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Hot takes, wrestling rabbit holes, free-streaming deep dives & life on the open web. Welcome to taco ‘bout it—Schwegler’s corner for TV commentary, chaotic internet culture, and fediverse experiments.

  • the geese have made actual plans

    ·

    the geese have made actual plans

    crafts, icebox pie, and two actual dates on the calendar. meet silly goose girls night, with upcoming gatherings at hilltop public house… Tune in & read →

    the geese have made actual plans. there is a calendar and everything.

    silly goose girls night is a project built around crafts, food, friendship, and making room for a little more play. their feed moves between projects you can try at home and real-life gatherings in montgomery, alabama. the name sets a fairly manageable dress code for your personality.

    their mission statement puts the emphasis on creativity, laughter, and an inclusive community, with women giving themselves permission to play. not every hobby needs to become a small business. sometimes scissors can just be scissors.

    first, the dates that have not already happened

    if you’re around montgomery, there are two things on their published calendar:

    • saturday, october 31, 2026, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.: find their table at the hilltop halloween market at hilltop public house, 3 north goldthwaite street. their latest announcement says they’re making things for the market and will have candy for the kids. stop by and meet the geese.
    • saturday, november 14, 2026, 10 a.m.–noon: make & mingle at hilltop public house. the calendar announcement describes a laid-back social: everyone is welcome, and you can bring a craft or project you’re working on and meet some new people. your unfinished project has been invited out.
    Silly Goose Girls Night calendar: October 8 pop-up at Lorraine's, October 31 Hilltop Halloween Market, and November 14 Make & Mingle at Hilltop Public House.
    the organizers’ calendar, which also includes the now-past october 8 pop-up. graphic: silly goose girls night.

    those details are from their public announcements, checked october 22. follow the account for updates before heading out; the november listing doesn’t specify a ticket price or registration requirement.

    they have already put the scissors on the table

    their first official event was the october 8 modgepodge collage night at lorraine’s bake shop. the event listing supplied the practical part: collage supplies, a canvas, and time to make something together. their next-day recap shows people working around the craft tables and thanks lorraine and bill for hosting.

    this is the useful thing about the photos: you can see the activity rather than being asked to imagine an abstract concept called community. paper, scissors, glue, other people. an unusually literal way to make connections.

    photos and original recap: silly goose girls night. the october 8 event has already happened; this is a look at what they’ve been making, not a current ticket offer.

    the stickers can finally stop waiting for the perfect surface

    one of their at-home projects takes a familiar problem—stickers too good to commit to anything—and turns it into a miniature gallery wall. their july 19 carousel walks through framing favorite stickers, including travel souvenirs, in little frames.

    a small project, an excuse to sit together, and something to put on the wall afterward. the sticker collection has received a promotion.

    and yes, there is pie

    the food side is similarly approachable. their cream cheese icebox pie reel uses a graham-cracker crust and a blended filling, then lets the refrigerator do its part. the full method is in their original post below. leave time for chilling; the pie does have one scheduling requirement.

    between the craft projects, recipes, and local gatherings, there are several ways into this particular flock. try something from the feed, send a project to the friend you’d make it with, or put one of the montgomery dates on the calendar.

    start with @silly_goose_girls_night on instagram. their official link page also connects to facebook and tiktok. at the time of writing, its eventbrite button still points to the october 8 event, so the instagram announcements above are the useful place for the next dates.

    featured image: the sticker-framing project, silly goose girls night. all embedded posts are credited to and linked to their original account.

  • the iPad line is a value menu and a luxury car dealership

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    the iPad line is a value menu and a luxury car dealership

    the $449 iPad is enough for almost everyone. the $1,199 iPad Pro may be the best tablet money can buy. the middle… Tune in & read →

    Apple sells four kinds of iPad, which sounds like a product line until you look at the prices and realize it is two different stores sharing a hallway.

    At one end, there is a $449 tablet that can handle school, streaming, email, video calls, notes, games, drawing, and most of the other things people mean when they say they want a tablet. At the other, there is a $1,199 slab with a laptop-class chip and a display engineered for people who have opinions about black levels.

    Both are easy to recommend. The middle has been asked to prepare a presentation.

    ipads are weird because the line has both the cheapest decent tablet and the best expensive tablet on the market

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-24T14:35:49.232Z

    the cheap one is not a punishment

    Apple’s current lineup starts with the 11-inch iPad at $449. It has the A16 chip, a Liquid Retina display, 128GB of storage at the base price, a landscape front camera, USB-C, and support for a keyboard and Apple Pencil.

