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Joined 22 days ago
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Cake day: May 11th, 2026

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  • iocase@lemmy.ziptoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worlddam
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    2 days ago

    Lol this is the 1887 version of tech bros reinventing railroads.

    What’s more efficient than one person driving a car? Carpooling!

    In fact, if we made the car driverless it could hold even more customers.

    Although we probably want to make designated roads where only driverless cars can go. That makes coordination and safety far easier.

    We probably want signals specific to these roads that only the driverless cars need to be concerned with.

    And you know what has lower rolling resistance than rubber on roads? Metal. If we make the wheels out of metal we would get insane fuel efficiency

    Except now that rips up the road so we need to pave the road with metal too.

    That’s actually expensive so maybe we just pave directly underneath where the wheels go

    If we’re going to do all of this we need more passengers. Maybe we attach cars together and run them on a schedule? That should work for the most people?

    Maybe we can run all of this on electricity too! No gas needed! With our metal wheels that’s some insanely low energy costs!



  • I guess it’s an emotional reservation. It would be a bit like feeling guilty for eating passenger pigeons and contributing to their extinction, especially if you hunted them and left some to rot because it was so cheap and easy to get more. Once they’re extinct you can’t help but look back and wince or blame yourself for being part of the problem.

    On the other hand, a skilled lapidary can cut a tanzanite with way more care and attention than some commercial gem cutters that are concerned with stone weight and production volume. A lot of big gems end up as windowed trash, where the center of the gem can be seen through like a glass window. No sparkle or reflections because the gem cutter preserved gem weight to charge more at the cost of beauty, and also making the gem lose even more mass later on if it needs to be recut to have proper angles.

    If I screw a natural stone up I would feel horrible though. Synthetics are like “who cares you can buy them by the pound”







  • Gem cutting. Once you have a good machine it doesn’t cost a lot of money for raw gem quality rough.

    I want to cut synthetics since I don’t like the idea of a hobbyist screwing around with non-renewable gems… Also synthetics are flawless and can have cool color shifting patterns like ametrine (amethyst/citrine) or even watermelon colored corundums.

    I just want to make shiny jems to look at :( I want to cut giant Portuguese cut cubic zirconia and square cut color shifters :(

    It’s like $2000-5000 for a decent lapidary setup… And that’s not counting abrasive wheels.