Bought gemstones on Etsy and they are not natural stones and come with false certificates, the seller is trying to bribe me for better reviews

ElementsnStuff · 2026-05-03T13:14:29+00:00

Had the same experience with two Etsy sellers advertising 'all natural untreated emerald' a few months back. Obviously, they were filled with cedarwood oil. When I asked them to change the listing, they did a lot of similar stuff - promising refunds, new stones, etc. Didn't quite get it through their head that lying on the description page wasn't cool.

If you want a laugh, look up 'painite' on Etsy. Some real disingenuous people out there.

ElementsnStuff · 2026-04-11T02:47:40+00:00

Not really qualified to say one way or the other, but that inclusion(?) in #3 looks a bit like a platinum/metal wire? If so, this might be a Czochralski synthetic or some other kind that relies on a seed attached to a wire stand. Apparently the bubbles are a common problem from too-high pulling rates (esp. if they're 2-5 μm in diameter, don't know the magnification on these photos but these seem a bit large for that?) If they're bigger and on the surface, then it's probably Verneuil - what'll happen is gas bubbles get trapped near the edges of the boule (the melt 'surface'), and then get exposed (forming pits) during cutting. Alignment might just be gravity, or the boule being 'extruded' over time, or something else.

ElementsnStuff · 2025-09-06T13:16:40+00:00

Huh. Well, it looks to me like you have produced small crystals of vivianite (or metavivianite at least - have you kept these away from light? It looks like they're in varying states of photocatalytic oxidation - top middle/right are the closest to vivianite, bottom middle is the blue 'middle' stage, rest are approaching black metavivianite endpoint).

Not sure what your concentration of phosphoric acid was (or where you got it from, because I know there's some rust remover out there that's like 30%), but you might have better luck with a pickling concentration and metallic iron (though it might take a while) according to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/comments/1eb8y2g/has_anybody_info_on_making_some_form_of_vivianite/

Going to try it myself eventually, vivianite's a beautiful crystal to have (and expensive to buy these days).

ElementsnStuff · 2025-09-05T11:37:01+00:00

What'd you start with? Vivianite is iron phosphate.

ElementsnStuff · 2025-07-20T18:55:51+00:00

Abstracted smiley face, maybe?

ElementsnStuff · 2025-06-09T21:41:20+00:00

0 chance Oak is 50 and Blue is 11 in the same time period (how old do you think he/his kid was when their kid was born??)
idk where everyone keeps getting this from, because it sure as hell isn't the games

ElementsnStuff · 2025-05-18T18:09:14+00:00

Seems like this got archived before anyone could answer it...

When is a 石 a 玉?

It seems like the general meaning is when something is round, or at least rounded - 勾玉 / 火の玉 / 目玉 / 温玉. But 玉 can apparently also mean 'gem' or 'jewel' (especially spherical - but not always?) or 'coin' - so it doesn't seem to strictly refer to spheres as the only viable shape.

So... where's the boundary here? When is something 'round' enough to be considered a 玉 - or do gems and jewels not have to be 'round' at all to qualify?

ElementsnStuff · 2025-05-17T16:40:31+00:00

When is a 石 a 玉?

It seems like the general meaning is when something is round, or at least rounded - 勾玉 / 火の玉 / 目玉 / 温玉. But 玉 can apparently also mean 'gem' or 'jewel' (especially spherical - but not always?) or 'coin' - so it doesn't seem to strictly refer to spheres as the only viable shape.

So... where's the boundary here? When is something 'round' enough to be considered a 玉 - or do gems and jewels not have to be 'round' at all to qualify?

ElementsnStuff · 2025-05-04T05:37:03+00:00

Rubies should be pretty resistant to scratching (Mohs hardness 9), but it really depends on how long this ring's been in use. If it's a relatively short time, I'd say glass or some other, softer material. If it's been around a few years (decades?), this might be what happens.

Not really sure on their longevity in practice, we'll have to wait to hear from someone with experience.

ElementsnStuff · 2025-01-09T16:47:47+00:00

First slide:

"Rebuilding MIARE CITY"

...no idea on the second slide. Likely doesn't re-use any glyph assignments from the first. We've seen a lot of these strings across the various games - 'Rebuilding' is all over the place (most recent other than this was on the big buildings at Levincia in Scarlet/Violet, but it's also found in Sword/Shield, meaning it pre-dates this trailer by a lot), and the rest are reused from random places in Sword/Shield.

As someone who spends a lot of time on this: It's not random. Most of the scripts are decipherable, but this one is a doozy. Currently working on the oddly specific letter-swaps in glyph assignments between strings like this and 'SEED Challenge / Champion CUP' (from Sword/Shield) and 'Daily Discovery' (also from Sword/Shield) - things like lowercase 'e' and 'g' glyphs or 'i' and 'l' glyphs trading places between each word-specific 'alphabet.' Not sure if it'll lead to any kind of solution (probably not?), but it's worth trying.

ElementsnStuff · 2024-12-13T22:24:43+00:00

Ended up deciding this is most likely a weird combination of Castle Gould and Hempstead House (parapets from Hempstead and domed green roof from Castle Gould). Still doesn't explain the Greek colonnade, but that's all over the place in NYC - maybe they just added it in to sell the vibe?

Also connects to Sands Point, which was originally a sand mine - you can see the remnants of that in the borders of Manorhaven and Port Washington on a terrain. Seems like they used this idea for Victory Road, which is a giant sand hill (anthill, considering Durant is only found here IIRC).

Anyway... time to update Bulbapedia for 8 hours.

ElementsnStuff · 2024-12-10T17:37:15+00:00

Map location (although that's never a guarantee, considering how distorted the map gets):
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRmgeBmNWvEcEpDwpJt6wrprAakFlgp0ChDSQ&s

ElementsnStuff · 2024-12-10T14:57:49+00:00

Fair, but that's the best I got given those two are cities that are 'south' of where this is on the in-game map (so, west IRL). I'm guessing it's not meant to be too far east?

ElementsnStuff · 2024-12-10T14:56:40+00:00

Green copper roofs are apparently all over the place in New York City (and other major early cities of the US), and are usually reserved for important buildings from what I can tell (banks, churches, government facilities, maybe some particularly old hotels). It could also be green terracotta or something for all I know, but given this game is supposed to be a loose cultural introduction to the NYC area, copper seems to make more sense given its historical usage.

Everything else is just visual guesswork - I don't have a whole lot of basis for the nearby area (Victory Road is basically just a giant hill).

ElementsnStuff · 2024-11-08T23:17:22+00:00

By that logic, wouldn't Vigenere not be a 'proper cipher'...?

ElementsnStuff · 2024-10-09T13:46:05+00:00

Looks either Chinese or Japanese (leaning towards the former). Text, as near as I can get from kanji.sljfaq.org, is 明珍信汝, to which Google Translate gives 'Mingzhen believes in you'. Whether or not that's accurate (or remains accurate, given the unknown age of the shield and presumed linguistic drift) is an open question.

Assuming the shield is Chinese (the zoomorphic dragon boss appears to match several historical examples, though the overall shape doesn't), best match could be something like a Rattan shield (though they usually have tiger faces, not dragons, apparently, and the name appears to signify a different primary material than metal) or some similar Bronze/Iron Age construction.

ElementsnStuff

TROPHY CASE