Not P but DFW: a kind of brittlely tolerant homeostasis

[Mike Jing]

The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's essay *Consider the
Lobster*:

More concrete is the oral testimony of Dick, our florid and extremely
gregarious rental-car liaison,11 to the effect that PETA’s been around so
much during recent years that a kind of brittlely tolerant homeostasis now
obtains between the activists and the festival’s locals, e.g.: “We had some
incidents a couple years ago. One lady took most of her clothes off and
painted herself like a lobster, almost got herself arrested. But for the
most part they’re let alone. [Rapid series of small ambiguous laughs, which
with Dick happens a lot.] They do their thing and we do our thing.”

What does "brittlely tolerant" mean here, especially the "brittlely" part?