How to make a synthetic diamond (2009)
instructables.com
instructables.com
I do not understand people who want a natural stone. My buddy is marrying a woman who insisted on a natural rock. It’s one of many things wrong with her, and fits the pattern I’ve seen with her to a T.
The rock is a rock, but its exaorbitant price serves as a threshold for potential mate selection. We may consider it crass, but animal kingdom is full of examples of females considering males based on specific criteria.
But it's also perfectly expected for a male, if he's aware of these innate traits, when selecting a female partner, if he's looking for more important things other than looks and physical attractiveness, to give more "points" to different traits. In my case, intelligence was factor number 1. If she reaaally needs that stupid ring, she's out. In the end I got myself a PhD girlfriend, that is way smarter than me, and with whom I can have conversations way into my 80s. Mission accomplished. Thank you DeBeers for creating a standardized test to put potential wives through.
I wonder if any Bowerbirds have shared your revelation.
On a separate note, it seems the ornate courtship is offset with regular polygamy. I might be reading too much into it and try to extrapolate to human behavior, which is way more messy.
Personality is a close second but males are very simple in this department too. Men just want someone chill and nice and not crazy.
Intelligence and career come in next as mostly not considered at all. The young hot girl working at Starbucks does better than a older jaded PhD girl. Especially if that PhD girl is superficially fat. Good conversation isn't a factor here.
This is how most men operate. There are clearly exceptions. But more than exceptions there are men who lie to themselves and claim their base nature is above that.
Additionally I will say that intelligence doesn't wipe away a womens instinct. They still covet some sort of tribute from a romantic standpoint. Women can have high intelligence and still desire a ring. They can suppress this desire but this suppression isn't related to intelligence. Think about it, it doesn't take high IQ to understand what a blood diamond is.
Anyway sometimes in rare cases a man is highly desirable and extremely high value. If a man has a bunch of options among hot young women to choose from that is the only situation where intelligence plays a big role. Why not? Every woman is hot and nice and the only differentiator is intelligence. Go for it. That's probably your case. I imagine you have a bunch of hot super model esque girls pining for you and you picked the one who didn't want a ring and had a PhD. Good for you! Seriously. But note you are the exception not the rule.
For millions of years women have contributed only child care and house work to the family unit. For millions of years it is only men and the capability to hunt, strategize, use their strength to build shelter and farm that was critical to the survival of the family unit. Feminism and equal occupations is only a very recent phenomenon.
Therefore when it comes to marriage men are biologically inclined to not look at "capability" or intelligence as a big factor. Evolutionarily speaking men are driven primarily by the fertility of the woman and personality as a second factor. Make no mistake, It is fair and just to give women equal rights but our biology is not equipped to fully account for this new reality.
This female dating match maker with years of experience illustrates the preferences for both men utterly clearly:
https://youtu.be/pAF0Ebg48A0?si=SmECgNA0Tsv2Cu0c
Additionally most men cannot date "indefinitely". Statistics show among dating apps women are exclusively dating a small pool of high value men. The majority of men do not get very many matches.
Most of this is evident to most men. There are a few cases where this isn't evident:
1. You are a woman. Women tend not to be aware. This is the most likely scenario.
2. You are a high value man. Therefore you have an abundance of choices. Your reality is therefore different from most men.
3. You are a man and an exception to the rule. You are low value but you still value intelligence over looks. This is the least likely scenario.
I followed the argument and was on the fence for most of it, but here I clearly disagree. This is one advantage for a male in a dating pool. He can absolutely date ( and sire children ) longer than women. I have an anecdote about it, but it is just that.
Now... women have a lot less time to find a suitable mate. Men can wait.. if they choose to do so.
An average man in his prime on a dating app gets 20 matches for every 100 swipes.
A woman, even a below average woman can get 80 out of 100.
There is data on this: watch just the beginning of this video for a easy to digest summary: https://youtu.be/XZbApDoe45E?si=ze0X3Np3wMUVKP6Y
Additionally, nowadays you will find on dating apps even women past 40 still have abundant matches. This is a modern phenomenon though. In the past what you said is largely true but with dating apps the game has leaned heavily in favor of women on all fronts.
What's happening is the age group is just shifting. If the woman is in her 20s her age group is 20 to 30, if she's in her 40s it shifts to 40 to 60. As the pool for younger men closes an older pool opens up. Dating apps is what enables this as women can now find matches outside of local networks.
