#Ratball

[msvblight]

Almost threw up laughing at the idea of Vermin doing a spirit bomb, but with rats.

Ratball.

"Each one has consumed less than a gram of explosive material. Not much individually, but all together? It will be enough to level this building."

Supervillain idea: "Vermin"

His real body suffers from locked-in syndrome, or some sort of paralysis from the neck down. But his power allows him to control rats, mice and other such vermin and to use them to clump together to form "new" bodies anywhere in the world.

He is generally a messenger and information gatherer, but the amorphous nature of having a body made out of live rats is a real boon in combat - and his secret is that he can control multiple of these gestalt rat bodies at once.

Furthermore with the sheer population of vermin in just about anywhere, he can form what I can only call a "semi-humanoid rat kaiju"

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Hoot

Debut: Super Mario 64

Is this guy as much of a hoot as his name implies? Perhaps even a hoot and a HALF? Or more like just half a hoot? Let us discuss.

Super Mario 64 was around the time when Nintendo seemed to think of owls as a Good Guy Animal. They would not dare make an owl an enemy! In Super Mario Land 2, Super Mario 64, and Wario Land 2 and 3, owls are only portrayed as helpful to the player, and I guess they were really trying to make "owls=good" an overarching truth in video games.

And it worked I guess! Everyone respects owls! They're the Smart Birds, even though they are really not notably smart, but NOT stupid like some people might want you to believe! Animals do what they evolved to do, and they do it well, and it is stupid to call them stupid for not excelling at unrelated things.

But what about Hoot himself? Is he a Wise Cartoon Owl?

He's really just sort of a regular guy! When Mario climbs up his tree, he is bothered to be woken up during daylight, but this stand-up fellow decides to let Mario hang on to his claws and go for a ride with him! That's so nice of him! Far more courteous than most would be in that situation! But is it safe to be flying while sleepy, and with a passenger, no less? Is it like tired driving? I don't know! I'm not a bird!

Hoot appears in Whomp's Fortress in 64, and is added to some other vertical-focused areas in the DS remake, which is very nice! It helps ease the annoyance of having to venture back up the same parts of the level over and over again after being booted out with each Star. What a convenient owl this guy is! I would rate him a hoot and a half, easily!

Of course, he cannot hold Mario forever, and it is at this point that I may have to dock that half of a hoot. Not because he has his limitations- that's just natural!- but because he is RUDE about it! He tells Mario he needs to lay off the pasta, and come on, man! That's personal! He loves his pasta, don't try to deprive him of it! Maybe you're just envious because you have to eat woodland critters instead of getting to enjoy pasta. Maybe if you asked nicely, Mario could find a place in Brooklyn where you could get some spaghetti and ratballs! Mm-mm!

Oh no! I'm sorry, Hoot! I didn't mean all that to criticize you, I just wanted you to be more considerate of others' feelings! I never wanted you to develop a severe gambling addiction!

[vanillamissionary]

Behold the RatBall

[nothinged]

Can you imagine even caring about how a celebrity is reacting to the middle east.... can you imagine watching 10 000 people get killed on live stream and think "hm why isn't Ratball the actor speaking up about this."

[canageek]

All right actual professional scientist here, what you've encountered is almost certainly a publication mill.

Is there an actual scientific journal does very much read your paper if it gets passed an initial automated screening, and not all of them use automated screenings. Then it will be read by an editor either employed by the journal or a volunteer editor who will choose whether to reject it or pass it on to reviewers. Then it'll be sent to 2 to 4 people not affiliated with the journal who will review it and send back comments.

I know this because I've published papers and they come back with comments, now obviously some people are more detailed than others and some people basically just skim it, but there's usually very specific comments indicating people are in fact reading this.

Now here's the kicker, scientists just don't make any money off their publications. In fact quite a large number of journals charge you to publish in them, particularly open access one since they don't make any funding from people subscribing.

However, having lots of publications is required for advancement at most universities. In any situation like this scam artists will arise, and in this case they sell the ability to publish in their journal. The people who pay for this are a mixture of those desperate to pad their publication counts, those who mix it up for a legitimate journal as the names are often identical or very close, and people who can't get their low quality research published in real journals.

