Stainless Steel is the alloy of miracles. Fuck the naturally occurring rock, I want the alloy millions would fight to the death over for most of human history.
They are so fucking cool. If I had the money, I'd have a room that's just these gems+blacklights. There are some that change color based on the wavelength of UV light they're exposed to. Some glow a different color under UV than they do under normal light. Some are both fluorescent and phosphorescent, meaning they light up in response to UV, but then they can maintain their glow temporarily. Some change color based on the angle you view them at. They're so fucking cool.
The mechanics of extracting diamonds is baffling. Hell, even gold. Cutoff grades (where it is no longer feasible to mine economically) for gold is about 2.5 grams per tonne of overburden... that's a fucking metric shitpile of waste rock, some of which is ML/ARD (Metal leaching or acid generating).
I find the whole thing fascinating, and mining can be done responsibly, but it is not an easy thing in general
Holy shit I need blacklight jewelry! I got lab alexandrite and lab moissanite for my wedding ring, but I didn’t know I could get SCIENCE gems! And I do a ton of confocal microscopy where we use dichroic for splitting the wavelengths! Thank you for this link, I’m def buying all my jewelry from here from now on!
My nightmare of a previous boss called my moissanite engagement ring "cheap" and "trashy," and treated us to a 30-minute speech about how if it's not "real" diamond, it doesn't count.
I hope sucking down those Marlboro blacks takes care of that problem of a woman sooner, rather than later, and in the meantime the gorgeous rainbow sparkle of my pretty ring is made all the more beautiful for the complete lack of child slavery that went into making it!
... I also just realized that horrible harridan didn't have an engagement ring, or even a boyfriend, and now some things make sense.
We all have these people in our jobs, don’t we? I‘m practicing to engage them with a therapist rn. Have been through abuse when I was young and they love to dump on me. My new goal is to pin a notice on my wall that I get for telling the next bully where to stick it (in public). Lets see how that goes.
"I consider this harassment inappropriate for a workplace. I'd rather not get HR involved."
Key words from the employee manual or even better, HR training. No emotion, just stating facts. Don't trust HR, but management knows that more than anyone. They use it as a bludgeon against employees all the time, they know it could be turned against them just as easily.
I usually take a month off of work in the fall each year. One of my bucket list items is taking that time off to find a job with the worst bosses and seeing how far I can go while giving no fucks.
Moissanite is a perfect replacement of a diamond. Definitely agree that it looks great, better off putting the money towards something that will actually enhance your life.
The diamond industry sucks don't get me wrong. But the real culpurists are the dumbfuck diamond buyers.
My friend is a diamond salesperson and told me a story about one of their customers. They were looking at different pieces and the customer kept asking about the purity of the diamonds in the piece. Whenever my friend said it's "SI," the customer would be visibly disappointed and would ask for "VS" or "VVS" which are purer. My friend then got annoyed a bit and told the customer that purity doesn't matter once you reach "SI" since the impurities are not really visible by the naked eye. He even showed the customer 2 pieces with one looking 10 times better than the other but has SI diamonds and the non-pretty piece has VS diamonds. He asked the customer to tell him which is which and the customer wrongly said the SI one was more pure. Even after he revealed his ruse and showed that purity doesn't matter much, the customer kept asking for more pure pieces as if nothing happened.
These "people" literallly are willingly being lied to, and they like it. If a diamond buyer saw a piece, told you they love it, told you they would buy it, then you told them it's a synthetic, they would be disgusted. It's bullshit from all sides and they deserve eachother.
I feel like the high-end buyer's don't care about how much they like their possessions, they care about how expensive their possessions sound when described to others. They couldn't tell that the SI was less pure, but they knew they couldn't describe it to their friends as the purest, so they didn't care.
Funny thing is that this comes from middle class people. There's still VVS and flawless diamonds which are significantly more expensive. But they can't afford one that looks any good. Given the choice they'd absolutely burn their money to buy those though.
