Barb Brooks 🌻

@brbeezy on Mastodon
Procrastinating poet.
Also, apparently a snoot.
AA 4-20-13

[The Moth Returns @MothReturns]

“My bots! My precious bots!”

What an asshole.

[Angry Staffer @Angry_Staffer]

It’s been almost 90 days since the American people have seen or heard from Mitch McConnell.

We’re still paying his salary.

[Lakota Man @LakotaMan1]

ICE must be stopped.

ICE must be brought to justice.

By any means necessary.

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Stephen Black @stephenRB4]

🙏🏻

[♡⃝ @wine_x13]

There’s a mom at our school drop-off. Messy bun, always three minutes late, kids usually eating dry cereal out of a Ziploc. The "Pinterest moms" always whispered about her. I honestly felt a little bad for her.

Then one day at the playground, my neurodivergent son had a massive, violent sensory meltdown. I’m sitting in the dirt, crying, totally paralyzed.

The "perfect" moms just stared and pulled their kids away.
Suddenly, she’s there. The messy mom.

She drops her giant bag, sits right in the dirt next to us, pulls a heavy sensory toy out of her purse, and calmly shields my son from the crowd. No panic. No judgment. He regulated in three minutes. I was speechless.

We had coffee after. She told me her house is a disaster and she has severe ADHD, but she knows exactly what a nervous system collapse looks like.

I asked her how she deals with the judgmental stares from the other moms.

She took a sip of her cold coffee and said: "Perfect moms know how to bake organic muffins. Chaotic moms know how to survive the trenches."

Every time I see her running late now, I just smile. Girls, be like the messy mom. Stop apologizing for your chaos.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Someone in my replies thought King Arthur was invented for the 2004 movie starring Clive Owen. He was not aware of the centuries of previous stories about Camelot. Every day we are exposed to people who are less literate than a child in 1992 quoting Monty Python.

[໊ @oockreg]

Anonymous

My 13-year-old son just said, “Mum, I think I have a good idea. The people in America protesting ICE should call themselves LAVA — Local And Very Angry. And lava melts ice. You should post that and see if it's a good idea"

We’re about as far away from the United States as you can get, here in Perth, Western Australia. But I hope the people over there know that even a young boy on the other side of the world can see when something isn’t right.

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

Beware of any Christian movement that acts as though the world is full of enemies to be destroyed rather than full of neighbors to be loved.

[Shipwreck @shipwreckshow]

At this point..

[The Halfway Post @HalfwayPost]

BREAKING: Donald Trump is reportedly terrified that Europeans will subpoena all his bank records from the European banks he had to use after every US bank blacklisted him following decades of rampant fraud, and the Europeans will see all his suspicious transactions with Epstein.

[ONLY POEMS @onlypoemsmag]

This magnificent poem by Todd Dillard is easily one of my favorite poems of all time. What a masterclass in line-breaks and meaning-making! Also a brilliant balancing act of abstractions and concrete specific imagery. Just read this with class — I had perfect attendance and it was a perfect class. The students were thrilled and had so much to say. Feels really good to see a bunch of 18-year-olds get so excited about poetry.

[Jennifer Bendery @jbendery]

Some good news: A little girl from the same Minneapolis-area school district as Liam Conejo Ramos was released from a Texas ICE detention facility late Tuesday.

Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, a 4th grader, had been locked up there with her mom since Jan. 6. https://t.co/nqE1Wf4UoN

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

People in concentration camps being exposed to deadly diseases where have I heard this before

[Eliza Jabore BACKSTABBERS available now! @KupcakeProse]

First draft: be a storyteller
Second draft: be a writer
Third draft: be a reader

This is my process. What’s yours?

[Jacob Brogan @Jacob_Brogan]

I'm heartbroken by the Post's decision to eliminate its books coverage. The actual fact of my job aside, the existence of a standalone books section felt like a real celebration of a culture of literacy, dialogue, and even debate. It was a place to discover and celebrate.

