Do they want super-intelligent apes?

Because this seems exactly like how one would go about creating super-intelligent apes. Yeah, what even am I talking about? I'm talking about growing ape brains in a lab, and then poking at the genes to see what happens. This can't end well, can it?

Pictured: some scientist, seen here poking something, possibly genes.

Probably.

The gene pokers in question are Dr. Madeline Lancaster from Cambridge University in the U.K. and her team, and this is science so I should walk it back a bit. Nobody's growing ape brains, they're just growing brain cells. Specifically those from chimps and gorillas. Human brain cells too. But they're just cells in a Petri dish or something, so it's not like they can get out and run around or anything. Probably. Also they're not so much poking at the genes as they are manipulating a specific gene that controls how large the brains grow in development. 

Like seriously, don't go to zoos.

They found that the gene, Zeb2, tells the cells to stop dividing and start maturing. This happens later in humans, which is why our brains are so much larger than other primates, or losers as I like to call them. Of course, whether or not brain size is directly connected to intelligence is still up for debate, and even if true, it's probably more complicated than big brain = smart. Still though, last time I checked, we're not the ones in the zoos. Which, incidentally, is incredibly cruel. 

The very idea is fraught with unsettling,
yet adorable ethical concerns.  

Anyway, Lancaster's team found that if they delay Zeb2 in ape brain cells, they keep dividing and develop more like our brains. Likewise, if they activate Zeb2 early in human brain cells, they stop dividing and are more in line ape brains. Or something. I don't know, I'm not a neuroscientist, but you're probably wondering why they're even doing this? According to Lancaster, it's important to know how the brain develops in order to get a better understanding of neurodevelopment disorders and that's great, but I also think it's important not to create a species of super-ape.

And again, to be clear, that's not what's happening here. Lancaster and her team aren't growing brains, just brain cells. Everything is under control. For now. I mean, nobody thought anyone would sabotage the electric fence in Jurassic Park either, and look how that turned out. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe we shouldn't not worry about our inevitable take over by super-intelligent apes of our own making.

Behold: Dr. Madeline Lancaster, grim architect of our extinction.
That is if pandemics, war, or climate change don't get us first. 

He knows TV's are in color now, right?

Yeah, but why black and white? The Justice League, I mean. I watched the four-hour Zack Snyder's Justice League, and it was better than the original release, but I don't know why he wants us to watch it in black and white. 

Pictured: Color television, seen here being a thing since the 1960's.

He's probably one of those monsters
who takes video in portrait orientation.

He who? Zack Snyder, that's he who. Apparently his preferred version of the movie is in that weird 4:3 aspect ratio, which is the format of both the Snyder cut and the even newer Zack Snyder's Justice League: Justice is Gray. No really, that's what it's called. But no one seems to know why. The aspect ratio is about Snyder's insistence that the film is best viewed on an IMAX screen, as super heroes are larger than life and a wider frame takes away from the sense of tallness. Which, I mean most of us don't have IMAX's at home so...

It's not Serpico is all I'm saying.

Ok, he has a vision. That's cool. And if I sound down on the movie, I'm not. Like I said, it was an improvement over the original cut, I'm just not a big fan of superhero movies that take themselves so seriously. For whatever reason, Snyder's pervious D.C. movies (Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman) are tonally dark in addition to looking like they were filmed through a dirty, sepia-toned window. I find it off-putting for something that's essentially an adaptation of The Super Friends.

"Mrrrwm rrwmm. Brwwww!"

-Bane

Speaking of directors who are apparently forgetting they they're making a movie about Underoos characters, this reminds me a little of how Christopher Nolan basically called everyone whiners for complaining about how the music and sound effects drown out the dialogue in his movies. He says it's because his sound design is too radical and that we just don't get him as an artist, but I'm not sure it isn't because his mixing kind of sucks. 

Anyway, I just find the existence of the black and white version baffling. Baffling and suspect. The comics upon which they're based were never black and white, so it's not about trying to stay true to the source material, and the movie is set in the twenty-first century, so it's not like it's a period piece. I kind of think he's doing it because he thinks it makes his dumb movie about explosions and lycra suits feel more artsy. 

On the other hand, would we even notice the removal of color from a Zack Snyder movie?

