Category: Everything

  • edible owns edible.com and edibles.com, which feels like cheating

    edible owns edible.com and edibles.com, which feels like cheating

    the fruit bouquet company has acquired both the singular and plural forms of an ordinary adjective. language remains technically available to the… Read more →

    i learned yesterday that Edible Arrangements is now simply Edible, which already feels like a company winning an argument nobody else knew had started.

    Edible arrangements changed their name to just Edible? And they got that dot com? feels illegal

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-19T14:37:32.017Z

    it also owns edible.com. not edible arrangements dot com. not send fruit dot biz. the ordinary adjective. the entire concept of being safe to eat now routes directly to a company that can deliver a pineapple cut into the shape of a daisy.

    this felt illegal to me, but it turns out i had not yet reached the most suspicious part.

    the rebrand has been happening very patiently

    to be fair, this is not new. according to Edible’s own history, the company began using the shorter name in 2021. in 2023, it announced a broader visual overhaul built around a new logo, packaging, storefronts, and the reminder that it sells more than fruit bouquets now.

    Red Edible gift boxes sit beside occasion cards reading I love you, congrats, feel better, and happy birthday.
    The newer Edible identity on gift packaging. Photo: Edible.

    the company described itself as a modern gifting destination with fruit arrangements, cookies, brownies, cakes, flowers, and dessert boards. removing “Arrangements” makes strategic sense. the old name had become less a description of the inventory and more a legally binding promise that somebody in the building would keep putting cantaloupe on sticks.

    still, there is confidence, and then there is deciding your company is called Edible. it is the branding equivalent of opening a shoe store called Wearable and waiting for search engines to accept the new government.

    the plural is doing something completely different

    a reply to my Bluesky post joked that weed companies must be begging for the domain. delightful news: the same corporate family already thought of that.

    Edible Brands launched Edibles.com as a marketplace for hemp-derived THC products, then opened its first physical Edibles.com store in Atlanta this year. the singular website sells chocolate-covered strawberries and birthday bouquets. the plural website sells gummies and THC drinks. one letter separates “send this to your aunt” from “do not make additional plans tonight.”

    A brick storefront displays an EDIBLES.COM sign above its windows and an orange circular EDIBLES sign near the entrance.
    The first Edibles.com storefront in Atlanta. Photo: Courtesy of Edible Brands, via Axios Atlanta.

    these are separate businesses under the same parent company, which is an important distinction for anyone worried that the strawberry bouquet may now be capable of perceiving time. the fruit remains fruit. the gummies have their own website, branding, store, and requirement that customers be 21 or older.

    but the domain strategy is still astonishing. most companies spend millions trying to own one useful word in the public imagination. Edible Brands looked at the English language and apparently selected both grammatical quantities.

    there is an edible for that, apparently

    the company’s 2023 campaign used the line “there’s an Edible for that,” which now reads less like advertising and more like a quiet jurisdictional claim.

    birthday? Edible. apology? Edible. low-dose alternative to alcohol? Edibles. a search for the basic definition of something that will not poison you? please select which corporate division best matches your needs.

    i respect the audacity. if a company called Tables bought table.com and then quietly opened tables.com to sell psychedelic furniture, i would also have to write about it.

    for now, Edible owns the fruit, Edibles owns the gummies, and the dictionary appears to be operating under a licensing agreement. feels illegal. apparently is not.


    Sources and image attribution: Edible’s 2023 brand-identity announcement; Edible’s company-name explainer; Axios Atlanta on the first Edibles.com store. Featured and packaging imagery supplied by Edible; Edibles.com storefront photo courtesy of Edible Brands via Axios. Images used editorially for commentary.

  • 1
    i thought “call me maybe” was a silly one-hit wonder. then E•MO•TION happened.

    i thought “call me maybe” was a silly one-hit wonder. then E•MO•TION happened.

    fifteen years after “Call Me Maybe,” i would like to formally acknowledge that i misread the situation. badly. Read more →

    There are songs you hear and immediately understand as the beginning of something. “Call Me Maybe” was not that song for me.

