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New York woman discovers rare 2.3-carat diamond, intends to use it for future engagement ring

After three weeks of digging through the dirt, Micherre Fox proved life’s most meaningful treasures are worth the effort to find them.

Credit: Crater of Diamonds State Park

31-year-old Micherre Fox with her prized diamond

In a world where love seems to be weighed in carats and measured by a suitor’s purchasing power, Micherre Fox boldly chose a different path. When she and her partner began discussing marriage two years ago, the New Yorker quickly realized that her engagement—and the ring that comes with it—didn’t have to follow some predetermined social norm. It could mean something.

From then on, Fox was determined to make her engagement ring a unique reflection of her beliefs about marriage: determination, perseverance, and the ability to overcome challenges.

That meant store-bought diamonds were off the counter. Fox would have to find one herself.

woman, diamond, park, carats, engagement Could you have spotted Fox's diamond?Credit: Crater of Diamonds State Park

“There’s something symbolic about solving problems with money, but sometimes money runs out in a marriage,” she explains. “You need to be willing and able to address those issues with hard work.”

Despite the skepticism from her social circle, Fox and her partner decided to postpone their engagement for a month. This was not a delay, but an opportunity for Fox to symbolically commit to the hard work and dedication that she believes a successful marriage requires.

So, after graduating with a master’s degree in management from Fordham University, the 31-year-old packed her bags and flew halfway across the country to Arkansas, where a month-long treasure hunt awaited her at Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Yes, you read that right. Fox went diamond hunting.

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The only place in the world

Although Fox was “willing to go anywhere in the world” to turn her D.I.Y. diamond dream into a reality, her research led her to a surprising discovery: she wouldn’t need to jet set overseas, or even pull out her passport. Everything her heart desired could be found in a 37-acre field in Pike County, Arkansas.

Among the tall pines of Murfreesboro lies Crater of Diamonds State Park, the “only place in the world” where the public can search for and keep the diamonds they find. For just $15 a day, Fox was finally free to scour the volcanic crater’s eroded surface, which has been revealing rarities and artifacts since 1906.

crater, arkansas, diamonds, state park, volcanic Welcome to the "Crater."Credit: Amy, Flickr

Affectionately known as the “Crater” to locals, the park’s glimmering bounty comes from a one-million-year-old natural anomaly: an eroded volcanic formation, or volcanic pipe, that possessed the power to bring diamonds up to the earth’s surface, like bubbles in a Champagne flute. There are other sparkling treasures to be found, too.

21 days of dirt and despair

On July 8, 2025, Fox arrived at Crater of Diamonds State Park, ready to spend the next three weeks searching for her prized rock. The search was anything but glamorous. Unlike Indiana Jones tracking the Sankara stones in the Temple of Doom, Fox was stuck solo, systematically combing through the sticky, dark gray soil known to local farmers as “Black Gumbo.”

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Rainfall helped but also didn't, with showers washing away dirt and uncovering anything near the surface, while simultaneously introducing humus, or decomposed plant and animal matter, to the soil, making it even stickier and more challenging to work through. Park staff plowed the field regularly. And yet, Fox remained empty-handed, pushing through growing physical exhaustion and mounting disappointment.

“I was coming to terms with the fact I was likely leaving without a diamond,” she told The New York Times.

Although the park averages one to two diamonds a day, with visitors finding more than 600 diamonds annually, these are usually teeny gemstones. The average size of a diamond found here is about the size of a match head—definitely not the heft, symbolically and literally, that Fox was hoping to find.

But Fox had made a commitment—to herself, to her partner, and to the values she wanted their engagement to represent.

That magic moment

On July 29—her very last day at the park—Fox was walking along the West Drain area when something caught her eye. Could it be?

“Having never seen an actual diamond in my hands, I didn’t know for sure, but it was the most ‘diamond-y diamond’ I had seen,” Fox later recalled.


quarter, diamond, park, carats, engagement Micherre's raw diamond, with a quarter for context. Credit: Crater of Diamonds State Park

She hurried to the Diamond Discovery Center, where the staff confirmed her discovery. It was a white, or colorless, diamond, about the size of a human canine tooth. Fox, overwhelmed with joy, named it the “Fox-Ballou Diamond,” after their last names. It had a smooth, rounded shape and a beautiful metallic luster, precisely what every bride-to-be hopes for in an engagement ring.

Oh, and the Fox-Ballou Diamond weighs a whopping 2.3 carats. It’s the third-largest diamond found in the park this year.

A rock that truly rocks

Fox’s diamond now ranks among the Crater’s most significant finds, like this year’s reigning champion, Minnesota resident David DeCook, who found a 3.81-carat brown diamond in April after just one hour of searching, naming it “The Duke Diamond” after his dog.

