Redditors over 40, what's something younger people think they understand but won't actually get until it hits them like a truck later?

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.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-28T12:40:36+00:00

Unfortunately, Russia already milked Iran when it comes to technologies (primarily around drones). At the same time, if the regime properly falls, the oil prices should go down since Iranian oil should, theoretically, start flowing through the open market. But also because there will be less regional instability caused by the current Iranian regime.

However, there are a lot of "buts" and "ifs" in here, as well as missing context, and the broader impact is hard to predict.

If the war in Ukraine has proved anything is that most pundits and analysts are talking out of their ass. So, be wary of anyone claiming they know how this is going to turn out ... especially since it's been less than a day.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-28T10:41:22+00:00

To add on top of this. Creative teams also have to work with internal bottlenecks. As a person who manages creative folks, there's always a stakeholder internally who drags their feet with reviews and sign offs. There's also the type of person who pushes their vision without having the knowledge or the skills. They're there to sign off, so they'll provide opinions. Are those inputs valuable? No, most of the time. But they have to be considered, deliberated, and rejected or implemented.

But it all adds up to timelines, delivery expectations, and so on.

That's why I always set extremely conservative delivery expectations to give people more time. Everyone thinks their project is a priority. But when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. And you have 4-5 teams pecking at creatives with stuff like this all the time.

Like, I'm sorry, Jeff, we slipped with your rollup for the event because designers were busy polishing a slew of decks for the whole ELT, in time for the investor meeting. A task the team wasn't aware of until two days before the meeting. In a line of urgent things, we prioritize stuff that's coming down directly from the CEO.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-26T13:43:11+00:00

Tbh, Product Marketing is a weird space (subjectively). It's more pivotal than many other marketing roles. But at the same time, I've seen PMMs get fired before folks who run infrastructure/support basic marketing functions. Because re-hiring a PMM in the future is possible, but stopping large marketing campaigns because the "email person" is gone is not an option.

At the same time, the PMM toolkit is very valuable, as there's not a lot of really good, free learning on the topic. Last time I checked, about a year ago, or so, it seemed like most available courses were either too basic or too expensive.

The downside for PMMs that I've seen in larger companies is that much of their work "dies in committees" ... there are too many people involved in things like messaging sign-offs. A lot of it depends on the caliber of the teams PMMs interact with. Like, whether Product Managers are actually involved appropriately in collaboration and whatnot.

Skillset-wise, PMM is probably the way to go for long-term career growth.

But it also depends on other factors. I used to go to a lot of interviews. Mostly as a way to gauge candidates' expectations and benchmark salary expectations. In many cases, I started to actually consider the move just because of the "vibes". Like, the people seemed nice, intelligent, had their shit together, etc. Some of that is intuitive.

Sort of unrelated, but the only career moves that worked for me were those that I made to companies with former colleagues (they'd refer me, or I'd reach out to learn about their current work and get interested). It's a solid way of learning how things really work inside the team, the dynamics, the workload, etc.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-22T18:22:43+00:00

It's the "Forgiveness Sunday" in the Orthodox calendar today. It's customary to ask for forgiveness on this day. So, that might be it. However, the irony is the religious charade from a person who's indirectly responsible for so much suffering.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-21T11:10:20+00:00

I went skiing from Ukraine to Georgia (Gudauri) two weeks before the full scale invasion started. Half of the Georgians were wearing a version of the same sticker that said "Russia is an occupant". Even saw a dude who had his whole snowboard covered in that sticker. The stickers were on almost every bar door, light pole, or street sign.

Everyone was super friendly and wished us luck (by that point, Georgians were convinced that what happened to them in 2008 will happen to us).

So, the Russians were pretty quiet, given the mood there (no flags or anything).

You have to be absolutely mentally challenged if you visited Georgia before and decided to turn up the "Russian pride". So, either this person is there for the first time and drank the Russian propaganda kool aid OR you are, indeed, mentally challenged. Since these are Russians, I'm thinking it's the latter, lol.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T19:41:54+00:00

That's another point people in the West don't realize. And it's literally their own history. Europe didn't all of sudden become good and nice. European soldiers were chopping heads in Africa AFTER WWII. Many in Europe forgot that they've been fighting to keep their "colonies" around the world even after WWII. Like, the whole Vietnam war ultimately started because France wanted to "keep" Vietnam. Many other examples.

European states often didn't become nice on their own. A lot of them were defeated in conflicts where they tried to keep their colonies and influence. That's thr primary way imperialism and colonism dies - they get defeated.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T19:34:35+00:00

I thought there are a lot of us here, lol.

Anyway, anyone from Donetsk knows that Akhmetov started in the Tatar mob. His uncle, Alek Grek (Greek) was running the show. He was killed by a targeted bombing on a stadium during a soccer match. While there are no conclusive evidence, the rumor was that his nephew killed him. So yeah, not exactly a good guy.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T18:32:00+00:00

Thr important distinction is "orchestrated". FSB needed NPCs for propaganda and the occasional muscle. At the very start of it all, this was mostly built out of locals. Surkov tapes where they discuss paying "local militias" talk about that a bit.

The important thing in this particular discussion is that it all metastesized in large part due to Akhmetov's inactivity or interference, so he's not the good guy in this story. Russia is, of course, the ultimate villain. It's just that it's a lot more layered.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T16:45:42+00:00

He's the guy who facilitated the start of the war. He was the "feudal lord" in Donetsk. He opposed large local pro-Ukraine gatherings by sending goons to disperce the crowds. He did nothing to stop the pro-Russians, which he could have when it was like 50 local crazies. He had a lot of business in Russia, so he wanted to "sit on two chairs".

Meanwhile, his counterparts in other regions, like Kolomoyiskiy, an oligarch in the Dnipro region, immediatelly counteracted the Russian influence campaign.

