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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.

  • Montgomery is talking about suicide prevention. we should listen.

    Montgomery is talking about suicide prevention. we should listen.

    A new WSFA report puts Suicide Prevention Month in very local terms: Montgomery families living with grief, bullying, and the work of… Tune in & read →

    If you need support right now: call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. LGBTQ+ young people can also contact The Trevor Project by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or using online chat.

    there is a version of suicide-prevention messaging that stays safely abstract: a ribbon, a statistic, a phone number, a sentence about checking on your friends. all useful. all very easy to nod at and keep scrolling.

    then there is the version where the people telling you to pay attention live down the road.

    WSFA spoke with two Montgomery women this week about the losses that pushed them into suicide-prevention advocacy. Angela Jackson described the shame and isolation that followed a suicide in her family. Monique Davis talked about her son, Jamari Terrell Williams, who died in 2017 at age 10 after being bullied.

    Jamari loved to dance. Davis told WSFA that classmates treated him as different because of it, and that difference became a target.

    that detail lands hard because “different” is one of those words adults can make sound harmless after the fact. kids know exactly how it gets weaponized.

    A young person speaks on the phone in a cozy bedroom while a trusted friend sits nearby holding a warm mug.
    sometimes support is not a slogan. sometimes it is staying nearby while somebody makes the call.

    “different” should not become a warning label

    yesterday i wrote about why queer and trans kids deserve to grow old. this is not the same story, and i do not want to flatten Jamari’s life into an identity the reporting does not give him.

    but there is an obvious point of contact: children who get marked as different are often asked to absorb an astonishing amount of cruelty while the adults around them debate whether the cruelty technically meets the threshold for intervention.

    Jamari’s mother did not leave that debate where she found it. she created the Jamari Terrell Williams Foundation, which works with schools, churches, city officials, and community groups to fight bullying and prevent suicide. Alabama’s student-harassment law was renamed for Jamari in 2018 and expanded protections around bullying, including cyberbullying.

    the foundation’s message is wonderfully uncomplicated: it is okay to be different.

    A diverse group of young adults laugh together while painting a colorful bench in a community garden.
    the future we are trying to protect is mostly ordinary: friends, community, bad haircuts, errands, and getting to be here for all of it.

    the local part matters

    WSFA also reports that Alabama loses at least two people to suicide on an average day, and that nearly 840 Alabamians died by suicide in 2024. those numbers are large enough to become scenery if you let them.

    the reason local stories matter is that they turn the scenery back into people.

    a mother in Montgomery is still saying her son’s name. a city employee is talking openly about grief she once felt ashamed to discuss. a foundation here is still going into schools and churches telling kids that being different is not a problem to solve.

    and this Saturday, Montgomery Parks and Recreation is hosting a Suicide Awareness Resource Fair from 4 to 6 p.m., connecting people with counselors, mental-health professionals, information, and community resources.

    that is what “check on your people” looks like when it stops being a caption and becomes infrastructure.

    call. text. ask the second question. take bullying seriously before it becomes somebody else’s origin story for advocacy.


    Resources: Call or text 988 for free, confidential crisis support 24/7. Learn more about the Jamari Terrell Williams Foundation. LGBTQ+ young people can contact The Trevor Project 24/7.

  • firefox would like to save this mistake for later

    firefox would like to save this mistake for later

    nothing improves an incorrect password like the browser offering to preserve it forever. Tune in & read →

    there are mistakes, and then there are mistakes that immediately receive an offer of archival services.

    i reblogged this because Firefox asking whether it should save the password i just got wrong has the exact energy of a waiter appearing beside a shattered wine glass to ask if i would like that boxed up.

    no, thank you. i would like the browser to avert its eyes while i try the same password again with one capital letter, one exclamation point, and the rapidly deteriorating confidence of a man defusing a bomb he apparently assembled himself.

    the prompt has arrived before the verdict

    A hand partially closing a laptop above its keyboard, as if asking the computer to look away.
    the correct amount of eye contact after a failed login. photo: MarkJFernandes / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

    the password manager is doing what password managers do: noticing a credential field and offering to remember what went into it. Mozilla’s own documentation explains the ordinary, useful version of this feature. the problem is that the prompt sometimes arrives with the timing of a documentary crew asking for comment while you are still falling down the stairs.

    the site has said “incorrect.” the browser has said “save this?” somewhere between those two systems is a tiny gap where context was supposed to live.