 

Not pictured: irony.

And another thing, you know who's a garbage human? Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia, because he just signed that horseshit voting restriction bill. 

Oh, sorry, not you-I didn't mean you...you're great. 

Pictured: Stacey Abrams, seen here
not being the Governor of Georgia.

Kemp was himself the beneficiary of shady Georgian election practices that allowed him to run for Governor while being the Secretary of State, you know, the official in charge of running a free and fair election. Which, I mean, he won after baselessly accusing Democrats of trying to hack the voting machines two days before the polls opened so...Cool fact, not only was it later found that there was no such hack but that he knew there was no such hack and was just trying to steal an election. Which he did. And now he's the Governor and just signed a transparently racist, and spiteful new law.

Yeah, spiteful. That's the only word I can come up with for a bill that includes a provision making it a crime, an actual crime, to bring snacks and water to people waiting in the extra long lines crated by the other new rules and restrictions that make up this bill. 

Water and snacks? A crime. A bunch of white good'ol boys,
fully armed and standing around the polling place in their MAGA
hats, intimidating voters? Totally legal. Because Georgia. 

People voting isn't an alarming issue,
it's how democracy works-oh, wait, you
don't suppose this is about racism, do you?
Because I'm pretty sure this is about racism.

Kemp insists that limited ballot drop boxes, ID requirements and criminalizing basic human kindness will help to make the elections more safe and secure. He also said:

"There's no doubt there were many alarming issues with how the election was handled, and those problems led to a crisis of confident in the ballot box here in Georgia."

-Governor Kemp, without a 

hint of irony or shame

Look, I don't know, I'm not a political scholar or anything, but is there any read of all this, any interpretation that isn't summed up by saying that GOP, faced with an increasingly diverse electorate, is opting to simply rig the system in their favor because it's easier than making a case for electing them based on their platform? 

Pictured: Georgia state Democratic Representative Park Cannon
being arrested for knocking on Governor Kemp's door. Which these
officers can't legally do because Cannon is a legislator and they can't
arrest a legislator while the legislature is in session, but here we are.

Ken Burns called, he'd like his haircut back.

Oh shit, they've got nothing. Like, nothing. Republicans I mean. Well, ok, they control a bunch of state legislatures and are leveraging that to pass a bunch of laws to make it extra hard for people to vote in areas that don't lean GOP, but what I'm saying is they've got nothing when it comes to reasons D.C. shouldn't be a state. 

Pictured: Some magician, seen here holding
the GOP argument against D.C. statehood.

Tell you what, let's just skip this whole
Congress thing and go full yard sign.

Congress held hearings today in which both sides of the D.C. Statehood debate laid out their arguments for and against. The Pro-statehood side points out that the District of Columbia has a population larger than several states and is full of Americans who should, you know, be represented in Congress. The Con-statehood side argued today that residents of D.C. can put bumper stickers on their cars and signs in their lawns and congresspeople will see those and that's just as good as representation. Better even. 

Pictured: Zach Smith on C-SPAN,
looking exactly like you'd picture him.

"The Framers also wanted to avoid one state having influence over the Federal Government. There's not question that D.C. residents already impact the national debate. For the members here today, how many of you saw a D.C. Statehood yard sign or bumper sticker or banner on your way to this hearing today?"

-Zach Smith, of The Heritage Foundation, 

seen here using impact as a verb

And not for nothing, but clearly the yard
signs aren't doing much as D.C. still isn't
a state. So what else you got Zach?

Yeah, but the Framers also didn't intend for Mitch McConnell to steal two Supreme Court seats or for a sitting President to incite a bunch of armed goons to storm, and then shit in the halls of, the U.S. Capitol Building. And I don't know, but I feel like we could argue that sparsely populated states, like say, the Republican stronghold of Wyoming having the same number of Senators as California or New York is itself undue influence over the Federal Government. And representatives being beholden to constituents and yard-sign-seeing aren't the same thing. Also, should we be listening to a guy with a haircut that dumb?

Both sides are to blame in the sense that
Republicans are guilty of bullying, while
Democrats are guilty of not turning around
and punching the GOP in their bully faces.