    That is not the iPad you buy while apologizing to yourself. It is the iPad most people should buy.

    The screen is not laminated. The chip is not part of Apple’s M-series. The accessory situation contains the usual light administrative cruelty. But none of those facts change the basic experience of opening a browser, watching a movie, reading a comic, playing a game, or moving three apps around while pretending the fourth one is not where the missing document went.

    A cheap Android tablet can be cheaper. A good Android tablet can be more flexible, especially for emulation, file management, or anyone who prefers Android on principle. But the base iPad remains irritatingly complete. It is the rare entry-level Apple product where the compromises mostly wait until after you have started doing something unusually specific.

    the Air is where the explanation begins

    The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $749. The extra $300 buys the M4 chip, a laminated display with P3 color, faster connectivity, Apple Pencil Pro support, and a device with much more performance than ordinary tablet work can currently threaten.

    Current iPad Air models in several colors shown from the front and back
    The iPad Air now uses Apple’s M4 chip and starts at $749. Image: Apple.

    This is the sensible upgrade. It is lighter than the word Pro, more powerful than the word Air has any right to imply, and available in 11- and 13-inch sizes. If you draw, edit video, keep a tablet for years, or simply notice display lamination every time your Pencil touches glass, the Air makes a coherent case.

    The problem is not that the Air is bad. The problem is that rationality has terrible merchandising. If the $449 iPad already does everything you need, $300 is a lot to spend on things you may appreciate but cannot turn into a dramatic sentence. If you are already willing to spend serious-computer money, the Pro is standing nearby wearing a much better screen and looking impossibly thin.

    Hitch holds up a long receipt that unfolds into a pile at his feet. Reaction: vindication.

    The Air is the correct answer for a large group of people. It just arrives with homework.

    the expensive one is not pretending to be practical

    The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,199. According to Apple’s comparison page, it pairs the M5 chip with an Ultra Retina XDR display, ProMotion, Thunderbolt and USB 4, and the option for nano-texture glass on higher-capacity models. The 13-inch version moves farther into “please discuss this with your accountant” territory.

    Current iPad Pro models in space black and silver shown from the front and back
    The current iPad Pro pairs the M5 chip with Apple’s Ultra Retina XDR display. Image: Apple.

    It is absurd. It is also probably the best tablet on the market if “best” means the fastest hardware, the strongest display, the thinnest design, and the fewest compromises inside the category.

    Whether iPadOS can justify all of that hardware is the question Apple has been answering with increasingly elaborate window-management demonstrations. But the device itself is not confused. It is a luxury object that can also edit five streams of 4K ProRes footage, which is at least more useful than most luxury objects.

    the lineup makes sense if you stop asking it to be one lineup

    One reply to my post recommended a Surface Pro for school because it can move between tablet and laptop jobs without asking the buyer to choose which kind of computer they are allowed to own. That is the more useful framing. This is less a contest between spec sheets than a question about what problem the object is supposed to solve.

    The base iPad is a very good appliance. The iPad Pro is a very good obsession. The Air lives between them, collecting the people who know exactly which base-model limitation will annoy them but cannot produce a professional reason to spend $1,199.

    Apple did not build one tablet line. It built the cheapest decent tablet and the best expensive tablet, then placed a perfectly reasonable product between them to handle customer-service escalations.

  • Drew picked dad over big sis, and BB28 has its final three

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    Drew picked dad over big sis, and BB28 has its final three

    Drew evicted Dee, kept Rick, and sent Taylor, Drew, and Rick to the final three. yay or boo, whichever you prefer. Tune in & read →

    episode spoilers for Big Brother 28 through the final-four eviction on Thursday, September 24.

    Taylor won the HOH that guaranteed her a chair at the end. Drew won the veto that turned the other two chairs into his personal seating chart. then he evicted Dee, kept Rick, and gave us a final three that can be greeted with either “yay” or “boo” without changing the punctuation.

    crying with Taylor

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-25T00:45:40.106Z

    what happened

    The entire final-four round happened inside Thursday’s two-hour episode. Taylor beat Dee and Drew for HOH, then nominated both of them. Drew won the veto, used it on himself, and forced Rick Devens onto the block beside Dee.

