Despite being Archelos' home plane, I noticed a distinct lack of Turtlefolks on Bloomburrow- even including the commander set they did not even get a one-off card. Additionally, not a single art in the set depict one, and the closest we got was a Frogfolk wearing a turtle shell (in my opinion looks a little morbid to be honest). Which leads me to ask, did something happen to them?

Frogs and Turtles were the two front runners for green/blue and Frogs won out. Bloomburrow does have one Turtle.

Was it ever considered for winter moon to have the “as long as this is untapped” clause that winter orb has? I know that having it would make moon way stronger, but it feels like it would’ve added a chefs kiss to the call back. It’s not there wasn’t enough space on the card.

R&D, in general, is not a fan of artifacts that shut off when tapped, so it’s not something we tend to add to cards.

With Winter Moon existing, how long until we get Blood Orb?

It’s only a matter of time. : )

I would like to invoke the sacred rite of birthday trivia to ask for any trivia on Borborygmos?

His name is an actual English word which means “a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.”Happy Birthday!

It's maybe a bit late to add my two cents on this topic, but I want to challenge the seeming consensus that the Brother's War set failed to appeal to new players in the pursuit of hitting the nostalgia of older players. I got into Magic when BRO was the latest set, knowing nothing about Magic story except the few tidbits I would absorb from my Vorthos friend, but all I needed to hear was "it's the heroes of the modern day traveling back in time to an ancient war from the early years of the game" to think "Woah. That's cool." It was a strong hook that gave me something cool to chew on, and I think it was a uniquely good jumping-on point to this last multi-year storyline. That's just my perspective as a completely new player, so I'd imagine players who's started a few sets earlier might have found it a bit jarring to jump focus from the modern characters they were starting to get attached to into a wildly different time and status quo, but I'd nonetheless challenge the wisdom that referencing Magic's history inherently turns off new, unfranchised players. Players are already intimidating by the massive size and scope of MtG across its 30-year history, but an invitation to understand and experience some of the big events they missed does a lot more to bring people in than to shut them out.

The set didn’t do quite as well as we’d hoped, but there is much debate as to why.

When/if: an artifact that "turns off" when it's tapped, like howling mine or winter orb? I know it's a holdover from old rules about continuous artifacts, but I wonder if there's any potential design space with it.

If. It’s not particularly fruitful design space.

Could a reprinted card get a description ability? Like if you reprint Borborygmos Enraged could his second ability where you discard a land to deal damage get the description of “throw rocks” or something like that?

In theory, flavor words can be added or removed, as they have no actual mechanical relevance.

Another Magic in pop culture, again on the Lateral podcast: on a question about other collectibles, the host brings up the story of a player who tore up a Chaos Orb to sprinkle it across the table as an example of collectibles that encourage their own destruction

Thanks for letting me know.

Can ability words be added/removed from cards for the sake of reprints? For example, "Tragic Slip" having it's Morbid tag removed in a set where that isn't a theme, or "Bone Picker" having Morbid added to it if you want to use it in a set where that's a theme.

Ability words can be removed/added. They don’t functionally impact a card.

What color should be able to arrange its own library? Black does it with Doomsday and sort of does it with Forbidden Crypt by rurning your graveyard into your library. But shouldn't this effect really have been in Blue?

Blue and black are the colors that manipulate the library. Unstable made a card called Hot Fix that (sort of) does this in white/blue.