Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
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edrybicki.bsky.social
Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
@edrybicki.bsky.social
Semi-retired biotechnologist and virologist, interested in making vaccines, lover of 70s rock and hard SF. And good red wine. Posts are both personal and professional, and may include music and/or strong opinions. And possibly zombies.
Pinned
"Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology 7th Edition revised extensively by Ed Rybicki, is an easily accessible introduction to modern virology, presenting principles in a clear and concise manner."

**Selected for Doody’s Core Titles® 2024 in Microbiology**
www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128...
Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology
**Selected for Doody’s Core Titles® 2024 in Microbiology**Cann's Principles of Molecular Virology, Seventh Edition provides an easily access...
www.sciencedirect.com
I did this a while ago, but hey, if it introduces some more people to the Eclipse Trilogy by @johnshirley2024.bsky.social, then so much the better! 😁
November 27, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Prompted by @feralharp.bsky.social's recent comment on the radio show I described to him that I ran for a year in the mid-90s, here's a link to a description of Retroid Rock - and one of the tapes I made from it. Enjoy! edrybicki.wordpress.com/2025/11/27/r...
Retroid Rock
From mid 1995 to mid 1996, I hosted a weekly 2 hour music programme on University of Cape Town Radio: UCT Radio, FM 104.5 within about a 5 km radius of UCT Upper Campus. I called the programme &#82…
edrybicki.wordpress.com
November 27, 2025 at 10:49 AM
@penpensl.bsky.social Any connection to a certain editor? 😎
November 27, 2025 at 8:57 AM
You know how you Yanks say “No Kings!”? I appear to have adopted one today: King Chuck, to be precise 😁 I am now legally a soutpiel: one foot in S Africa and one in the UK.
November 27, 2025 at 8:52 AM
I review most of what I read on Kindle on the Amazon site - and I liked this last one 😁
November 27, 2025 at 8:44 AM
No comment 😎
November 27, 2025 at 7:21 AM
A disaster entirely of human making: incompetence and corruption have nuked S Africa’s ability to make animal vaccines, and inevitably a series of FMDV outbreaks followed - exacerbated by uncontrolled stock movement. Need new technology…! @isv-news.bsky.social www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...
Race to vaccinate 7.2 million cattle as foot-and-mouth crisis bites | Daily Maverick
<p>South Africa is rolling out a nationwide jab for its 7.2 million-strong cattle herd, in a bid to shut the gate on foot-and-mouth disease before more value escapes. The biosecurity blitz is aimed at...
www.dailymaverick.co.za
November 27, 2025 at 5:59 AM
For those who love rugby: about time!! www.dailymaverick.co.za/cartoon/2025...
Players | Daily Maverick
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www.dailymaverick.co.za
November 27, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
okay then - the lates dropped only a few short weeks ago - www.amazon.com/Winds-Four-Q... - take a look! (oh and BTW I did the embroidery that's on the cover, too :) )
November 27, 2025 at 4:09 AM
You’re as bad as @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social 😎
November 26, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
New Episode!

Challenging the NIH’s new “pandemic playbook” and COVID revisionism.

With the inimitable @angierasmussen.bsky.social & @codyjohnston.bsky.social

iTunes: tinyurl.com/yr4djnmc
Spotify: tinyurl.com/msnmprrm
November 26, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
I like the term "intercellular biodiversity" (much more than the old trope of "parasitism") #MicroSky
According to the microbial ecologist Puri López-García, pictured here at a salt flat in the Chilean Andes, some 25% to 50% of all bacterial cells may be parasites of other cells.
A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life | Quanta Magazine
The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.
www.quantamagazine.org
November 26, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Now for some sports news...
(this week's cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages)
November 24, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Sitting post-lunch, waiting to go in for an abdominal ultrasound, distracting myself with Jethro Tull’s Benefit. One of the finest proggish rock albums ever released. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW9_...
J̲e̲thro T̲ull - B̲e̲nefit (Full Album) 1970
YouTube video by Classic Rock
www.youtube.com
November 26, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
As an about-to-be British citizen, AND one with a Polish name, I endorse this view 😎
"When are we going to see tough choices for multi-millionaires and billionaires?"

@zackpolanski.bsky.social joins Good Morning Britain to discuss the Budget.
November 26, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
G&T’s GREATEST HITS: a compilation of the rockingest tunes from the first five years. Soon to be available on vinyl! Meanwhile … on.soundcloud.com/Wy30kggNQ8I6...
G&T’s Greatest Hits
A compilation of the best tunes from ‘Shaken & Stirred’ and ‘Flowers & Bromance. Soon to be out on vinyl.
soundcloud.com
November 26, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
To be fair, the citrus ones are also about sex and/or hobbits.
February 19, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Unraveling the mechanism behind the probable extinction of the B/Yamagata lineage of influenza B viruses

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Unraveling the mechanism behind the probable extinction of the B/Yamagata lineage of influenza B viruses - Nature Communications
Influenza B/Yamagata lineage has rarely been detected since COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions were introduced, while transmission of other influenza lineages resumed. Here, the authors investi...
www.nature.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
Since 2005, the number of wild and domesticated birds H5N1 has killed is greater than the combined human populations of the U.S. and Russia. On this week's episode, why this version of avian influenza won’t go away. bigpicturescience.org/episodes/flu...
November 24, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Just finished "The Green Man's Holiday" by Juliet E. McKenna. Same day I bought it. Meaning…they’re too damn short!! But I’m ready for the next one, @julietemckenna.bsky.social? And - excellent, BTW!!
November 25, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Ed Rybicki 🇿🇲🇿🇦🇬🇧🍷🚀
♬ Stuck in the middle with you ♪
November 25, 2025 at 5:57 PM
😳 TFW you make an ice coffee with an espresso and cold water, and discover you used sparkling water...even kept its bubbles!
November 25, 2025 at 2:39 PM