    That made Drew the only voter. He chose to evict Dee, ending the Icons pair and sending Taylor, Drew, and Rick to the final three. Big Brother Network’s final-four results confirm the whole sequence, which is useful because the episode compressed an HOH, nominations, veto, veto meeting, eviction, and several years of emotional aging into two hours.

    Hitch slumps on a tiny stool with his head in one hand and his tail drooping. Reaction: exhausted.
    Big Brother 28 finalist Drew Campbell wearing a black-and-white striped shirt
    Drew Campbell. Photo: Evan Mulling/CBS, via Parade.

    Drew finally made the move

    Drew spent weeks close enough to the Icons that every decision became a referendum on whether he was playing with them or merely decorating their alliance. He voted out Yash over Dee. He absorbed the jury’s suspicion. He kept insisting there was a point at which loyalty would become timing.

    This was that point, because it could not be any later. Dee could not retaliate, nominate him, or win one more competition. Drew gets to walk into finale night saying that when one vote could finally remove the season’s most established strategic pair, he cast it.

    The complication is that he kept Rick. Cutting Dee breaks the pair, but it does not remove the veteran story from the final three. Rick has survived being visible, targeted, nominated, twist-afflicted, and occasionally dressed like a Morpheus vampire. that is not a small résumé to sit beside at the end.

    Big Brother 28 finalist Rick Devens wearing a blue suit jacket and looking upward
    Rick Devens. Photo: Robert Voets/CBS, via Parade.

    Taylor won exactly enough power to lose control

    Taylor’s HOH was enormous because it guaranteed safety at final four. It was also structurally rude: after she nominated Dee and Drew, the veto winner controlled everything else. Drew won, saved himself, selected the replacement nominee by default, and cast the only eviction vote.

    So Taylor got the thing she needed most—a final-three seat—and then had to watch someone else decide who would occupy the other two. crying with Taylor was not an overreaction. it was the correct amount of crying for winning power in a format designed to immediately explain the limits of your power.

    yay or boo, whichever you prefer

    yay or boo whichever you prefer

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-25T01:49:39.188Z

    This final three has three usable stories. Taylor fought her way into the room after losing allies and being treated like a convenient pawn. Drew waited until the last possible vote to prove that waiting was strategy rather than fear. Rick arrived as the obvious returning-player threat and is somehow still inside the building.

    It also has three obvious objections. Taylor may need the final HOH more than either man. Drew may have waited so long that the jury remembers the hesitation better than the move. Rick may be the person everyone spent the season identifying as dangerous and then repeatedly declining to remove.

    The final HOH will decide which two of them face the jury at the 90-minute finale on Thursday, October 1, at 8/7c. Until then: yay. boo. both remain valid and, frankly, rotational.

    Photo attribution: official CBS promotional portraits, used editorially via Parade.

  • spray butter has zero calories if you stop counting immediately

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    spray butter has zero calories if you stop counting immediately

    one spray is a serving. six sprays are 5 calories. the bottle contains 1,130 servings. nutrition has become a precision instrument for… Tune in & read →

    There are products you forget because they disappeared, and products you forget because your brain quietly filed them under surely society moved on from this.

    Spray butter, apparently, was the second kind.

    remember margarine in spray bottles? what was that about?

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-23T16:22:57.527Z

    I asked what spray margarine was about and immediately learned two things: it still exists, and people have been using it to make grilled cheese this whole time. One person said the spray gives the bread an even coat for toasting. Another warned me that a cold bottle may squirt instead of mist, which is a sentence that makes the product sound less like food and more like a household appliance with a known defect.

    the sandwich defense

    The practical case is annoyingly solid. A very thin, even layer of fat is useful on popcorn, vegetables, a pan, or the outside of a sandwich. The manufacturer recommends basically that list, including sandwiches and quesadillas. If you do not want to tear bread with a knife full of cold butter, a spray bottle is a tiny piece of engineering pointed at a real problem.

    Golden grilled cheese sandwich browning in a black skillet with melted cheese at the edges
    An even coating helps grilled cheese brown consistently. Photo: Good Housekeeping.

    Fine. Spray butter may remain.

    But then I looked at the label.

    one spray is a serving because scale has been abandoned

    I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter says one serving is one spray. One spray weighs 0.2 grams. The eight-ounce bottle contains about 1,130 servings.