    I heard it, thought well, that is certainly an aggressively catchy little song, filed Carly Rae Jepsen under “probably one of those people we will all remember from one very specific summer,” and went on with my life.

    This was, in retrospect, an embarrassing administrative error.

    https://bsky.app/profile/popcrave.com/post/3mvwcqazy422u
    Call Me Maybe single artwork showing Carly Rae Jepsen crouched against a light background beside the song title in blue script.
    “Call Me Maybe” single artwork. © 604 Records / School Boy Records; used editorially.

    “Call Me Maybe” is approaching fifteen years old, which is rude for several reasons, but mostly because I remember treating it like the platonic ideal of a novelty-adjacent pop smash: perfect, enormous, unavoidable, and probably not the beginning of a long-term relationship.

    the song i thought was the whole story

    The funny thing is that I did not even dislike “Call Me Maybe.” Disliking it would have required immunity to one of the most efficient pop hooks ever constructed, which I did not possess. I just thought I understood the assignment. Here was the goofy, charming one-hit wonder of the moment. We would all yell the chorus for a year or two, then eventually hear it in a grocery store and briefly remember 2012.

    Carly, meanwhile, was apparently busy becoming one of the people who would most permanently alter what I wanted from pop music.

    She has talked recently about how strange the scale of “Call Me Maybe” felt from her side, and how much it made her want to prove that its playful, quirky sweetness was not the only thing she could do. That makes sense to me now because the next chapter of her career feels almost impossibly clear in hindsight: the giant hit opened the door, and then she used the door to leave the room everybody expected her to stay in.

    and then came E•MO•TION

    E•MO•TION album cover showing Carly Rae Jepsen seated in a striped sweater against a dark background beneath the album title.
    E•MO•TION album artwork. © 604 Records / Interscope / School Boy Records; via Cover Art Archive, used editorially.

    Then, in 2015, E•MO•TION happened.

    I do not mean “I heard an album I liked.” I mean one of those records that quietly reorganizes the shelves in your brain. Suddenly pop could be this glossy and this specific at the same time. It could sound enormous without sanding off the weird little emotional details. It could be ecstatic, embarrassing, wounded, horny, lonely, and incredibly precise about all of it.

    “Run Away with Me” alone should probably qualify as corrective action against my earlier one-hit-wonder diagnosis. That opening saxophone arrives like somebody has kicked open a fire door to the most emotionally dangerous Target commercial ever made, and then somehow the song gets bigger.

    But the thing that made E•MO•TION stick was that it was not one perfect single surrounded by supporting documents. “Your Type.” “All That.” “Boy Problems.” “Warm Blood.” “When I Needed You.” The whole album felt like discovering there was an entire city behind a storefront I had casually walked past three years earlier.

    And once that happened, “Call Me Maybe” changed too. The silly song did not become less silly. It became better. It stopped looking like an accidental novelty and started looking like one very bright piece of the same songwriting brain that would later make all of this other stuff I loved.

    being wrong is occasionally a gift

    There is something genuinely fun about being this wrong about an artist. Pop fandom can make everybody feel like they need to have arrived first, recognized the genius immediately, preserved the correct old Tumblr post as documentary evidence, etc. I did not. I heard “Call Me Maybe” and basically said, “cute, anyway,” and had to be dragged several years into the future before understanding what was happening.

    I am glad I was wrong.

    Fifteen years later, Carly is still here, and the one-hit-wonder story now looks almost comically inadequate. E•MO•TION became a modern pop landmark, the B-sides became events of their own, Dedicated became another whole vocabulary, “The Loneliest Time” somehow became both a great Carly song and a TikTok dance, and now Day and Night has arrived as a 24-track double album because apparently restraint remains optional.

    Even better, Carly has said that “Call Me Maybe” is no longer the biggest moment at her own shows. There is something lovely about that. The song that once threatened to define her career forever now gets to simply be what it was all along: a ridiculously good pop song that introduced a lot of us to someone we did not understand yet.