There's a concept, 'conspicuous consumption,' that people will use products in such a way for their social power regardless of anything else. So getting higher quality diamonds, whatever imperceptible difference it has, is still worth it to be seen as affording the higher tier. One of the ways in which market economies poison the brain.
Saw a story about a wedding ring where instead of a diamond the ring was jeweled with the couple's birth stones fit together into the shape of a heart, which honestly I think is WAY better and probably WAY cheaper too.
There's some religious history to them, but in general these days people are talking about the list of stones that American jewelers came up with in the early 20th century to try to sell more shit.
Moissanite is chemically different to diamond (SiC vs C), has a different crystal structure, and is less hard. You can also get actual lab-grown diamond, but they are quite expensive. But you probabaly won't be able to tell the difference anyway.
But also, who cares that it's less hard? I'm not using it for a drill bit, it's a cosmetic piece. Literally it's only function is visual. And moissanite is superior. All the visual markers that are used for beauty in a diamond it surpasses. And some quick googling I did to confirm that also showed me that diamond is only barely harder ("With a hardness of 9.25, moissanite is the second-hardest material used a gemstone." a diamond is a 10.) and it turns out, less likely to break in some cases. "Moissanite doesn't have a cleavage plane, while diamond does. (This is an internal plane along which a diamond crystal can easily split)" So if you hit a diamond in the wrong spot, it can still crack. Moissanite does not have a weak spot.
It's very important to me that my gemstone only has carbon. If it has silicon I'm going to get very upset. Silicon interferes with your inner flow and can have harmful ions.
Everything can be pointless when it comes down to it. I never ever wore jewelry but when I got married we got really nice matching plain bands and now I never take it off and quite like how it looks, it's not pointless to me.
Yeah it’s (as far as I know) just aesthetic since the pots were decorative from the 1800s. I don’t think anyone cares about the aesthetics of like brass pipe fittings but for something decorative (like the pots and a wedding ring) the aesthetics matter.
Opals are the superior stone and they actually look awsome. Transparent glass like stones are so boring. They are also much cheaper and not harvested with child labor.
Rings, like engagement/wedding rings, can take quite a beating. You need a hard stone or it won't really last very long.
I have a lab Ruby in my engagement ring and then lab diamonds around it. The lab Ruby is a good alternative because it's a hard stone! Sapphires and alexandrite are also just as hard and could be good stones in a ring you'd wear everyday.
Hardness absolutely matters in rings. Not as much in pendants or earrings, but people don't realize how rough they are with their hands. Most people do not take their rings off to wash their hands, or do their laundry, or, or, or. So many things have unexpected abrasives that may just feel a little rough on your skin, but can significantly damage a soft stone like opal. In a rush and accidentally bang your hand against the door frame? Chipped opal. Back of your hand itches, so you rub it against your jeans briefly? Scratched opal. They're very fragile stones.
My wife's is made of a purple sapphire as the main stone with a small diamond on each side. She loves the purple. The diamonds I didn't pay for, they were her grandmother's that I got from her sister.
The Kimberley certification process for diamonds has been entirely co-opted and no longer serves the purpose of ensuring you are not buying blood diamonds. All the NGOs that matter have already walked away considering it a lost cause.
If you buy natural diamonds, there is a good chance you are supporting criminal enterprise and warlords.
My life is actually easier long term. I've never been attracted to white women. My mom is an affluent white Karen, my sister is on her way to being the same. My dad and sisters SO are constantly fighting, mostly to get them to shut up for 5 mins.
My wife is cold, blunt and super hot. She looks just as good at 40 as she did at 20. Leaves me alone to do my own thing, when we found out I was shooting blanks it wasn't a huge deal, she was upset we wouldn't have a kid but she stuck with me anyway. I've gotten used to the way she is and will play damage control when she has to deal with other white people. I am a glorified man servant to her whims sometimes.
