a complete record of the human experience, if the human experience had three coffees, a sandwich, and absolutely no room for feedback.
Source: YouTube
ON THE AIR
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.
-
liz lemon remains extremely well-documented
a complete record of the human experience, if the human experience had three coffees, a sandwich, and absolutely no room for feedback. Tune in & read →
-
yard work simulator got a sequel before i got a lawn
a joke about yard-work simulators became an unfortunately complete survey of gaming’s most specific genre, just before the free prologue arrives. Tune in & read →
i reposted this because it is, technically, a joke, and also, technically, an accurate status report on where the simulator genre currently stands.
Beyond Yardwork Simulator is a real, upcoming Steam game from developer JoyDev and publisher PlayWay, a studio whose back catalog reads less like a release slate and more like a to-do list nobody ever crossed items off of. you mow, pressure-wash, weed, and sort trash in exchange for cash you then spend renovating your own house, one increasingly specific chore at a time, per the official Steam page.
a free prologue covering the first three jobs arrives Sep 9, per the Prologue’s Steam listing. the full game does not have a date beyond “2026,” which, generously, leaves PlayWay all the runway it needs to eventually announce Beyond Beyond Yardwork Simulator.
Screenshot: Beyond Yardwork Simulator, via Steam; used for commentary. i say all of this as someone who has spent measurable years of my one life running a digital farm in Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon without once, personally, touching a lawnmower that exists in three dimensions. Beyond Yardwork Simulator is aimed at exactly my demographic: people who will lovingly manage a fictional flower bed for forty hours and describe an actual flower bed as not my problem. the genre understands its audience. it is not judging me. it is, at most, gently billing me two thousand imaginary dollars per job.
and it is a genre, not a one-off bit. Beyond Yardwork Simulator is arriving into a field that already has Lawn Mowing Simulator, whose real sequel, Lawn Mowing Simulator 2, lands Sep 23 with licensed Kubota, SCAG, and STIGA equipment, per its own Steam page. PC Gamer, surveying the field, noted there is also a separate game called Lawn Care Simulator, and that it exists twice, which the outlet delivered with exactly the tired disbelief the situation deserves, per PC Gamer’s coverage.
Screenshot: Beyond Yardwork Simulator, via Steam; used for commentary. somewhere there was a pitch meeting that ended with the sentence “we have done the yard, now let us transcend it,” and somebody funded it, and here we are, well over a thousand likes into a joke about the Simpsons being insufficiently prescient. i will be downloading the free prologue the day it exists, not because my actual yard needs anything, but because it does not have one to need anything about, and that, per the entire thesis of the genre, is exactly the point.
-
no one has ever been more prepared to haunt you than kate bush
kate bush arrived at the windowsill fully formed, wearing a red dress and a practical amount of wind; everyone else has been… Tune in & read →
kate bush arrived at the windowsill fully formed, wearing a red dress and a practical amount of wind; everyone else has been trying to catch up since.
Source: YouTube
-
arkansas has put the library card on probation
an Arkansas censorship law has turned ordinary library use into a maze of age zones, checkout bans, and criminal-risk management. Tune in & read →
i reposted this because the list of new rules at the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library reads less like library policy and more like terms of supervised release.
minors cannot use the self-checkout kiosks. children under 13 are limited to the children’s collection. teenagers can use the children’s and teen sections, but not the adult collection. nobody under 18 may check out a DVD. minors are also barred from entering or buying anything from the Friends of the Library bookstore.
the state has not technically replaced the library card with an ankle monitor. it has merely arranged the experience so that borrowing a movie, browsing outside your assigned age habitat, or purchasing an old paperback requires adult intervention. freedom has been preserved in the sense that there are still books inside the building.
Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library. Photo: Explore MOR(e) Northeast Arkansas. the threat works before anybody gets arrested
these changes follow the Eighth Circuit’s July 30, 2026, decision allowing Arkansas to enforce Act 372. the law exposes librarians and booksellers to criminal liability for furnishing material deemed “harmful to minors,” and it gives local governing bodies final authority over challenged library material. a federal district judge had blocked the law as unconstitutionally vague and overbroad; the appeals court reversed that judgment.
the Arkansas Times reported on September 3 that libraries were already redesigning ordinary circulation around the possibility that a librarian might be charged. Independence County stopped minors from checking out manga and adult graphic novels. in Pulaski County, the outgoing director of the Central Arkansas Library System urged the board to minimize employees’ exposure to prosecution.
this is the part censorship advocates get to pretend is administrative. nobody has to march through the stacks with a cardboard box labeled FORBIDDEN IDEAS. you threaten the person behind the desk with criminal charges, then let the institution calculate how small it needs to become to feel safe.
the chilling effect is not a side effect. it is the product.