Actual fertility is a different story though.
Basically, the dating market available through dating apps is an infinite holodeck of available women, for men that have a reasonable enough sense of humor and specially, ARE NOT CREEPY AND NEVER, EVER, SEND A DICK PICK TO A WOMAN.
Really, it's that simple. Even when, eventually, a girl asks a guy for a "nude", NEVER, EVER, send one.
There's only two possibilities: it's either a real woman, and sending it or not will NOT make any difference in terms of the date going through or not, or the most probable possibility, it's a man on the other side of the conversation. No heterosexual man got extra points for sending nudes to a woman, ever.
After 2 and a half years of LITERALLY having dates every weekend, the revolving door of Starbucks 20 somethings becomes very boring. A non creepy man with middle class finances in his 30s can date anywhere from 18 to 40 year olds easily, and over time you start to realise that you prefer the company of the 35yo girls, but the looks of the 21s.
So I made a conscious decision to stop the machine at a certain point and settle down for a 26 year old girl 2 years away from defending her thesis. Now we're 6 years into a relationship and finally thinking about kids.
A man's instinct is to keep dating indefinitely for as long as he can, but believe me, EVERYTHING gets boring given enough time. I have no religion or any ideia about why we are on this world after all, but I believe that happiness is basically following our nature and doing what most fulfills our life from an experiences point of view.
I believe that a young man NEEDS to experience this phase of over polygamy, as well as I believe that having kids and passing your knowledge on to a new generation is an essential part of what being a human being is.
In the end, yes I was probably one of the few "high value men" that those apps tend to be so good at elevating. But once again I can tell you guys: I was never a great ladies man when it came to the traditional dating scene in the 90s and early 2000s. In person dating, on parties and the like, I was really average. On a dating app, it was really easy. Just don't be creepy.
And do not waste your early 30s guys. It's the most amazing time for a man to be on the dating scene, believe me. It's probably the closest a man can feel of what it's like to be a woman at the top of her powers, 18 to 25.
Your tips are irrelevant. The majority of men dont fit your criteria. How dumb do you have to be to send a dick pic? Very few men are that stupid. In fact this isn't even criteria women are judging you based on. If Chris Hemsworth sent a girl a dick pic, he won't be judged as a creeper.
Why? Because he's good looking, high status, over 6ft, rich and women would gobble up his penis no questions asked. There is never really a wrong thing to do or say to a woman, your worth is almost entirely derived from superficial features. Women just call the guy who sent them a dick pic a creeper because that guy had no chance in the first place. They reject and degrade men who make a move but aren't in their league. That's where the entire concept comes from. Women are kind of cruel this way.
Let me spell out the reality. The overwhelming majority of men do not have an endless supply of women to date. Maybe you do, but to be that way you are most likely white, over 6ft, very fit and very rich. Game is a factor here but from your tips you just dished out you basically have none.
You're born lucky and your circumstance is good. The advice of don't send dick pics is absolute garbage because it's blindingly obvious. Do you really think your the only genius who's figured out "don't be creepy"? Come on man. It sounds like you don't need any game and you're succeeding based on circumstance there's nothing insightful you have to offer.
Stay in the clouds bro. I'm serious.
I dated, literally, dozens of women during my years of dating app cruising, and ALL of them would emphatically explain that the main reason that they accepted to go out with me, was that I NEVER ASKED for, nor sent/asked permission for sending nude pics to them. IT REALLY is a deal breaker and a huge advantage on this market, to know these simple rules.
Don't be fat. Don't be unemployed. Pay for the dinner. Do not put sex in the conversation. It's so easy to not creep women out, there's really no secret to it. If you're fat, it's your prerogative to close your mouth. If you're (too) poor, work hard, learn how to save money and it's easy to get to your 30s on a decent enough life situation. I live in a freaking 3rd world country and was able to do it, on a place where a current year iPhone costs the same as 2 years minimum wage salary.
I can't stand men that make excuses in the style of yours, sorry dude. Evolutionary psychology is true, I saw your other comments. And exactly because of that, you should know that it's way easier for a man that started on the bottom tier of the dating rankings to pull himself up by his own decisions, than to a woman. If a woman is born "ugly", it's game over. She's probably going to be a bottom feeder on the dating market. I feel REALLY sorry for ugly women when I meet one, I have a sister that is in this situation and it is not a good life.
