taco 'bout it

Category: Everything

  • the marshmallow does not need you to defend its racist name

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    the marshmallow does not need you to defend its racist name

    a follow-up to the world’s most racist snack: chocolate, nostalgia, and the people making solidarity purchases on behalf of a confectionery label. Read more →

    There are two kinds of posts on this website: the ones I labored over like they were going to be taught in a seminar someday, and the ones where I embed a strange little video with a title that looks like it was generated by a haunted search bar.

    Guess which one Google decided it had opinions about.

    In July, I posted a short video about the chocolate-covered marshmallow treats that have, in different places and at different times, been sold under names built out of racist caricatures. It was mostly a “huh, that is bleak” drive-by. Then it started showing up in the site’s search data next to queries like most racist snack, racist snack name, and the world’s most racist snack. Not huge numbers, exactly, but it is now one of the little site’s more persistent visitors. Apparently this is what the people need from taco ’bout it: snack-based colonial hangovers.

    it’s a marshmallow, not an archival document

    The treat itself is straightforward: a biscuit or wafer base, a whipped marshmallow-ish center, and a chocolate coating. Depending on where you are, a perfectly normal name exists for it: Schokokuss (“chocolate kiss”), Schaumkuss (“foam kiss”), or simply chocolate-coated marshmallow treat.

    That is why the usual defense of “it’s just tradition” never quite works for me. Tradition is not a force of nature. It is a series of choices that people keep making because nobody has bothered to make a different one. We managed to put a marshmallow on a wafer and enrobe it in chocolate. Surely we can also call it a chocolate kiss without acting like someone has confiscated grandmother’s entire kitchen.

    But the older names that linger in parts of Europe are where it gets ugly. Variants translated to “Moor’s head,” “Negro’s kiss,” and other terms that turn an actual racial category—or an old colonial fantasy of one—into a cute little product description. The point was not just “it’s brown because chocolate.” The imagery attached to those names did the rest: Blackness reduced to a cartoon head, a dark coating, a novelty.

    A chocolate-coated vanilla foam sweet with its white filling and wafer base exposed.
    Photo: Tiia Monto / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    the weird part is how small the fix is

    No one is asking anyone to stop eating the thing. This is not a campaign against snacks, which would be both doomed and personally offensive to me. It is a request to stop using a name that makes a person’s identity into the punchline and then demanding everybody else treat the discomfort as an overreaction.

    And the replacement names are not even bad. “Chocolate kiss” is kind of sweet. “Foam kiss” has the energy of a discontinued 1980s perfume, but it is still leagues better than making a confectionery aisle reenact colonial racism. The food is the same food. The recipe has not been silenced. Nothing has been erased except the part nobody needed.

    There is a particular kind of nostalgia that mistakes familiarity for innocence. You grew up hearing a word, so it feels harmless; someone else hears the history packed into it, and suddenly the word is political. But it was already political. It just had the advantage of being old enough to pass as décor.

    anyway, congratulations to the algorithm

    So yes: the original video is a weirdly effective little piece of internet detritus. It points at something real, it has a title people are apparently compelled to type into a search engine, and now it has earned itself a follow-up post in which I get to say the obvious part out loud.

    If you want the snack, have the snack. Just call it a snack. We are all capable of surviving a product rename, even if the internet’s search habits suggest we may never stop being fascinated by the phrase “racist marshmallow.”

    Further reading: Swissinfo’s reporting on the Swiss debate and a 2019 study of media responses to the “Mohrenkopf” controversy.

  • i have started missing things that are still here

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    i have started missing things that are still here

    grief is not a loyalty program. there are no points for starting early, and no discount for suffering efficiently. Read more →

    there is a specific kind of emotional efficiency where you begin grieving something before it has actually left. the relationship is still technically happening. the dog is still asleep in the sun. the apartment still has your furniture in it. the television show has three episodes left. none of this stops your brain from dimming the lights and beginning the memorial slideshow.

    https://www.tumblr.com/schwegler/826976539914665984

    i reblogged this because “holy shit i love grieving things before they’re gone” is funny in the way that an accurate diagnosis becomes funny when somebody puts it in lowercase. the addition — “and grieving things that never even happened” — turns it from a personal habit into a complete operating model.

    the farewell tour begins immediately

    anticipatory grief is a real term. Cleveland Clinic describes it as grief that begins before a loss, often when someone knows a death or major change is coming. that is the serious, useful definition. the less clinical version is that the human brain sees an ending on the horizon and starts pre-sadness as if tickets might sell out.

    sometimes this prepares us. sometimes it lets us say what needs saying, pay attention, take pictures, or notice the ordinary details we would otherwise allow to pass without ceremony.

    sometimes it simply means we spend the final good month of something acting like its widower.