    So: happy almost-fifteenth birthday to “Call Me Maybe,” and congratulations to Carly Rae Jepsen on proving my 2012 music criticism should not be entered into evidence.

    Sources: ELLE, Universal Music Canada, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s official site.

  • surely, we shouldn’t be worried about this infringement… right? 😰

    “We feel obliged to speak up about the injustice and violation of our rights by not being allowed to promote a feminist… Read more →

    Poster for Virginia Wolf play in Spain

    “We feel obliged to speak up about the injustice and violation of our rights by not being allowed to promote a feminist work, specifically a work by Virginia Woolf who was born in 1882.

    What can we do? As a theatre we have to publicise our activities … and we have to make use of social media so that people are aware of cultural activities.”

    Source: Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism.

  • The Next Chapter for Bungie?

    Bungie leadership committed to restoring specific content to Destiny 2 that had previously been removed, though they did not provide a definitive… Read more →

    Bungie leadership committed to restoring specific content to Destiny 2 that had previously been removed, though they did not provide a definitive list of names or a specific release timeline.

    Source: The Next Chapter for Bungie – YouTube

  • mahna mahna remains a complete operating system

    a man in a green suit begins with one little noise, two pink creatures answer him, and television becomes briefly perfect. Source:… Read more →

    a man in a green suit begins with one little noise, two pink creatures answer him, and television becomes briefly perfect.

    Source: YouTube

  • the map must be optimistic because the food is not

    the map must be optimistic because the food is not

    the driver is “nearby” in the same way a distant thunderstorm is technically in the area. Read more →

    delivery tracking is one of the few consumer technologies designed to make a perfectly manageable wait feel like a military operation. the driver has accepted the order. the driver is waiting. the driver is apparently moving in a direction that suggests an entirely different meal.

    Person holding a smartphone outdoors
    Image: GB News

    the map is always serene about this. a little icon glides around with the confidence of a person who has never had to find an apartment complex after dark. meanwhile, the food is becoming a philosophical concept.

    i do not need a detailed route. i need one honest sentence: ‘there has been a development.’ maybe the driver is on a bike. maybe the restaurant has entered a fugue state. maybe the app has decided miles are a kind of vibe.

    Portable external drive on a desk
    Image: Seagate

    i will still order again, obviously. there are some systems we criticize because we believe they can be better, and some we criticize while opening them for the fourth time.

  • the housewives anniversary trip is a hostile group project with luggage

    the housewives anniversary trip is a hostile group project with luggage

    seven veteran Housewives, five cities, one traveling jurisdictional dispute, and Teresa waiting patiently for the next euphemism to receive technical support. Read more →

    there are television shows with plots, and then there are television shows where seven women who have each spent years learning how to seize a scene are placed on a bus and asked to celebrate institutional history.

    ultimate girls trip roaring 20th might be the best tv show I’ve ever seen? just everyone hating everyone and about every 16 minutes they have to explain a sex euphemism to teressa

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-14T05:03:14.953Z

    The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th may be the best version of the second thing Bravo has ever made. everyone hates everyone, every city supplies a new ceremonial reason to reopen an old wound, and approximately every sixteen minutes somebody has to explain a sex euphemism to Teresa Giudice.

    this is not a criticism. this is the format achieving consciousness.

    the trip has no neutral territory

    The seven Roaring 20th cast members pose together in colorful vacation clothes and sunglasses aboard a boat.
    The Roaring 20th cast takes the anniversary trip on the road. Photo: Bravo.