    One thousand one hundred thirty.

    Back of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray bottle showing the nutrition facts and ingredients
    The back label lists one spray as a 0.2-gram serving. Image: Upfield.

    The company also gives the math that the front of the bottle politely declines to discuss: six sprays contain 5 calories, 0.5 grams of fat, and 15 milligrams of sodium. Up to four sprays contain what it calls insignificant amounts of calories and fat.

    Nothing magical happens between sprays four and six. The soybean oil does not suddenly remember it is oil. We have simply crossed a line where the numbers are no longer allowed to dress up as zero.

    zero is doing administrative work

    Under the FDA’s nutrition-label rules, fewer than 5 calories per serving may be stated as zero. Total fat below 0.5 grams per serving is also expressed as zero. The important phrase is per serving, and the serving is one-fifth of a gram delivered by a single press of a nozzle.

    So the bottle is not claiming that eight ounces of flavored soybean oil contain no energy. It is making a much narrower claim: if you stop counting immediately, the first spray rounds down.

    Hitch holds up a long receipt that unfolds into a pile at his feet. Reaction: vindication.

    *hydrogenates vegetable oil*“you’re Not gonna believe this”

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-23T16:19:41.695Z

    This is legal. It is also extremely funny.

    A serving size is supposed to help translate a package into human behavior. Here it has become a unit of regulatory geometry: make the slice thin enough and every number disappears. The product can be useful, the label can be technically accurate, and the experience of reading “0 calories” on a bottle whose second ingredient is soybean oil can still feel like being challenged to a duel by arithmetic.

    I now understand why spray butter exists. I understand how it has zero calories. I do not believe either answer has improved me.

  • i know tapping B does nothing. i will be tapping B.

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    i know tapping B does nothing. i will be tapping B.

    a GameFAQs post from approximately 1999 still has administrative privileges over my thumb. Tune in & read →

    i rapidly tap B when i’m trying to catch a pokémon because of something i read on GameFAQs in, like, 1999. i know it does nothing. i have known it does nothing for a long time. my thumb has declined to participate in this conversation.

    i rapidly tap B to 'improve catch odds' because of a gamefaqs post i read in like 1999 and i still do it even though i now know it Does Nothing

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-16T15:13:13.355Z
    https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js

    someone else was talking about holding down + B, which is a different denomination of the same religion. apparently some of us believed you had to hold the buttons, and some of us believed you had to attack them. we agreed that the little animal needed to stay in the ball and that, somehow, this was a job for our hands.

    The original gray Nintendo Game Boy, with burgundy A and B buttons beside the directional pad.
    an entire belief system could fit beside this screen. Evan-Amos / source. Public domain

    the embarrassing part is that i’m perfectly capable of understanding the actual system. the original games’ capture calculations involve things like the ball, the pokémon’s HP and status, its catch rate, and random numbers. there is no bonus for how earnestly a child is pressing B. i am now an adult who works with computers. this should have been enough to resolve the matter.

    it wasn’t.

    the ball is wobbling and i would like to contribute

    catching a pokémon has a very effective little pause built into it. you’ve made your choices. you’ve thrown the ball. now you have to watch it wobble while the game decides whether to be nice to you.

    that is an unreasonable amount of time to leave a person alone with hope.

    so i tap. if it works, excellent technique. if it doesn’t work, maybe i tapped badly. this is an extremely durable explanation because it can survive literally any outcome. the pokémon escapes and somehow the theory gets another chance.

    i don’t remember the username of whoever passed this along. i can’t produce the post. i’m not even confident about the year. but the instruction remains available immediately, without searching, whenever a ball starts moving. meanwhile, a fact i needed for an actual appointment has already left the building.

    A silver Game Boy Pocket with its screen, directional pad, and two round action buttons.
    smaller hardware, same opportunity to insist you are helping. Evan-Amos / source. Public domain

    an old internet habit that can stay

    there’s something funny about a bit of advice outliving your belief in it. i don’t go into the game thinking i’ve found a secret mechanic. i just start doing the thing, notice i’m doing it, and continue doing it. correcting myself would require more effort than the superstition.

    i’ve written about missing the older, weirder web. this is a much smaller souvenir: an unverifiable instruction from a page i read when i was a kid, still making its way into how i play.

    i don’t need to turn it into a lesson about misinformation or insist it was secretly good advice. it was wrong. my catch odds are unimpressed.

    but if you see me tapping B, please understand that the information has reached the relevant department. the relevant department simply does not care.