Choose your destiny dude.
Bro. When did I say looks is the only factor of attraction for women? Your imagination is running wild and cooking up things I didn't say. LOOKS matter for men, For women they're judgement on attraction is MUCH more multi-faceted. They judge, status, they judge personality, they judge wealth, they judge career, they judge race, they judge humor, and they judge Looks. Looks is one dimension of multiple variables.
BUT here's the thing, looks HELP. It's a factor but men can get around that factor. If you have looks, you can do a lot worse in other categories. This isn't the point. The point is that women are HIGHLY selective. Even though women are multifaceted in their approach their bar is extremely high. Men are one dimensional in attraction but they have a lot of leeway and make a lot of exceptions.
That's why you see the data in dating apps. 80% of Women are pining for the top 20% of men and men are only matching with the bottom 80% of men. That's it, facts.
>I dated, literally, dozens of women during my years of dating app cruising, and ALL of them would emphatically explain that the main reason that they accepted to go out with me, was that I NEVER ASKED for, nor sent/asked permission for sending nude pics to them. IT REALLY is a deal breaker and a huge advantage on this market, to know these simple rules.
You're blind. You know when you ask a woman if money tell you it doesn't right? Lies. They're outright blind themselves. Never ask a woman for dating advice they tell you they want a sensitive man, they want someone who cares for them, they never tell you what they really want which is a 6 foot white chad extremely rich man who will dominate them and make them feel small and feminine. You let women tell you their delusions and you eat it up and become delusional yourself. This is what you are: Living in the clouds.
The data shows the average man only matches 2 out 8 swipes while the average woman matches 8/10. That means women aren't even matching with most men. MOST men don't have the OPPORTUNITY to launch out a dick pic. What that means is those two men getting matched are getting hundreds of matches. Basically they can do whatever the hell they want because they have what you termed indefinite supply. Think about it. If dick pics don't work why are certain men sending it?
I hate to break it to you, but any person of average intelligence can figure out dick pics don't work. If you're below average intelligence experience will eventually teach you dick pics don't work. Your advice is telling men to stop driving a car into a wall and then you walk away like your some kind of genius for that discovery. Let's just say you're not the brightest tool in the toolbox but that's besides the point. The point is that if there are still men sending dick pics it means for a certain segment of men it works. Like I said Chris hemsworth can send a dick pic to any woman and she will send him her current location and phone number and tell her to come pick her up in the middle of the night no creeper shit intended.
>Don't be fat. Don't be unemployed. Pay for the dinner. Do not put sex in the conversation.
rolls eyes the irony here is that fat is actually more acceptable for women. In terms of physicality women place the most desirability on height. "Don't be short" would be the perfect addition to your little list of useless tips. EVERYBODY knows about what you just said. Garbage.
The other thing, "Do not put sex in the conversation" just shows you have no game. Do you flirt? The art is to pick the time, pick that right place and work it into the conversation and get her horny. I'm guessing you play lame nice guy routines and get by purely off your looks. Lucky you, but you didn't earn shit and you certainly shouldn't be giving out advice given how little you know. The true players know the art of conversation and I've seen fat short guys get girls to break their rules and bed them on the first date. You aren't even close.
In fact your advice makes me wonder how long you can keep a woman.
>I can't stand men that make excuses in the style of yours
Bro, when the fuck did I make an excuse? I am simply spitting facts. I'm saying this is the current state of the world. I'm pointing out where your wrong and when things you say are patently false because you lack knowledge. The game is harder for men that's just reality in the same way the game is just harder for overweight women. It's reality. Stating facts is NOT an excuse. It's a statement about reality. Nowhere did I tell other men to give up, nor did I say I'm giving up, I'm just laying out the conditions of the field. Jesus. Now you're acting like your some expert guru.
>. If a woman is born "ugly", it's game over. She's probably going to be a bottom feeder on the dating market. I feel REALLY sorry for ugly women when I meet one, I have a sister that is in this situation and it is not a good life.
This is true. The game is unfortunately even harder for your sister depending on how ugly she is. It can very much be game over her if she's disfigured. Depending on how bad her situation is her only strategy is to lower her standards by a lot. Either way, this has NOTHING to do with what I'm saying.
You're acting like a dating coach, and I'm telling you, you don't know shit. You have no clue about what's going on with modern dating.
>Choose your destiny dude.