No this is further complicated by the fact that a number of Chinese institutions would pay their researchers if they manage to get their research into English language journals, with some sort of tier system so better journals paid more. This led to a lot of low quality research spamming intermediate and lesser known journals and completely destroyed the reputations of many of them, such as the Canadian Journal of Chemistry due to the fact they published too much research that was technically fine find to publish but not interesting or particularly useful.

And this also serves the scam journals because if their publication fee is less than how much this particular Chinese researchers institution pays for paper then why not spam it and pocket the difference? I believe that most Chinese universities this situation has been getting better, but Chinese hospitals still have this problem, any of you'll notice on the ratball paper that all three researchers are associated with Chinese hospitals.

And if you're just trying to get out spam publications as fast as possible to collect some extra money, you're not going to take the time to verify the citations, you're going to plug in a semi-relevant search term into a specialist scientific search engine such as scifinder, web of knowledge, or Google scholar and just scatter around the top results.

The publisher the ratballs paper was in is one known to have a lot of low quality, pay-to-play journals, mixed with a few very good ones that have held out since before this publisher fell from grace. MPDI is another publisher that used to be reasonable but has been doing deeply unethical things over the past couple decades.

Generally good publishers would be those run by scientific societies such as the American Institute of Physics (AIP), IEEE, the Royal Society of Chemistry, International Union of Crystallography, American Chemical Society (though they are wildly unethical in ways that aren't related to research quality). Of course not every publication from even a good publishers of equal quality, that's entirely dependent on the editorial board and can change over time, and I don't think there's a journal on the planet that hasn't let a fraudulent paper slip through because it was convincing enough. But outside of the scummy publication Mills people do indeed very much read the papers, as evidenced by the additional experiments and rewriting I have to do whenever I publish.

tbh the rat balls article confirms a lot of what i worry about these days which is that no one is actually reading anything. people are just mashing "ok" on things and don't actually care. there's no actual quality control because to turn things down for their quality means turning down money for a submission

[hermitcraft-8]

i miss ratball

[tahlwyn]

i eat lead bars

[davehiltonukfit]

So cute when they sleep 😍🐀 #ratball #rat #fancyrat #ratsofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BnMXM-XFTbB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1vy7yh0gti571

[abasketofnothing]

[cuuno-moved]

You barely know anything about me so my timezone is cst, and my favorite animal is a hedgehog

very important thank you

[callmebadwolf]

Precious naps 💫 #ratbrats #Ophelia #Sage #ratsofinstagram #ratmom #ratball https://www.instagram.com/p/B1MrmkRFkmv/?igshid=18ht8lfa86bu8

[gamenit3]

Late Game Nite Playlist - Demontower (NitW)

We have multiple gaming channels btw, so if our playlists include one of the following channel names:

1. Game Nite (this content is for everyone, the general viewers)

OR

2. Late Game Nite (this content is for anyone 17+ or older, the mature viewers)

[cheekywithcullen]

Listen, you can;t just talk about that without providing context. Show it!

[gooberto]

Raticute.

aka “raticate but with slightly more accurate rat anatomy because rats are adorable”

[2-point-5]

WAIT. have i posted ratball

[crushcandles]

I had a ratball couple of days at work that dried up all my TV energy. Good to be back for the weekend, dumping thoughts about Stranger Things S4.

S4E4: Poor Max, always getting the rough treatment. First, a stepbrother. Then Indiana. Then her stepbrother dies and now this shit? Erica 💛 - u deserve that Nintendo with Duck Hunt. Steve’s bitchy leg cross when he sits down 😍. Okay, after a further 30 seconds of exposure, I very much ship Nancy and Robin. Them in Nancy’s room was fantastic. Oh my god, the way Mike and Will are small mouth pleased about saving themselves and everyone else, so cute. This is a great episode for them. And their plan leading to more Argyle makes me very happy. Robin’s speech was totally bonkers but worth it for the low-five (I thought they were going to hold hands??? I am BOARDING this ship). But not loving the Silence of the Lambs business, no thanks.

I’m not currently that interested in the Russia/Hopper storyline, but him getting emotional over tasting peanut butter was touching. Won’t lie, I tuned out a lot of Victor’s story - it was just a B-minus horror movie. Omg biographical details about Billy. Omg Billy. Omg Max and Billy (a relationship sorely underdeveloped). And of course, nightmare Billy, my beloved. Ah, the song everyone’s been talking about. Max (and Lucas) 💗.