My paper got accepted to a good journal, and I was asked to send my bio and a picture. The post-doc in charge said the picture was unsuitable in a very condescending manner, without explaining what is the problem.
I asked my (ex-)advisor what is wrong with it, and he said my clothes and the settings are fine, but my expression is "judgmental, angry and will make the readers uncomfortable".
Imagine it's 2021, and girls in academia still need to deal with that shit of "why aren't you smiling?"

Am I the only one who finds it bizarre that there is a fucking picture supposed to be printed in the first place?

I am not a girl or particularly attractive and I'm often told to smile. I hate it and - relatedly - my picture smile looks like I'm wearing a tooth aligner that forces my mouth in that shape.

Since September when I started uni and entered the workforce, that is. Before that I was surrounded by saner people and less imitation.

@Fast-Nop nope
I think pictures are nice and all but should definitely remain optional.
Not everyone wants to be publicly seen

I would suggest growing a beard - but that might not be an option in this specific case...

I'm almost certain it's not a man/woman issue. I'm a dude and got ask continually why I make this angry face, and to cheer up

But that's just my resting face.

I remember in Russia when some international soccer championship took place, they tought Russian service stuff to smile for the tourists.

By themselves, people don't do that in Russia because Russians would think you're either stupid or drunken when you smile for no apparent reason.

Or maybe -- hear me out -- not smiling on a profile shot to be printed in a magazine is not very asthetically pleasing and has absolutely zero to do with your gender

@12bitfloat I thought journals were supposed to be read for their papers, i.e. the content - seems like they went yellow press.

First, it's an IEEE journal not Victoria Secret's campaign. If we cared about aesthetics then most researchers would have to forgo a picture at all - they are just not attractive as our profession does not require us to be.
Second, I am smiling, but very subtly. I never smile widely because then I look like a fucking squirrel with my pinch-me-cheeks. But I guess professors and post-docs feel comfortable to tell me I have a resting bitch face.
Third, I am fairly certain it is a gender thing, because I looked at Journal papers of other people (read:men) and a lot of them were not smiling. Somehow, they made it to the journal!
If you were wondering, this is the photo (I will Photoshop the background to be blank later).

@molaram I did, but then they threatened not to put my picture at all...feeling quite powerless.

@NickyBones From your collar, I'd conclude that you have Apple hardware. *hiding* ^^

@NickyBones Weeeeell, tbh it doesn't look to me like you're smiling, but nevertheless, I don't see anything wrong with the pic.. :/ You look awesome!

@Fast-Nop I have a Mac that I got for free from Uni. Does it count if I didn't pay for it? :)

@NickyBones It does, but only if you had it at least in your backpack while being at Starbucks. ^^

@sladuled The left corner of my lip is slightly upturned :) That's my everyday smile :)

@Fast-Nop Starbucks is too expensive for me since I went back to school

@Fast-Nop True, the easiest solution would just not having any pictures in the first place

@NickyBones I've never been to a Starbucks, did I miss out on anything

@LotsOfCaffeine Not really, just very expensive hot chocolate :) I never ordered anything else there

@NickyBones that reminds me I bought chocolate drink powder stuff

Brb making a cold chocolate

@NickyBones I don't get the fuzz, the pic looks fine. Maybe next time you should look deep into the soul of the readers by looking directly into to the cam. That condecending smirk would be perfect.

@NickyBones

> not to put my picture at all

It sounds like a win to me, but I guess some people like it.

@Benutzername I don't know if I should go for a more intense look. My ex-advisor told me that my stare makes him feel like I am judging him for his sins. Which I am, just not in this picture.

@Jabb03 But I want glory 😭

Wow! That is one aggressive necklace.
You look fine in that pic to me. Not smoking but fine. I too haha all the fake smily shit.

@hjk101 The necklace is the School of the Cat symbol :)

@NickyBones pfff remind me not to swipe early in the morning 🙅.
Not smoking = not smiling.
Haha = hate.

Witcher stuff is really nice but I can see muggles taking offence. I love it, for me your pic would brighten up the page but more interested in your paper!

@hjk101 It's already up in arxiv - "Fully Onboard AI-powered Human-Drone Pose Estimation on Ultra-low Power Autonomous Flying Nano-UAVs".
It should be published on the IEEE IoT journal, but not sure in which month.