Bookshelves inside the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library. Photo: Explore MOR(e) Northeast Arkansas. a library is supposed to permit wandering
i understand that libraries organize material by age. a picture book, a young-adult novel, and a tax manual are trying to do different jobs. but a useful library is not a set of sealed departments. it is one of the few places where curiosity is allowed to make an unscheduled turn without first becoming a purchase.
a 12-year-old can wander from mythology into archaeology. a teenager can look up the novel referenced in a movie, read a cookbook, or discover that the adult shelf contains both James Baldwin and fourteen books about fixing a deck. sometimes the great danger is literature. sometimes it is home improvement.
the Craighead County library’s own history says its regional system gives patrons access to more than 164,000 physical items, plus a large digital collection. that is what public infrastructure looks like when it trusts people: abundance, shared access, and room to find something nobody thought to assign you.
Act 372 turns that trust inside out. the child is treated as a liability, the librarian as a potential defendant, and the shelf as evidence waiting for a prosecutor to develop an opinion.
parental rights, except for everyone else’s parents
supporters sell laws like this as parental control, but the practical result is government control applied to every family at once. a parent who wants their teenager to browse the adult collection cannot make that choice through the teenager’s library card. a family that permits DVDs cannot reverse the blanket ban. the state has defended parental authority by preempting it.
EveryLibrary has called for Arkansas to repeal and replace Act 372, arguing that libraries already have collection policies, challenge procedures, and ways for parents to guide their own children. that is the boring answer because boring answers are usually what functional public institutions use: professional standards, due process, and individual families making individual decisions.
the exciting answer is threatening librarians until the self-checkout machine becomes contraband.
the Eighth Circuit opinion explains what the law permits. the policies now appearing around Arkansas show what it produces. the distance between those two documents is where censorship likes to claim it did nothing.
meanwhile, children may continue enjoying the library in the approved biome, during authorized browsing, with an adult nearby to operate the dangerous machinery.
- 1
-
🐰
AI might tear the fabric of our society apart. But look at this bunny wearing a little hat! Tune in & read →
AI might tear the fabric of our society apart. But look at this bunny wearing a little hat!
-
voter registration has discovered audience targeting
the voter-registration reminder has finally accepted that democracy may occasionally require a patriotic jockstrap. Tune in & read →
there are many ways to remind people to check their voter registration. you can make a sober infographic. you can deploy a clipboard. or, as this Tumblr post correctly concludes, you can put the reminder next to a man in a patriotic jockstrap. democracy contains multitudes, apparently.
Image: tim-ee-sis on Tumblr the useful part remains extremely useful. Vote.gov will route you to your state’s registration and status tools. in Alabama, the general election is November 3, 2026, and registration closes during the fourteen days before an election. “i will do it later” is therefore a deadline wearing a fake mustache.
GIF: tim-ee-sis on Tumblr the original post had already collected 190 notes by early Saturday afternoon. this is not a controlled experiment, but it does suggest civic engagement may improve when it briefly acknowledges that voters have bodies, interests, and internet connections.
so, yes: check your Alabama registration, make a plan, and then return to the important national discourse about whether the stars-and-stripes jockstrap is legally business casual.
- 4
the freezer has become a very small evidence locker
i have two boxes of recalled fruit bars, one obvious decision, and a brain determined to open negotiations. Tune in & read →
i currently have two boxes of fruit bars in my freezer that may contain glass, which means the freezer has become a very small evidence locker.
the correct decision is not complicated. Dreyer’s says to throw the affected bars away or return them for a full refund. there have been no reported injuries, and i would like to continue contributing to that statistic.
unfortunately, the human brain did not evolve around nationwide frozen-dessert recalls. it evolved around scarcity, attachment, and standing in front of an open freezer thinking, “but i paid for those.”
first, check the boxes
one of five recalled flavors, wearing the color of a warning label that has been trying to seem fun. product image: Outshine / PR Newswire. the August 16 recall notice from Dreyer’s covers specific batches of five Outshine flavors: Strawberry, Grape, Watermelon, Black Cherry, and Tangerine. it applies to the six-count boxes of 2.5-ounce paddle bars distributed nationwide.
it does not cover every Outshine product. the useful part is on the bottom of the box: compare the UPC, batch code, and best-before date with the company’s list. the affected UPCs are 041548610047 for Strawberry, 041548244044 for Grape, 041548413624 for Watermelon, 041548000121 for Black Cherry, and 041548612041 for Tangerine.
the batch list is long enough that i am not going to make anyone trust a transcription from a personal blog when the original recall notice exists. use the company table. this is one of the rare situations where “go read the spreadsheet” is an act of care.
