Brotherhood of The Orb

Is it normal to have so much die off?

ya! this happens as a succulent grows, the old bits naturally dry out as the succulent gets bigger + redirects the water to new growths. a lot of my succulents would look like this!

"Stop saying we'll survive this because Renee Good didn't!"

It's very important to talk about what happened to Renee Good, the horror this administration has inflicted upon the world, and how we got here. I do not, however, think it is ever ethical to essentially encourage suicidal thoughts and aggressively tell people things will never get better. In fact, things won't get better if everyone gives up and believes resistance is futile because we're all dead anyway. In addition, someone trying to talk themselves out of a dark place isn't necessarily undermining what happened to Renee, either. The people saying we'll survive are generally people who are scared and have taken Trump seriously for years, not the people who downplayed him before the election.

I'll say what I began saying in January of last year; if you're really in such a dark place, you have no right to drag others down with you. It's not "raising awareness" to scream at people trying to get through the day during very unsettling times. When you're telling people to stop even saying we'll survive, what are you actually doing? What are you accomplishing? If your answer is "being aggressively hopeless until my last breath", then go do that somewhere else.

Oh I definitely think part of this is that people really didn't believe things would get this bad, so they're having a delayed reaction and are feeling what we felt before or immediately after the election. There's a reason why I cried every day for about 3 months straight, but have shed few tears lately. I was actually just talking about that with my supervisor; she asked me if I'd seen what happened to Renee Good, and I said yes, and, "Some people really screwed up over a year ago and didn't think anything would fundamentally change. But I knew. That’s why I was crying my eyes out the next day and needed to go home from work."

She said, "Yes, I remember that." (She'd comforted me in that time. She'd just gotten citizenship, and despite her facing hardships in Algeria, I think she's shocked over the past year.)

But I'd also put myself back in therapy immediately after the election because I knew what a bad place I was in, and I didn't want this administration to kill me. We must live to see this end. We have to try, and we can't be dragged down by people who've given up. As I said many times, Trump 1.0 taught me that daily misery doesn't change current events, and only puts your own life on hold

I haven't said this before because I don't want to be misconstrued as undermining what's happening, but this is actually my take as well. The administration is WEAK. They're desperately trying to display strength, which is dangerous because they see violence as strength, but Renee's death only increased protests against ICE. You have people shouting at ICE, "You can't kill all of us!" People simply aren't going down without a fight. The National Guard was told to get out of the states that didn't request them (like CA). Resistance is much stronger now than it was this time last year; just think of how bleak things felt in January-February 2025. Trump is polling underwater on basically every issue, and not by a small amount. The administration keeps LOSING in a lot of ways. All their attempts to prosecute their enemies have been thrown out by courts thus far. They couldn't even keep Jimmy Kimmel off the air. They drastically lowered hiring standards and training times for ICE officers because they're NOT hitting their hiring goals and NOT hitting their deportation quotas. Democrats did very well in elections last year, and they could very well overperform this November in the midterms

Things have, indeed, gotten scarier as things fall apart more, but it doesn't mean they aren't falling apart. This will end. It's still a long road until the end, but we inch closer to the end every day. It doesn't mean bad things won't happen until then, but it means we need to keep trying to survive and looking forward to when he's gone forever and we can pick up the pieces

Additionally, "we will survive" does not mean "every individual person will survive." It means "the We will survive" -- that is, the community of people who care, the group of folks standing in solidarity with each other, the people fighting fiercely and closing ranks to protect the vulnerable. ICE has killed multiple people already, and any realistic perspective will admit that, barring some miracle, they will almost certainly kill more people before it's over.

But We will survive, because they cannot kill all of Us. The We is a living thing, a breathing and thinking organism, a greater body that is more than the sum of its parts. You and I are part of that body: If you survive, then We survive; if I survive, then We survive. So let's survive. They can't kill all of Us.

dry humping in its specificity as a term implies the existence of wet humping

not my best work

Okay, I am really obsessed with this joke. I literally reblog it every time I see it.

Really big problem: world hard cold and full of obligations, but duvet warm

In duvet: warm cozy. Everything as it should be

Outside duvet: debacle

Apparently ICE now has agents posing as utility workers to get into people's homes. The electric and gas companies have posted information on how to tell if it's one of their workers, and numbers to call to confirm whether they've sent someone to do utility work on your house.

Stay safe, friends.

Some people have shared stories of suspicious “sales representatives” knocking on homes, asking about the home owners and who lives there, fishing for phone numbers, but do not provide business cards, company id, company phone numbers, etc when asked.

