Venting thread

[doctor shark]

Minor-ish vents all around.

More: show

(1) I'm at a point where I'm thinking it might be a good idea to upgrade a number of my electronics: for example, some of my things are showing their age (eg. my Nintendo Switch, which I've had and used very extensively for three years, but showing some issues with especially the controller joysticks; my phone, which is now four years old and running out of space for kitten pictures; and my laptop, which is having storage and screen issues). The good thing is that I have the money to do so after closing an unused bank account, but there's still that alarm bell going "do you really need to?". It's a bit of a thing that, even though I'm not in a bad position financially, some of my habits from when I didn't have as much money mean I delay replacing things that I should probably replace moreso than I need to. (And given the warranty schemes in Europe, I much prefer buying things here with the two-year compulsory warranty!)

More: show

(2) Similarly, I'm going on vacation in March (plus conference). In general, I have to prepay/pay in advance for conference expenses and get them reimbursed later, but now I'm getting a bit concerned over how much I'm forking over... fortunately, once I start the vacation bit and get an inordinately large number of Swiss francs converted for newer models*, my bank account can breathe a sigh of relief, but again, I know I shouldn't have these worries. And yet I do.

More: show

(3) We got reviews for a paper back, and it was quite clear two of the reviewers didn't properly read or understand things! The first response was "reject", but my boss successfully appealed to get it upgraded to "major revision", which is quite a feat, but now we're getting ready for the re-submission... and I'm still a bit worried. I think we've addressed their concerns, but there are plenty of people I've encountered that are hard/impossible to please with results and research. Without knowing who these reviewers are, it's also hard to tell what will ultimately make them happy.
Though, relatedly, we're starting (slowly) the process of a paper in collaboration with the Organic Chemistry group, and it's already making me a bit crazy, mostly the fact it feels like we're on different planets in terms of what we see out of the paper and how to weave the scope and the fact they still insist on "pass the Word document" for papers, which is painful. (Anymore, I use Overleaf, a Latex editor, which is quite useful, but the senior ORCs don't want to learn Latex, and I've heard similar complaints from some other ORCs not involved with the project...)

More: show

(4) I have a grant application due in mid-April, and I just can't work up the energy to write as much as I'd like for it...

[bradrn]

We got reviews for a paper back, and it was quite clear two of the reviewers didn't properly read or understand things! The first response was "reject", but my boss successfully appealed to get it upgraded to "major revision", which is quite a feat, but now we're getting ready for the re-submission... and I'm still a bit worried. I think we've addressed their concerns, but there are plenty of people I've encountered that are hard/impossible to please with results and research. Without knowing who these reviewers are, it's also hard to tell what will ultimately make them happy.

Funny, I just had a very similar experience. Thankfully, no-one has yet said explicitly the paper should be rejected.

Though, relatedly, we're starting (slowly) the process of a paper in collaboration with the Organic Chemistry group, and it's already making me a bit crazy, mostly the fact it feels like we're on different planets in terms of what we see out of the paper and how to weave the scope and the fact they still insist on "pass the Word document" for papers, which is painful. (Anymore, I use Overleaf, a Latex editor, which is quite useful, but the senior ORCs don't want to learn Latex, and I've heard similar complaints from some other ORCs not involved with the project...

My own lab group doesn’t like LaTeX, and quite enjoys their game of ‘pass the Word document’. It drives me a bit crazy, but there’s not much I can do about it.

[doctor shark]

We got reviews for a paper back, and it was quite clear two of the reviewers didn't properly read or understand things! The first response was "reject", but my boss successfully appealed to get it upgraded to "major revision", which is quite a feat, but now we're getting ready for the re-submission... and I'm still a bit worried. I think we've addressed their concerns, but there are plenty of people I've encountered that are hard/impossible to please with results and research. Without knowing who these reviewers are, it's also hard to tell what will ultimately make them happy.

Funny, I just had a very similar experience. Thankfully, no-one has yet said explicitly the paper should be rejected.

That's a good sign! Normally we would just get "major revision" when things like that happened or a very clear "rejection for scope", but I think this time we were just ticked off at the comments from the reviewers that we went "let's see what happens".

Though, relatedly, we're starting (slowly) the process of a paper in collaboration with the Organic Chemistry group, and it's already making me a bit crazy, mostly the fact it feels like we're on different planets in terms of what we see out of the paper and how to weave the scope and the fact they still insist on "pass the Word document" for papers, which is painful. (Anymore, I use Overleaf, a Latex editor, which is quite useful, but the senior ORCs don't want to learn Latex, and I've heard similar complaints from some other ORCs not involved with the project...