    The season’s official structure is a tour through the franchise’s history: Orange County, Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Miami, and New York. Bravo describes the core cast as seven “franchise-defining” Housewives—Lisa Barlow, Porsha Williams, Kyle Richards, Luann de Lesseps, Vicki Gunvalson, Teresa Giudice, and Gizelle Bryant—with other familiar faces appearing along the route.

    on paper, this is an anniversary celebration. onscreen, it is a traveling jurisdictional dispute. every stop gives somebody home-field advantage and everybody else a fresh opportunity to resent it. nostalgia arrives carrying a seating chart.

    the casting is almost mathematically hostile. these are not seven people selected because they will naturally bond. they are seven people selected because each believes, with years of supporting footage, that she understands how a Housewives scene is supposed to work. put them together and every lunch becomes a writers’ room where nobody has agreed who is showrunner.

    everyone is producing, including the person denying she is producing

    episode six, “Cockies and Conversation,” is where the machinery becomes especially visible. the Miami stop includes an argument about Lisa being late, another argument about whether Lisa talks to bloggers, Vicki’s gastrointestinal situation, Luann interrupting a toast about sisterhood, and Porsha repeatedly trying to redirect traffic like the only crossing guard assigned to an eight-lane intersection.

    Lisa Barlow speaks with other Housewives during episode six of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th.
    Lisa Barlow during “Cockies and Conversation.” Photo: Bravo, via Vulture.

    Vulture’s recap describes the cast as reaching the point in a vacation where everyone is exhausted and patience has become a limited natural resource. that exhaustion is exactly why the episode works for me. nobody has enough energy left to pretend these conversations are spontaneous, but everybody still has enough professional instinct to keep the scene alive.

    Gizelle introduces an accusation. Lisa rejects the premise. Teresa locates Lisa almost immediately when she leaves to cry. Luann enters each silence like she has been summoned by a small bell only she can hear. Vicki tries to deliver a toast while the room behaves as though the toast is a public comment period.

    the show is not hiding the labor of reality television anymore. it is letting us watch seven veteran employees conduct an increasingly hostile peer review.

    Teresa is the audience, somehow

    Teresa’s role in all of this is essential because she keeps reacting to language like it has arrived without documentation. somebody says something filthy. the group pauses. Teresa processes the phrase. a colleague provides technical support. television resumes.

    after twenty years of Housewives, this is the kind of ritual the franchise can now build around itself. the joke is not simply that Teresa does not know a euphemism. the joke is that everyone else knows she will not know it, the editors know we know, and the explanation becomes a tiny recurring ceremony. oral history, but make it deeply unhelpful.

    the anniversary works because nobody can behave at it

    Bravo’s official language promises nostalgia, heartfelt revelations, effortless humor, and “larger-than-life dynamics.” that is accurate in the same way “weather event” is accurate. the appeal is not that the women gather to honor twenty years of television with dignity. the appeal is that dignity keeps booking a later flight.

    Roaring 20th understands that the Housewives legacy is not a collection of isolated iconic moments. it is a workplace culture. alliances, grudges, catchphrases, self-production, selective memory, and the unshakable belief that the other person should apologize first have all been standardized across franchises.

    so yes, everyone is hating everyone. the trip keeps moving. Teresa will require another definition shortly. this may be the finest commemorative programming the institution could have produced.


    Sources and image attribution: Bravo’s official Roaring 20th first look; Vulture’s episode-six recap. Promotional and episode imagery from Bravo, used editorially for commentary.

  • streaming has turned watching tv into unpaid market research

    streaming has turned watching tv into unpaid market research

    streaming has trained viewers to treat every premiere like a performance review—and every show they love like an unpaid internship. Read more →

    last night, four days after The Paper dropped its entire second season, I started watching because I wanted to. I also started watching because some small, unpaid Peacock employee living inside my brain had begun shouting that the show needed my numbers immediately.

    why do I feel forced to watch streaming shows i like within the first week they’re out for n fear that low first week numbers will cause the algorithm to cancel it?

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-14T00:30:53.244Z

    this is a strange new relationship with television. I am no longer simply deciding whether I feel like watching a show. I am being asked, or at least gently haunted, to demonstrate that the show deserves to continue existing.

    the premiere is now a performance review

    The Paper released all ten season-two episodes on Peacock on September 9. That is convenient if you want to spend a weekend at the Toledo Truth Teller. It is less convenient if your preferred television schedule is “eventually, after I finish the other eleven things everyone released on Thursday.”