    Telly, a TV-headed character, tiptoe anticipation with clasped hands, with “I WANT TO BELIEVE” on his screen. Reaction: hopeful wonder.

    Featured image: Evan-Amos / source. Public domain

  • why would i let 20-year-old me review my life

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    why would i let 20-year-old me review my life

    he had more friends, a better city, and absolutely none of the information. i’m willing to hear his concerns. Tune in & read →

    somebody asked whether 20-year-old you would be impressed or disappointed by you today. i gave it some thought, which was my first mistake.

    20-year-old me had more friends. probably more fun. lived in a city i liked better. he had fairly high expectations of a future somewhere gay-friendly, with a social life that did not require quite so much deliberate effort.

    so, sure. show him the current situation and he’d probably have some complaints.

    but why the fuck would i listen to that 20-year-old dickhead?

    20 y/o me had way more friends and probably more fun and lived in a better city and had pretty high expectations of a future in a gay-friendly city, so he'd probably be mad at me, but, then again, why the fuck would i listen to that 20 year old dickhead?

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-17T19:43:56.389Z
    https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js
    A street scene in downtown Athens, Georgia, looking toward the University of Georgia Arch in 2008.
    downtown Athens in 2008, close to the period the question sent me back to. Richard Chambers / source. Public domain

    i say that with affection. i was him. i remember enough of what he wanted to know that it wasn’t stupid. wanting friends, belonging, interesting work, and a place where being gay feels ordinary is a pretty reasonable set of requests. i haven’t stopped wanting those things.

    what i object to is giving him the final say about how well i’ve done. he was making a prediction. he wasn’t agreeing to live through everything that happened next and then submit a report.

    he did not have the full itinerary

    when i started listing what 2009 me hadn’t experienced yet, the list got long quickly. friendships falling apart. the company behind a dream job shutting down. moving back to the hometown we’d left when i was ten. eventually ending up in Alabama. becoming my mother’s caregiver. losing her. the pandemic.

    i’ve already written some of that history in “My Lost Decade.” i don’t need to repeat the whole thing here. but i do need it to count when i’m being asked to compare the life i imagined with the one i have.

    there’s a remarkable amount of missing information in “would younger you be proud?” younger me hadn’t tried to hold his life together under those circumstances. he hadn’t even heard of most of the circumstances. he had a lot of opinions, of course. that part came installed.

    if i asked an actual 20-year-old to assess my life, i’d probably explain what had happened before taking his disappointment personally. apparently, when the 20-year-old is me, i’m supposed to skip that step and accept the review.

    A panoramic photograph of downtown Montgomery, Alabama, with buildings spread across the skyline.
    Montgomery: a place the earlier version of the plan did not account for. Chris Pruitt / source. CC BY-SA 3.0.

    i can miss that life without owing it an apology

    the comparison is tempting because some of what i miss is real. i don’t want to pretend that every difficult thing improved me or that every turn was secretly taking me somewhere better. sometimes something good ended. sometimes i made a bad choice. sometimes the available choices were all pretty shitty.

    i can miss the friends, the city, and the feeling that there was plenty of time without concluding that my current life is evidence against me.

    i also don’t have to turn surviving into an inspirational job. there doesn’t need to be a lesson attached to everything i lost. i would happily have learned several of those lessons in a less thorough manner.

    what i want is a fairer comparison. the person i was at twenty could imagine the future, but he couldn’t know what living it would cost or what would become important along the way. i know more now. not everything, obviously. enough to have earned a vote.

    i wrote recently about never quite feeling like a finished adult. this is a different problem: treating an unfinished younger person’s expectations as if they were binding instructions.

    some of those expectations are still useful. i’d like more connection. i’d like more fun. i can take those wishes seriously today without first agreeing that i’ve let somebody down.

    so yes, 20-year-old me can tell me what he misses. i might agree with quite a lot of it.

    then he can listen for a while. he has seventeen years to catch up on.