My own lab group doesn’t like LaTeX, and quite enjoys their game of ‘pass the Word document’. It drives me a bit crazy, but there’s not much I can do about it.

Fortunately, my own group has a bit of a "whoever leads the paper writing decides how it'll be written". Whenever I lead the authorship, my boss has no issues with using LaTeX (and seems to be warming up to it, especially how it doesn't screw up the references), while other people in the group will instead use the "pass the Word document" technique. But a categorical "no" or being unwilling to learn is a bit frustrating...

[bradrn]

Though, relatedly, we're starting (slowly) the process of a paper in collaboration with the Organic Chemistry group, and it's already making me a bit crazy, mostly the fact it feels like we're on different planets in terms of what we see out of the paper and how to weave the scope and the fact they still insist on "pass the Word document" for papers, which is painful. (Anymore, I use Overleaf, a Latex editor, which is quite useful, but the senior ORCs don't want to learn Latex, and I've heard similar complaints from some other ORCs not involved with the project...

My own lab group doesn’t like LaTeX, and quite enjoys their game of ‘pass the Word document’. It drives me a bit crazy, but there’s not much I can do about it.

Fortunately, my own group has a bit of a "whoever leads the paper writing decides how it'll be written". Whenever I lead the authorship, my boss has no issues with using LaTeX (and seems to be warming up to it, especially how it doesn't screw up the references), while other people in the group will instead use the "pass the Word document" technique. But a categorical "no" or being unwilling to learn is a bit frustrating...

Well, I’m doing my Master’s, and this is the first paper I’ve ever been involved in, so… not much chance of that for now, I guess!

[Man in Space]

Someone up the chain screwed up getting my insurance taken care of at the beginning of the year and now I'm $6'000 in medical debt. I'm trying to get this sorted out before it all goes to collections but I am pissed.

[Raphael]

Someone up the chain screwed up getting my insurance taken care of at the beginning of the year and now I'm $6'000 in medical debt. I'm trying to get this sorted out before it all goes to collections but I am pissed.

Yikes! That's extremely messed up, and you're completely right to be pissed about it! Good luck with sorting it out!

[Travis B.]

Someone up the chain screwed up getting my insurance taken care of at the beginning of the year and now I'm $6'000 in medical debt. I'm trying to get this sorted out before it all goes to collections but I am pissed.

Ugh - I too would be pissed as all hell.

[Raphael]

I just discovered that some works by authors who have been dead for more than 70 years nevertheless remain copyrighted in the USA, under some obscure "renewal" rule. Until less than an hour ago, I had assumed that copyright in most places followed a simple "lifetime of author + X years" formula, with "X" being determined by each country's laws. I'm less anti-copyright than the online hacktivist crowd, but this still annoys me a lot.

[Linguoboy]

I just discovered that some works by authors who have been dead for more than 70 years nevertheless remain copyrighted in the USA, under some obscure "renewal" rule. Until less than an hour ago, I had assumed that copyright in most places followed a simple "lifetime of author + X years" formula, with "X" being determined by each country's laws. I'm less anti-copyright than the online hacktivist crowd, but this still annoys me a lot.

This is something that particularly annoys me in relation to the recent ginned-up controversies over long-dead authors like Fleming (d. 1964) and Dahl (d. 1990). Under any kind of sensible copyright regime, their work would be in the public domain and everyone could release their own redactions with as much or as little racism, anti-semitism, ableism, sexism, fatphobia, homophobia, etc. as they liked.

[chris_notts]

This is something that particularly annoys me in relation to the recent ginned-up controversies over long-dead authors like Fleming (d. 1964) and Dahl (d. 1990). Under any kind of sensible copyright regime, their work would be in the public domain and everyone could release their own redactions with as much or as little racism, anti-semitism, ableism, sexism, fatphobia, homophobia, etc. as they liked.

Didn't Netflix just buy the Dahl rights for a crazy amount? The tricky thing about restoring any kind of sensible copyright rules is that a lot of big companies would have to do some really big write downs, so the amount they're willing to spend on lobbying against it is almost unlimited.

Heavily leveraged companies making big write downs could even mean bankruptcy in some cases, I would guess?

[Linguoboy]

This is something that particularly annoys me in relation to the recent ginned-up controversies over long-dead authors like Fleming (d. 1964) and Dahl (d. 1990). Under any kind of sensible copyright regime, their work would be in the public domain and everyone could release their own redactions with as much or as little racism, anti-semitism, ableism, sexism, fatphobia, homophobia, etc. as they liked.

Didn't Netflix just buy the Dahl rights for a crazy amount? The tricky thing about restoring any kind of sensible copyright rules is that a lot of big companies would have to do some really big write downs, so the amount they're willing to spend on lobbying against it is almost unlimited.