I'm in a fucking relationship. God. Wake up. It's just pure cringe watching you act like you know what you're talking about.
Did you have them lined up and you picked one?
Indeed, but don't we already have much more practical things that serve the same purpose? For example a nice house/apartment or a car. Things we own, even what kind of furniture we have. All this communicates ones ability to provide for a family better than a rock. Gold itself is much better (preferably in bars or coins, not jewellery).
The problem with diamonds isn't that they are only a token of value. The problem is that they are extremely overvalued during the first purchase in jewellery. If one could buy an engagement ring for $10k then 10 years later sell it and make profit with regards to inflation (like it was a gold coin/bar) I would have no problem with it.
It's unequivocally clear to a woman and to all other women who she shows the ring too that the ring was 100 percent a tribute to her and only to her and only for that purpose.
Like peacocking the peacocks feather has zero utility. It is purely a mating ritual. A car or a house is not as clear because it has shared utility.
Buying a car or a house for a woman is not romantic at all. in terms of "romance" women tend to be looking for a clear and unequivocal display of devotion.
(Pro-tip: If you find yourself surrounded by people with incredibly old school value systems and no desire to think for themselves, move to one of the bigger melting pot cities on the coasts. You'll find others like you already did.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
> In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder’s son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.
> Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.
A savings bond, or even a symbolic gold chain... provided that the price is reasonably represented in gold weight.
Dowries are/were a symbolic and real proof of financial fortitude, intent. They often a represent real safety net. In some cases, increase the woman (or man's) ability to leave a marriage, a liberty and power balance function.
So much of our modern culture is a corrupt cargo cult. We are completely removed from the meaning behind our symbolisms, both intellectually and culturally.
China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example. A copy of a copy with all meaning distilled to "winter shopping."
Anyway... there's no inherent reason for engagement rings, gifts or donations. If we like the traditional/cultural aspects... use them. Otherwise, why so sheep?
Indeed. Bring back Saturnalia!
[1]: If they ever were ever really "worshiped" in the modern sense, in an animistic belief system.
Edit: Got the direction of money transfer wrong but the fundamental “two men agreeing to transact a woman” remains intact and, yes, despicable.
There’s work to be done on the procreation part, though.
A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining farm either, yet somehow they weren’t the ones being bought and sold “for their own benefit.”
That is not how dowry worked. The bride brought the dowry, not the groom. So basically the father/family would pay the husband to be to take the daughter off their hands.
In the past, a woman had little chance of making a living of her own. That was the purpose of a dowry.
A state of affairs created and maintained by exactly the same people transacting in women…
How odd
A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining life either. Ultimately women got transacted around to solve this problem rather than men because men tend to be physically stronger than women, and that’s it. No matter how you dress it up.
>the issue seems to be the "exchanging ownership of a woman" part
2) It obviously is misogynistic because in either case a woman is being held and transacted as property between men.
The point is that women (and people in general) are not widgets, no matter how you wish to transact them. There's nothing mysterious going on here: it looks like property changing hands because it's property changing hands, and those people were property for the exclusive reason that they were born as women.
In your widget analogy: the widget is absolutely a secondary player in the exchange and is treated as property as compared to both other parties regardless of which way the money flows. Any such transaction would correctly be called "widget-ist" if you wish.
Right, the person you responded to was talking about misogyny but you subtly changed it to "it’s bad to transact other human beings".
>2) It obviously is misogynistic because in either case a woman is being transacted as property between men.
that's basically what I was arguing in the previous comment?
>I don't think the parent is arguing that financial transactions involving humans aren't bad
Ironic thing to say post Snowden, Cambridge Analytica and on HN!
Button sorry for the diversion. Back to diamonds…
Generally, it boils down to economics. If the wife is not expected to be a direct source of family income (as in most of Western society until fairly recently -- it was considered vaguely shameful if the wife had to work outside the home), dowry is more common. If the wife does provide income (as in many African cultures, where the wife or wives do the majority of food production), bride price is more common.
Humans are seemingly infinitely variable in the ways in which they've invented workable cultures (not necessarily what one would call equitable, but workable).
Blah. This is pious view, and a pious dismissal... not a thought out or real feminist perspective... imho.
The past (and present) is complicated... and patriarchal. Marriage, dowries, other symbols, customs and language around marriage... they all relate pretty directly to patriarchy because marriage was (and often still is) patriarchal.