    Featured image: Tichnor Brothers Collection / Boston Public Library / source. Public domain

  • five years is not a deadline for missing someone

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    five years is not a deadline for missing someone

    my mother would have turned 65 this week. grief has reviewed the calendar and declined to recognize the five-year performance target. Tune in & read →

    wednesday would have been my mom’s 65th birthday.

    the sentence is simple enough. the feeling has apparently declined to remain within the assigned scope.

    i have spent the last few days moving between missing her and being angry at myself for still being this affected after half a decade of “healing.” five years sounds like enough time to have completed something. there should be a certificate. perhaps a small badge i can attach to my shirt that says processed one major loss, please proceed normally.

    wednesday would have been my mom's 65th birthday and i am cycling between feeling sad and also being mad at myself for feeling sad after half a decade of 'healing'

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-21T20:10:03.129Z

    i posted that thought on Bluesky, and people replied with the thing i can believe when it applies to anybody except me: grief does not have a deadline. one person said five years is nothing. another told me to be kind to myself.

    reasonable advice. deeply inconvenient.

    A scattered collection of old black-and-white portrait photographs.
    Mr Cup / Fabien Barral / Unsplash

    healing is not an uninstall button

    i think part of the problem is the way we talk about healing as if it were a project with an end state. you do the work. you learn the lessons. eventually the loss becomes a tasteful line item in your personal history, and the emotional department stops opening tickets about it.

    that has not been my experience.

    i am not as wrecked as i was five years ago. that matters. i can remember my mother without every memory immediately collapsing into the fact that she died. i can write about her angry power-walking playlist and let the memory be funny. i can hear “You Oughta Know” and picture a specific woman being specifically pissed off, rather than treating her entire life as a preface to losing her.

    that is healing, i think. not becoming somebody who no longer hurts, but becoming somebody who has more room around the hurt.

    the trouble is that birthdays are very good at finding the room.

    the calendar keeps making plans for people who are gone

    a birthday is not an abstract reminder. it arrives with a number attached. sixty-five. a whole age she did not get to be. the calendar presents it like an appointment i forgot to cancel, then acts surprised when i have feelings about the empty slot.

    there are other dates, obviously. the day she died. holidays. the ordinary anniversaries that do not announce themselves until i notice what month it is. but a birthday carries a different kind of alternate timeline. i can imagine the cards, the cake, the jokes about senior discounts, and whatever opinion she would have developed about being sixty-five.

    none of that means the previous five years did not count. it means wednesday counts, too.

    Two empty wooden chairs beside a wall, crossed by warm sunlight and shadow.
    Greg Rosenke / Unsplash

    i do not need to grade this

    being mad at myself for being sad is an attempt to turn grief into a performance review. surely, after this much time, i should be more efficient. surely the same date should not be able to surprise me again. surely i have received sufficient training.

    but grief is not evidence that i failed to heal correctly. it is evidence that the relationship still has consequences. my mother mattered while she was here, and her absence remains capable of mattering now. five years did not revoke that.

    i wrote before that grief is not a loyalty program. apparently it is also not continuing education. i do not earn a cleaner response by logging enough hours.

    so, on wednesday, i am going to try not to evaluate the sadness while i am having it. i can miss her. i can be irritated that i have to miss her. i can laugh about the playlist and feel terrible about the age she never reached, possibly within the same five minutes.

    the feeling does not need to demonstrate progress before it is allowed in.

    she would have been sixty-five. i wish she had gotten to complain about it.

    Featured image: Dasha Kroti / Unsplash. Body images are credited in their captions. All three photographs are used under the Unsplash License.

  • a stray dog showed up and kindness immediately became logistics

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    a stray dog showed up and kindness immediately became logistics

    a stray dog appeared at the door, and suddenly caring was not a feeling. it was a checklist. Tune in & read →

    a dog appeared on my doorstep last night and immediately turned compassion into an operations problem.

    literally crying about a stray dog outside rn; I wish I had money for the vet bills and supplies so I could know she’s ok

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-23T01:54:09.726Z

    she looked like a light-brown lab mix. no visible owner. no little instruction card explaining whether she had escaped a yard, been dumped, or had simply selected my porch as tonight’s least-bad option.

    i did what panic allows: filled out the humane society’s form, sat outside with her, and wished very hard that wishing came with a scanner, a kennel, a veterinary budget, and office hours.

    it does not. this is the rude part of kindness. the feeling arrives all at once. the infrastructure does not.

    the first job is not adoption

    finding a dog does not instantly make you the dog’s forever person. the first job is smaller and more urgent: keep everybody safe long enough to make the next call.

    if the animal is injured, acting aggressively, standing in traffic, or otherwise unsafe to approach, call local animal control or an emergency veterinary clinic instead of trying to become an improvised action hero. a scared dog can bite. a well-meaning stranger can make a frightened dog run farther. love is not improved by adding an avoidable emergency.

    if the dog can be contained safely, offer water and a quiet place away from traffic, children, and your own animals. check for an ID tag without forcing contact. take clear photos. write down exactly where and when the dog appeared. these are not glamorous acts, but they are the beginning of a handoff.

