Daily Bafflements

• Yesterday, while commentators and critics were trading financial analysis of whether abruptly-ousted New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson’s salary of $525,000 a year was more or less than her predecessor’s salary, thousands of fast-food workers across the country walked off the job to demand a liveable hourly wage.

• Norway may have found a partial solution to the gender wage gap, according to PolicyMic: a non-transferrable, federally-regulated, paid paternity leave. (Via Dan Weiss at The Rumpus.)

• Julian Baggini at FT dissects the “tired tropes” of the vacuous genre of “smart thinking” books. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

• Patent reform legislation remains stalled in Congress, but meanwhile, “Of the top ten filers of patent lawsuits in 2013, every single one was a patent troll,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Happy Friday!