But at the end of the day I'm happy. Which is more than I can say for my closest friends who have been through multiple divorces
Ahh I know the type, mine isn't that bad but maybe had she went into a different field she might've ended up that way. The men in her family are that way though. One's a cardiologist, didn't have kids on purpose. Married a woman with an older kid, doesn't really parent just throws money at the kid.
Oh no she's a science teacher and is obsessed with the hardness of diamonds. I bought her a synthetic which she wasn't pleased with but I've had words about I feel about DeBeers and diamonds in general. Love won out, or begrudgingly won out in the end.
Which they want to sell at inflated 'natural diamond's prices, not cheaper 'lab diamond' prices. So their goal is to try and convince people lab diamonds aren't as good or 'don't count'; pretending natural diamonds are lab grown isn't going to help with that. And would probably make the industry look even worse than it already does once they get caught, which they would
I'll also add that diamonds don't expire or go down in price. Storage costs are also very cheap compared to pretty much any other product. Basically, they are extremely cheap to hoard until they sell for the price that the owner wants them to sell for.
You are right. I guess I meant to say that there is no incentive to lower the price, because storing them is dirt cheap. The people that are hoarding them are able to keep the price high, unlike most other goods that have some sort of a shelf life or a smaller period of time to make profit.
I bought my wife a 'fake ' diamond ring for the engagement ring.
She couldn't tell her snooty friends that though, so she went and bought herself a very expensive ring with real diamonds.
She had the ring I bought her melted into my wedding band. I hate jewellery though so had no intention of wearing it. I agreed to wear it for a week after we got married. I've never worn it again. I haven't even seen it since that first week. Over a decade. I wonder if it's just lost, or she has it somewhere still.
it's hard to know the extent to which the comment represents the marriage. otoh, if one were to read their comment and leave thinking "sounds like a normal, healthy marriage to me", that imo would be a premium red flag on the reader.
And they are literally the same thing, which is very funny to me. Like, they are flawless diamonds, so now apparently the imperfections are what cost money? Except the cost of natural diamonds is higher when they have fewer imperfections? Diamonds are bullshit.
Nerevar, you foolish mortal! I have heard your lamentations about the cost of diamonds and how they are too expensive for how common they are. I agree, and I know who to blame. The Bear Company, which holds a monopoly on the diamond industry, is rigging the supply to keep prices high. They use propaganda to create a demand that is disproportionate to the real value of diamonds. What fools they are to think that they can hide such deception from me. I, Lord Dagoth, master of these lands, see through their shallow deceit and call for justice. Now please leave. I have to write upset words on this piece of parchment to show the world how angry i am. Nerevar, do you have a stick with you? Maybe also a stapler? Nerevar please go to the next trader and aquire a new Edding for me. I have let the cap open for too long and now my Edding has dried out.
DeBeers have massive investments in the synthetic diamond industry. They are actually world leaders and have known that it's possible to produce higher quality diamonds at a much lower cost. They make a killing selling synthetic diamonds to industry.
Honestly, fuck diamonds in general. Normalize jewelry with unnatural laboratory gems. The old gems are boring, bring on the synthetic glowy gems.
Edit: damn, you can get chunks of reject sapphire made for F35 fighter jet windows on their new store. They've got some pieces over 1kg.
Diamonds are great....
...as tools in the hands of the working class.
My wedding ring was 30 dollars on Etsy. It has just as much meaning as a 10k diamond to me.
Mine was literally a piece of stainless Steel my mate turned into a ring. Even made me spares, love them.
Stainless Steel is the alloy of miracles. Fuck the naturally occurring rock, I want the alloy millions would fight to the death over for most of human history.
I got my wife her dream ring with synthetic stones. Her idea.
She's a keeper. Screw these dumb traditions engineered to indebt.
I am interested in purchasing a glow in the dark wedding ring
Those look interesting
They are so fucking cool. If I had the money, I'd have a room that's just these gems+blacklights. There are some that change color based on the wavelength of UV light they're exposed to. Some glow a different color under UV than they do under normal light. Some are both fluorescent and phosphorescent, meaning they light up in response to UV, but then they can maintain their glow temporarily. Some change color based on the angle you view them at. They're so fucking cool.
