441–450 of 455 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since the 80s but only tiny or imperfect stones. The true diamond age is when we can make large structural things with diamonds. Imagine an aircraft wing made from a honeycomb of diamond rather than aluminum.
Why make an aircraft wing out of diamond when you could make it out of graphene?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But again, that will only hold for some bizarre new shape. Anything using existing techniques and any cuts you can't plausibly claim copyright on will still be fine, and that's going to be almost everything. If de Beers wants to patent and copyright some bizarre foamy cut of a diamond that does some exotic thing, that's fine, but it's not going to be "a diamond ring" as most people think of them.
I don't know, lots of things that shouldn't be patentable seem to somehow become patentable when you say the magic words "using a computer." Maybe de Beers' legal team will come up with some gemstone equivalent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I've seen lots of marketing spam on my elevator's "Captivate" box "educating" viewers on colored diamonds and how "natural" impurities make them that way. Very obvious ploy to increase the desirability of mined diamonds.
Well, the whole point of diamonds is to show off wealth. Natural diamonds and their defects are more expensive and very hard to replicate crystallographically , so they're not doing anything unexpected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can also verify this. I currently have 932 flawless imperial rubies in my stash and they are all red.
One of the drawbacks of being dragonborn is the hoarding instinct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tribalism goes both ways. Sadly, it's hard to be a pragmatic optimist and say "Yea it's probably going to change but there's also nothing we can do about it without killing millions of people through economic destruction and we'll likely adapt anyway (humans can adapt their civilizations in the time scales of climate change - see the rapid growth of Chinese cities), so let's not worry too much." Then everyone see…
> Sadly, it's hard to be a pragmatic optimist and say "Yea it's probably going to change but there's also nothing we can do about it without killing millions of people through economic destruction and we'll likely adapt anyway (humans can adapt their civilizations in the time scales of climate change - see the rapid growth of Chinese cities), so let's not worry too much." That's not really pragmatic optimism, it's in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sadly, it's hard to be a pragmatic optimist and say "Yea it's probably going to change but there's also nothing we can do about it without killing millions of people through economic destruction and we'll likely adapt anyway (humans can adapt their civilizations in the time scales of climate change - see the rapid growth of Chinese cities), so let's not worry too much." That's not really pragmatic optimism, it's in…
But in real life, do you actually expect we will stop climate change before it causes any serious harm? When do you think we'll start doing that? We've done almost nothing so far but what we have done is incrementally developed technology to allow humans to comfortably survive severe weather like storms, floods, and droughts. So I say pragmatic because it's a continuation of what we already do, and optimistic because…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But in real life, do you actually expect we will stop climate change before it causes any serious harm? When do you think we'll start doing that? We've done almost nothing so far but what we have done is incrementally developed technology to allow humans to comfortably survive severe weather like storms, floods, and droughts. So I say pragmatic because it's a continuation of what we already do, and optimistic because…
Lol, finally someone with the same opinion as me. Yes, climate change is real, but it would be more expensive to stop it than to adapt to it
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Are you a dicotyledon that relies on the shikimic acid pathway to synthesize folates?
The parent is probably a very complex system with too many pathways involved in their life to be confident that none of them will get involved in a side-reaction. I'm not a surface impurity on a roll of sheet metal but that doesn't mean I'll stick my hand into a steel pickling vat.