    Light-brown stray dog waiting near the porch after arriving at Andrew's home
    still here, still somebody’s dog until proven otherwise. Photo by Andrew / Bluesky.

    there is probably a person already having the worst night

    a dog without a person in view is not necessarily a dog without a person. collars break. gates fail. fireworks happen. somebody may be refreshing neighborhood groups every thirty seconds while the dog is sitting three streets away looking like she has never participated in a plan.

    a veterinary office or shelter can scan for a microchip. if a number is found, the AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup can identify which registry should have the owner’s contact information. the chip itself is not GPS; it is a tiny clue with paperwork attached, assuming the paperwork stayed current.

    the ASPCA recommends contacting local animal control, veterinary hospitals, municipal and private shelters, and rescue groups. it also tells people who find an animal to contact their local shelter for guidance. that is important because the shelter is where many owners are going to look, even if the finder is able to keep the dog temporarily.

    post the same clear photo and location in neighborhood groups and local lost-pet networks. file a found report with the public shelter. ask whether the shelter offers a finder-to-foster option, what its stray-hold policy is, and whether it can scan the dog without requiring immediate surrender. “call the shelter” and “leave the dog there” are not the same instruction.

    ASPCA image accompanying guidance for finding and reporting a lost pet
    the boring infrastructure—identification, shelters, neighbors, and reports—is how lost pets get home. Image: ASPCA, used with attribution for commentary.

    “no-kill” is not a magic word

    one reply warned me not to involve a government-run shelter unless i could confirm it was no-kill. i understand the fear inside that advice. shelter outcomes vary enormously, capacity matters, and asking questions before transferring an animal is responsible.

    but “no-kill” is not a promise that no animal is ever euthanized, and “municipal” is not a synonym for death sentence. Best Friends Animal Society uses a 90 percent save-rate benchmark when it labels a shelter no-kill. the label describes an outcome threshold, not the ownership structure of the building and not the complete circumstances of the dog in front of you.

    a blanket instruction to avoid the public shelter can also remove the dog from the system her owner is most likely to check. the useful questions are local and specific: what happens at intake? how long is the stray hold? can the finder foster? which rescues pull from this shelter? is the facility over capacity today? the answers matter more than the sign outside.

    kindness needs a handoff

    the part that made me cry was not only that the dog might need help. it was the sudden belief that helping meant i personally had to become the entire institution: owner, rescuer, foster, fundraiser, veterinarian, transportation department, and emotional-support porch furniture.

    that is too much for one person, which is why the checklist matters. contain if safe. photograph. scan. report. call. ask what happens next. keep the dog visible to the systems her family will use to find her. none of those steps guarantees a clean ending, but together they make one more possible.

    update: the handoff happened

    by 10:06 Wednesday morning, the logistics had done their job: she was safely at the humane society. i am going to keep watching for her adoption listing and share it once she is available. the ending is not that one person suddenly acquired unlimited money and a surprise dog. it is that the next part of the system showed up.

    Mission accomplished. Gonna keep an eye out and post a link once she’s adoptable. 💜

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-23T15:06:18.216Z

    Featured and first body photos by Andrew, originally posted to Bluesky. Additional image from the ASPCA’s lost-pet guidance, used with attribution for commentary and public-interest reporting.

  • ·

    Is Matt Mathews funny or just racist?

    Bob explores the shift in how comedians gain fame today, contrasting the traditional path of honing jokes in clubs with the modern… Tune in & read →

    Bob explores the shift in how comedians gain fame today, contrasting the traditional path of honing jokes in clubs with the modern influencer model where an audience is built first through viral content.