The mechanics of extracting diamonds is baffling. Hell, even gold. Cutoff grades (where it is no longer feasible to mine economically) for gold is about 2.5 grams per tonne of overburden... that's a fucking metric shitpile of waste rock, some of which is ML/ARD (Metal leaching or acid generating).
I find the whole thing fascinating, and mining can be done responsibly, but it is not an easy thing in general
Holy shit I need blacklight jewelry! I got lab alexandrite and lab moissanite for my wedding ring, but I didn’t know I could get SCIENCE gems! And I do a ton of confocal microscopy where we use dichroic for splitting the wavelengths! Thank you for this link, I’m def buying all my jewelry from here from now on!
Very interesting selection. Is that site safe/reliable/etc?
If you buy something and they don't ship it to you then you have my words that I will go break their legs. You can trust me.
Please Gen Z, finish killing this Industry off.
Trust us we are. It's not like we can afford them anyway
My nightmare of a previous boss called my moissanite engagement ring "cheap" and "trashy," and treated us to a 30-minute speech about how if it's not "real" diamond, it doesn't count.
I hope sucking down those Marlboro blacks takes care of that problem of a woman sooner, rather than later, and in the meantime the gorgeous rainbow sparkle of my pretty ring is made all the more beautiful for the complete lack of child slavery that went into making it!
... I also just realized that horrible harridan didn't have an engagement ring, or even a boyfriend, and now some things make sense.
We all have these people in our jobs, don’t we? I‘m practicing to engage them with a therapist rn. Have been through abuse when I was young and they love to dump on me. My new goal is to pin a notice on my wall that I get for telling the next bully where to stick it (in public). Lets see how that goes.
"I consider this harassment inappropriate for a workplace. I'd rather not get HR involved."
Key words from the employee manual or even better, HR training. No emotion, just stating facts. Don't trust HR, but management knows that more than anyone. They use it as a bludgeon against employees all the time, they know it could be turned against them just as easily.
Good advice! Thank you :)
I would have just sat there quietly and when she finished answered her with "well, that's your opinion"
I don't care if I depend on my job and my boss is a POS, my self worth is more valuable than any job.
I usually take a month off of work in the fall each year. One of my bucket list items is taking that time off to find a job with the worst bosses and seeing how far I can go while giving no fucks.
This sounds really fun
Moissanite is a perfect replacement of a diamond. Definitely agree that it looks great, better off putting the money towards something that will actually enhance your life.
It's got a higher refractory index than diamonds.
Average employer. I bet they only see diamonds as legitimate because of the slave labour put into them.
The diamond industry sucks don't get me wrong. But the real culpurists are the dumbfuck diamond buyers.
My friend is a diamond salesperson and told me a story about one of their customers. They were looking at different pieces and the customer kept asking about the purity of the diamonds in the piece. Whenever my friend said it's "SI," the customer would be visibly disappointed and would ask for "VS" or "VVS" which are purer. My friend then got annoyed a bit and told the customer that purity doesn't matter once you reach "SI" since the impurities are not really visible by the naked eye. He even showed the customer 2 pieces with one looking 10 times better than the other but has SI diamonds and the non-pretty piece has VS diamonds. He asked the customer to tell him which is which and the customer wrongly said the SI one was more pure. Even after he revealed his ruse and showed that purity doesn't matter much, the customer kept asking for more pure pieces as if nothing happened.
These "people" literallly are willingly being lied to, and they like it. If a diamond buyer saw a piece, told you they love it, told you they would buy it, then you told them it's a synthetic, they would be disgusted. It's bullshit from all sides and they deserve eachother.
I feel like the high-end buyer's don't care about how much they like their possessions, they care about how expensive their possessions sound when described to others. They couldn't tell that the SI was less pure, but they knew they couldn't describe it to their friends as the purest, so they didn't care.
