p15

Perhaps, but artificial fur is not the same substance as natural fur, and so is easily distinguished. Man-made diamonds are in fact diamonds and are indistinguishable from mined diamonds with the naked eye.

Also, manmade diamonds tend to resemble scarcer flawless diamonds rather than more common flawed / included diamonds. Even if preferences shifted to included diamonds to signal a "natural", the more obviously flawed / natural are also the most plentiful, again posing a pricing challenge.

The diamond industry is a racket built on the backs of impoverished Africans to produce frivolous symbols. It isn't even useful like the cobalt and tantalum mining. And it extorts young married couples out of serious cash ("three months salary" for a rock instead of a special trip, a car, a down payment...).

Good riddance.

An excellent introduction to this topic is a lecture series called “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” by Robert Greenberg.

It’s very rich in detail but Greenberg also makes it accessible and fun.

It’s available for cheap on audible and from “the great courses”.

Agree with this, but the problem is user demand in competitive markets.

> I regard anything that runs javascript as inherently malicious, out to violate my privacy and drain my battery.

Tech people like those on HN may understand the centralizing corporate control that's embedded in the current structure of the internet.

Average users a) have zero technical understanding b) mainly use JS-heavy, DRM/surveillance-loaded "big tech" websites c) lack the skills, awareness, and desire to change anything for increased user freedom. There's more reward for positive features than lack of negatives.

Unless a compelling case can be made to the minimally-competent user who sees only speed, usability, and immediate real-world social use (I can watch DRM movies, play DRM music, use FB / YT / Google Apps / other "big tech"), any shift seems unlikely.

The problem is less technical than social. DRM / surveillance tech crapware is now a social norm, and there's rarely a good time to have a discussion. Most non-technical people just don't know or care.

As someone who didn’t know much about Rossini, this was both entertaining and enriching.

==

New Criterion is in my view the best magazine around, so always love seeing it on HN! Hilton Kramer, the late New York Times Critic, founded it to pursue a Modernist, as opposed to Postmodernist, approach to criticism.

It is unabashedly highbrow. While certainly accessible to a cultured layman, it is not dumbed down, and there is no pretense to accessibility or relevance for the modish chattering classes (e.g. NYT, NYBooks, New Yorker). Thus the articles can be intimidating. This is not snobbery but in an idealistic belief in unifying power of high culture – a universal striving towards perfection, accessible to anyone who makes the effort.

TNC’s contrarianism thus contributes to its small circulation of 6,000. In an age of left-liberalism / “progressivism” and relativism, it is classically liberal and aspires to universal truths. Many will thus despise what they view as a Eurocentric, chauvinistic veneration of “dead white men,” as well as an evil discriminatory belief in “high culture” – that some art is better than the rest.

TNC’s polemic (elsewhere) can be tiresome – depending where you stand, either inflammatory or preaching to the choir. But this sort of article – educating us about someone we should know – is what makes it great. For those of us who missed out on critical theory, “this is Good Art” is a lot more accessible than today’s typical Pomo. And there is a certain satisfaction that Rossini, who perhaps we knew only as a "name to conjure with," as well as his Péchés, are a little less unfamiliar than when we started.