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Joe Rybicki

@joerybicki.com
491 followers 167 following 3.9K posts

He/him. Writer, video game consultant, virtual tourist. Former Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. Other credits: higround.net/#bylines

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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 16h
The cover of The Official Street Atlas of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, 2002-2003 Edition. It is a blazing red book with black lettering and beige highlights, with a drawing of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower in the center.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 29/09/2026
Computer! Enhance!
A quote from the above article with the following sentience highlighted: “None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.”The word “sole”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 24/09/2026
Jordan Peele in a football jersey and slightly curled hair, mouth slightly open. Below, it says “OZAMATAZ BUCKSHANK”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 23/09/2026
George Michael Bluth, an awkward young man in an oddly printed button-down, short-sleeved shirt, says, “What a fun, sexy time for you.”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 22/09/2026
I gotchu fam
A young John Scalzi, with a full head of hair and glasses, looks at the camera with his head tilted quizzically. He is sitting in 1.) the audience of the Oprah Winfrey show, and 2.) a Cosby sweater.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 16/09/2026
BREAKING: Cap’n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters will no longer be opening for Ed Sheeran
A band of men dressed as sailors play in front of a Shrimp Shack
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 14/09/2026
Oh! But this is one (of four) of our actual cats. Charlie was acquired the day after the 2024 elections. He was an emotional support kitten.
A tiny black kitten with a white blaze on his chest looks to the right adorably. He is unbearably floofy.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 14/09/2026
Goddamn @chuckwendig.bsky.social is good at this. THE CALAMITIES summons this so well
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 12/09/2026
This isn’t my cat, but I love it anyway (Seen in June in Chonqing Old Town, China)
A gray-striped cat with a white face is curled up on its side on a tiny lounge chair made of blue patterned cloth on a folding light-colored wood frame. Its eyes are closed, its paws are all mushed together, and its basically the most adorable thing possible.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 25/08/2026
My build seems to think it has international language support already… (Seeing this all over, attached to fully English messages.) (Not just Luxembourgish, to be clear.) Link to post: bsky.app/profile/natedimeo.bsky.soc…
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 12/08/2026
Here’s what it looked like when I tried the first time:
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 08/08/2026
Oh actually the main page doesn’t either:
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 08/08/2026
I dig this a lot, but fyi the box score doesn’t scale with system-set font size:
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 08/08/2026
As a timeline cleanse, sharing this awesome beetlebutt (mainly for @tkingfisher.com in case she has some insight into their reproductive habits that she’d like to share)
A greenish beetle is shown in closeup so tight you can see the weave of the bar towel it’s hanging out on. It is egg-shaped (kinda tick-shaped tbh) but has these awesome horizontal brown and green striations across its butt, except with a black void dominating the center, looking like someone stabbed it with a fountain pen
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 07/08/2026
Me, something like eight years later:
A closeup of my right pinkie finger. Its tip is noticeably less rounded on the right side.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 07/08/2026
Somewhat related: Google Maps traffic just before 5 pm on April 8, 2024 (by me) (fine, and google)
A Google map of most of the Eastern half of the U.S., with traffic turned on. It shows patches of yellow and red indicating slow traffic in a noticeable distribution, angling from northern Vermont and Montreal in the northeast going southwest through Cleveland, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Memphis, and northwest Arkansas. Most major cities outside this corridor show much smaller areas of red or yellow shading
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 05/08/2026
As proof that the writers of our timeline are getting lazy, our hometown mall is now an Amazon warehouse. But when it was rockin, it was glorious:
A shot of Randall Park Mall outside Cleveland Ohio. Pic is taken from the upper level and shows the weird crisscrossing ramps that ran through the middle of the place. The carpet is a deep red and one can make out Cinema I II III, which from the outside appears to be the size of a Spencer’s. Below is a glimpse of a kind of amphitheater with curved stairs surrounding a stage with mustard-colored carpet. Above is an abstract hanging structure consisting of huge panes of glass connected in random positions. Not pictured: the smell of the Hot Dog on a Stick joint just out of frame.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 27/07/2026
What’s your sign?
A triangular yellow caution sign in China depicts a car falling off a roadway into water.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 26/07/2026
A black screen with HIDEO in the upper left in monochrome-monitor green
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 24/07/2026
Decided to make myself feel worse by looking up that Cedar Point commercial but instead I got to feel worse by discovering anew how badly Google fucking sucks now (apparently Gemini thinks “sad” means “scary”??) Got so frustrated I decided to google it. It’s beyond parody at this point:
A screenshot of a Google search for “why is google fucking useless now” returns the following result:

Al Overview:
“Google search feels useless now due to overwhelming ads, aggressive SEO spam, and intrusive Al overviews that push real content down the page.

Ads and Monetization
• Top of the page: The entire viewable screen is often taken up by sponsored ads and shopping carousels disguised as organic results.