Funny thing is that this comes from middle class people. There's still VVS and flawless diamonds which are significantly more expensive. But they can't afford one that looks any good. Given the choice they'd absolutely burn their money to buy those though.
There's a concept, 'conspicuous consumption,' that people will use products in such a way for their social power regardless of anything else. So getting higher quality diamonds, whatever imperceptible difference it has, is still worth it to be seen as affording the higher tier. One of the ways in which market economies poison the brain.
The people who don't deserve this are the slavers who make gorillians off the abusive trade, plus the slaves who are forced to work the mines.
But if you don’t buy her a real blood diamond how will she know that you love her enough to support slave labor?
I have prime.
Look up moissanite. It’s literally the cheaper, superior diamond. The fact that it exists just goes to show how inflated the diamond market is
Saw a story about a wedding ring where instead of a diamond the ring was jeweled with the couple's birth stones fit together into the shape of a heart, which honestly I think is WAY better and probably WAY cheaper too.
What are birth stones?
Birthstones are like the zodiac signs of geology. Each month gets assigned a gemstone.
One of which is diamond, annoyingly enough.
There's some religious history to them, but in general these days people are talking about the list of stones that American jewelers came up with in the early 20th century to try to sell more shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthstone?useskin=vector
As long as one the birth months isn't April.
Moissanite is chemically different to diamond (SiC vs C), has a different crystal structure, and is less hard. You can also get actual lab-grown diamond, but they are quite expensive. But you probabaly won't be able to tell the difference anyway.
But also, who cares that it's less hard? I'm not using it for a drill bit, it's a cosmetic piece. Literally it's only function is visual. And moissanite is superior. All the visual markers that are used for beauty in a diamond it surpasses. And some quick googling I did to confirm that also showed me that diamond is only barely harder ("With a hardness of 9.25, moissanite is the second-hardest material used a gemstone." a diamond is a 10.) and it turns out, less likely to break in some cases. "Moissanite doesn't have a cleavage plane, while diamond does. (This is an internal plane along which a diamond crystal can easily split)" So if you hit a diamond in the wrong spot, it can still crack. Moissanite does not have a weak spot.
source
It's very important to me that my gemstone only has carbon. If it has silicon I'm going to get very upset. Silicon interferes with your inner flow and can have harmful ions.
Usually you can tell the difference. Lab grown diamond is pure while rock grown diamond is imperfect.
But you have to look at it under a magnifying glass to tell, and know what you’re looking for.
It’s like 93% as hard but has better better optical properties which is what matters.
A strategy that has been working well for me is "Never buy jewelry of any kind ever because it's completely pointless."
Don't hang around people who demand you consume in order to get their approval. They are empty people who will not support you.
Everything can be pointless when it comes down to it. I never ever wore jewelry but when I got married we got really nice matching plain bands and now I never take it off and quite like how it looks, it's not pointless to me.
There will be no rings for me. I run too many power tools for that.
If your significant other would be upset with a brass ring for an engagement ring, I don't pity the misery that will be both of your lives.
Depends if it turned her finger green or not.
Yeah brass wouldn’t work as brass polishing sucks. I’ve had to spend hours every year polishing the brass pots at my grandparents place. Never again.
What happens if the pots were unpolished? Does it effect aesthetics or function?
A nice patina.
Yeah it’s (as far as I know) just aesthetic since the pots were decorative from the 1800s. I don’t think anyone cares about the aesthetics of like brass pipe fittings but for something decorative (like the pots and a wedding ring) the aesthetics matter.
I like brass for jewelry, but it gets green and grimey.
Opals are the superior stone and they actually look awsome. Transparent glass like stones are so boring. They are also much cheaper and not harvested with child labor.
Opals are soft as hell. Not really a diamond replacement.
I'm not talking about replacing your diamond drill bit with opal. I mean jewellery
Rings, like engagement/wedding rings, can take quite a beating. You need a hard stone or it won't really last very long.
I have a lab Ruby in my engagement ring and then lab diamonds around it. The lab Ruby is a good alternative because it's a hard stone! Sapphires and alexandrite are also just as hard and could be good stones in a ring you'd wear everyday.