@molaram Is there an unwritten law that you should cross your arms over your chest?
When I get pissed enough for crossing arms, you better start running....
Anyway, the requirement for journal photos are from chest/shoulder height and up.
It seems super weird that I need to hire a professional photographer and makeup artist to publish a paper.

@molaram In the examples you sent, the women are wearing heavy makeup and the shots are definitely not amateur selfies. This is why I was asking.
Why do I need to wear a suit? My work is 40% crawling on floors with robots, 40% coding, 20% reading papers, none which I do with a suit.

@molaram
Selling yourself is different for every profession, and I don't think a suit is what will help me sell myself as a roboticist/CV engineer.
I wouldn't take my car to a mechanic that wears a suit.

Hit them back with "I feel no need to share my medical history neither you have the right to discriminate me because of it" (which is 100% true and probably entirely unrelated) and laugh at their apologetic yet detailed explanation about the "intern's mistake".

@NickyBones
The picture looks perfectly fine to me.

But how much load can that nano UAVs carry after ECM shielding?

@Oktokolo Enough C4 to still be useful.

@Fast-Nop
After proper shielding (not just a thin layer of foil around the µC)?!
It still needs some minutes air time to not just be a fancy grenade (although depending on cost and fragility that might be a viable use case too).

@Oktokolo The payload is like 15g ;)

@NickyBones
That isn't much. But it may still be useful for some search & rescue missions.

Or can you make it hit the nearest head attached to a body wearing specific insignia or holding a specific gun model?
Also can it be programmed such that the user just throws it in a general direction and it brakes mid-air a meter or so before hitting a non-matching obstacle (or the ground) before homing in on the nearest target?

@Oktokolo What we had in mind is mostly monitoring - instead of having a huge network of in place sensors, you have a few mobile ones mounted on nano-drones. Thinking about industrial environment, where there are also people, so a nano-drone is a safer choice than a big drone for indoor, possibly crowded, areas.
But certainly there are other applications.

@NickyBones Such an indoor drone swarm could be useful for fire fighters. What gases are there, how hot is it, where are the hottest spots (i.e. likely sources of invisible fire), are any people in the building and if so, where and how many.

@NickyBones
Sounds slightly more convincing than "search & rescue", but i am pretty sure, you just invented the smart grenade:
Throw and forget. The grenade automatically homes in on the next foe's head and splatters his brain all over the place - probably by use of a shaped charge (combatants wear helmets).

Industries are happy to install all the sensors they need. No use for nano drone swarms there.

Fire fighters would need flir cams - which need cooling, which needs energy, which means heavier batteris. Also, the drones would need heat shielding.

For actual search & rescue air time is key.

But a dual use (additionally to military) could be as surveilance drones in public spaces. Hats work pretty good against typical stationary cams. So some inexpensive nano drones could always be ready to launch from their charge pod and scan the faces of whoever could not be identified by the stationary cams. There is a huge market for that.

@Oktokolo Actually not. Simple mass check: a standard hand grenade clocks in at 300-400g. That's because what makes it effective isn't the explosive, it's the shrapnels, hence you need to have mass that would become shrapnels. With only 15g payload, there won't be a grenade.

Also, air time isn't that important in fire fighting because you have to act fast, and that means you don't have much time for recon anyway. Shielding isn't that necessary because you don't fly them right into the fire zone - or if you do, to collect last-seconds-data, just treat the drone as disposable unit. Make them cheaper, not more robust.

@Fast-Nop
Maybe, "grenade" is indeed the wrong term. "Assasination drone" is more fitting. Each of it would cleanly kill only one target directly instead of hoping for shrapnel to hit something...

And you are right on the firefighting use case:
At that temperatures, the near infrared spectrum of generic CCDs is actually useful.
Grats for finding a non-1984 civilian use case.

P.S.: They can also be used as selfie drones and toys, but their main use is still pretty obvious.

@Oktokolo Nothing in my work is related to swarms. And the nano-drones are quite weak - they are not suitable for usage outdoors or even indoors with you have strong air currents. I guess you can just avoid assassination with a very strong hair fan? Always carry it with you, and you will be saved.

@NickyBones
Would the software work with bigger drones too?

@NickyBones Oh wow that reminds of those drones from Breath of the Wild. Especially the ones outside Vah Rudania.

@Oktokolo The NN is a very small one, and the whole point of the project was to be able to run inference on ULP processors. If you have a big drone, you can mount it with a Jetson and run some SotA models that do things x10 more complex than mine.