Essentially. There's a reason why the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 has been called "the Mickey Mouse Protection Act". Disney has All The Money and not a single qualm in the world and an almost unstoppable lobbying apparatus.

Is there a name for this particular flaw in democracy? 99% of the citizenry would benefit from more rational copyright law. But those whose business model depends on the current system derive a lot of benefit so they'll put incredible effort and funds into protecting the status quo, meaning that the 1% who care a lot always end up trumping the 99% who care just a little. It's the same with agricultural and energy subsidies, licenced professions, environmental laws, etc. I know "regulatory capture" is the term for when corporations basically write the regulations meant to keep them in check, but it goes much further than that.

[alice]

Is there a name for this particular flaw in democracy?

It's informally known as The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

[Raphael]

I've lived with news reports about this kind of thing for most of my live. But I don't think it has ever happened so close to where I live:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64910415

[MacAnDàil]

Minor-ish vents all around.

More: show

(1) I'm at a point where I'm thinking it might be a good idea to upgrade a number of my electronics: for example, some of my things are showing their age (eg. my Nintendo Switch, which I've had and used very extensively for three years, but showing some issues with especially the controller joysticks; my phone, which is now four years old and running out of space for kitten pictures; and my laptop, which is having storage and screen issues). The good thing is that I have the money to do so after closing an unused bank account, but there's still that alarm bell going "do you really need to?". It's a bit of a thing that, even though I'm not in a bad position financially, some of my habits from when I didn't have as much money mean I delay replacing things that I should probably replace moreso than I need to. (And given the warranty schemes in Europe, I much prefer buying things here with the two-year compulsory warranty!)

More: show

(2) Similarly, I'm going on vacation in March (plus conference). In general, I have to prepay/pay in advance for conference expenses and get them reimbursed later, but now I'm getting a bit concerned over how much I'm forking over... fortunately, once I start the vacation bit and get an inordinately large number of Swiss francs converted for newer models*, my bank account can breathe a sigh of relief, but again, I know I shouldn't have these worries. And yet I do.

More: show

(3) We got reviews for a paper back, and it was quite clear two of the reviewers didn't properly read or understand things! The first response was "reject", but my boss successfully appealed to get it upgraded to "major revision", which is quite a feat, but now we're getting ready for the re-submission... and I'm still a bit worried. I think we've addressed their concerns, but there are plenty of people I've encountered that are hard/impossible to please with results and research. Without knowing who these reviewers are, it's also hard to tell what will ultimately make them happy.
Though, relatedly, we're starting (slowly) the process of a paper in collaboration with the Organic Chemistry group, and it's already making me a bit crazy, mostly the fact it feels like we're on different planets in terms of what we see out of the paper and how to weave the scope and the fact they still insist on "pass the Word document" for papers, which is painful. (Anymore, I use Overleaf, a Latex editor, which is quite useful, but the senior ORCs don't want to learn Latex, and I've heard similar complaints from some other ORCs not involved with the project...)

More: show

(4) I have a grant application due in mid-April, and I just can't work up the energy to write as much as I'd like for it...

If your phone is just missing space, you can either transfer or delete some of the images. It would be a waste to get rid of something functional.

I just got my first rejected article myself. One objection was that I only included one reference to native linguistics, and that indicated it wasn't really a movement. But I had included more sources, including ones which explicitly described it as a movement.

[alice]

I've just discovered that the setting for my soon-to-be-written novel is a cliché and should be avoided at all costs. And I've just created 144 believable names for it too. Oh well, time to start from the beginning again.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Write it as you planned and see if you can't save it from clichédom?

[quinterbeck]

I've just discovered that the setting for my soon-to-be-written novel is a cliché and should be avoided at all costs. And I've just created 144 believable names for it too. Oh well, time to start from the beginning again.

I'm curious, what's the cliché?

[Raphael]

And how did you spend the time until now not noticing that it's a cliché?

[Moose-tache]

Lots of great books had cliche settings. Assassin's Apprentice has a super boiler plate fantasy world. A Memory Called Empire is a generic space opera with some misunderstood Mayan elements (presented as Aztec for some reason) thrown in in the hope nobody will notice, but it's still extremely cliche. And both those books are awesome, because they have engaging characters.

[Ares Land]

I want to know what the cliché is too!

Lots of great books had cliche settings. Assassin's Apprentice has a super boiler plate fantasy world. A Memory Called Empire is a generic space opera with some misunderstood Mayan elements (presented as Aztec for some reason) thrown in in the hope nobody will notice, but it's still extremely cliche. And both those books are awesome, because they have engaging characters.

Absolutely. What matters isn't the idea but the execution.