    this is one of the more specific humiliations produced by software that is determined to be proactive. autocorrect confidently preserving the wrong name. a calendar asking whether the meeting that just ruined your afternoon should repeat weekly. a shopping app inviting you to buy again the item you returned because it caught fire.

    the computer is not judging you. it has simply automated the part where a coworker repeats your mistake back to you in a meeting.

    good error recovery should understand shame

    Close-up photograph of a computer keyboard’s Caps Lock key.
    the smallest key with the largest potential to make this feel personal. photo: Tom Harpel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

    software does not need emotions. it does need sequence. if the login failed, wait. if the login succeeds, then offer to save the credential. this is not artificial intelligence. it is artificial tact.

    an authentication screen is already an accusation with a text box attached. maybe the password is wrong. maybe Caps Lock is on. maybe the site changed its rules without telling anyone. maybe i am trying the password from a different account because every service demanded a unique one and then punished me for taking that advice seriously.

    none of these moments need a museum curator leaning into frame to ask, “shall we preserve this?”

    please forget what you have seen here

    password managers are good. unique passwords are good. having a browser remember them is much better than discovering, during an airport layover, that your one universal password has apparently become French.

    but help should arrive after success, not during the autopsy.

    Firefox, i appreciate the offer. for now, please close the tiny filing cabinet and let me fail privately.

  • queer and trans kids deserve to grow old

    queer and trans kids deserve to grow old

    on world suicide prevention day, the specialized 988 service for LGBTQ+ youth is still offline. queer and trans kids deserve more than… Tune in & read →

    If you need support right now: in the U.S., call or text 988, or use the chat at 988lifeline.org. LGBTQ+ young people can also call 1-866-488-7386, text START to 678-678, or chat with The Trevor Project. Both services are available 24/7.

    happy world suicide prevention day to everyone except the administration that saw a dedicated crisis line keeping queer kids alive and decided THAT was the waste of government spending to cut? trans and queer kids deserve to grow old. check on your friends, donate, and stay alive

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-10T20:17:52.499Z

    i posted this today because apparently World Suicide Prevention Day now requires a small asterisk.

    the country still has 988. you can call it. you can text it. a counselor will answer, and that matters. but the dedicated “Press 3” service that connected LGBTQ+ young people with specially trained counselors ended on July 17, 2025. the 988 Lifeline’s own FAQ still says the LGBTQ+ subnetwork is closed.

    Congress has since directed $33 million toward bringing specialized service back. in June, the Associated Press reported that the administration intends to relaunch it by the end of 2026, although the Trevor Project—the organization that helped build the service and handled about half of its 1.6 million contacts—may be excluded from the new network.

    so, on suicide prevention day, the dedicated service is currently a promise with an end-of-year deadline. an extremely federal form of hope: please remain in crisis until the procurement process concludes.

    A transgender young person speaks on the phone in a cozy bedroom while a trusted friend sits nearby holding a warm mug.

    staying alive is not an endorsement

    to the queer and trans kids who keep receiving the message that their existence is a budget problem, a political issue, a school-board agenda item, or an awkward subject adults would prefer to discuss without them: you do not have to become inspirational about any of this.

    you do not owe the world a triumphant speech. you do not have to forgive anybody. you do not have to prove that pain made you stronger, or turn survival into a tasteful before-and-after photo.

    you are allowed to stay alive because you love someone. because someone loves you. because your cat would be confused. because a game comes out next month. because you still need to hear one particular song live. because spite is renewable energy. because the version of you five years from now is doing something extremely ordinary and does not yet know how hard you worked to get them there.

    staying alive is not an endorsement of the conditions you are surviving. it is refusing to let those conditions write the ending.

    check on your people like you mean it

    “reach out if you need anything” is a kind sentiment and a terrible user interface. ask the second question. send food. sit on the phone. help make the appointment. offer a ride. stay while they text a counselor. if somebody tells you they are thinking about suicide, take them seriously, ask directly whether they are in immediate danger, and help connect them with crisis support.

    and if you have money, donate to the places still doing the work. The Trevor Project continues to provide free, confidential, affirming crisis care around the clock without the federal Press 3 contract. institutions love to describe community care as resilience after they have finished making it necessary.