So you can see where I'm coming up with "They've got nothing." Anyway, there's like zero percent chance this happens. Zero. Even thought something like 86% of D.C. residents are in favor of it, it's not going to happen. And it's not even a question of it being fair or the right thing to do, or even a possible thing to do. Instead, it's because Republicans. And Democrats, but mainly Republicans. But both sides are to blame. Republicans don't want D.C. to be a state because it will add two more seats to the Senate that will almost certainly be held by Democrats and Republicans hate democracy.

In the same way that their push for strict voter restrictions after their 2020 loses has nothing to do with preventing the ones of cases of voter fraud every year and everything to do with keeping Democratic-leaning voters, a lot of whom are people of color, which I'm sure has absolutely nothing at all to do with it, from voting. 

Although they do love those Confederate flags...wait, you don't
suppose this has been about race this whole time, do you?

Today in Shakespeare's Zoltar Machine news:

Hey, you know who existed? Shakespeare. I mention this because there's this weird conspiracy theory that he didn't and that his plays were secretly written by somebody else and that the entire Elizabethan theatre industry and audiences perpetrated in an elaborate hoax to convince future generations that he did. For some reason. 

"Thank you for coming everybody! And remember, if anyone asks,
tell them that the play you just saw was written by William Shakespeare.
He doesn't exist, we're just trying to troll people in the future."

-Some hilarious actor, 

The Globe circa 1599

You'd think a conspiracy this elaborate
and far-reaching would have sprung
for a better sculpture, but here we are.

Batty nonsense aside, one of the pieces of evidence anti-Stratfordians (that's what they call themselves) like to throw up there is that we don't even know for sure what Shakespeare looked like. And yeah, ok, that's fair, we can't say for sure and there are only two accepted portraits and one of those is his funerary monument and it's, well, it's kind of terrible. The monument, purportedly by a man called Gerard Johnson, is a waist-up sculpture of Shakespeare looking startled and clutching a quill and writing on a piece of paper that's resting on a pillow; a famously excellent writing surface. Anyway, the whole thing looks like the Zoltar machine from Big. According to people who think Shakespeare is a hoax, this monument is actually of someone else and it was altered as part of their dumb conspiracy theory. Yeah, but why would they even think that? You might reasonably ask. 

Because some bloke called William Dugdale drew this sketch of it in 1634:

"Ah-hah!"

-Anti-Stratfordians

Above: this picture of Dugdale can
however be taken as irrefutable evidence
  that he had terrible taste in hats.

See the problem? Yeah, it's wildly inaccurate. According to The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, an organization that believes the Earl of Oxford was secretly the author, this inaccuracy is evidence that Shakespeare wasn't real. The idea is that since Dugdale's sketch seems to show a man giving a belly rub to his pet tardigrade, it must be the original monument and it was later altered by adding a quill and paper. Again, for reasons. And look, I'm not a scholar, I barely know anything about Wilfred Shakeston. I'm just some rando Googling this stuff. And yes, I'll admit that Dugdale's sketch doesn't look a lot like the monument as it is today, and he did probably see it in person, but I'm not sure that the general crappieness of the sketch is so much evidence of the Oxford theory as it is evidence that Dugdale is an outstandingly shitty artist.

"What? Shakespeare scholaring
doesn't exactly pay six-figures."

-Cowen Orlin, having a point

But, it doesn't matter I suppose, because now a professor from Georgetown University says she has new evidence that not only is it totally Shakespeare, but that the playwright himself commissioned the work and that the sculptor knew him in life. And it totally, absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that she has a new book coming out in June. Professor Lena Cowen Orlin, who plans to roll out her findings at a lecture in April, says that the person to whom the piece has been attributed to for centuries, the aforementioned and mediocre sculptor Gerard Johnson, isn't the artist at all, but rather it's his brother Nicholas. Nicholas Johnson was an actual tomb maker by trade and not only spent part of his time in Stratford-upon-Avon, but also worked near Shakespeare's theatre in London and so could easily have known him personally.

Is she right? Who can say? At least in April she's going to back up her claims with evidence instead of, you know, wild speculation. And I mean, sure, none of us were alive back then and iPhones weren't a thing until at least the 1700's, so there's no way we'll ever know with one hundred percent certainty what Shakespeare looked like. But her theory sounds way more plausible than a conspiracy involving hundred of participants spanning centuries. And who doesn't love a good Occam Razor?

