They are, but they have also once been a living creature and are still retaining the structure of the living form. It's not what is ordinarily considered a mineral in this context and they are not valued according to their mineral contents or being sold for their mineral contents which is what the mineral rights are meant to protect.

I have since that comment changed my opinion that they were wrong in pursuing this as relentlessly as they did. So I agree that it wasn't unreasonable. It's just not as straight forward as considering it just a mineral. It's a unique grey area.

I don't know what I would do anymore. The more I read about mineral rights and what is and isn't a mineral both technically and basically the muddier it gets. At this point I'm not sure if I even understand what a mineral is anymore or if everything is just arbitrarily a mineral depending on how cold it is outside that day.

I don't think I would have fortitude to even bother to be honest.

There's also a third option where you try to adhere to a definition but lack a consensus and then end up in a 5 year dispute trying to establish whether a fossil is a mineral or not.

A line should be drawn somewhere, or not at all. Seems senseless to have it open to interpretation. Should it just be anything containing a mineral regardless of the origin then? We can argue that a lot of things are minerals that we wouldn't normally consider minerals, gravel, ice, snail shells or whatever you want really.

Perhaps it would be better if it was just mining rights that apply to anything of significant value that is unearthed from the ground. That's what people are out after anyway.

If there was no established criteria for what is considered a mineral under the mineral rights other than a loose definition of the word then I guess that's not the fault of the claimant. Perhaps I judged them too harshly.

I would explore what is intended to fall under the mineral rights, yes. If I discovered I had a legitimate claim then yes, I would go to court. What I wouldn't do is go to court several times over 5 years after being shut down arguing over semantics to try squeeze myself in there.

That's why I used the quotation marks. I just couldn't find a better term for it and was too lazy to figure it out. I just meant that anyone with a sliver of power to make a claim suddenly crawling out of the woodworks to do some Avatar levels of Lawbending. Vultures would perhaps have been a better term for it.

I'm just happy to see that "the powers that be" didn't manage to completely fuck the landowner out of a payday, despite what appears to have been a lengthy and genuine effort at doing exactly that. The fuck's wrong with people...

So no one would notice if the diamond was gone?

That's my experience at least. Maybe different sectors work differently. I can only speak for industry work and that's usually a kindergarten with hierarchical social cliques/wolf packs. Maybe it's because there's prestige involved in skilled labor work.

You'd think that's what's going to happen until your petty jealous coworkers uses the knowledge of your marginally higher salary as a reason to band together to bully you instead of negotiating a higher salary for themselves. Every. Fucking. Time.

Unions are for communicating with workers and negotiating a fair competitive salary for everyone with companies. Personal salary is personal, no good reason to be sharing that with everyone.

I don't have any money and absolutely nothing has happened for years. I'm starting to think money is the problem.

Even knowing it's fahrenheit that's still hot as shit. When it's like that in Sweden I don't even go outside. I sit naked in the bathtub thinking I'm going to die of heatstroke.