    Source: Is Matt Mathews funny or just racist? – Bob The Drag Queen

  • the traitors: new blood has turned vibes into forensic evidence

    ·

    the traitors: new blood has turned vibes into forensic evidence

    twenty-two civilians entered a Scottish castle and immediately began converting mumbling, posture, and dog-groomer intuition into probable cause. Tune in & read →

    spoilers for the two-episode premiere of The Traitors: New Blood.

    i started The Traitors: New Blood cold, having zoned out during enough introductions that several contestants were temporarily named “that guy,” “the redheaded woman,” and “the dog groomer who reads vibes.” this turned out to be an entirely appropriate way to watch a show where twenty-two strangers immediately begin converting posture, mumbling, and whether somebody seems too helpful into forensic evidence.

    to Me? these are all nobodies, at least #TheTraitorsUS #NewBlood starting now; starting coldpacking a bowl; making popcorn

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-20T02:02:17.288Z

    NBC’s civilian version keeps Alan Cumming, the Scottish castle, the missions, the breakfast theater, and the professionally unnecessary cover songs. It replaces the familiar reality stars with twenty-two “everyday Americans” selected from more than 80,000 applicants, all competing for as much as $250,000. “everyday” is doing some work there. these are people who applied to spend several weeks accusing strangers of murder on network television. they have simply not yet acquired franchise branding.

    everyone arrived knowing what kind of show this is

    the celebrity seasons come with useful baggage. you know who is used to performing, who has a public feud, and who will mistake being loud for being correct because you watched them do it on another show for eleven years. New Blood removes that shorthand, but it does not give us innocents. the cast already understands the grammar of reality television: announce a strategy, identify a vibe, form a theory before breakfast, and say “fact-based” while standing near very few facts.

    Arisa Thomas poses at the round table on The Traitors: New Blood
    Arisa Thomas on The Traitors: New Blood. Photo: NBC.

    Arisa, a dog groomer, says in her official bio that she plans to use her “golden retriever energy” to seem trustworthy. on television this becomes a person professionally associated with reading animal behavior now reading the room for treason. which is ridiculous, obviously, except that the entire program is built on people assigning legal weight to eye contact. she may be the most formally qualified person there.

    not the dog groomer vibe reader #TheTraitorsUS

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-20T03:15:35.334Z

    conversation is now a crime scene

    the premiere’s best early conflict comes from the kind of half-heard sentence that destroys a group chat and, apparently, a Scottish breakfast. a mumbled remark about feeling bad picking Kim becomes evidence because another player heard something more suspicious. i would absolutely get banished this way. i mumble, revise sentences while saying them, and sometimes expect the second half of a thought to retroactively repair the first. this is not compatible with a game where twenty-one people are waiting to turn a preposition into probable cause.

    Kim Daily poses at the round table on The Traitors: New Blood
    Kim Daily on The Traitors: New Blood. Photo: NBC.

    Kim was my immediate favorite, which lasted until the next immediate opinion. Jay managed to make me alternate between liking and disliking him sentence by sentence. Kriste became the person i wanted banished before i had assembled a responsible case, which means i was participating correctly. the show’s central mechanic is not deduction. it is deciding that an impression feels factual and then shopping backward for supporting documentation.

    Hitch concentrates while writing on a clipboard with a pencil. Reaction: taking notes.

    Do I like Jay or hate Jay? Every other sentence I change my mind #TheTraitorsUS

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-20T02:48:30.013Z

    the civilians make the machinery easier to see

    without celebrities, there is nowhere for the edit to borrow a personality from. the premiere has to teach us who everyone is while simultaneously asking us to distrust the lesson. the accomplice duel is a smart answer: it immediately gives two players a private relationship with the game, lets everyone else begin inventing explanations, and gives the episode a cliffhanger because i always forget this show considers emotional closure a streaming-platform feature.

    what surprised me is how little star power the format needs. Alan still enters every room like the castle has summoned him. the missions remain enormous devices constructed to make adults crawl through mud in wool. the soundtrack is still a collection of pop songs being performed by a haunted wedding band. the production supplies grandeur; the players only need to supply bad information with confidence.

    after two episodes, i do not know everyone’s name, i have changed my mind about Jay several times, i like Kim, and i want Kriste banished for reasons i would not submit to a court. in other words, The Traitors: New Blood works. the cast may be new, but the human impulse to call a vibe “fact-based” arrived fully trained.

    The Traitors: New Blood airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock. Cast and schedule details via NBC.