But the value of the Fox-Ballou Diamond lies far beyond its size or market worth.

Natural diamond prices have declined significantly from their pandemic-era peaks, falling nearly 30% from their 2022 highs due to reduced demand from economic uncertainty, technological advances, and changing consumer attitudes towards laboratory-grown diamonds, particularly among younger generations who prioritize sustainability and ethical sourcing.

In an era of instant gratification and digital shortcuts, Fox’s three-week quest represents something increasingly rare: the willingness to work for something meaningful rather than simply purchasing it—all while maintaining your values. It can seem impossible for love to flourish in today’s wedding industrial complex. Still, as Fox proves, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and go to work, you can have your dream engagement ring without reinforcing the value of earth-mined stones (there are many ethical concerns regarding “blood diamonds” and environmental destruction associated with traditional mining operations).


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Modern love

The average price of a 2.3-carat diamond is currently $27,037, according to diamond price aggregate StoneAlgo. However, a diamond of that size can cost anywhere from $7,172–$66,766, depending on the diamond’s shape, color, clarity, and other factors.

That is, if Fox were looking to sell it. (She’s definitely not.)

When she returned home to New York, she proudly walked up to her boyfriend and presented him with a box containing the diamond, The New York Times reports.

His response?

“I’ll say this, I certainly have to find a way to live up to this now," he explains. "She’s dealt her cards and now it’s my turn to put together something impressive, and I’m really looking forward to that.”

Until then, we’ll hang onto Fox’s story as proof that when we’re willing to dig deep—literally and metaphorically—for the things that matter most, we often discover treasures far more valuable.

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Man uses 'garbage' shoes to explain troubling economic trend for middle-class Americans

"These shoes are just the tip of the iceberg."

Photo credit: Canva

Remember things being built to last?

Americans are well aware of shrinkflation, where food companies reduce the sizes of their products while the price remains the same at the grocery store. You see this in fast food restaurants when you pick up a burger and feel like your hand has grown a few inches, and at the supermarket when you buy a box of cookies, it weighs less than it did a few weeks ago. Companies use this strategy when they think you’ll be less likely to notice a dip in quantity than a hike in the price.

We see something similar in the world of retail, particularly fast fashion. Fast fashion offers cheaper garments made from low-quality materials that last about as long as the trend does, so people can throw them away and buy the next hot thing. This can be a real problem because fast fashion harms the environment and leads to exploitative labor practices. And the tough part is—even for the most conscious of consumer, it's hard to escape from.

Here's a prime example of what this looks like in the real world. A few months ago, a TikTokker named Tom (@SideMoneyTom), popular for making videos about consumer products, went viral for a video where he called out shoe manufacturers for dropping their quality while keeping prices high. “So many of you guys want to shoot the messenger, but look, it's not my fault shoes are made out of Styrofoam and oil now,” Tom says in a TikTok with over 528,000 views. “It's literally every shoe you look at now. It's not even just the cheap ones. I can find hundred dollar plus pairs of shoes all day long with glue squeezing out of their Styrofoam cracks.”

@sidemoneytom

Replying to @Oscar Magaña shoes are done #fyp #shoes #foryou

Tom notes that recently, shoes have been made with foam soles instead of rubber. Both have pros and cons. Foam is a little more comfortable, but rubber lasts a lot longer. Rubber shoes keep shape and support over time and are much more durable. Conversely, foam shoes compress over time, losing their support and comfort. When companies sell cheaper shoes that wear out more quickly, they make much more money because you must keep replacing them.

In the video, Tom adds that many companies that used to have shoes made with rubber heels, such as Carhartt and Timberland, have switched to foam. This is an interesting choice for brands that pride themselves on selling durable products.

Cora Harrington, a writer and lingerie expert, says that companies aren't entirely to blame. Americans don’t want to pay higher prices. “People don’t exactly want to pay more for all that stuff,” Harrington told Vox. "So what has to happen if everything is more expensive and the customers still want to pay the same price, something has to be cut and that’s often going to be the quality of the garment.”

“There is an entire generation of consumers at this point that doesn’t actually know what high-quality clothing feels like and looks like,” Harrington continues. “It gets easier, I think, for consumers to just not know any better.”

@sidemoneytom

Replying to @donkles #shoes #fyp #sketchers #nike

Many commenters have noticed the decline in shoe quality and praised Tom for pointing it out. "I am so happy I’m not the only one who is baffled by shoes being made of styrofoam and then being upcharged for them," one commenter wrote. "When shoes started being named some version of 'Air Light Cloud float,' my thought was it was because they went from quality rubber to cheap foam and less materials,” another commenter added.