They come in pairs, never one person though one may hag back a bit. They have been seen using cars with significantly tinted windows, no business logos anywhere on the vehicle, or parking close to the home they walked up to only to drive away right after without visiting other homes, almost as if they’re not real sales people.

True door to door salespeople need a sort of peddler’s license, subject to city and county law, to solicit at your door. You can ask to see this permit. If they don’t provide one or make an excuse, they are likely bogus.

They wear a jacket with a company logo but likely don’t wear name tags and the Don’t provide id.

Tell them you’ll call the company about a noncompliant representative. Make them leave. Better yet not to open the door to them, and tell them nothing.

Actual sales reps also generally do follow “no soliciting” signs. Be aware, be safe, don’t give out your information or that of others under duplicitous means.

THE advantage of memorizing poetry is that when somethings happening, maybe even you’re in a situation or a location, you can just go “ok. lady of shallott time” and boom. you reclaimed your mental space and attention for YOU for the next ten minutes

Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.

— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

i know this is humorous but! i learned from one of my college friends (who learned from a therapist) that reciting a poem you have memorized is a great grounding & focusing technique when you’re spiraling into anxiety or panic. i can personally attest that The Tyger has staved off several panic attacks.

so like if said “situation or location” is freaking you out really badly, “lady of shallott time” can help reclaim your mental health too

Ok everybody share what poems you can recite in case we’re trapped in an elevator.

I’ve got the first 42 lines of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, the first 10 lines of Beowulf in Old English, the first canto of Tolkien’s Lay of Beren and Luthien, and Sonnet XVI by Pablo Neruda (“I love the handful of the earth you are”). I used to have the Proem of the Kalevala but I’m a bit shaky on it it now and I think i’ve only got the first two sentences. Anda handful of others I half-remember which i could probably do if I were with someone else who half-remembered the same ones and we could prompt each other back and forth.

I do a slight variation on this where I recite chunks of plays/books/movies/songs in my head. The first act of Hamilton and the first act of Les Mis have gotten me through many a long stretch, and bits of Jeanette Winterson are my little momentary mental meditation stones, I just rub them around feel a bit more grounded.

The problem with giving advice to angry and suffering people is that rather frequently the thing they need to know to improve their position is the last thing they want to hear and not something they have the capacity to internalize or accept

Unfortunate truths you can tell people that would help if they could hear what it means and not just what it sounds like

This is the foundation of all hope btw. In the words of Tolkien, 'despair is for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.'

Analyzing the politics of a work that's meant to be apolitical is actually a really interesting exercise because it asks you to critically examine what the creator considers to be "political" in the first place. Which ideas are just How Things Are, and which ones are Political, and how is that influenced by the creator's beliefs?

Usually this just ends up with you looking like a moron btw

Angrily lashing out at the suggestion that it's possible to do basic media analysis was foundational to the ragebait ecosystem of the 2010s, from which we got basically the entire culture of modern far right politics, btw.

I genuinely believe myself and others are being so sincere and literal when we say TOUCH GRASS

I went outside and got an education, that's where I learned that you can obtain knowledge and insight through analytical methods, then noticed that some people who sit on the internet yelling at strangers get really mad about that constantly.

Avelo Airlines cuts ties with ICE, ends deportation flights - al.com

Avelo Airlines, the only commercial carrier believed to have been operating full deportation flights on a regular basis for the Trump administration, is ending its relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and will no longer charter those deportations.

The budget carrier signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security in April 2025 to operate ICE flights out of Arizona, drawing immediate protests and calls to boycott.

At the time, the airline acknowledged the decision may be controversial but said it was expected to support company expansion and job protection. However, after less than a year since inking the deal, Avelo has admitted that the program became too costly and complex to continue.

CEO Andrew Levy acknowledged the backlash in an email to employees late Tuesday.

“We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy,” Levy wrote in the email, obtained by CNBC.

“The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.” (aph)

KEEP PROTESTING AND KEEP MOBILIZING. IT WORKS. IT IS NOT HOPELESS AND IT WORKS.

I'm recovering from an injury and not feeling particularly eloquent, but trust me on this: Everyone should watch M*A*S*H. It's progressive and fun and funny and unabashedly horny. If you haven't seen it before, take this as your sign to go watch a few episodes.

The setting for the show is an American military post. Despite being a sitcom, the American military is also the primary antagonist of the show.

It's like the exact opposite of copaganda. Almost everyone hates being there and is constantly trying to leave, and any character who believes in the US military is a total tool.

I love uninstalling shit. Get out of my computer.

i also love using task manager to kill things! Cease this

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who's my best friend in the world and recently he was like "you're too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!" and I was like "a niece might be more up my alley" and he just got more excited and said "ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful"

OP the tags!!