    A weekly show can slowly become part of your life. A binge release arrives like a pallet on the loading dock. Please process the complete shipment while it is still considered culturally fresh.

    Netflix engagement report graphic with a collage of streaming titles
    Netflix’s 2026 engagement report artwork. Image: Netflix.

    Streamers do not all disclose the same decision-making formula, and one household pressing play four days late is not a tiny executioner standing beside a cancellation button. Still, the industry has trained us to understand viewing as a vote. In its July 2026 engagement report, Netflix described engagement around the moment someone chooses a title and stays to watch; it reported more than 97 billion hours watched in the first half of the year.

    The numbers get enormous very quickly. Nielsen’s 2026 midyear streaming report ranks successful shows in billions of minutes and describes a new class of originals through their measured viewing. That is useful industry data. It also means viewers now encounter television surrounded by the language of quarterly results.

    Nielsen chart ranking the top overall streaming titles by minutes viewed in the first half of 2026
    Nielsen’s top overall streaming titles for the first half of 2026. Image: Nielsen.

    fandom has become an unpaid internship

    If you like a small comedy, a queer show, a weird genre series, or anything else that does not arrive pre-certified as a global event, watching can feel less like leisure and more like constituent services. You watch early. You let the credits run. You tell friends. You make a post. You consider putting “stakeholder engagement” on LinkedIn.

    The platform does not need to send a push notification saying this program’s continued employment depends on you. We have seen enough beloved shows vanish after one or two seasons to write the notification ourselves.

    And because the actual renewal calculus is private, there is no moment when the assignment is complete. Was starting within four days fast enough? Do I need to finish this weekend? Does rewatching help? Was pausing to make dinner an act of industrial sabotage?

    I would like to return to merely watching television

    I do not want every show I like to become a civic obligation. I want to watch The Paper because Sabrina Impacciatore is doing something ungovernable on my television, not because I have appointed myself to Peacock’s programming committee.

    But I did start season two. four days after release. while publicly complaining about feeling forced to start season two.

    the algorithm will be pleased to note that its employee remains highly engaged.

    Images from Peacock/NBCUniversal, Netflix, and Nielsen, used editorially.

  • the group chat is a municipal service

    the group chat is a municipal service

    somebody has to announce they have arrived, somebody has to react with a heart, and somebody has to send the screenshot. Read more →

    the group chat is where adulthood quietly moved its public square. not the glamorous parts, obviously. the group chat is largely weather complaints, grocery photos, and the collective management of a restaurant reservation nobody wanted to make.

    Friends talking around a phone
    Image: HealthX

    it still performs essential services. it witnesses a bad day. it confirms that a suspicious text is suspicious. it keeps a small but functional archive of jokes that would otherwise have evaporated the moment they were said.

    there is always a person who posts the news, a person who posts the meme about the news, and a person who arrives six hours later with a very sincere question that was answered directly above them. democracy survives anyway.

    Friends standing outdoors with phones
    Image: GB News

    maybe that is why i am protective of it. the group chat asks very little: show up when you can, say something strange, and do not make the shared calendar a hostage situation.

  • the local file has better bedside manner

    the local file has better bedside manner

    the cloud keeps promising my movie collection is safe, then asks me to download it before i can watch it. Read more →

    the modern arrangement for owning a video is very polite until you ask it to behave like ownership. the file is in the cloud. the cloud is everywhere. the cloud will absolutely need several minutes alone with the file before it can show it to you.

    External hard drive on a desk
    Image: Xataka

    this is why a local library still feels faintly revolutionary. not because i am trying to recreate a server room in my apartment, although any external hard drive immediately develops the emotional gravity of a server room. it is because pressing play should not begin a negotiation.

    i like a service that remembers where i was, offers subtitles, and does not make me think about codecs. i also like knowing that the thing i saved is still there if a licensing deal, a redesign, or a very confident progress bar changes its mind.

    Portable Seagate external drives
    Image: Seagate

    the local file is not glamorous. it is just sitting there, ready when asked. frankly, that is more intimacy than most platforms offer.