    A diverse group of queer and transgender young adults laugh together while painting a colorful bench in a community garden.

    queer and trans kids deserve adulthood. boring errands. ugly apartments. friends who become family. jobs they complain about. haircuts they regret. group chats that outlive three phones. the chance to discover that growing up does not solve everything, but it does make the world larger than the room where somebody first told them they were wrong.

    stay alive. stay long enough to become inconvenient evidence that they failed to erase you.


    Need help now? Call or text 988. LGBTQ+ young people can contact The Trevor Project by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or using online chat. If there is immediate physical danger, call emergency services or go to the nearest emergency department.

  • #BB28: the final 7, ranked after tonight’s eviction

    After tonight’s #BB28 eviction, there are seven left, and my rankings are now Barrett, Taylor, Melody, Drew, Devens, Yash, and Dee. this… Tune in & read →

    after tonight’s eviction, we are officially down to seven, which means i can no longer pretend these rankings are provisional in any meaningful way. they are still emotional, reactive, occasionally petty, and almost certainly going to age badly, but at least there are fewer people to be wrong about now.

    as always, this is not a power ranking. this is a deeply scientific measurement of who is currently contributing the most to my enjoyment of .

    1

    Barrett Pfeiffer

    Barrett

    somewhere between “i Might like him” and now, this apparently became a full investment. not necessarily the cleanest path through the game, but consistently one of the people i actually want to watch do things.

    2

    Taylor Brown

    Taylor

    an absolutely wild climb from my early-season “she’s fine, probably?” position. she has somehow become one of the people i most trust to make the room she’s in more interesting.

    3

    Melody Morris

    Melody

    from “still not clear on who this is” to third place is, frankly, the kind of character arc i appreciate. she has had one of the better late-season rises for me.

    4

    Drew Campbell

    Drew

    still irritatingly likable. i have spent basically the entire season waiting for that to stop being true, and here we are at seven.

    5

    Rick Devens

    Devens

    still good vibes, still solid television, still occupying a strange lane where i enjoy him without ever becoming fully Devens-pilled.

    6

    Yash Patel

    Yash

    i have, against all odds, moved beyond the haircut note. character development for both of us.

    7

    Dee Valladares

    Dee

    the funniest possible endpoint after starting the season at number one. i do not dislike her, exactly. i have simply reached the point where everyone else left is currently giving me more.

    so that’s the seven. Barrett at the top, Dee at the bottom, and a truly irresponsible amount of room for this to change before i have even finished emotionally processing tonight’s episode.

  • adulthood remains three years away at all times

    adulthood remains three years away at all times

    every age eventually becomes the age when you were obviously a baby. this is inconvenient for anyone waiting to feel finished. Tune in & read →

    the most reliable feature of adulthood is that it remains about three years away at all times.

    i reblogged this little age ladder because it explains a process that has apparently been running in the background of my entire life. at 12, nine-year-old you was embarrassing. at 15, twelve-year-old you was a child. at 18, fifteen-year-old you had only recently acquired knees. then the increments break down, because every current version of you insists that this time the paperwork is final.

    it never is.

    there is no adult loading screen

    Lit candles spelling Happy Birthday across the top of a cake.
    the numbers change; the loading screen does not. photo: Ed g2s / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

    i am 37, an age that sounded fully structural when i was 23. surely by 37 a person has stopped improvising. surely he wakes up already knowing which container lid fits, what day the recycling goes out, and whether an ache is an injury or just weather.

    instead, competence arrives in oddly specific departments. you can be the person everyone calls when a complicated thing breaks, then spend ten minutes searching for the phone that is currently playing a podcast into your hand. adulthood is less a promotion than an expanding set of permissions accompanied by no useful documentation.

    psychologists have tried to give some structure to this. the American Psychological Association describes “emerging adulthood” as roughly ages 18 through 29, a stretch shaped not only by development, but by housing, work, education, relationships, and an economy that has made several traditional milestones feel like luxury upgrades. researchers have also started talking about “established adulthood” from about 30 to 45: the alleged rush hour when work, care, money, health, and identity all decide they need to merge into the same lane.

    this is reassuring mostly because science has confirmed that everybody is busy and confused.

    the milestones keep moving because the person does

    Cardboard moving boxes stacked together in a room, ready for another life milestone.
    the unfinished person has acquired a new place to put the boxes. photo: Dr. Shaym Peesapati / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    we are taught to imagine adulthood as a row of fixed markers: graduate, move out, partner up, buy something with a roof, become mysteriously interested in grout. but milestones do not create a finished person. they just give the unfinished person somewhere new to put the boxes.

