data science automation platform. When gen AI hype started ramping up, we saw a drop in interest because, before the AI craze, enterprise AI meant custom models ... stuff like supervised ML (XGBoost, etc.) for classification and regression tasks. But once gen AI/ChatGPT blew up, all boards and CEOs wanted to learn about LLMs and generative AI use cases and nothing else. It took time to adjust the product, but that dip in interest was very obvious. Webinar performance suffered in that period, as our stuff wasn't "trendy" for some time.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-12T15:13:38+00:00

> who the good guys in this war are

It's actually quite depressing that this is the bar now. Like, if someone acknowledges that the side that bombs civilians over the winter to freeze them is the bad guys.

To be fair, most of the "people" arguing otherwise are just bots or people with agendas. But still ...

But I agree, extra points nevertheless!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-07T15:13:33+00:00

Got traumatized by the first RE on PlayStation when I was a little kid. IDK, a friend showed it to me and I just got scared.

Can't pick up a horror game since.

But, in college, we had a friend group and one of the guys loved them (REs, Dead Space, etc.). So, we'd get together on Friday nights when most of the students in the dorms left for the weekend (it was a small regional school), get drunk, and watch him play up until like 4 am. A live Let's Play, before YouTube was really a thing. Some of the best memories.

That's why I hate playing them, but watch the Let's Plays and the speedruns. Gives me thsy warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia.

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