• Revenue priority: Maximizing ad clicks drives changes, prioritizing commercial profit over user efficiency…”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 21/07/2026
@boostblue.bsky.social Here’s another, maybe you can catch it. Screenshot below if not
A screenshot of a response to a post seemingly presented as a standalone post
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 21/07/2026
I mean
A Google search for “your mouth my chicken chaucer” (having already been corrected from Google’s assumption that “chaucer” means “chausser”) returns the following “AI Summary”:

“It sounds like you are referencing the clever rooster Chauntecleer tricking the fox in The Nun's Priest's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer! In the poem, the fox opens his mouth to boast just as Chauntecleer cleverly flies away. 

If you are instead looking to make a delicious, mouth-watering Chicken Chasseur (the classic French hunter's stew) for your own mouth, here are the core ingredients you'll need: & Nicky's Kitchen Sanctuary
• Chicken: 4-6 bone-in, skin-on thighs or drumsticks
• Veggies: Sliced mushrooms, chopped shallots or onion, minced garlic…”

For the record, “Your mouth, my chicken!” is a *direct quote* from *The Miller’s Tale* in *Chaucer’s* Canterbury Tales
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 11/07/2026
God Dammit
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 09/07/2026
Seriously! Look at this dumb shit! You know how many people came to this show? Literally as many as the venue could legally hold. The fuck outta here with that “gotta have an artist” bullshit.
A flyer for a punk rock show in 1995. It is printed on green paper and features the following words, printed in all caps, times new Roman, on a shitty inkjet printer, and pasted over a map of Ohio:

WHATEVER…

THE REAL CD/LP RELEASE SHOW

FRIDAY, AUGUST 11th

PEABODY'S DOWNUNDER

WITH DREYFUS
AND OTHERS?

SHOW STARTS AT 9:00pm

$3.00 PLUS THAT 21 AND UNDER CHARGE

NO MAN, WOMEN OR CHILD SHOULD MISS THIS ONE!!

ROCK AND ROLL LIVES
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 27/06/2026
Principal Skinner says “Am I so out of touch? …No, it’s the voters who are wrong”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 26/06/2026
This is magnificent. I immediately screen-shotted this to share with non-bsky friends. Including it here with alt-text in case you wanna do the same
A Bluesky post from Aaron Rupar, @atrupar.com, shows a video from CSPAN of Representative Tom Emmer, R, an old white man in a tan blazer and blue tie. The post quotes him as follows: "Minnesotans are so afraid that you're gonna call us a racist, you're gonna call us an Islamophobe. You know what? I'm done being even the least bit careful. Somalis don't assimilate. And if they don't assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from."

Brandon Friedman, @brandonfriedman.bsky.social, quote-posts the above and says “21st century America is a multiracial democracy whose commerce, culture and cuisine reflect the influence of immigrants from every country on earth. The only people seemingly unable to assimilate into this society are white Republicans.”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 24/06/2026
Principal Skinner says “Am I so out of touch? …No, it’s the voters who are wrong.”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 09/06/2026
Joins this one for dumb music pun memes, a surprisingly robust genre
Three otters pop out of a water chute. Above it reads “hello from the”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 25/05/2026
Mustachioed man with a drumstick flute says “Bitch”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 21/05/2026
What an interesting choice of word. I would have gone with “thanks to” From: www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-582241…
A screenshot of a segment from the linked article. The relevant passage reads "’Gen Z, despite being more familiar with Al, is the most pessimistic about jobs, with 81% saying that Al will decrease job opportunities,’ said Chetan
Jaiswal, an associate professor of computer science and associate chair of the Department of Computing at Quinnipiac who also worked on the poll.”

The word “despite” is highlighted.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 20/05/2026
this is a cat picture check point. relinquish the most recent cat picture on your phone.
Two black cats and a tuxedo cat sit in front of a sliding screen door. The middle one is gazing up raptly at something flying by. Not pictured: the cutest little chest blaze and white tail-tip of the foreground feline
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 19/05/2026
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 18/05/2026
2080 (the number of hours in a year of work at 40 hours a week)

Divided by

8 (the number of hours in a standard work day)

Equals

260 (the number of days most people who work full-time work)

*to be clear a lot of folks get 10 to 30 days of paid time off, so for the sake of completeness:

260-30 = 230.

And for further completeness:

230 - 140 = 90.

