61–70 of 89 posts
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Best I can do on the phone right now: http://i.imgur.com/Gj0dp.jpg
Wait! That's a picture from a cell phone? Man, my cell phone cameras (iPhone 2G, Palm Pre) are really behind the times. Wait! You're browsing Hacker News on your honeymoon?!
note that this article is from the 1980s, not recent (though still accurate)
Yeah. The article should maybe deal in depth with the start of De Beers. De Beers was basically formed by an English colonialist (Cecil John Rhodes). He controlled a company which basically owned a country ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_South_Africa_Company ). He also had his own private army and tried to overthrow a sovereign government ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid ).
Spending insane amounts of money on a clump of carbon molecules to declare your love seems to me extremely wasteful. If your s.o. really needs a display of conspicuous consumption over spending your - now joint - funds carefully and wisely you might want to talk it over. Easy come easy go, if you have money left over to throw it out more power to you but most people are not in a position to throw away money like this…
That rock is a form of marital financial insurance policy, should she decide to bail on you for whatever reason. It's small, portable and relatively fungible. She definitely knows that, too. And yes, you could call it a reverse dowry. Or a spousal hedge.
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Best I can do on the phone right now: http://i.imgur.com/Gj0dp.jpg
Wait! That's a picture from a cell phone? Man, my cell phone cameras (iPhone 2G, Palm Pre) are really behind the times. Wait! You're browsing Hacker News on your honeymoon?!
I'm also blown away by the imgur apparently on android. It was the easiest thing I've ever uploaded.
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I had an argument about this article and the book it came from. I flat refused to buy diamonds, and obviously she wanted a beautiful engagement ring. The compromise we came to was that if it wasn't a diamond, then it better be fucking amazing, preferably with a yellow saffire. Long story short, I'm currently on my honeymoon, and her yellow saffire ring blows everyone away. If your g…
She must be pretty damn happy with it, if you're getting away with browsing news.yc whilst on honeymoon :)
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This was an eye opening experience for me as a younger nerd, something that taught me how truly irrational many humans are. Diamonds are clearly pretty, but buying them props up a cartel and indirectly leads to warfare, enslavement, and death. Clearly a young woman would happily understand why I would have ethical objections to this... ...and to this day, I don't understand how some people's minds even work. (It was…
It also of course, provides legitimate employment to a lot of people throughout Africa. If people stopped buying diamonds, it would be a disaster for the continent. Saying that, I still would hate to buy something that may have been mined by a slave and purchased by a cartel.
There's really no gain to capture economic centers in developed parts of the world, because they do things like finance or entrepreneurship or software which are actually dependent on a stable settled population in a consistent legal system. That's why despite all the gangsters in LA, they just sell drugs instead of taking over Hollywood by force and trying to profit from the film industry. Even when gangsters take something over in this country, it's through infiltration rather than mounting a physical invasion of the city.
African gangsters (better known as "rebels", "paramilitary groups", etc.), on the other hand, can actually take over a diamond mine or something and collect all of the income relatively quickly. Crush the demand for diamonds, and the diamond-rich parts of Africa become that much more stable just because they'll have to work harder to generate wealth. And then, maybe, it won't be worthwhile for the paramilitaries and rebels to attack it.
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Wait! That's a picture from a cell phone? Man, my cell phone cameras (iPhone 2G, Palm Pre) are really behind the times. Wait! You're browsing Hacker News on your honeymoon?!
If you are looking for a good camera, traditional phone manufacturers(Nokia, SE) are a much better choice. My several years old Nokia has a 5mpx with a real flash and autofocus.