Intertwined within that web were all sorts of dowry customs. Money can go either way, be symbolic or actual. It can explicitly represent a prospective divorce settlement... etc.
Diamond engagement rings happen to have very little to do with either patriarchy or liberty. They're just common consumer culture in a void that once housed real cultural content, whether those were patriarchal or otherwise.
> real cultural content
The "realness" of any "cultural content" is circularly defined by its culture. Nothing makes exchanging goats more "real" than exchanging a shiny rock or exchanging nothing at all.
It is not hard to understand why dowries are a thing of the past in western society. But it is still a thing in other parts of the world.
No one knows the word "dower," and the term "dowry" is used pretty widely to describe the entire mess of different customs that do and did exist. IRL, these are all symbolically complex and play a role that is usually different to the symbolic one.
Engagement rings are a riff on these.
Dowries upon marrying is an extension of this: if I abuse you and you have to leave me you can afford to live your life with this thing I gave you.
Desire for diamonds is centered around women. It's part of human mating rituals.
A lot of women demand sacrifice or some sort of proof that the man loves her and is willing to sacrifice resources to take care of her. Romance is 100 percent what this is. It's always a man putting in a romantic gesture and a woman making a practical decision based on that gesture(s). Society often gets these roles reversed but in actuality: men are the romantic sex, women are the practical sex. I like to note here that a woman is not consciously thinking this is a practical choice, but rather her instincts drive her in this direction as much as a man's instincts drive him to make irrational tributes to her.
One form of this sacrifice comes in the form of material jewelery. First the sacrifice needs to be a literal "sacrifice" or basically useless in terms of utility. Second it needs to be "showable" meaning the woman can use the thing and "show" other people that a man sacrificed a huge amount of money just for her.
Diamonds fulfill the above request more than anything else. If a woman has a house it's not clear whether the house was a sacrifice just for her or for him as well, but if she has a diamond it is 100 percent clear it was for her and nothing else. This is why the zero utility aspect is important. It is the ultimate way to communicate the nature of the "sacrifice". It is not a coincidence why a bouquet flowers also fills this role of "tribute". Cut Flowers are both useless and ephemeral communicating the act of "sacrifice" unequivocally.
So that's where it comes from. Human mating rituals. Diamonds are pleasing to the eye but there plenty of cheap forms of gemstones that are pleasing to the eye too and you don't see women coveting that stuff. The rarity and mostly zero utility nature of a diamond ring makes it an object ideal for tribute.
It is a shame, but you can't deny human nature. Women want tribute from men and they want to put that tribute on display to show off their status. Men will as a result fight tooth and nail for the status and the ability to provide a high value woman with that tribute. Entire businesses will spawn and form around this human behavioral quirk and one of these industries is the diamond industry.
That's the way the world works. Let me be clear though. If diamonds didn't exist... something else would fill this role of tribute. There will be an entire industry spawned around some other useless thing and women will highly covet that thing as tribute. It's not purely the fault of the diamond industry as many people seem to think. The diamond industry is simply filling a niche that if they didn't fill, would've been filled by something else.
Also diamonds are not rare. Look into the history of the diamond industry. It didn't spawn because society needed to use something for "mating rituals", they advertised their way to become that.
It's not "pop" shit. It's from a field called evolutionary psychology. A very real field in academia.
By the nature of what's being studied evolutionary psychology is harder to statistically quantify things as they do in the hard science like physics and chemistry. What they do is they study commonalities between multiple cultures and come up with qualitative conclusions based off of the most likely inductive and logical explanation for those observed commonalities. This is quite common in the soft social sciences.
Tribute to women and other mating displays from males... aka "romance" is across the board found in many divergent cultures. It is even found in animals.
In animals generally the female species is the one being courted or romanced. This occurs because the female is the one that carries the child so she is the "gatekeeper".
It is real and there are authoritative sources that illustrate what I say. There are many sources where you can read about this stuff.
Here's one: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology https://a.co/d/01Caa1v
>Also diamonds are not rare.
Rare enough such that diamonds can fill the role of a tribute object. Yes advertising does play a part but if diamonds were so abundant that they're only 10 bucks a pop women wouldn't care for one at all. Of course with the advent of synthetic diamonds the market value of diamonds is now largely artificial.
All of this, however, does not detract from my point. If it's.not diamonds, it'd be something else.
