Men Are Shallow Pigs When it Comes to Engagement Rings
Men want to buy a nice rock for a pretty face, new research suggests.
Guys are more willing to spring for a bigger, pricier engagement ring when they picture themselves with a more attractive woman than with a less attractive one, according to a new study from Western Oregon University — and women want a larger, more costly ring when they imagine themselves paired with a less attractive man.
And hypothetical partners aside, the greater a woman’s self-assessment of her own attractiveness, the bigger and more expensive her ring choice — “a finding consistent with the notion that desirable women expect greater resource investment from their mates,” the authors wrote.
The study, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, analyzed data from 590 heterosexual men and women. A majority (64 percent) of participants, who had an average age of 29, said they were in committed romantic relationships; of the 189 folks who were engaged or married, nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) had given or received an engagement ring.
Couples dropped an average of $6,351 on an engagement ring in 2017, according to wedding website The Knot’s survey of 14,000-plus recently married or engaged people — a nearly 25 percent increase from $5,095 in 2011. Seven in 10 grooms say they landed on a ring budget by themselves, and another seven in 10 brides say they’re aware of how much their fiancé spent. Ninety percent of brides said they were happy with how much their partner plunked down.
Link: https://nypost.com/2018/07/18/men-are-shallow-
Your Earliest Memory Is Probably Fake
Forget what you thought was your very first memory, a new study says it could be nothing more than a “figment of the imagination.” Researchers from University of London, the University of Bradford and Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. surveyed 6,641 people about their earliest memories and found that 38% had a memory from before their second birthday.
But researchers don’t think our brains are developed enough at that age for us to be able to hold onto memories. They say recollections we have before the age of three are based on “fragments of experience” - which include flashes of people, places, and things we regularly saw in our early years combined with things people tell us later in life.
So our earliest memories aren’t really memories, but we keep linking them together over time and eventually they become what we believe is an actual memory from our past. “Crucially, the person remembering them doesn’t know this is fictional,” says study co-author Martin Conway. “In fact when people are told their memories are false they often don’t believe it.”
Conway explains that this is because the systems that allow us to remember things are very complex and we don’t form adult-like memories until we’re five or six and our brains have developed. So that memory you think you have of when you were two? It’s probably a fake.
Source: The Sun
Lay’s Has Eight New Chips Flavors
Get ready foodies, Lay’s is coming out with eight new potato chip flavors on July 30th. Frito-Lay’s new options are way more interesting than what’s on shelves now and they’re all part of their “Taste of America” campaign and are all tied to a regional dish from different parts of the country.
These are the new flavors representing the iconic tastes of America, in chip form:
- Cajun Spice - from the Central Gulf region
- Chesapeake Bay Crab Spice - from the Mid-Atlantic
- Chile Con Queso - from Texoma, Mountain, and Southern California
- Deep Dish Pizza - from the Heartland and Mid-America
- Fried Pickles with Ranch - from the Midwest
- New England Lobster Roll - from the Northeast
- Pimento Cheese - from the Southeast
- Thai Sweet Chili - from the Pacific Northwest
Source: Food and Wine
Amazon Has A Patent On A Dwarf Tossing Robot
Is there anything Amazon doesn't want to dominate? It appears that they now want to be the exclusive providers of robotic dwarf tossing. Bet you didn't see that one coming.
Amazon was just granted a new patent for a robotic arm that throws things into boxes. And in a bunch of the example drawings they used, they showed the robot flinging a dwarf across a room into a box.
As you can imagine the Little People of America organization is not happy about it. Quote, "Any time that 'tossing' and 'dwarf' are put together, it's a real concern for us. It really opens up the possibility of mocking and dehumanizing little people."
Amazon says they're taking it out of context. They say they just used a dwarf figurine as an example of a product that the robot arm could throw into a box.
Source: The Mercury News
Salt Your Cocktail, Not The Rim
We have reason to believe that we may have been doing some of our cocktails very wrong. Who doesn’t love a margarita with salt on the rim of the glass? Crazy people, that’s who. But maybe we should be cutting out the middle man and just sticking the salt directly into our beverages. It’s all going to the same place anyway, right??
We’ve been doing it all wrong, folks. You get way more control over how much salt ends up in your mouth if you just mix it into the drink little by little. Who likes the sip of a margarita where you get a giant clump of salt in your mouth? Not many people. And as you finish your drink, the salt around the rim begins to dwindle down, leaving you with too little to actually finish the drink with.
Start salting your drinks, guys!! You don’t want that gross rim salt to ruin your happy hour, do you?
Source: Life Hacker
Donating vacation time to new moms is a trendy co-worker baby shower gift
Forget the traditional office pool to buy an expectant coworker a car seat or stroller. The new trend is to give a mom-to-be some of your own vacation time to add days to her maternity leave.
Angela Hughes, of Kansas City, Missouri, was less than a year into her job in the registrar’s office of a private college when her daughter was born two months early.
Hughes did not qualify for any paid maternity leave because she was so new at her job. She said she never took a day off during her entire pregnancy so she could save as much vacation time as possible for after the baby was born.
Her boss, sensing her stress, donated 80 hours of her own paid time off to Hughes through a policy at the college allowing the practice. More coworkers followed suit and, in the end, Hughes had eight weeks of paid maternity leave, almost all of which was donated by coworkers.
“It took a weight off of my family’s shoulder,” Hughes of the donated vacation time. “Having a baby is a huge adjustment anyway but having a premature baby, my emotions were all over the place.”
The United States is the only country among 41 industrialized nations that does not mandate paid maternity leave, according to 2016 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Things are looking up for some new moms, but it depends on the employer. The prevalence of paid maternity leave increased significantly between 2016 and 2018, from 26 percent to 35 percent, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2018 Employee Benefits Survey.
The decision on whether or not to allow employees to donate their paid time off is left up to individual employers and governments.