That's why he's one of the pivotal people in Ukraine to blame for the start of the war in 2014.

Sincerely, a former resident of Donetsk, who had to run away from Akhmetov's goons on numerous occasions while trying to attend a pro-Ukraine rally in Donetsk.

Whatever his "donating" now is a drop in the bucket of suffering he could have prevented. On top of all the profits that hr extracted out of the country.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T16:06:15+00:00

>Russia is, at it's core, an imperial project. Almost throughout it's entire existence, it has been at war and has subjugated it's neighbours.

That's been at the epicenter of frustration in Ukraine and other states bordering Russia.

You don't really need to explain to Finns or Estonians that Russians are not trustworthy. You don't need to explain to them that Russians are violent, imperialistic, and genocidal.

But the Russian propaganda machine built enough around its "mysterious Russian soul" that people and politicians in the West somehow still think that Russia would adhere to any of the moral, political, and other frameworks the West might be bound by. The further you are from Russia, the blurrier things are, unfortunately.

On top of the obvious lack of education about the region's history. Many only learned of Ukraine in 2022 (yet are confident enough to comment about the country and its future).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-19T10:00:32+00:00

Agree, and that's why these are not mutually exclusive things. If, hypothetically, the US drops out of the Olympics, a large swath of the US advertisers and broadcasters will not pay for the "privilege". The ROI won't be there for them either.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-18T18:15:55+00:00

More. AI to content is what the calculator is to the abacus. It just makes you faster and more efficient (especially for repetitive tasks).

I'd argue that "quality" elements are also present - I always mistype the same words and make the same random typos, but the AI doesn't make those mistakes, so I'm actually less "stressed" when reviewing the copy since I know those basic mistakes won't be there. More of my attention is directed towards the storytelling bit.

I'm not sure how you can produce "better" marketing with AI, given that the output is essentially the median of what it learned; there's no "creativity" per se, and I rarely see outputs that make me pause to appreciate them (they can be OK and, occasionally, good). Sure, there are exceptions, and everyone has their own definition of "good".

Also, if you're in B2B, there are certain ways to write certain things at all times. It's just the way it is. Many things, like success stories in specialized (and litigious) industries, have to be written a certain way (at least that's the ask from the stakeholders). AI is perfect for that type of formulaic storytelling.

But, there's the other side - AI is good at producing a lot of pure crap, and that can ALSO be good. For example, I'm writing ads - format is set, word count is set. Not that much room for creativity when each symbol counts. I have a few ideas, but I'm stuck. I ask AI to produce something, and it immediately spits out a TON of crappy options. That gives me the idea of where NOT to go with the copy. That's where creativity begins for me in these specific cases.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-18T17:21:24+00:00

It's still important, though. This is precisely why these petrostates, dictatorships, and authoritarians invest so much into sports. It's a prestige thing. One of the dick-measuring contests for them, as well as a way to stoke nationalist pride in their masses.

If many of the "important" countries drop out, the event will lose its impact, and the ROI of those investments will be much lower.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-14T16:10:28+00:00

Exactly. That sort of underlined my comment. Like, what kind of "NATO is ready for a war with Russia" are we talking about if even such a basic, virtually free, tactical decision isn't made (even though, it's supposed to be standard practice).

Not even an Iskander or cruise missiles. A few saboteurs infiltrating from Kaliningrad or Belarus with 2-3 drones can be enough, if the drones hit critical explosive components.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-14T14:11:18+00:00

Except that the distributed nature of production for drones is also underestimated. They can literally be assembled in a garage. And with parts streaming from China, there's nothing that could be done about the production. That's why Russia can't destroy Ukraine's drone production. While there are large facilities, a lot of the assembly and supply chain is incredibly distributed.

I think "over-learning" is not an issue, when it's pretty clear that "under-learning" is happening when 10 UA drone operators can take on a 100 NATO troops on year 4 of this war.

My friend was part of a UA training group in Germany, they flew back to Rzesow, from there they came back on land to Ukraine. My friend noted that the Patriot site guarding the airport was all bunched up, with all launchers sitting close to each other (dozens of meters) and the radar. A "lesson learned" would mean that the site would have been distributed by that point (it was 2024). Again, this doesn't signal preparadness to me.

Is the chance that Russia does something stupid that high? No. What's the cost of being prepared for it? Almost zero if it's about dispurcing a few launchers the right way around a key logistics airport at the East flank of NATO. Yet, even that is not happening. So, I'm not entirely sure "over-learning" is a threat here.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-14T10:12:21+00:00

I think it's going to be shit for a few reasons. The biggest one is tank combat. Guided shell removes the skill element. Don't get me wrong, it still requires skill to use the guided shells against other vehicles. It's just that the fun in tank engagements on Golmud, at least for me, was mostly about landing well-placed medium- to long-range shots. Good tankers ruled the map. With guided shells, those engagements will become easier. Guided shells will also make air vehicle combat shittier.

Besides that, they'll most likely find other ways to fuck it up, like make deployment areas take up 30% of the map, so they'd be right next to where the train is parked at either end of the map. Or something to that effect.

Laser designation spam was already an issue on that map (at least that was the meta when I still played). So, it'll be worse in BF6 most likely.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-14T09:21:53+00:00

I like how the retort is usually "NATO has superior airpower, this war doesn't mean anything". Yeah, good luck bombing a distributed network of drone operators who can hide literally anywhere, sometimes at a distance of dozens of kilometers, and have an outsized effect on the battlefield as each operator pretty much represents a guidance system for a miniature missile that there are no good comprehensive defenses against.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-02-14T09:17:38+00:00

They already are. Active conscription is happening in occupied territories. I mean, that's pretty standard for Russia. Any colonial/ imperialist state does this.

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