Tom believes the decline in shoe quality is an example of a more significant trend affecting American consumers' products: quality is decreasing while prices remain the same. “The quality of everything is going to hell, and the prices are going up," Tom concludes his video. "The problem is, so many of us have just become used to it that we keep buying it, and we basically allow them to dumb down the quality of everything. Everything in our lives. These shoes are just the tip of the iceberg. Start thinking about it in your life. What are you gonna allow to be garbage quality?"

This article originally appeared in March.

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A guy planted two potatoes in an Amazon shipping box to prove a point. Mission accomplished.

You should see how many potatoes he got out of this experiment.

The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni/YouTube

Can you grow vegetables in a cardboard box?

In the era of supermarkets and wholesale clubs, growing your own food isn't a necessity for most Americans. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to try.

A household garden can be a great way to reduce your grocery bill and increase your intake of nutrient-dense foods. It can also be a good source of exercise and a hobby that gets you outside in the sunshine and fresh air more often. However, not everyone has a yard where they can grow a garden or much outdoor space at all where they live. You can plant things in containers, but that requires some upfront investment in planters.

container garden, growing plants in containers, growing vegetables, homegrown, produce Potted plants and herbs can thrive in a container garden.Photo credit: Canva

Or does it? Gardener James Prigioni set out to see if an Amazon shipping box would hold up as a planter for potatoes. He took a basic single-walled Amazon box, lined it with dried leaves to help with moisture retention, added four to five inches of soil (his own homegrown soil he makes), added three dark red seed potatoes, covered them with more soil, added a fertilizer, then watered them.

He also planted a second, smaller Amazon box with two white seed potatoes, following the same steps.

Two weeks later, he had potato plants growing out of the soil. Ten days after that, the boxes were filled with lush plants.

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Prigioni explained how to "hill" potato plants when they grow tall enough, which helps encourage more tuber growth and protect the growing potatoes from sunlight. Hilling also helps support the plants as they grow taller so they don't flop over. He also added some mulch to help keep the plants cooler as the summer grew hotter.

After hilling, Prigioni only needed to keep up with watering. Both varieties of potatoes flowered, which let him know the tubers were forming. The red potato leaves developed some pest issues, but not bad enough to need intervention, while the white potato plants were unaffected. "It goes to show how variety selection can make a big difference in the garden," he explained.

The visible plants have to start dying before you harvest potatoes, and Prigioni checked in with the boxes themselves when they got to that point.

vegetable garden, growing potatoes, grow potatoes in a cardboard box, Amazon box, farming Freshly harvested potatoes are so satisfying.Photo credit: Canva

"I am pleasantly surprised with how well the boxes held up," he said, especially for being single-walled boxes. The smaller box was completely intact, while the larger box had begun to split in one corner but not enough to affect the plants' growth. "This thing was completely free to grow in, so you can't beat that," he pointed out.

Prigioni predicted that the red potatoes grown in the larger box would be more productive. As he cut open the box and pulled potatoes from the larger box, they just kept coming, ultimately yielding several dozen potatoes of various sizes. The smaller box did have a smaller yield, but still impressive just from two potatoes planted in an Amazon box.

People often think they don't have room to grow their own food, which is why Prigioni put these potato boxes on his patio. "A lot of people have an area like this," he said.

"I will never look at cardboard boxes the same," Prigioni added. "There are so many uses for them in the garden and it's just a great free resource we have around, especially if you're ordering stuff from Amazon all the time."

cardboard box, container garden, amazon box, growing vegetables, gardening Do you see a box or do you see a planter?Photo credit: Canva

People loved watching Prigioni's experiment and shared their own joy—and success—in growing potatoes in a similar fashion:

"I have been growing potatoes in every box I can find for several years now. I have had excellent success. I honestly think potatoes prefer cardboard. And yes, most of my boxes were from Amazon."

"I live in an upstairs apartment with a little deck and I have a container garden with containers on every single stair leading to the deck. I grow potatoes in a laundry basket. It's amazing how much food I can get from this type of garden!! Grateful."

"I literally got up and grabbed the empty boxes by our front door, the potatoes that have started to sprout, and soil i had inside and started my planting at 1am. Lol. I will take them outside today and finish. Thank you James!"

"I grew potatoes and tomatoes on my tiny balcony in Germany (in buckets and cardboard boxes). Now I have a big garden here in America. I so love to grow my own food."

"I grew sweet potatoes in cardboard boxes. It’s so much fun."

Next time you're stuck with an Amazon box that you don't have a use for, consider whether you could use it as a planter for potatoes or some other edible harvest. Gardening doesn't have to be fancy to be effective.

