TL;DR: I got a remote job interview, they refused to turn on the camera, then told me after the interview that I was googling the answers to questions I didn't know, which I wasn't. But without a camera I had no way of proving it.
I had a job interview for a huge company that I was super excited about. I had applied to an entry-level job position, and they even contacted me and told me that my profile would match a non-entry position more closely, so my process was transferred. I was nervous, but excited!
The interview was remote, which was not usual (this was pre-pandemic! Around 2018 I believe). Once they arrived, I was surprised that they didn't want cameras on; it was a fully audio-based interview. Whatever, I thought, I'll just do the interview anyway.
It didn't go very well, as I was just a silly kid straight out of university with no interviewing experience, but I thought it wasn't catastrophic or anything. I still do. They asked me a couple of questions about my industry that I had no idea about unfortunately. I still tried to answer as best as I could, but I could tell my answers were not the ones they wanted. The dude was nice anyway and told me "that's OK" whenever I didn't know an answer.
A couple of days after the interview, I get a call from a very nice HR lady and she said "unfortunately you were not selected for this position, but feel free to apply for other positions in our company!". I was a bit sad but wanted to make use of this as a learning experience, so I asked "do you have information as to why I was not selected?" or something to that effect.
She said: "let me see... It says here they were not looking for someone with your profile...
... Oh! Also, you were googling the answers to questions you didn't know, as we heard you typing"
This broke me. I had done no such thing! I started trying to tell her that was not true (and that if it were, I would have gotten the answers right!). But I quickly realized that it was a losing battle. They had made their decision, and I was just wasting their time. If only they had turned on the camera I could have evidence that was not true. But I decided not to further sully my reputation and just said "Thank you for your time, I hope to talk to you again".
Since I did not get that job, I applied to and was accepted into a PhD programme so I guess that was a pretty important moment in my life. I am about to finish my PhD and that company is one of my options afterward, so I sometimes wonder if they still have that lie on file.
Finally finished a few things that were keeping me working at home after work and was able to dive back into Mass Effect 2 (in the remastered trilogy). I'm enjoying it a lot, I just recruited the final squad member.
Before that, I did the missions on the Krogan homeworld and really enjoyed seeing how my companion from ME 1 is doing. I also like my Krogan squad member a lot, so it was nice.
Beautiful Katamari was the first time I recall seeing controversy about on-disc DLC. You had to buy a few stages, including the one they advertised the most that went from like 1cm to rolling up the sun iirc, and all the purchase did was toggle a key that allowed you to play the levels which were already in your CD. It's normal now, but at the time I remember people hating it.
For what it's worth I liked We Love Katamari (and the original, which I only played once the re-release came out) much more than Beautiful Katamari! They tried to mix it up in Beautiful Katamari where you not only needed to roll a sufficiently large Katamari, but also it needed to be made of specific categories of items, and while this is fun for a few levels it ends up being boring when they do it for almost the whole game.
Or you could be so amazing that you're the reason why someone loves your entire race/gender/creed/country!
... And that in turn makes that person hate all other races/genders/creeds/countries and spend their whole lives committing atrocities to eradicate them, so that everyone in the world looks a bit more like you.
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I wasn't expecting the website to outright refuse me from accessing it after refusing to be tracked, and with such bullshit lingo too
Yes, a lot of people are very excited about applications that would require this material in bulk, like power transmission, and I don't see this happening with the fabrication methods we have now. Still incredibly excited about this, though, and crossing my fingers that the results can be replicated and confirmed quickly!
I'm sorry, I am fully male-presenting (and was assigned male at birth - which is relevant as my boss is super conservative and would not tolerate a trans person in her office. The LGBTQ lay low here).
My supervisor, however, IS read as female, and I fully suspect that she is who my boss has a problem with. Especially after she left, as my boss saw this as a personal betrayal of sorts. And since my own project is inexorably linked to my supervisor, I get these reactions by association.
That's the plain and simple categorical imperative by our good friend Immanuel Kant!
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
(it's a mouthful but he was onto something!)