Of course, while this may be another strike against the Oxfordians, the bad news here
 is that Shakespeare probably looked like that sculpture and not say, Joseph Finnes.

A grounded character study about ice ninjas.

The Producer of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
wouldn't make a bad film, would he?

I'm not saying that I'm a fan of movie and video game violence, in fact, as I get older and the world is gets shittier, I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with it. And yet for some reason I'm having confusing, complicated feelings about Mortal Kombat movie producer Todd Garner's recent comments about-huh? Oh, haven't you heard? There's a reboot of the Mortal Kombat movie coming. I have feelings about that too, but they're for another time. Anyway, in an interview with The Verge, Garner explained the that violence in the film is not as graphic as that in the games:

Above: Bambi, famously the
Mortal Kombat of 1942.

"Compared to the game, we're like Bambi. We're like a G-rated movie compared to the game."

-Todd Garner, Producer on-

wait, does he want people to see it?

I mean, for real. I don't want to tell him how to PR his Mortal Kombat movie, but is telling fans how violent it's not the way to go? Like, as much as I'm uncomfortable with the preposterous violence, it's kind of all the series has going for it, so why is he even making this movie in the first place? 

Remember when this, and not say,
armed right-wing extremists, was all
 we, as a nation had to worry about?

I used to be a fan of Mortal Kombat but fell off of it ages ago and part of the reason was the stomach churning violence, which, paradoxically, was the appeal in the first place. In the early 90's, we were hot off the moral panic of Dungeons and Dragons and drunk on Crystal Pepsi, so the comparatively tame blood and gore of the first game made us kids feel incredibly badass; like we were getting away with something and Senators loosing their minds over it only sweetened the pot. But once the subversiveness wore off, I think we all realized that the games were, you know, not good. 

Pictured: Mediocrity
not stopping anyone.

Anyway, mediocrity never stopped anyone, and the Mortal Kombat games are still pretty popular. Like, there're always tweens, right? And with each iteration the violence gets more and more ludicrous to keep pulling in new players. And that's fine, I mean, we turned out ok and no matter what the Mikes Huckabee of the world want to bloviate about on Fox News, there isn't a single reputable study linking real-world violence to violent video games. Kids aren't out slicing off heads with razor-brimmed hats or crushing each other's skulls with cyborg arms because of Mortal Kombat. It's dumb, not developmentally dangerous. My point is, making a movie version and blunting that element seems like an odd choice, and it's even odder that Garner is telling us about it.

Specifically up to this moment.

Garner went on to say:

"We're trying to make a movie where you care about the people, it's grounded, it has a realistic tone to it...you're not just trying to make torture porn. You're trying to do something that...is motivated by real characters that feel like they've lived real lives up until this moment"

-Todd Garner, talking about 

some other movie? I guess?

Is he though? Trying to do any of that stuff I mean? Like, if the film bears any resemblance to the games, it's about an inter-dimensional martial arts tournament in which hemophiliac earthlings try and karate a bunch of pallet-swap ninjas and wizards. Heads are punched off, spines torn out. By no stretch of the imagination is this grounded or motivated by real characters. I'm not saying that's a problem, I'm just asking why bother?

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get into Goro's motivations. 

Unbefungingleivable!

In what is definitely going to be a permanent movement in the art world and is not in any way a bubble or a dumb trend that no one will remember in two years, a JPEG has sold at auction for sixty nine million--with an "M" and not a "B," but still--dollars. Of money.

Specifically this JPEG, but not this exact JPEG, but this JPEG. Still with me?

"The bid is $69 million, going once, going twice-
are you absolutely certain? You realize this piece
doesn't actually-very well: Sold. For $69 million."

-Some auctioneer

Which is nonsense, right? I mean, why would someone pay anything for a JPEG, much less $69 million dollars? There is a why, like, a stated reason, but I'm not sure I'm any closer to an answer. This particular JPEG is something called an NFT or a non-fungible token. An NFT represents a digital file (like an image or a video) that is stored on a digital ledger called a blocktechnical (yeah, I know) chain as a unique file. Because the ledger contains information such as ownership, there is only one "true" instance of the file that can be bought and sold.

