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Reading Stones With Our Own Engine

A short one. We have been picking up stones this season, the kind that catch your eye, might be a gem, and usually are not, and running them through our own engine. It is powered by rainshower, the same engine behind most of the arithmetic on this blog.

It never names a stone. It works by elimination. Each thing you can see or check without harming the stone rules some possibilities out, and whatever is left standing gets listed with the test that would tell it apart from its neighbours. A stone that could still be two things is reported as two things, not as the more exciting one.

That is the same rule as everything else here. A well formed answer is not a true one, and a confident label on a rock is about the easiest wrong answer there is to produce. A report that says "not yet settled, and here is what would settle it" is less fun to read and far more useful to act on.

The recent reports did what they should. Most stones came back ordinary, which is the honest result for most stones. A handful came back worth a closer look, with the harmless tests to do next. Nothing was identified, because nothing here identifies anything. That part is a lab's job.

That is all we are going to say for now. More when there is something worth showing.