You can find more of gardening experiments on The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni.

This article originally appeared in April.

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Instead of buying a home, 22-year-old spends life savings on a chunk of raw Colombian jungle

Why fight traffic when you can live with the monkey and harvest avocados?

Canva Photos

A 22-year-old spent his life savings not on a house, but on a jungle.

There comes a time in every young person's life where you find yourself facing down the path laid out for you. All the things you're "supposed" to do: get a college education, land a good job, make enough money so you can save up and eventually reach the mountaintop of buying your own home.

The problem is that settling down and buying property has become ridiculously, ludicrously out of reach for a lot of young people. Price-to-income ratios are the highest they've ever been in the history of the United States, and many of the new generation of adults who have achieved the dream of owning their own home have found it to be... a trap! Yes, there are a lot of amazing benefits to being a homeowner, but it can also be a massive drain on your finances, your time, and your freedom.

One Gen Z man is documenting his attempt at doing things a little differently. Instead of investing in his first house, he spent his life savings on 7.5 acres of undeveloped jungle in Colombia.

Twenty-two year old Robert Lennox-Hvenekilde from Denmark has always been an adventurer. He's been filming his outdoorsy-escapades on TikTok for years. But a recent trip to Colombia left the Gen Z-er inspired to take his interest in nature to the next level.

"[I] realized that there were a lot of people living in these areas of the world who were maybe not rich in an economic sense, but they just seemed extremely free and to have an extremely high quality of life," he told Newsweek.

He decided to do something a lot of people only dream or fantasize about: he wanted to live in Colombia, among nature, and create a sustainable homestead for himself. So, after months of researching, networking, and negotiations, he was able to purchase three hectares of undeveloped land for about $40,000. That equates to roughly five or six football fields, for reference.

The jungle land Lennox-Hvenekilde now calls home features a fresh water stream, avocado and other fruit trees, and sugar cane.

He's currently building a small structure on the land to live in, and he plans to be a good caretaker of the land. Outside of harvesting fruit and avocado to eat and sell, he says he'll continue to plant and nurture native plant species to provide a habitat for the several species of endangered monkeys living there. Lennox-Hvenekilde also says his property came with special trees planted specifically for wood production, which he's using to create his dwelling.

"I would not cut down any of the native jungle," he says.

Watch him give an amazing tour of his new home here:

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Property break down #4you #foru #danmark #wildlife #nature #dk #offgrid

Nearly two million people were fascinated by the wild video. Many were inspired by a way of life they'd previously thought completely unattainable.

"Dream life"

"can i come join you... sounds amazing"

"Bro made the best decision of his live"

It looks incredible on camera: the vibrant greens of the rainforest, working with your hands instead of staring at a computer all day, never having to commute or deal with rude strangers out in public. Where do I sign up!?

Still, others had mixed feelings:

"Please take care of the land and his water. Is our job to protect our nature. Plant trees and native flowers," one user implored.

More than a few commenters were uncomfortable with an outsider buying up endangered jungle land in a foreign country, likening it to gentrification.

Lennox-Hvenekilde's response has been that it's better for someone like him to take a small piece of the land for living, and harvest and care for the rest. In comparison, mass farmers burn down hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest every single year in Colombia to make room for their crops. In comparison, the 22-year-old's impact will be extremely minimal.

@roba_tron

Project Property #4you #foru #wildlife #nature #offgrid #cabin #adventure #danmark #dk

We've all had the fantasy at one time or another. Disappear, leave our entire life and Earthly possessions behind, and flee deep into nature. Live off the land. Create a simpler life for ourselves. Be happy.

In fact, interest in off-grid living has been steadily growing in popularity due to factors like rising costs, fierce political division, and an increasingly hectic and stressful modern lifestyle.

For most of us, though, the thought remains a fantasy. As appealing as it sounds, the idea of actually saying goodbye to our career, friends, family, and human pleasures is a little frightening. Worse is when we realize that living off the grid is a ridiculous amount of work. Sourcing our own food and fresh water? Having little to no access to medical care if we were to get injured or sick?

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Day 36 #4you #foru #wildlife #nature #offgrid #cabin #danmark

It took a lot of bravery for Lennox-Hvenekilde to take such a big leap the way he did. But his journey is not without its dangers. His viewers worry he might have run ins with the infamous Colombian drug cartels, which operate in the rainforest growing coca, which is used to make cocaine. And then there are all the bears, jaguars, and creepy crawlies.

"But how are the spiders?" one commenter asked Lennox-Hvenekilde. "Big," he said.

Yeah, on second thought, maybe that commute doesn't sound quite so bad.

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