u/OpinionsRdumb

I am not talking about this admin obviously (ignoring their recent NIH proposed change to $1-2k for covering APC charges which does nothing but favor wealthier labs who have non NIH funds). But in general, have there been any pushes to regulate APC charges? It seems like literally everyone on the planet agrees that APC charges (particularly OA charges) have become detrimental to science in every way possible and a lot of journals essentially have monopolies in their fields given them unprecedented pricing power.

But the most bewildering and confusing fact about all this is that APC charges are paid for by taxpayers. Professors use publicly funded grants to pay journals the right to publish publicly funded research so that taxpayers can read the research they funded without having to pay a subscription.

The whole boycott argument or "I only publish in society journals" is nice but we all know this will never be adopted across the field. It seems like gov intervention is desperately needed here? Otherwise we are left with a system where tax payers are literally propping up a multi billion dollar industry.

I am making more as a postdoc than half of the Asst Prof salaries I am seeing. What is going on here??

It seems like this occurs at smaller schools, lesser known schools. Which I guess is self-explanatory but I did not know it was this bad… I’m talking $55k bad in some cases for idk, teaching our country’s future workforce??

I understand there likely a lot of “logical” explanations for this (budget cuts, 9 month contracts, etc etc) but geez can Asst profs get a little more love for literally educating the next generation???

I am loving this game so far but the one thing that makes no sense to me is itemization. Holy crap this is so confusing. Playing support (Leona) and this is what I've read online:

"To build and itemize Leona in League of Legends, start with World Atlas and health potions, then support item like Bloodsong or Celestial Opposition, build Plated Steelcaps or Mercury's Treads, and rush Locket of the Iron Solari. Complete your build with utility tank items like Knight's Vow or Thornmail."

Like what???? Do I buy the mats for Locket first to "rush" it? or do I buy the other stuff first. I get the World Atlas part since you buy that off rip. And then it feels like there are always so many options to choose from. Do I always buy hp potions? Do I always fill up on wards?

But I guess in general how the heck do you figure this stuff out? I also tried Blitz but I am at a loss for how this helps as I just keep picking the "recommended" stuff the game tells you anyway. Any tips??

I won't go into everything because I could sit here and write all day. But just as an example there is thing called Practice Tool in League where you can load up into a fake match on any of your champions (characters), give yourself infinite gold (you have to buy items in league every match), auto regenerate hp, mana, max out all your abilities. You can CUSTOMIZE the dummies. And then proceed to test out all your abilities, read tooltips, etc etc. (think of all the tooltips in WoW that basically don't even read correctly until you instance into arena and even then a lot of them don't read correctly, aka tier sets, etc).

You can also set up and completely customize a bot game for yourself.

There is also this tutorial mode where you can try out different specs in the same game and try out their abilities.

EDIT: I love how one of the biggest complaints about WoW pvp has been barrier to entry and in my very first experience with League I am blown away by all their tutorial/guides/QoL features for noobs and instead everyone just refuses to acknowledge this comparison whatsoever. I did not mention once in my post I am trying to push Diamond right away. Heck I would be happy to get Silver in a year+ of playing

EDIT2: also everyone keeps saying “but league is bigger than wow pvp”. Yeah no shit. But the difference is we pay $60-90 every 2 years AND we pay $15 a month. Times that by all players who primarily pvp and you have tens of millions of dollars every year.

Prepping for my interviews and I know the general advice is to “be yourself” “be genuine” “ask them things you actually care about” “show them you did your homework” etc etc.

But I am just curious if any faculty here have heard a question that really just impressed them during a candidate’s interview. Also any questions I should completely stay away from?

Due to remix a majority of players have a bunch of level 70s and 80s that are considered their “alts”.

And sure I get some folks here have no problem whipping out the 4+ hours it takes to do the standard delve leveling strategy or timewalking event to get to 90 for the Nth time ina row.

But what if you just want to take your sweet sweet time in Redridge mts or Barrens or STV? I have about 3 alts left I would love to get to 90 but I just cannot stand to do another midnight delve.

It makes 0 sense to me that zones don’t just scale up to max level. There is absolutely 0 downside. As long as you require people to do the campaign once, then all zones should open up thereon afterwards.

If I had to sum up S1 it would be akin to getting that late night text from that one girl you chased all year asking "you up?"

Like we got a bit more attention than we ever had compared to previous seasons. We had more balancing than we ever had. We had Ion actually acknowledge that we exist (basically giving us the 'wyd?' text at 2am) albeit cynically. We had a change to the ranking system that has been untouched for 10 years.

But even as I write this I realize I am literally experiencing my own Stockholm Syndrome. Like sure she texted you back but it was only after you texted her 50 times on read...

Because let's not forget: we got a complete addon purge. And in replacement we basically got the middle finger from the devs. Kick tracker which is essential for pvp? Nah. Damage meter that actually works for arena? Nope. Ability to see auras effectively? Not even. Allowing people to see their own party's CDs? No can do. Instead the devs had apparently been working on a bot arena... which sure can be a cool thing...but if you are gonna devote dev hours to pvp why not first fix game-breaking UI issues and bugs?

And so at the end of this all, I am left with a very bittersweet taste in my mouth. It really feels like we are being breadcrumbed. So ofc we are all gonna log back in on Tuesday with our mouths wide open. But dam there are just so many small things that need fixing that would make WoW PvP 1000% better for new and old players alike.

I guess the point I am trying to make is yes I am not satisfied but I'll see you all next week anyway (because I will always love this game even if it becomes some illegal private server you can only access on a foreign VPN). Maybe this season we will continue to see some gradual improvements that maybe by next expac we will actually have a solid pvp experience. One can only hope

Imagine flying into Westfall, or Redridge Mountains, or Barrens, heck or even a capital city like Stormwinds, with 50 other players, teams of 3, 2dps/1healer. And last one to survive in the storm wins.

