taco 'bout it

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    it wasn’t.

    the ball is wobbling and i would like to contribute

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

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

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

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

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

    an old internet habit that can stay

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

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

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

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

    Featured image: Evan-Amos / source. Public domain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    he did not have the full itinerary

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

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

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

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

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

    i can miss that life without owing it an apology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • five years is not a deadline for missing someone

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    five years is not a deadline for missing someone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    reasonable advice. deeply inconvenient.

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

    healing is not an uninstall button

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

    that has not been my experience.

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

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

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

    the calendar keeps making plans for people who are gone

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

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

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

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

    i do not need to grade this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • a stray dog showed up and kindness immediately became logistics

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    a stray dog showed up and kindness immediately became logistics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    the first job is not adoption

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

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

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

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

    there is probably a person already having the worst night

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

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

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

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

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

    “no-kill” is not a magic word

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

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

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

    kindness needs a handoff

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

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

    update: the handoff happened

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

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

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

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

  • ·

    Is Matt Mathews funny or just racist?

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

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

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

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

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    the traitors: new blood has turned vibes into forensic evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

    everyone arrived knowing what kind of show this is

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

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

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

    not the dog groomer vibe reader #TheTraitorsUS

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

    conversation is now a crime scene

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

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

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

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

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

    the civilians make the machinery easier to see

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

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

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

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

  • the water does not expire. the bottle is making other plans.

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    the water does not expire. the bottle is making other plans.

    the date on bottled water is not a chemical trapdoor. it is a reminder that the container and the garage have been… Tune in & read →

    i found an expiration date on bottled water and immediately needed to know which part of this arrangement had developed mortality.

    wait, is there an expiration date on bottled water?

    — schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-20T21:38:56.942Z

    the obvious answer would be that the water expires. this is not the answer. water has been doing its little two-hydrogens-and-an-oxygen routine for billions of years and is not suddenly defeated by a date printed on a case from Costco.

    the less comforting answer is that the water comes with a container, and the container has been participating the entire time.

    the date is not a chemical trapdoor

    a printed date does not mark the evening when a bottle crosses an invisible line and becomes poison at midnight. federal bottled-water rules are built around the source, processing, and allowable levels of contaminants; the FDA standard does not describe a universal moment when bottled water “expires.”

    that does not make the date decorative. it is a practical boundary for the product as the manufacturer intended it to taste and be stored. Ready.gov tells people building an emergency supply to keep commercially bottled water in its original sealed container, in a cool, dark place, and to observe the printed date. the advice is less “the water dies Tuesday” and more “please do not make a warm garage part of the recipe.”

    so my first theory—that the date is an estimate of the exact day plastic has leached enough into the water to become unacceptable—was too neat. chemistry has declined to use a shared calendar.

    Close-up of water droplets and condensation on the side of a clear plastic bottle
    the bottle is not a passive observer. Photo by NIKHIL / Unsplash.

    the bottle is still chemistry

    plastic packaging can release substances into water over time. the important correction is that this is not a simple countdown with one universal safe side and one universal bad side. bottle material, brand, temperature, storage time, light, and the water itself can all affect migration.

    temperature matters a lot. a 2017 study of 66 bottled-water products found significantly more antimony—a substance used in manufacturing PET plastic—in bottles stored at 50°C than at 24°C. the samples kept at 24°C were below the guidelines used in the study; one measurement at 50°C exceeded the World Health Organization value the researchers cited. another study found that both storage time and higher temperature increased antimony migration.

    this means “how long has it been there?” is only one question. “where has it been there?” may be the louder one. a bottle spending six months in a cool pantry and a bottle spending six months auditioning for the role of dashboard casserole are not having the same experience.

    and once the seal is broken, we have introduced a new cast: hands, mouths, air, whatever has been living in the cupholder. at that point the issue is no longer only the bottle’s long-term relationship with its contents. it is also that the tiny closed system is not closed anymore.

    Green reusable stainless steel water bottle standing on a white table
    a reusable bottle does not abolish cleaning, but it does let you stop wondering how long a disposable bottle has been slow-roasting. Photo by Joan Tran / Unsplash.

    the garage is a coauthor

    the useful answer is boring in the way most survival advice is boring: keep sealed bottled water somewhere cool and dark. rotate an emergency supply by the printed date. do not treat the trunk of a car as a climate-controlled beverage cellar. if a bottle is damaged, cloudy, smells wrong, or tastes wrong, it has already submitted its resignation.

    this is not because the label knows the exact molecular future. it is because a date gives us one manageable instruction for a product whose actual aging depends on several variables nobody is tracking at home.

    so: does bottled water expire?

    not like milk. not all at once. and not separately from the bottle that has been sitting around it, quietly making plans.

    Featured image: charlesdeluvio / Unsplash. Body images by NIKHIL and Joan Tran, also under the Unsplash License.

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

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    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… Tune in & read →

    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.

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    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. Tune in & read →

    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.