Ricky B

@ambivalentricky

Music, puzzles, writing, politics I guess. Future former lawyer. Beginner chess player. Disdained as an "egghead" by Matt Taibbi. Banned from Great Clips 7/20/24. He / him.

518 Following763 Followers10,222 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and ambivalentricky.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· 1d

What’s in the box part 2: a selection of 15 autographed Interscope, not Merge, CDs, circa 2008. I assume someone from Merge said “anyone want a box of random promo stuff” and I said “sure”

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· 1d

What’s in the box part 1: a Matt Pond PA sweatshirt

a Matt Pond PA sweatshirt, black hooded with pocket

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· 2d

Mystery of the morning: I found an unopened 5-pound box from @mergerecords.bsky.social mailed to me in 2009. What’s in it? I don’t think it’s thirty CDs — not quite heavy enough. Reasonable and creatively unreasonable answers welcome.

An unopened cardboard box ordinarily used to mail 30 CDs; in fact, the label on the side indicates that it was to be used to mail 30 copies of Julian Koster’s solo album, which I don’t think is what’s in the box

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 19

this took some calculation - definitely not the kind of car I ordinarily pay attention to #cardle Cardle 4/5

cardle - game in which you guess make model and year of a car - results showing I got it in 4 guesses

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 18

it really says something when I average 9 posts a day (oof) and that still doesn't put me in the highest Velocity category (IMO all Bluesky Elders also deserve Veteran status)

"bluesky license" - a pseudo-passport with various metrics specific to one's Bluesky account, like "Web of Trust" and "Engagement"

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 18

This is the first time I've heard of irreconcilable brands as grounds for divorce. (What kind of "insider" describes someone's life in terms of "authentic branding"?)

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 16

Help me with some research: WITHOUT stating its name in a reply, hit "like" if you know the name by which this meme image is commonly known.

a white cat being held in the air by its owner

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 13

there's checkmated and there's extremely checkmated #chess

checkmate in which black's queen and two rooks are lined up in a battery that controls like 50% of the squares on the board

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 12

tfw very important to locate the toy you hid under the rug 1 minute ago

young ginger and white cat with only his haunches and tail sticking out from under a throw rug

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 12

"in his spare time, he likes to dress up like a police officer and try to pull young women over late at night"

photo of a young man in a suit and tie with a dead-eyed sociopath vibe

Jesse Hughes is a JD candidate at Liberty University School of Law and a legal research assistant at the Standing for Freedom Center at Liberty University. He previously received a B.S. in Law & Policy and a B.A. in History from Liberty.

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 12

why are this guy's hands so big media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/imag...

J Chase Davis, a white guy in a black Western shirt, holding a copy of his book "Offensive Chrstianity" which has a knight or something on the cover. He is on a riverbank and appears to have a small head, narrow shoulders, and huge hands.

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 11

never give up #chess

screenshot of a chess dot com game in which my opponent had two queens and still stalemated

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 9

Without downloading new pics, what is it like to date or be married to you? This is the confirmation from when I had to pay $45 at RDU because I forgot my Real ID at home, which also required me to go through security twice, resulting in my coming within 5 minutes of missing our flight.

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 4

I don't understand how you can think Zinn refuses to notice race and supports white supremacy given this, one of many similar, excerpts from the same APHOTUS chapter, in which he repeatedly quotes Douglass and du Bois approvingly. (One of my issues with Zinn to follow.)

Despite the apparent hopelessness of this situation, there were black leaders who thought Booker T. Washington wrong in advocating caution and moderation. John Hope, a young black man in Georgia, who heard Washington's Cotton Exposition speech, told students at a Negro college in Nashville, Tennessee:

If we are not striving for equality, in heaven's name for what are we living? I regard it as cowardly and dishonest for any of our colored men to tell white people or colored people that we are not struggling for equality. . . . Yes, my friends, I want equality. Nothing less. . . . Now catch your breath, for I am going to use an adjective: I am going to say we demand social equality.... I am no wild beast, nor am I an unclean thing.
Rise, Brothers! Come let us possess this land. ... Be discontented. Be dissatisfied. ... Be as restless as the tempestuous billows on the boundless sea. Let your discontent break mountain-high against the wall of prejudice, and swamp it to the very foundation.. . .

Another black man, who came to teach at Atlanta University, W. E. B. Du Bois, saw the late- nineteenth-century betrayal of the Negro as part of a larger happening in the United States, something happening not only to poor blacks but to poor whites. In his book Black Reconstruction, written in 1935, he said:

God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and blind with tears and blood. For there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor.

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Jun 3

#brilliant #chess (note again: brilliant seems to = sacrifice a minor piece to win a major piece)

"brilliant" move in which I fork the black king and queen with a knight such that if black takes the knight with a pawn, I win the queen anyway

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 21

"Think back to your childhood. Do you remember when the anxiety started?"

Witchy-Poo from "H.R. Pufnstuf," the 30-minute bad acid trip for children

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 20

My "brilliant"-getting theory demonstrated in the game I just played. 2 #brilliant moves... 65% accuracy. #chess

chess dot com "brilliant" #1 for trying to sacrifice a bishop in order to pin the queen

chess dot com "brilliant" #2 for succeeding in sacrificing that bishop in order to pin the queen

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 18

if not "Howard the Duck," then this

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 6

Good Trailcams image of two large birds of prey and they look like one of them is yelling at the other

screenshot of the couple at the Pacers game in Brooklyn at the point at which the woman is saying "what the fuck are you talking about" - which the Good Trailcams photo resembles a good deal

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 5

that came together nicely - 12 moves #chess

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 4

Right - cell phone bans in schools didn't affect test scores because they still have Chromebooks and attention spans drastically shortened by out-of-school device use. And it's very likely suspensions went up because phone-addicted kids violated the cell phone bans. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/u...

Even so, the bans had a “close to zero” effect on test scores, according to the paper. Test scores are affected by many factors, including the stability of students’ home lives and the quality of teaching and curriculum. The researchers also noted that once cellphones had been banned, students might have been distracted by other forms of technology, such as laptops, which are ubiquitous in American classrooms.

The bans also did not improve student attendance or perceptions of online bullying. And in the first year after strict bans went into place, student suspensions increased by an average of 16 percent — a large and troubling change.

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 4

Photo from a development in Pittsboro from today's NYT (bottom) uncanny resemblance

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 4

"a common hate symbol" what's distinctive about it is that it is in 3/4 perspective and the skull has a big forehead and prominent coronal sutures (I did have to look that term up) Neo-Nazis know the difference between it and a generic skull and crossbones when they go to the tattoo parlor

ADL hate symbol database entry on the Totenkopf

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 4

It was a feature of the SS uniform! I'm sorry you don't know more about 20th century history but some of us do upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· May 2

Dang clumsy driverless cars

NYT headline: "Cornell President’s Car Bumps Into Students After Confrontation Over Gaza"

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Apr 30

I have playlists called "All Time" and "All Time But Too Much" (favorite songs that are too emotionally affecting for me to handle when I'm doing normal things). The former is limited to one song per artist, which distorts it a little. But here's a screenshot of an excerpt

favorite songs list including Devo, Wire, Chaka Khan, Prince

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Apr 30

Advertise your account with a Simpsons image

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Apr 30

#chess sackin' the queen

chess dot com game review with a "brilliant" queen sacrifice by me in the interest of promoting a pawn

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Apr 29

#chess

Ricky B@ambivalentricky· Apr 28

Meanwhile what has been getting built is whatever this is