I'm not sure if you're experience nullifies the hypotheses. Your cat may have been attracted to the fattiness of the kisses rather than the sweetness. There's been some investigation into this: https://www.scientificamerican...

My cats will ignore sugar and fruits, but they too will eat chocolate and drink mocha; glad to hear the chocolate likely won't kill 'em. I'm still not sure about caffeine.

IANAEconomist, but I 'll take a shot at explaining it:

• Most easy to get jobs inevitably pay at or slightly above minimum wage, so this will represent a large portion of the population and the job pool.
• Our goal is to maximize the happiness of the population which will be composed largely of people who hold these jobs.
• Happiness that altering minimum wage will be something like: free_time*income in some sort of units that probably work out to 120hours*$15/hour is awesome.

When we increase minimum wage, workers make more money for the hours they put in, but hours available begin decreasing as businesses can't afford as much labor:
At $100 (or probably even $25) per hour, no business can afford to pay that, free_time*income=doesn't_matter*0=0=unhappy.

Because it seems so obvious, that only the nerdiest among the news for nerds crowd would put math to it.

The other reason that people avoid the question is that the other side works out equally bad, but they're concerned that you aren't considering it.
When Minimum wage decreases, people have to put in more hours to make a living, because most easy to get jobs inevitably pay at or slightly above minimum wage, but more jobs and hours become available since businesses can afford them.
Set minimum wage to zero and we are back to child laborers paid in script: free_time*income=0*0=0=unhappy.

Somewhere in this curve is a happiness maximum. IANAE and I've never visited Seatle, so I can't give you a number on a "livable wage", but I hear the cost of living is huge and the weather is so dismal that not only is it impossible to be homeless, but people suffer from year round seasonal affect disorder. I wont move there for less than $60/hour and under 50hours/week.

You can try to fire me, but then who're you going to call at 3:00am if no one on the rest of the team is willing to touch my code even with a 100ft USB cable?

Come to think of it, probably 98% of the remaining 2% of ordnance is cover fire, or whatever terms the military uses for "doesn't kill the target" (IANA military strategist), and might as well plant trees too.

I'd agree with you, but somehow Amazon continues to succeed while allegedly driving their devs (and the rest of their staff) into working ridiculously hard all the time.

I also witnessed a project recently that has been driving people nearly that hard for nearly 5 years. It's not going well, the (remaining) employees get by more on their bonds of shared suffering than 'passion', 'drive' or whatever euphemism companies are looking for these days, but it's still going!

I know I can't survive more than a couple weeks at 60+ hours, but somehow, it's done; I've seen it done and it seems to be working for well Amazon.

Well, in amazon's case, it's more of a lack of skilled workers willing to tolerate our working conditions. Amazon pays amazingly well from what I've heard.

I played Magic the Gathering as a Kid. As young as 10 I saved up my allowance to buy physical objects from a store with my physical money. I understood exactly how that transaction worked (even with gift cards), and my parents, though not entirely approving of my choices, understood what was going on.

Now in my 30s working as an IT professional, I've got my parental controls against purchases maxed out on my own devices because half the time I don't understand whether I'm buying something or not. And my parents? On a good day, they might remember their passwords, they'd be helpless to protect me even if they were still helicoptering.

Your right that marketing virtual collectable toys to kids isn't new, but the predatory tricks that current companies employ are.

First, this doctor is omnipotent, so really, the doctor condemned me to death in the first place. Second, the alternative to the medicine isn't death, it's an eternity of pain, which again, omnipotency, this doctor created this pain for me; for his amusement, I'm guessing?

And in fact, human tetrachromats may exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Scientists are researching this subject and in the mean time, no one has demanded I behave a certain way and send them money or the Mighty Second Red will burn me for all eternity.

Any examples? I'd be willing to accept that They make obscure people disappear, but a notable guy like Snowden disappearing in US custody would be unbelievable to me. Maybe a little waterboarding and an extra IRS audit of his parents. Martyring him would only ensure the general public becomes fixated on his revelations and corruptions of the system.

I think he's in more danger of execution outside the states where he could be declared an enemy combatant and assassinated as such. Some US ally could be found responsible for the act.

You're mastercard requires a fingerprint? All my master card requires from me, after a number, is a "signature." I frequently spend several hundred dollars on my card and leave a small squiggle, assuming the touchscreen worked that day, to confirm it was definitely me who made the purchase.

Instead of having just a number (which has been taken from me at least twice before), this person needs to spoof my phone and have acquired pictures of me. It's not perfectly secure, but this is orders of security above the security systems that are currently in place around my cards.

I even better liked the suggestion of using a dick pick, very few people have my dick pick on file. You can't pull that off of my facebook profile either (like mugshots and my phone number if you're a friend.

Wouldn't these things also cause men to flee the tech industry? I don't see why any of those would only apply to women.

The cheapness and ease of control of drones, I think, makes it reasonable that they've had their recent explosion in popularity and have generated a much larger following than the old RC flying clubs.

I've seen big RC helicopters, kinda wanted one, but never got around to spending the time to do the research such a big purchase would require, nor learn how to to hover and deal with the pendulum effect, etc. The ones I was looking at were gas powered and had metal rotor blades though I know they come in some less dangerous varieties.

On the other hand I recently went down to the toy shop and for $40 bought something I could easily fly around my house and have no problems letting friends children fly around my pets.

Note that I also have a couple tiny plastic RC helicopters, but I've seen few other people with the patience to build skill at flying them around the house.

Unfortunately, it's frequently not a joke; e.g. http://idle.slashdot.org/story...

If brain wave interference is the problem, then the best solution would be a tin foil helmet (no joke; it would make a protective Faraday cage).

Well, if that gun manufacturer advertised guns as "great toys for kids!" and didn't tell you or your kid much, if anything, about gun safety, then I'd see that blame as entirely justified.

They've been doing this for years (google has too), and many people either didn't know they could be reimbursed or felt it was their fault for not reading to the end of every 300page EULA and checking back frequently for changes. The companies know this, and (I believe) they leave this loop hole open on purpose because it's so lucrative.