This is what we did. I got my wife a nice ice blue sapphire center stone instead of a diamond. It was less expensive, durable and more unique.
My engagement ring used sapphire. Beautiful stone.
It's more dropping or getting scratched, but I'll admit I've never seen opal break.
Why does harness matter? You are supposed to wear them, not cut or drill with them.
An engagement ring is worn on your hand pretty much all the time. Opals are easily damaged, diamonds are exceptionally durable.
Hardness absolutely matters in rings. Not as much in pendants or earrings, but people don't realize how rough they are with their hands. Most people do not take their rings off to wash their hands, or do their laundry, or, or, or. So many things have unexpected abrasives that may just feel a little rough on your skin, but can significantly damage a soft stone like opal. In a rush and accidentally bang your hand against the door frame? Chipped opal. Back of your hand itches, so you rub it against your jeans briefly? Scratched opal. They're very fragile stones.
Moissanite
Dont opals lose their shine or something over time due to being hydrophilic?
My wife's is made of a purple sapphire as the main stone with a small diamond on each side. She loves the purple. The diamonds I didn't pay for, they were her grandmother's that I got from her sister.
Hematite. The most metal gemstone.
The Kimberley certification process for diamonds has been entirely co-opted and no longer serves the purpose of ensuring you are not buying blood diamonds. All the NGOs that matter have already walked away considering it a lost cause.
If you buy natural diamonds, there is a good chance you are supporting criminal enterprise and warlords.
You're getting ripped off, too. The price is artificially inflated, because it's controlled by a cartel.
My gf asked me to not give her a ring when I'll propose, but a zweihander instead :D
A diamond sword is going to cost a hell of a lot more.
Just craft one yourself, it's not that hard. Chop a few trees for the wood, craft the workbench, dig down a bit for the diamonds and there you go!
She sounds like a keeper!
Player 2 has entered the game! Congrats to both of you
My partner and I just bought our own rings since we both have pretty particular tastes haha
I've never even thought of that! How cute!
You should put a ring on that. Oh wait.
Penguins don't own property, silly
Capitalist penguins do
I got my wife a moissanite ring. Looks great and just about as strong as diamond. It is time to use advertisements as guide what not to buy.
I bought my wife a moissanite ring and she refused it. Chinese girls man...
I hope you refused her. Would probably make your life easier in the long term?
My life is actually easier long term. I've never been attracted to white women. My mom is an affluent white Karen, my sister is on her way to being the same. My dad and sisters SO are constantly fighting, mostly to get them to shut up for 5 mins.
My wife is cold, blunt and super hot. She looks just as good at 40 as she did at 20. Leaves me alone to do my own thing, when we found out I was shooting blanks it wasn't a huge deal, she was upset we wouldn't have a kid but she stuck with me anyway. I've gotten used to the way she is and will play damage control when she has to deal with other white people. I am a glorified man servant to her whims sometimes.
But at the end of the day I'm happy. Which is more than I can say for my closest friends who have been through multiple divorces
My cousin's ex-wife is Chinese. She left him because their son of 2 has chronic asthma and that interferes with her career.
Chinese girls, man...
Ahh I know the type, mine isn't that bad but maybe had she went into a different field she might've ended up that way. The men in her family are that way though. One's a cardiologist, didn't have kids on purpose. Married a woman with an older kid, doesn't really parent just throws money at the kid.
They don't really care for diamonds anyway, just buy gold.
Oh no she's a science teacher and is obsessed with the hardness of diamonds. I bought her a synthetic which she wasn't pleased with but I've had words about I feel about DeBeers and diamonds in general. Love won out, or begrudgingly won out in the end.
Interesting!
Blood diamonds "the suffering makes them special!"
"It builds character"
we can achive what the earth can in a matter of months or we can chuck kids in a pit ...humanity chose
Wait, wait, go back a second. Are the child death pits still an option? Can we retroactively volunteer ourselves?