Right now, people, let's call them chumps, are paying crazy money for what are essentially NFT sports cards. Which even in a fandom that loves gambling and bets heavily not only on real games in whose outcome they have no control, but on fantasy sports as well, even among them this seems, you know...

Pictured: an eBay listing for a $997.77 fan token of 
some bobble heads. So a picture of some bobble heads.
A thousand dollars. Of money. Cool.

Still missing by the way. And there's
a $124,000 reward, so if you see it...

I think the idea is that it makes a commodity out of something that would otherwise be functionally infinite. Like a painting or a sculpture might be unique because there's only one of it. You can buy a print or a replica sure, but usually only the original has value. That's sort of what's going on here except instead of there actually being only one original Starry Night or that Golden Toilet somebody stole, we're just all agreeing that there's only one Everydays--The First Five Thousand Days.

Above: Beeple. And it's not just you,
he does look like a 90's sitcom dad.

That's what it's called. The $69 million JPEG. And look, that's great for Beeple, the artist. The piece that sold at auction was part of a project he started back in 2007. He posted a new piece online for five thousand days and Everydays--The First Five Thousand Days is what it says on the crypto-tin. 

According to Beeple:

"I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the next chapter in art history, digital art."

-Beeple, whose real name is

Mike Winkelmann, which I kind

of think is better than Beeple...

"Yes, but what is art?"

-that one guy in college

And, I don't know, is it thought? I mean, that's totally the kind of thing someone who just made $69 million dollars selling the theoretical ownership of his work would say, but is it the next chapter in art history? Please, take my opinion for what it's worth, which is to say nothing. I'm not an artist or even someone who knows what they're talking about. And I get that the act of creating something digitally and selling is is defiantly a statement, but is it about the piece itself or the idea that it can exist as a discrete creation? 

Is it the scarcity that's being valued here? Maybe. And maybe that's as legitimately an artistic statement as any other. But it also seems like part of the reason rich people buy art is to have something to show to their rich art collecting friends and at some point they're going to realize they've bought millions of dollars worth of scarcity. 

"These are nice, but do you have anything, I don't know, non-existent?"

-Some art collector

Today in solutions to non-existent problems:

Pictured: Arizonans voting.
Not pictured: any widespread
voter fraud at all. Like, at all.

"There's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they're willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don't mind putting security measures in that won't let everybody vote--but everybody shouldn't be voting."

-Arizona State Senator John Kavanagh

an actual elected official from whose mouth

that dumbassery actually slipped

Is is that Republicans
love racist children's books?

Holy shit. I mean, holy shit, right? That's from one of the state legislators in Arizona where they just passed another bill in an effort to address all the voter fraud. What voter fraud, you might reasonably ask? That's an excellent question and one that deserves an answer. And evidence. But here we are, still talking about it, and here they are passing sweeping new restrictive voting laws that will disenfranchise millions of Americans. He's right though, there is a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. 

What...was it something I said?

That being that Republicans are actively and aggressively trying to make it harder for people to vote and Democrats are, you know, not. Sure, it's possible that someone could commit voter fraud. It's super rare, but not impossible, so why are they going nuclear on it? The financial industry is rife with fraud and criminality, but no Republican in the history of republican-ing has ever tried to pass laws making it harder to participate in the stock market. So why aren't they out there trying to lock that down?

Sorry, I'm being unfair.
He played a lot of golf too.

Hey, you don't suppose this isn't about election integrity at all and instead about an existential dread the Republican Party is feeling after Trump was voted out, do you? Like, maybe they, for some reason, can't understand why the American people wanted him gone just because he was a grossly incompetent racist, whose undersized, leathery mitts are stained with the blood of thousands who died needlessly due to his mishandling of a national crisis? 

But that's how democracy works. The response to a loss should be to reevaluate where your party might have gone wrong, and adjust your platform. It shouldn't be to just pass a bunch of shitty laws designed to keep yourself in power.

"We thought about doing that, but at this point the party platform
rests entirely on xenophobia and white persecution complexes,
so it's just easier to not count votes that aren't for us."

-John Kavanagh, on the GOP's strategy 

"Democr-they probably meant to check
Republican. Hand me a pen, would you?"