HN does have a scientific slant for sure but unbeknownst to it's very users they also have a extreme liberal bias among certain users as well.
I would say I have a roughly equal amount of upvotes and downvotes. At one point my post was up by 3 and now it's at 0.
Its Science and evolutionary psychology vs. extreme liberalism.
In extreme liberalism Basically all genders are equal and reasonable there can be no major differences or negative things said about either. Feelings are more important then reality as evolutionary psychology has a lot of negative things to say about the human experience that make genders unequal in even taboo places like "intelligence"
I've talked about this stuff before in other venues that are in person where people who disagree have to be mostly polite. What I have found is that men largely agree while women do not. Even though I'm basically calling men irrational creatures fighting like idiots for women's approval, men are generally more accepting of that negative label then women are of being called the "practical" sex. I thought women would be more accepting of that label given they've been stereotyped as "emotional" since the dawn of time. Being practical tends to be a compliment... But anyway...
This explains the 50-50 thing I'm seeing going on here with the votes. The line is probably divided between gender... Women and very liberal people tend to not agree while most Men do agree.
However the cheaper of them (e.g. rutile, i.e. titanium dioxide) are not suitable for rings, because they have lower hardness so they would be scratched by dust.
Among those hard enough, moissanite could be used for more spectacular optical effects than diamond, though normally it is used in such a way as to mimic diamond, instead of trying to use its superior optical characteristics, to make it stand out.
And it’s my “I read it online” vs hers “I talked with a jeweler”
Which to be honest I’d call a draw.
It’s not really a reasonable comparison.
As for your second point, there is a large marketing component for most things that are bought and sold, including art and memorabilia. You say that for diamonds, the value is fabricated. But I believe the fabrication of value creates real consequences. It's not trivial to coordinate the action and common knowledge of an entire population. If you do it right, it creates a new Nash equilibrium. If someone then gifts you a "natural" diamond, it is irrational to sell it at the "synthetic" price. Your buyer might even be a diamond dealer who also believes the natural-synthetic thing is a marketing scam. The whole population can even know the whole situation is fabricated. But unless they can all coordinate and change the market price in unison, it doesn't make sense to deviate from the equilibrium.
Sure it does. In economics, it’s called a negative externality, and it’s a common topic when discussing pricing the output of industrial processes.
>But unless they can all coordinate and change the market price in unison…
They don’t need to. We have governments that do that, through mechanisms like taxes and tariffs.
Making a cheap diamond maybe useful for industrial applications, but for luxurious purposes (engagement rings & jewellery et al) it's counter productive.
Go to the London tower and look at the crown jewels. It's jaw dropping.
It's of course a way of displaying your wealth, but it also reflects and scatters light in an incredible way.
The "bling value" does exist. But a diamond jewelry is mostly to signal status. If the signal is cheap, the value is worthless.
Just buy your wife an engagement ring and tell her it's a cheap, second hand, artificial diamond and watch the light die out of her eyes.
fair enough if part of the bling is being dazzled by the price or prestige, but optically moissanite has a more brilliant refractive index than diamond
Perhaps not for everyone but I certainly enjoyed having it be more thoughtful than me essentially clicking the buy button for her. She did, too.
I used to get synthetic cut rubies and sapphires (same mineral) from a bulk supplier. 12mm sapphires were about $12 each. Rubies were a lot cheaper than that.
[1] - https://www.brightonsavoy.com.au/why-does-a-diamond-have-no-...
I'd think at this point it is common knowledge that they are not rare, and it is all marketing and market manipulation that keeps people spending a lot on them.
It sounds like it's pretty difficult to tell the difference between natural and HPHT manufactured diamond, without spectrometers etc.
I found this re. CVD diamonds though "You can identify CVD diamonds fairly simply. They have a unique strain pattern that doesn’t resemble that of natural diamonds and strong red fluorescence. In addition, they lack the typical "Cape Line" at 415 nm on their absorption spectrum. Instead, they present a strong line at 737 nm." - https://www.gemsociety.org/article/identification-of-synthet...
I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdsMIG04vHA (a short clip from Bang Goes the Theory) shows CVD, using acetylene. And they verify with a raman spectrometer.
We use these diamonds in my lab for experiments with nitrogen vacancy centers, which are an interesting platform for solid state qubits.
Also, if you want to try any "dry" recipe in a microwave, put a glass with some water near it. Otherwise you risk damaging something.