The Texas cities are an AP Style aneurysm.

Fascinating read. Thanks for the link!

My experience with diamonds is limited. I grew up in the '80s, so I of course remember the ubiquitous DeBeers ads with everything in silhouette except the ring.

By the time engagement sauntered my way for the first time, it was totally unplanned. My girlfriend had moved in after the end of the academic year, though functionally living with me for months before that (turns out the dorms suck as a freshman at 21), and one Saturday morning in September, I took a shower and on returning to the bedroom asked if we were headed toward marriage.

“I guess so.”

“Does that mean we’re engaged?”

“I suppose it does.”

So we decided apparently the order of the day is finding engagement rings. Both of us being oblivious to fashion, we set out on this journey with bleached hair of the same length, matching shirts and matching pants.

“Oh, twins!” someone remarked passing us on the street downtown.

Now, don’t get me wrong, at this point, we’re both giddy. We’d not so much ever discussed marriage, and neither of us was big on the institution, and yet, here we are.

First off, jewelry stores find this to be an odd situation. “We’re looking for each others’ engagement rings” was weird in 2005, I guess. The first two places we went were keen on … things neither of us was. They also found our target spend pedestrian, and explaining these were mere engagement rings and that the real money comes for the wedding rings didn’t improve matters.

This being a city of 20,000, options were limited, but we found success at the third place. This one wasn’t just a jewelry store; the guy actually was a jeweler and had a selection available but preferred doing custom pieces.

In the end, I got her a silver bypass ring with a negligible diamond off the shelf, and she got me a simple white gold band that he assured us he could add to for the wedding ring.

We were both very happy with what we picked up a week later, with hers needing to be resized and mine needing to be made.

Obviously, some phone calls happened the evening of the engagement, and my mom was a bit miffed that she only learned after the fact, despite assuring her I’d not, myself, woken up that morning thinking I’d discuss getting married.

But the net result was she offered me her engagement and wedding rings to use for the one I would design. Three diamonds were included in this, with the largest having been appraised at $7,900. I turned the smaller two into earrings and then went with a bypass solitaire. After we’d moved to another town (yay, newspapers!), we went into a jeweler and asked what we could get for the ring as a whole, gold and stone, and were told about $3,000.

It’s a racket.

(also, no diamonds were involved in my second wedding … a welded cone-spiked 1/2" stainless-steel collar is also forever)

I think some of us remember MySpace days, when you reconnected with old friends and quickly remembered why you’re no longer friends. For my cohort, Facebook solved a solved problem. Once I got anything other than from friends, I bounced. Haven’t talked to a few since, but if that’s their bag, more power to them.

Tom’s should be able to crunch the numbers themselves. “Scientist says” should be reserved for things with a confidence interval.

Stated briefly: Kurzgesagt isn’t what it once was.

At least you didn’t put hundreds of accumulators in a box while you were waiting?

I played Doctor totally wrong in the dorms, it seems.

That dovetails nicely with the mental state of an undergrad. In my case, I did actually know everything back then.

At least they didn’t first hear about it in someone else’s sociology class?

He always looked so laid back.

I heard he was retired and living like a king in Patagonia.

Is 2006 coming back? I’d prefer that, but MySpace as it existed then wouldn’t land the same way now.

I have a hard time equating “the LLM did what we told it” with “hacking.” But hey, let’s throw “escaped containment” in just to make it Serious™.

Always my goal.

Cats excel at this. I’m not sure I could pull it off at work.

Where I have to go …

Because a cat adopted me. Again.

That is suspiciously close to “Nowhere” spelled backward.

_2

Oh, someone’s getting hosed.

I trust Steam thus far. But music, I buy and download. Between my computer, my phone and a backup drive, I feel pretty good that I’ll be able to listen for the foreseeable future. Movies and TV, I also donnload.

I’m far more worried about what our own government is doing with advanced tech than China, which largely seems content to let us implode on our own without them having to spend any resources.