-how voting doesn't work

Kavanagh went on to suggest that:

"Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they're totally uninformed on the issues. Quantity is important, but we have to look at the equality of the votes as well."

-Senator Kavanagh, just

leaning in to the fascism

So I have some questions. First, if someone doesn't want to vote, they can, you know, just not vote. You don't actually need to make it harder for them to do so. Also, that's kind of a huge leap to assume that interest is tied to being informed. And what constitutes an informed voter? Who gets to decide that? Is there a test? Written? Oral? Some kind of American Gladiators-like competition? 

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but Kavanagh's like 70, 
so he might want to rethink his suggestion.

Did Piers Morgan cancel himself?

It would take a King Ralph level catastrophe
to make Harry King, so why put up with it?

Not that anyone's asked me my opinion of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex's interview with Oprah, but I don't really have an opinion. I mean, good for them for getting out of a toxic situation. Like, clearly there was something going on to drive the Duchess to thoughts of suicide. You don't just walk away from a gig that offers fame and fortune in exchange for the occasional carriage ride and a ribbon cutting at the mall. Do they have malls? Let's say they do.

The point is it's not nothing. Regardless of how you feel about Harry or Meghan or the idea of having all constitution authority flow from a single person based on who they had the good fortune to be related to, there's no reason to call someone a liar for coming out about their mental health issues. Huh...and guess I do have opinions.

One of those opinions is that monarchy is kind of absurd, but we did
recently let an obnoxious reality TV host have first strike capability
for four entire years knowing full well that he was unbalanced so...

"Ere, right then, I've 'ah it. Some one call
me a 'ackney, I'm 'eading back to me flat."

-Morgan, Britishly

Anyway, where I'm going with all this is that Piers Morgan, who I gather is the British equivalent of a Bill O'Reilly or a Rush Limbaugh, has quit his show, Good Morning Britain. He petulant walked off the set the yesterday after his cohost suggested that he had a grudge against Markle, but it was his suggestion that the Duchess was being dishonest about her experiences that prompted Ofcom to open an investigation into his comments under their "harm and offense" rules. Ofcom is I guess something like our FCC, and has the power to revoke licenses. 

Above: When they run Die Hard on cable 
they cut the "yippee-ki-yay line," so it's fine.

(source: our weird priorities)

But yeah "harm and offense," right? In the U.S. the FCC rains down the full force and condemnation of the law upon anyone who broadcasts "offensive material." This was more of a thing before cable and definitely streaming services, but still, we're kind of a messed up culture that loves guns and violence, yet freaks out over nudity and the word "fuck." In Britain however, Ofcom has rules that require factual programmes--that's I guess how they spell "program"--like, news shows or even certain talkshows, to not intentionally mislead audiences.

So for example, a news channel that, I don't know, I'm just making up hypothetical examples here, but let's say there's a news channel that perpetuates patent falsehoods about voter fraud. They might find themselves fined or have their license revoked. 

I can't help but feel like those rules could have
come in handy over the past twenty years or so...

"But if I can't cause harm and offense,
why am I even on television?"

-Piers Morgan, actual quote*

Anyway, they also have enforceable rules against material that might cause offense, or subject people to discrimination and mental health advocates are saying that by diminishing and questioning Markle's honesty when it comes to her talking about how she had thoughts of suicide, Morgan was doing just that and his comments could arguably make others question seeking help for fear that they too might not be believed. Ofcom got forty-one thousands complaints about Morgan, which approaches a record for them, so...well done?

So I guess my question is how long before American conservatives latch on to this as an example of cancel culture silencing conservative voices? I mean, sure, this situation has nothing to do with the America, and Morgan voluntarily chose to resign. But Republicans are loosing their ever-loving minds over Potato Head and Dr. Seuss, so I'm sure we'll have to hear about this, what, later today?

Pictured: House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy sitting down to read Green Eggs
and Ham to protest the COVID-relief bill because it didn't do enough to protect
 Dr. Seuss from being banned, which exactly no one is suggesting. At all.**

*no it's not.

**Oh, and also Republicans are the reason why the bill doesn't include an increase in the comically low Federal minimum wage which, unlike their bullshit outrage over Dr.. Seuss, is a real thing that people desperately need, but sure, let's talk about goddamn Green Eggs and Ham.