    An empty office chair positioned beside an elevator
    Photo: ParentingPatch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

    the cruel little trick is that grief feels productive. worry feels like vigilance, and sadness feels like proof that we understood the stakes. if i rehearse the loss thoroughly enough, perhaps the actual loss will arrive, review my preparation, and waive the fee.

    it never does. you can pay grief in advance, and it will still send the full invoice.

    the museum of things that never happened

    then there is the second category: grieving a future that existed entirely in draft form. a relationship that almost became something. a job you nearly got. the version of yourself who was definitely going to learn a language, move somewhere interesting, and own the correct number of plants.

    these losses are especially irritating because there is no clean object to mourn. nothing ended because nothing officially began. you are standing at the funeral of a hypothetical, and the hypothetical did not even have the courtesy to leave photographs.

    that does not make the feeling fake. imagined futures can occupy real space. we arrange decisions around them, furnish them, and begin living beside them. when they disappear, the vacancy is real even if the tenant never moved in.

    A solitary wooden bench beneath an autumn tree beside a misty lake
    Photo: Aaron Burden / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

    you are allowed to remain in the present tense

    i would love to claim that recognizing this habit has cured it. unfortunately, self-awareness is often just anxiety wearing a small employee badge. now i can grieve prematurely while also providing live commentary.

    the only useful correction i know is embarrassingly simple: if the thing is still here, let it be here. do not convert every good moment into future evidence that good moments once existed. do not force a person, place, pet, season, or version of yourself to become a memory while it is still trying to have lunch.

    and if the future you wanted never arrives, you can mourn it without arguing yourself into court over whether an imaginary event counts as a loss. the feeling already showed up. it has established residency. denying it will not make it return the keys.

    grief is not a loyalty program. there are no points for starting early, no discount for suffering efficiently, and no premium tier where you become immune to the ending. we may as well stop trying to beat it to the address.

    the thing is here until it is not. this is both the problem and, inconveniently, the whole gift.

  • ·

    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. Read more →

    a complete record of the human experience, if the human experience had three coffees, a sandwich, and absolutely no room for feedback.

    Source: YouTube

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    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… Read more →

    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

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    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. Read more →

    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.

    Jesus Christ: after a recent ruling by the Eighth Circuit that allowed Act 372 to take effect, an Arkansas county has banned all children from checking out any books in the adult section, bringing home any DVDs, or using the self-checkout kiosk in its public libraries.

    — Alex Ip 葉清霖 (@alexip718.com) 2026-09-07T08:02:48.458Z

    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.

    The brick Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library beneath bare trees, with white arched roof sections over its windows.
    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.

    Sunlight falls across a library aisle lined with tall shelves full of books.
    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

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    september, finally

    Read more →

    a hand holding Starbucks brand Pumpkin Spice Creamer
    a hand holding Starbucks brand Pumpkin Spice Creamer

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    🐰

    AI might tear the fabric of our society apart. But look at this bunny wearing a little hat! Read more →

    AI might tear the fabric of our society apart. But look at this bunny wearing a little hat!

  • voter registration has discovered audience targeting

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    voter registration has discovered audience targeting

    the voter-registration reminder has finally accepted that democracy may occasionally require a patriotic jockstrap. Read more →

    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.

    Man posing in a red, white, and blue jockstrap as part of a voter-registration reminder
    Image: tim-ee-sis on Tumblr
    https://www.tumblr.com/schwegler/826937809753505792

    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.

    Animated image of a shirtless man posing for a voter-registration reminder
    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

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    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. Read more →

    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.

    can't bring myself to throw away the two boxes of possibly-glass-contaminated outshine bars but am also too afraid to eat them

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-06T23:38:08.008Z

    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

    Outshine Grape frozen fruit bars in a purple six-count box, one of the products covered by the recall.
    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

    Outshine Watermelon frozen fruit bars in a pink-and-green six-count box, one of the products covered by the recall.
    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

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    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. Read more →

    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.

    you know what sucks the most about being an adult who lives alone? having to always make yourself foodi love cooking but would love for someone to make me lunch right now instead is, i guess, what i'm saying

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-05T17:51:17.327Z

    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.

    A homemade meal arranged on a plate
    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.

    A dining table set with plates, glasses, and silverware
    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.