    every few years, i look back and discover that a previous version of me was doing his best with absolutely prehistoric information. sometimes he was cringe. sometimes he was scared. sometimes he made choices current me would like to appeal. he was also the only available employee.

    the useful part of realizing you never reach a final form is that nobody else does, either. the 24-year-old who seemed impossibly composed was probably just wearing a coat. the 45-year-old giving advice may be excellent at exactly one kind of Tuesday. your parents, bosses, doctors, and favorite authors are all operating from a save file that contains some baffling early decisions.

    you do not have to disown every earlier draft

    growth is real. so is the temptation to prove it by prosecuting every younger version of yourself. i would like to retire from that job.

    maybe maturity is not finally becoming the person who knows what he is doing. maybe it is becoming less shocked that you do not, asking better questions, apologizing faster, and extending a little backdated mercy to the kid who thought adulthood would arrive all at once.

    he was wrong, obviously. embarrassing. practically an infant.

  • Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026: Seahorse farewell

    A portrait capturing an extraordinary moment between an adult seahorse and two newly born juveniles in French Polynesia has been crowned the… Tune in & read →

    A portrait capturing an extraordinary moment between an adult seahorse and two newly born juveniles in French Polynesia has been crowned the overall winner of the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 competition.

    Source: Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026: Seahorse farewell wins competition | CNN

  • the internet has made me suspicious of talented parrots

    the internet has made me suspicious of talented parrots

    a parrot got a bob haircut and for one beautiful moment i believed in something Tune in & read →

    this morning i saw a video of a parrot getting a bob haircut.

    this is, objectively, exactly what the internet was invented for. not banking. not work email. not whatever LinkedIn is doing. a parrot sitting patiently while somebody gives it a tiny, immaculate little bob.

    i was delighted for approximately the amount of time it took my brain to remember that it is 2026.

    even more devastated that my gut reaction to amazing animal videos is now to google if it's AI or not

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-10T15:53:04.560Z

    and that is the part i hate more than the fake parrot.

    the fake parrot is fine. honestly, she looked incredible. whoever generated her understood the assignment. the problem is that my first reaction to something delightful online has quietly changed from oh my god look at this to okay but did this happen.

    we have somehow added a CAPTCHA to joy.

    now an animal does something implausibly charming and there is a tiny forensic investigator in my head checking the feathers. counting toes. watching the background. wondering why the barber’s hand briefly became an assortment of seafood.

    A green parrot perched on a person’s hand, illustrating the ordinary animal videos the internet has trained us to second-guess.
    Photo by ANBARASU THIRAVIYAM, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    this is obviously not the largest problem created by generative AI. somewhere a lawyer is currently explaining to a judge why the case citations in his brief lead to Narnia. democracy has several concerns. artists have approximately seven thousand concerns.

    but this smaller thing still sucks.

    the internet used to have an informal bargain with me: if you showed me a baby elephant interrupting a television reporter, a raccoon stealing somebody’s phone, or a bird saying something with suspiciously good comedic timing, i was allowed to simply enjoy it until somebody in the replies explained that the video was actually from 2014.

    that was manageable misinformation. i could live like that.

    now every extremely good animal video arrives with homework.

    A green parakeet perched outdoors, accompanying a reflection on having to verify whether charming animal videos are real.
    Photo by Rayhan Rashid, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

    and i don’t even particularly want to become good at detecting AI video, because that feels like learning to identify counterfeit money when all i wanted was to buy a little treat. i would prefer for the treat economy to contain fewer counterfeit dollars.

    mostly i am mourning the loss of being an easy mark for a talented bird.

    i want to see a parrot with a bob and think, good for her.

    instead i opened google.

  • fair is still fair, actually

    the haircut, the motorbike, the extremely reasonable demand for $608: cinema used to understand a labor dispute. Tune in & read →

    the haircut, the motorbike, the extremely reasonable demand for $608: cinema used to understand a labor dispute.

    Source: YouTube

  • suburban trees are doing a surprising amount of emotional labor

    jump, little children made a whole little movie about the quiet, devastating work of trying to be fine in a place with… Tune in & read →

    jump, little children made a whole little movie about the quiet, devastating work of trying to be fine in a place with too many cul-de-sacs.

    Source: YouTube