But it's the dried up blood from the child slaves that dug them that make diamonds so pretty!
You spelled Diamond Mafia wrong.
All right she left and the kids are scared what's my next move
Knight in D2
holy hell
Quality synthetic diamonds are still bloody expensive.
the point here is about logistics, not giving diamonds to the poor.
I bet they are selling real diamonds as lab diamonds.
Naw, synthetic diamonds are cheaper, there's no point selling natural ones and pretending they're synthetic.
They're literally sitting on mountains-full of excavated natural diamonds.
Which they want to sell at inflated 'natural diamond's prices, not cheaper 'lab diamond' prices. So their goal is to try and convince people lab diamonds aren't as good or 'don't count'; pretending natural diamonds are lab grown isn't going to help with that. And would probably make the industry look even worse than it already does once they get caught, which they would
I'll also add that diamonds don't expire or go down in price. Storage costs are also very cheap compared to pretty much any other product. Basically, they are extremely cheap to hoard until they sell for the price that the owner wants them to sell for.
I'm sure they can go down in price.
You are right. I guess I meant to say that there is no incentive to lower the price, because storing them is dirt cheap. The people that are hoarding them are able to keep the price high, unlike most other goods that have some sort of a shelf life or a smaller period of time to make profit.
I bought my wife a lab diamond, it's nearly flawless.
You just can't fake that with a natural diamond, it's too rare.
No, no, they are just earning less.
I bought my wife a 'fake ' diamond ring for the engagement ring.
She couldn't tell her snooty friends that though, so she went and bought herself a very expensive ring with real diamonds.
She had the ring I bought her melted into my wedding band. I hate jewellery though so had no intention of wearing it. I agreed to wear it for a week after we got married. I've never worn it again. I haven't even seen it since that first week. Over a decade. I wonder if it's just lost, or she has it somewhere still.
I don't care enough to ask.
Sounds dysfunctional, but then you said a decade has passed, so maybe not.
it's hard to know the extent to which the comment represents the marriage. otoh, if one were to read their comment and leave thinking "sounds like a normal, healthy marriage to me", that imo would be a premium red flag on the reader.
If anyone wants a really deep dive into the diamond industry, a recent episode of Search Engine (podcast by PJ Vogt, for anyone familiar with Reply All) is all about this: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/why-are-we-still-buying-diamonds
It’s a fantastic episode.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195430621450
Do I trust ebay? Not really. Is this a fair sized diamond, cut, for $10? It claims to be.
edit: my bad, synthetic diamonds are also known as moissanite and aren't actually diamonds. Here's a link to two lab grown diamonds, cut, for like $30
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126018751890
And they are literally the same thing, which is very funny to me. Like, they are flawless diamonds, so now apparently the imperfections are what cost money? Except the cost of natural diamonds is higher when they have fewer imperfections? Diamonds are bullshit.
Nah, people are bullshit. Diamonds have uses for grinding and cutting.
I searched Moissanite last week and found a website that charges thousands upon thousands for moissanite jewelry.
Nerevar, you foolish mortal! I have heard your lamentations about the cost of diamonds and how they are too expensive for how common they are. I agree, and I know who to blame. The Bear Company, which holds a monopoly on the diamond industry, is rigging the supply to keep prices high. They use propaganda to create a demand that is disproportionate to the real value of diamonds. What fools they are to think that they can hide such deception from me. I, Lord Dagoth, master of these lands, see through their shallow deceit and call for justice. Now please leave. I have to write upset words on this piece of parchment to show the world how angry i am. Nerevar, do you have a stick with you? Maybe also a stapler? Nerevar please go to the next trader and aquire a new Edding for me. I have let the cap open for too long and now my Edding has dried out.
Is this how you honor the Sixth House and the tribe unmourned?
DeBeers have massive investments in the synthetic diamond industry. They are actually world leaders and have known that it's possible to produce higher quality diamonds at a much lower cost. They make a killing selling synthetic diamonds to industry.