Please blizz.

EDIT: to attract pve players it would also be cool to implement teams of 5 where tanks are also included and tanks carry a flag to incentivize targeting them and if they go down then the whole team gets eliminated.

So while I do have a solid publication record, a lot of it is methodology stuff or slightly lower impact than the stuff I am very excited about which is all unpublished/in review etc.

I know that successful job talks clearly show the candidates pub record. However, a lot of my most impressive figures and results are from a flurry of successful experiments that have occurred in the past year that we are publishing submitting to pretty high impact journals (i know that target journal is basically a meaningless statement until they are published).

Any advice on how to strategically package this in a job talks? Do I need to bottle this excitement a bit and really focus on what I have published to build a story that has a proven track record?

EDIT: by job talk i meant both the lecture and chalk talk

I have a paper under review at one of the CNS journals and its in the 2nd round of reviews with positive feedback from editor.

However, I know this is still considered unpublished. And I know the field standard on a CV is to list the preprint or list (in prep) without listing the journal. Is there anyway to mention the journal in my apps somehow. IE can I mention this in a research statement (paper X, under review at Y journal…) or interview? Or is this unprofessional/tacky/etc.

I am just a bit bummed because I know this is going to be my career defining paper but it likely won’t come out until after the hiring cycle…

Any help would be appreciated!!

Let's be honest 99% of the people that will be using this feature will be to test their UIs. Please Please please make this instant queue.

Having to wait for partners as well as queue with partners will make this a miserable experience. First off, most games are going to involve 1-2 people going into corner to test their UIs while 1 person actually tries to kill the bots. Second, if you do want to test your UI, all bots rather than with 2 humans will make this 10x easier for you.

Third, anyone new that is too anxious to even queue skirmishes will not even notice if their team is bots or real players.

The training ground should be queueable as a party, but autofill with bots if you soloqueue. This is the only way to make this an actually cool feature.

What is even crazier is you will (once they actually fix damage meters) actually be able to test damage/healing and complicated macros which would be INSANE. There is so much stuff that you can't really test on target dummies because of XYZ. Particularly party/arena123 macros and a ton of spells that don't scale properly in silvermoon but do in arena

So i have watched a bunch of guides on youtube on how to start playing League and I am still overwhelmed...I have to learn how to "CS", I have to learn how to manage my spells, items, and ghosting, flashing, Map awareness, Jungle spawns, all the buffs you can get from monsters etc, when to return to shop, etc etc etc It really just seems endless.

And a big problem I have now is I have no idea how to even start? Like is there an ultra casual game mode where you can just 1v1 people in some arena? I feel like the real map is a bit overwhelming.

On top of that do people have tips for what I pick up in the very beginning IE is there an ideal hero/role that is incredibly one dimensional that I can pick up just to get used to the game?

I know this is a highly complex game, but if you were to make some kind of ultra quick guide for a new player, what is the absolute bare minimum they should know in order to progress in league

EDIT: dam everyone so helpful here, ig this game is not as toxic as it seems. ty ppl

Considering playing league and curious what is the best but also most realistic rank to shoot for. Like at what rank can you say you are "good" and people would actually respect it.

Just by looking at the rankings it seems like this is Plat but I am curious what others would say.

Are the skills easily transferable? Is pushing "fun"? Or is the game basically incredibly sweaty and it will take years to be even remotely "competitive" (IE not hardstuck in whatever their Rival equivalent is).

I am just getting tired of playing a game that the devs do not give 2 flying shits about. And while League must suffer from its own problems, it is game where the devs actually focus on reward/system/combat design specifically for pvp.

I know this question is quite reductive, but I am curious what people from Japan value the most about where they live.

I swear I am getting these types of messages so much with Opus 5.

That being said I am primarily attributing it to the increase in open ended prompts I have been giving it which have mostly been amazing but there are times when it royally screws up.

And everytime it always acts likes it pats itself on the back for admitting that it messed up. It’s like no buddy you should give me more credit refunds everytime you mess up.

Hold on while I smack myself silly to make sure this is actually reality.

Let's see if I can get this straight. Because as of now, I truly cannot believe the trajectory we have been on with this addon purge (and now slow painful unpurge).

Basically the devs are now allowing the tracking and filtering and customizing of all buff auras in upcoming patch. Players' own debuffs that they apply on enemies AND party member buffs (however there is nothing about tracking party CDs so this is only half cool) will be trackable.

So now you can make a custom aura tracker for your most important dots you apply on enemies, you can filter for important buffs your party members get (ie Ironbark) and you can set up alerts for all these. Druids can now filter their own hots effectively and get rid of all the other clutter.

But check this out. This is the part that I just do not understand and still continues to blow my mind what an utter failure this is. Is this all going to be in the in-game UI? My sweet sweet brethren. They are simply changing the API so that 3rd party addons can do this for us in 12.1.

Yes we are getting back Weak Auras but the 2026 Temu version. There are already addons you can test out on 12.1 where you can look up any spell or buff in your toolkit via Spell ID and make a custom tracker for it.

It turns out the devs have realized that the thousands and thousands of hours that the addon community put in to making buttery smooth features for pve and pvp players are actually worth something in the game, and it essentially offloads millions of dollars in dev hours that Blizzard can spend elsewhere.

Sure a lot of people welcomed the addon purge. But this was of course before people actually went into M+or arena and realized, Oh gosh I actually do enjoy tracking kicks, and certain enemy buffs, and also having control over all my buffs and spells.