the sunk cost is approximately one popsicle
watermelon remains refreshing; the possibility of glass has been less well received. product image: Outshine / PR Newswire. if the codes match, the bars are not a challenge, a dare, or a chance to develop a new texture vocabulary. return them or dispose of them. anyone worried about an injury should contact a healthcare provider.
i know this. i also know that throwing away unopened food feels wrong in a way that can briefly overpower the much more relevant wrongness of possibly swallowing glass. the product has crossed from “food” into “object i purchased,” and apparently my sense of stewardship remains active after its culinary career has ended.
this is sunk-cost fallacy with freezer burn. keeping the boxes cannot recover the money. eating the bars cannot vindicate the purchase. it can only convert a recall notice into a medical anecdote, and i already have enough stories that begin with “in retrospect.”
a refund is the available third path
the recall says affected products can be returned to the place of purchase for a full refund. this is useful because my brain has framed the situation as a choice between wasting food and becoming afraid of dessert forever. there is, in fact, a boring administrative option. boring administrative options save lives.
so the boxes are leaving the freezer. not because i have conquered irrational attachment, but because i have been reminded there may be paperwork that lets me keep both my money and the structural integrity of my mouth.
sometimes growth is just finally accepting that a frozen fruit bar should not have a risk profile.
-
the worst part of living alone is being your own lunch lady
living alone is freedom, privacy, and discovering that the person responsible for making you lunch is somehow you again. Tune in & read →
there are a lot of luxuries associated with living alone. the thermostat becomes a direct democracy with one voter. the television is never mysteriously left on a channel showing men discussing golf. every horizontal surface can temporarily become a place where mail lives.
then lunchtime arrives, and the republic collapses.
i posted this because i was hungry, tired, and confronting the deeply unfair fact that being an adult who lives alone means the person responsible for making me lunch is, once again, me. apparently this was not a private grievance. within a few hours, more than a hundred people had liked it, several had reposted it, and the replies had become a small support group for people who would happily cook a beautiful dinner but cannot be expected to manufacture enthusiasm for a sandwich at 12:47 p.m.
the meal is not the hard part
i like cooking. this is important because otherwise the obvious solution would be “you do not like cooking,” and we could all go home, except i am already home, which is the problem.
the exhausting part is being the entire food department. i decide what sounds good, notice what is missing, make the list, buy the ingredients, remember the ingredients exist, cook them before they become a damp historical record, portion the leftovers, wash the dishes, and later discover that the container i confidently labeled “lunch” contains half an onion and no lunch.
Photo: 94rain / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) when another person makes you food, even something ordinary, the meal arrives carrying a tiny amount of care. somebody noticed you would need to eat before you became irrationally angry at a drawer. they made a decision on your behalf. they performed several boring steps, and then handed you the result. the grilled cheese is not valuable because you lack the technical credentials to melt cheddar. it is valuable because, for fifteen minutes, you were not the project manager of your own continued existence.
independence has a lot of administrative fees
living alone is often described as either perfect freedom or a haunting black-and-white sequence from an antidepressant commercial. mostly, it is neither. mostly, it is nice, punctuated by moments when you would like another person to be in charge of one extremely small thing.
not your finances. not your emotional future. just lunch.
this is one of the quieter things people miss when they live by themselves: not constant company, but ambient care. a cup of coffee already started. somebody asking whether you want anything while they are up. leftovers saved because another person remembered you liked them. these gestures are so small that they barely register when they happen, and so large that their absence can become the entire shape of an afternoon.
Photo: Danbold / Wikimedia Commons (public domain) the standard advice is meal prep, which is practical, sensible, and emotionally identical to receiving a calendar invitation from your past self. i support meal prep. i have also opened a neatly organized container on wednesday and felt personally managed by the version of me who made it on sunday.
delivery solves a different problem. it gets food to the house, sometimes by showing a tiny bicycle circle making choices no human driver would make. but ordering does not quite reproduce the feeling either. the app has not been thinking about me. the app would sell the same pad thai to a raccoon with a valid credit card.
make somebody lunch
the response to my post made the request feel less like loneliness and more like a broadly neglected form of friendship. we have made dinner into an occasion and brunch into a municipal festival, but lunch remains a clerical task performed near a keyboard.
maybe “can i make you lunch?” should be a more common social offer. not a dinner party, not a reservation, and not an event requiring shoes that hurt. just come over. i have bread, you have soup, and between us we can briefly create a household where neither person has to do every job.
until then, i will continue cooking for one, which is still cooking for somebody. unfortunately, that somebody is an unreliable supervisor who keeps wandering into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, and acting surprised that no staff have arrived.