[Jonathan Allen @alldspeed]

@GovPressOffice I can play Karoline Leavitt's game.

[Barb Brooks 🌻 @BeginToSing]

@_TheBlueTorch @Darth_Pingu I'm watching it this weekend!

[𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚌 𝙲𝚑𝚞𝚗𝚐𝚞𝚜 🍄 @anactualwalnut]

When I was a teenager I got in a fight and had to go through a juvenile detention board panel to avoid a charge on my permanent record, despite the fact I didn’t even start the fight or throw the first punch, because my “reaction was not equal”, meaning (from what I understood and remember from the time) I reacted too violently to the altercation. I (allegedly) took it to a level it didn’t need to go to because all the other girl did was pull my hair and swing on me. I should’ve “de escalated” “walked away” etc. according to the police who watched the footage (there was a camera in the hallway), but instead I… did not do that. lol.

Anyway, I say this because the police told me, as a teenage girl, with zero training on any de escalating tactics, who wasn’t even the initial aggressor, I should’ve either just not reacted, walked away, or mentally calculated what an equal reaction should’ve been in the midst of all this.

But asking that of full grown adult trained federal agents is asking too much.

Please spare me

[Niko @NikoLeMieux]

Yesterday as I was walking through Minneapolis with a friend I saw this Lexus parked terribly and commented to him: “get a load of this asshole’s terrible parking.” By complete serendipity, as if the universe itself was saying "be kinder with your spoken thoughts," right at that moment I heard a voice say “hey that’s my car, ICE grabbed me, I’m so sorry!” come from the passenger of a Jeep slowly passing by; the Jeep driver said she was the sister of the Lexus’ owner and that the two of them had just come back from picking her up from Federal detention. I went to go talk to the Lexus’ driver, but first I read the note on the windshield:

“THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN BY ICE. Please don’t hit or tow.” Neighbors put that there, and put a tarp over the window that ICE broke open so snow wouldn’t get in.

The Lexus driver, a short, brown haired white woman told me she lived in the area and was driving through looking for parking, when armed ICE agents speedily blocked off the street in front of her, and swarmed the white pickup truck in front of her grabbing its driver. She said people came from throughout the neighborhood with whistles to record them grabbing that driver, and as she was trying to leave, ICE agents swarmed her vehicle as well and proceeded to open her window and door and remove her from her car, slamming her facedown in the street. She said a Federal agent entered her vehicle and parked it like this, before taking her away. I don’t know the story of the pickup driver.

I'll be honest, I didn't really believe what I was hearing at first until she showed me the video that a neighbor filmed, confirming the whole story. I asked her to airdrop it to me so I could make this post.

This woman was just driving and minding her business one moment, and the next she was snatched, she told me that they said she was "obstructing an investigation." After 24 hours in Federal custody, they released her with only the white shirt she was wearing when I met her, into the -8F cold where her sister was waiting, and they didn't give her back her car keys. She came to make sure her vehicle was still there.

There's a lot of people on this platform making all sorts of excuses for the Federal government's despicable behavior in Minneapolis, but what it comes down to is this: they are out of control. They are Out. Of. Control.

This woman's story that I saw firsthand is emblematic of the institutional rot at the core of DHS, CBP, and ICE. The agents involved in both shootings this month were 8- and 10-year veterans, not untrained amateurs. There have been three homicides in Minneapolis thus far in 2026- 66% of them have been US citizens murdered by the Federal government. My city is being subjected to a full-fledged occupation by lawless, unprofessional, un-American thugs. They have gone far beyond their stated mission of removing violent criminals and illegal aliens. They have all of us looking at every SUV, every vehicle with out-of-state plates, every vehicle with more than 2 men in it with caution, scrutiny, and concern. Many of my friends have bought guns or have gone to get their conceal carry permits, to stay safe from their own government because it's better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.

Minneapolis will survive this and will come out stronger for it, because we learned in 2020 that there's no one coming to save us, it's up to us to show up for our friends and neighbors. But people need to know that if the Federal government are doing this to us: You're not safe. You're next.