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Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#571

Post by mNovak »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #466
danbruc wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the money and have a nice honeymoon, buy two $5 seashell necklace at the beach. There are so many ways to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars that are way better than investing them into small chunks of metal.

Take the money and have a nice honeymoon, buy two $5 seashell necklace at the beach. There are so many ways to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars that are way better than investing them into small chunks of metal. Agreed, but I was OK with spending the money, what really bothers me is how worthless diamonds are. Metals have a relatively free market, many uses, and are fungible, so the pricing is more in line with…

The gold in a typical engagement ring is worth something like $50-100. Not sure what you spent, but the same people peddling mined diamonds are also massively up-charging on the band.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#572

Post by mNovak »

akarma wrote: post #486
scottLobster wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where she gas-lit him? She agreed with all the points about moissanite/etc and then got bent out of shape when he took her at her word. Clearly all that was a "test" that he was supposed to "pass". I rarely see happy marriages with that kind of behavior as a baseline. God forbid he get her Carnations and a nice dinner for Valentine's day, she'll likely ignore the dinner and focus on why he didn'…

I didn't view it as gaslighting, I viewed it in the way I said it: she may have not wanted to demand a 'genuine' diamond, so she left it open-ended. What woman wants to demand that when asked for preference? Demanding it would remove the sincerity and meaningfulness of the man's gesture. On the note of carnations for Valentine's Day, I'd view it in much the same way. Unless she's told you how much she adores and pref…

When the stakes are that high however, this is the definition of poor communication. No one's a mind reader, and how many other unspoken expectations are there?

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#573

Post by AareyBaba »

bevesce- wrote: post #566
washadjeffmad wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this not that many years ago buying a ring for my SO. My biggest mistake was including her in the decision. She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it? Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning o…

Is this an American thing? I'm polish and this whole discussion is just mind boggling. I don't know anybody who would had such high (monetary wise) demands

Yes it is American. Getting down on your knees to propose, the engagement ring, the bachelor/ette party, the white wedding dress, the bridesmaids in matching outfits and flowers, the handwritten invitation cards, the tiered wedding cake, the wedding photographer, the reception dinner. It's the cultural script that little girls and boys learn to follow. .

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#574

Post by Dylan16807 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #478
washadjeffmad wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this not that many years ago buying a ring for my SO. My biggest mistake was including her in the decision. She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it? Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning o…

Look at it as a proof of work. What matters is you burned a certain chunk of your life for her.

That makes it worse.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#575

Post by Dylan16807 »

aksss wrote: post #525
sopooneo wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a quiet satisfaction, and clear conscience, in avoidance of evil. But no joy in the act of NOT. A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old,…

Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we , talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and los…

> How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window.

The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#576

Post by samatman »

akiselev wrote: post #553
beaconstudios wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's nothing rational about HN's brand of rationalism - which is really just materialist reductionism. In this thread alone are dozens of people completely blind to the concept of social signals, thinking instead about price, clarity and the vague notion of distant moral dilemmas. Beyond basic survival requirements, social signals are one of the most important concepts in human society! To exclude them from your c…

> Beyond basic survival requirements, social signals are one of the most important concepts in human society! These social signals are a core human survival mechanisms since at least the birth of agriculture. When the climate turned for the worse or food was scarce, nomadic tribes just migrated to an environment with better conditions. In an agricultural society, clans had to develop a different mechanism that took a…

> This is where the concept of banquets was born

Good post which I don't mean to detract from, but this is certainly not true.

Even before sapiens, erectus and neanderthalensis were big game hunters. Sapiens in particular developed the tools for mass killings of migratory herds of large animals, and the ability to set fish traps for harvesting spawning runs.

Both of these left early hunter gatherers with abundant surpluses of meat at certain times of year, so much that preservation was the limiting factor in getting those calories into bodies. We know the response of the Tlingit people to this bounty from very recent history: they would throw huge banquets called potlatches.

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#577

Post by drdeca »

beaconstudios wrote: post #557
drdeca wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you say "I'm no expert, but..." on HN, people take it literally. I'm not understanding this. What other way to take this is there? "I'm no expert, but" is indicating that -- oh, I think I see what you mean by the non-literal meaning, maybe. The literal meaning would be a disclaimer as to how much others should take one's perspective into account / how much others should trust/believe what one is saying, wherea…

the non-literal form is showing humility. It's not sarcasm - even if you are a literal expert (as in SME) on the topic it's acknowledging that you are still aware of your own fallibility - as the parent said. I don't think I've ever met anybody in real life that interacted the way HNers do. I always assumed it was a social affect where everybody pretends to be a robot because that's the culture of the site, in the sa…

Thanks for the clarification. I don't know that I've seen experts in a topic say that they aren't experts in the topic as figurative speech for humility. That sounds like it would be confusing?

Well, I believe I've seen experts saying that they aren't an expect in the particular sub-topic in question, even if they are an expert in (another sub-topic of) the same general topic. Like, saying that there are people with more expertise than them in the specific sub-topic at hand. And maybe they might phrase this as "I'm not an expert" without specifying the specific subtopic, before commenting on a question of the specific sub-topic. This doesn't strike me as figurative though. Perhaps I've just been misinterpreting though, and they mean "I'm not an expert" figuratively, rather than literally meaning "I'm not an expert in this specific sub-topic"?

I think the "everyone pretends to be a robot" is, partially a software engineer thing? (Or, rather, correlated with the sort of person who would enjoy programming-ish stuff. ) Not literally pretending to be a robot. Rather, a combination of naturally acting in a certain way that could be described as analogous in some ways to a robot, and an imitation (and sometimes exaggeration) of behaviors which one has seen in oneself and in others who one kinda "identifies with", or aspiring towards an ideal or idea which has been constructed around those kinda of behaviors (possibly with this idea including things that aren't really naturally part of the behaviors, but by accidents of chance and misunderstanding, became part of a cultural idea ).

I've previously told someone that I don't really ever "feel like a robot", but I do often "feel like the sort of person who would sometimes 'feel like a robot' " .

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#578

Post by robrtsql »

symlinkk wrote: post #474
washadjeffmad wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this not that many years ago buying a ring for my SO. My biggest mistake was including her in the decision. She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it? Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning o…

I don’t see what’s so hard to understand. The entire point of buying a ring is that you’re showing her how much you care by spending a bunch of money on something special. Instead, you decided to save money and get something that’s not as special, and that hurt her feelings.

You conveniently left out the part where they discussed it and she said that it didn't need to be 'natural'.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a 'natural' diamond. But to mislead your partner as part of some sick test, and then make them feel like dirt for not having passed?

Re: Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever

#579

Post by mNovak »

kbelder wrote: post #548
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that its fucking stupid and a corporate mind game that is trivial to see through.

So, tell her that. You didn't need to be in a relationship anyway.

Just chiming in to say that you can in fact be up front with your SO about your opinions on pretty rocks as a symbol of your relationship, and continue to have a happy, healthy relationship.
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