Brps

[Lucius Winslow @Lucius_Winslow]

1346: longbows
1356: rear attack
1415: longbows
1495: plague, a pope, and supply lines
1525: their own stupidity
1672: flood the dykes
1704: two military geniuses
1805: one-eyed genius
1812: a Russian winter
1815: infantry squares and a stiff upper lip
1954: take the high ground

[Brps @brps77]

@nypost Made a very good Peter Guillem in Smileys People.

[Stonehenge U.K @ST0NEHENGE]

Stonehenge Summer Solstice Sunrise Celebration 2026 🙏❤️

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Today in 1815, Napoleon and his Grande Armée were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.

[Mark W. @DurhamWASP]

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Sir Kenneth Clark reads The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats, born 13th June 1865

[Brps @brps77]

@80s90sfootball Unstoppable! It would have been six that day if not for Jennings.

[Brps @brps77]

@nonregemesse Rare example of Rome exploring! I read before that Seneca influenced Nero to find the expedition.

[Brps @brps77]

@thewolvenhour Antipater of Macedon kicked their asses nonetheless.

[Brps @brps77]

@KingKong9888 Cassius, one of the plotters and assassins of Caesar managed to escape.

[Brps @brps77]

@mcgillmd921 It’s amazing he lasted 4 years on the throne.

[Joshua A. Streeter; ὃς μάλα πολλὰ/πλάγχθη @PlaidBarbarian]

Christopher Nolan asked the Oracle of Delphi, "Will audiences love my adaptation of the Odyssey?"

And the Pythia replied, "They will discuss it non-stop for months before it even premieres."

And away he went, glad in this heart, poor fool.

[Rodney Marshall @RodneyMarshall1]

Number Two: "He can make even the act of putting on his dressing gown appear as a gesture of defiance!"

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

The diamond engagement ring was invented by an ad agency in 1947. Before that, only 1 in 10 American brides got one. The company behind it, De Beers, was worth $9.2 billion three years ago. Today that number is $2.3 billion, and its owner is trying to find a buyer.

In 1940, diamonds were a luxury for the rich. Nobody proposed with one unless they had serious money. De Beers had a warehouse full of diamonds and no customers, so they hired NW Ayer, an ad firm out of Philadelphia. A copywriter named Frances Gerety came up with four words: “A Diamond is Forever.” NW Ayer paid Hollywood studios to write diamond proposals into movie scripts. They planted stories in gossip columns about which rock some actress just got. They invented the “two months’ salary” rule, the idea that a man should spend two months of income on a ring. None of that existed before. It was all marketing.

By the 1990s, 8 out of 10 American brides wore diamond engagement rings. Then De Beers did it again in Japan, going from 5% to 60% in 14 years. Advertising Age called it the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. They were right.

The whole business ran on one trick: make diamonds seem rare. De Beers controlled most of the world’s supply but only released a small amount each year. That artificial shortage kept prices sky-high. And the “forever” in the slogan had a second job: if nobody resells their diamond, supply stays tight and prices stay up.

Lab-grown diamonds blew that apart.

You can now grow a diamond in a lab that is the same thing, atom for atom, as one pulled out of the ground. Costs 80–85% less. In 2019, only 6% of engagement rings in America had a lab-grown stone. By 2025, that number was 61%. That’s from The Knot’s annual survey of 10,000+ newlywed couples. People are buying bigger rings (1.9 carats on average, compared to 1.6 for mined) and keeping the savings.

De Beers saw this coming. In 2018, they launched their own lab-grown jewelry brand called Lightbox, priced at $800 per carat. The idea was to make lab-grown look like cheap costume jewelry so people would still pay a premium for “real” diamonds. Prices tanked 90% anyway. By 2025, American grocery stores were selling lab-grown diamond rings for $200. De Beers shut Lightbox down last May.

Since 2023, De Beers has lost nearly $7 billion in value. It lost over $500 million in 2025 alone and has about $2 billion in diamonds sitting in storage that nobody is buying. Its parent company, Anglo American, is now in what they’re calling “advanced discussions” to sell off the whole thing. A 137-year-old company, dumped.

The greatest ad campaign ever made convinced a planet that a common carbon crystal was worth two months of your salary. The product that’s killing it just proved you can grow the same crystal in a factory for pocket change.

[Brps @brps77]

@medievalgill Metal trader maybe.

[Brps @brps77]

@BangersOnToast St Michael’s Mount

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Rabbi Shalom Landau posts banger videos almost every day. He is doing more to discredit anti-Semitism than the people yelling and being nasty all day. You can win more with honey than vinegar.

[Brps @brps77]

@benryanwriter I’m sure there’s a huge list of Hollywood stars, expressing outrage at this.

[Brps @brps77]

@Cernovich He’s very good. Breath of fresh air.