And just to close the circle:

90 days of work is 4.14 months at 40 hours a week.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 08/05/2026
Give me your favorite non-Trek performance from a Star Trek actor
Dwight Schultz (“Reginald Barclay”) as Howlin’ Mad Murdock on The A-Team, a slightly crazed-looking white man wearing a black baseball cap, the then-ubiquitous headphones with the orange foam earpieces, and a battered leather bomber jacket, Hawaiian shirt, khakis and worn black hi-top Chucks, sits on a car hood with his fingers pressed together as though molding something out of clay. Or, more likely, C4.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 02/05/2026
“Guys, think we should bother hiring a copy editor?” “Nah.” “Nah, nah.” “NA NA NA NAAAAAHH”
A screenshot of a Kotaku headline reading “Sony Set Pay [sic] $7.8 Million To PlayStation Users After Jude [sic] Approves Preliminary Settlement In PSN Digital Games Class Action Lawsuit”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 29/04/2026
Without downloading anything new, where are you, mentally?
Irving from Severance, a graying man with a mustache and a sharp blue suit, says “Let’s burn this place to the ground”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 16/04/2026
Here’s how it looks in Boost on iPad:
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 15/04/2026
Seymour Skinner ponders whether he may be wrong about Catholic doctrine, then concludes that no, it is the FUCKING POPE who is wrong.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 14/04/2026
A cartoon of a That Fuckin Guy popping out of a well to say “I am very intelligent”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 11/04/2026
Integrity, Houston: have you flushed your DNS cache
Integrity, Houston: Try turning it upside down?
Integrity, Houston: Can you confirm you have full connectivity vis a vis Satphone and electrical outlet?
Integrity, Houston: How much rice do you have onboard?
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 10/04/2026
You rock! Y'know, since ur already under the hood...I've been keeping a list of stuff to report, and just realized if I keep waiting until you don't have other stuff to deal with it'll just get longer. So, attaching it as a photo. Items are roughly ranked by importance (to me!😁). All iPad/landscape
Boost Blue
- Headlines and subheds in link cards are truncated in the main feed. They're slightly less truncated in post view but they still don't wrap gracefully.
- If you tap on the start of a thread, you'll only see the first 7 posts, with no indication that the seventh post isn't the final one in the thread. If you do tap on the seventh and there are more, Boost will load only another 7, and so on. (Tapping late in a thread will allow the user to scroll all the way up to the beginning though.)
- Tapping on the Home icon from the main feed scrolls all the way up-which is not totally unexpected! —but it also clears the read position, which makes it possible for the user to accidentally screw themselves out of one of Boost's marquee features with a single tap. I'd suggest changing this behavior so that tapping on the Home icon either does nothing when in the main feed, or scrolls to the top but keeps the Read badge up so that tapping on that gets you back to where you were. (In other words, don't treat a scroll to the top as "reading" all the posts it scrolls by.)
- When replying, post being replied to is truncated after a few lines, and you can't scroll down to see the whole message. Also can't scroll up to view earlier posts in a thread you're replying to.
- Can't zoom in on image when writing alt text
- Random stuff triggers the link card. This seems to have calmed down a bit but it still happens occasionally. Main culprit at the moment is two periods.
- Spellcheck weirdly random: Misspelled words are rarely (it ever?) underlined, and seem to not be autocorrected either. Tapping on them will bring up suggestions for corrections though.
- Exiting full screen image or video is unreliable. The target for the X seems weirdly small, and flicking the media away seems to work unpredictably (this may have improved? Or maybe I just got used to it)
- A hash in a link adds a phantom second instance at the end (see the link in my profile for example)
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 03/04/2026
For anyone who shares my affliction
A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman from of the Orion spacecraft's window after completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026. The image features two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (upper left) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 31/03/2026
Three Peeps—one pink, one white, and one baby blue—stand next to each other. Two hold trans pride flags. The text reads “I suooort our trans peeps”

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. I see you and I love you.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 31/03/2026
(iPad, latest version, both landscape and portrait, reply to a longish post to see it immediately’
This exact skeet, except the word “immediately” is blocked by a large button that reads “Anyone can reply”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 31/03/2026
Sorry, gotta add one to your list:
A screenshot of this exact skeet being composed, except a large button that reads “Anyone can reply” blocks most of the single sentence
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 28/03/2026
Share a magazine cover you love
The cover of the November 2004 issue of The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. It features an angled stream of exclamation marks in the style of those seen above guards’ heads when they detect Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series. The main text on the cover reads “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 21/03/2026
So, my kid had an assignment for her Mandarin class to make a Chinese dish at home, and she chose Hóng Shāo Ròu, and friends?
We fucking killed it. Picture shows a plate with red braised pork belly on a bed of noodles, accompanied by steamed broccolini in an almost otherworldly green. And y’all? It tasted better than it looked.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 19/03/2026
The cover of the version of Thexder I bought with my own damn money from Radio Shack for our Tandy 1000. It depicts a robot and a massively late-‘80s vibe.
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 16/03/2026
vibe check
John Turturro’s character Irving on Severance saying “let’s burn this place to the ground”
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Joe Rybicki @joerybicki.com · 16/03/2026
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