Lucilla Piccari
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lucillapiccari.bsky.social
Lucilla Piccari
@lucillapiccari.bsky.social
1.4K followers 530 following 640 posts
MD, PhD, Pulmonologist, #PulmonaryHypertension specialist @researchmar.bsky.social, registries&data, environmental activist. She/Her. I claim my opinions 😊
Also @LucillaPiccari@med-mastodon.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
ryanmarino.bsky.social
You are infinitely closer to struggling than you ever will be to billionaires
James Van Der Beek Auctioning Off Dawson’s Creek Items Amid Cancer Journey
James Van Der Beek has put several Dawson’s Creek and Varsity Blues items up for auction as he continues to battle stage 3 colon cancer.
www.eonline.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
nsousanis.bsky.social
So geeked to hold this gem by @tomgauld.bsky.social in my hands! While I’ve read most of these in @newscientist.com great to have them in one sharp book! I’m particularly fond of the ones where he plays with comics conceptually, but all of them are brilliant & funny, he never misses! Good stuff!
Cover to physics for cars by tom Gauld. Pixie of Escher-esque impossible walk way with cats walking around all sides of it Three panel strip after Soren Kierkegaard. word balloons from a man moving from far right panel back to first balloons stacked so far back one reads first “life can only” “be understood” “backwards” and then a dog is walking from left to right through panels and it says in each panel respectively “but it” “must be” “lived forwards”. It is very clever use of space and the static-simultaneous nature of comics Comic strip of a single image - a big lab building upper left and. Path that two people are walking that loops out all up and to the right and returns to the building along the bottom and back up to it. It’s divided into panels mostly to show time passing. Text from characters, initially from inside the building where we can’t see them “nothings happening.” “Let’s take a walk.” Now outside “we can’t run this experiment forever.” The characters have turned back along the path toward the building “Good things come to those who wait.” “But how long do we wait?” Now nearly back to the building “let’s give it another try. I’ve got a good feeling.” “You said that last time.” A six panel comic, three across two tall. Title in first panel “overthinking” character walking far left of panel. Panel two same character advancing a bit, small thought balloon filled with lines that look like words. Third panel advance to middle of panel, bigger thought balloon, more filled with word like symbols. Panel four - character is paused, balloon is very large, filled with tons of text stuff that is written over the top of itself. Panel five, now character looks up at what was the word balloon but now looks like a dark textured cloud. Panel six, indeed it’s become a cloud and is now raining on the figure who is under an umbrella protected from the lines of rain from the cloud
November 14, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
williamripple.bsky.social
And we warned them with our new 2025 State of the Climate Report which you can check out here: doi.org/10.1093/bios...
November 14, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
mattgreencomedy.com
What exactly is the Chancellor going to do?
November 14, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
iwashyna.bsky.social
OMG, as a father, allow me to emphasize it is not ok for adult men to be into teen age girls, and if you are an adult rationalizing “15 year olds” as somehow ok:

You are gross

You need help

Stay the hell away from my children or my students
November 13, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
ryanmarino.bsky.social
Ventricular fibrillation is a condition where the heart stops pumping blood. It is 100% fatal within minutes without treatment. It is not something that “flares up.”
phillewis.bsky.social Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 1d
John Fetterman was taken to the hospital after suffering from a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and falling near his home
John Fetterman Hospitalized After Fall
www.huffpost.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
georgemonbiot.bsky.social
Climate breakdown is driven by a storm of lies. This lying is systemic, funded and coordinated, and operates across almost all media, old and new.
This week's column argues that we cannot fight the climate crisis without also fighting the epistemic crisis.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage | George Monbiot
The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 6:47 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
brenttoderian.bsky.social
Climate knowledge has been taken hostage to prevent climate action.

“It didn’t happen by accident. It’s the product of a deliberate and systematic assault on knowledge by some of the richest people on Earth. Preventing climate breakdown means protecting ourselves from the storm of lies.”
Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage | George Monbiot
The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
brenttoderian.bsky.social
True story.

Via @xkcd.com
Cartoon showing how each time vehicles have gotten bigger, it’s led other people to think their vehicles need to be bigger too. The final panel shows people discussing that they’ll need to install whirling spike clubs, or else be destroyed by other drivers…
November 14, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
petergleick.bsky.social
Dramatic increase in conflicts over #water in 2024 compared to previous years.

pacinst.org/announcement...
Bar chart of water conflicts by year from 2010 to 2024 showing dramatic increases. Each year is also broken out in three categories: water as a trigger, casualty, and weapon. Water as a casualty is the largest type of water conflict, followed by water as a trigger of violence. Data from the Pacific Institute Water Conflict Chronology database.
November 14, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
carolinelucas.bsky.social
Watching Labour MPs take a wrecking ball to nature makes me so angry & so sad. Their action tonight voting down amendments to the #PlanningBill intended to protect wildlife & habitats from destruction is so reckless & so counterproductive. People didn’t vote Labour for this 👇
Housing secretary tells Labour MPs to vote down planning bill amendment
Amendment restricts protection for animals to allow faster house building
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
beesincampanula.bsky.social
#PhantomsFriday The Flavian Amphitheater or Colosseum is associated with the ghost of Valeria Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius. Local legends suggest her restless spirit wanders the area searching for a lover…
View of the Colosseum from the Via dei Fori Imperiali beneath blue sky…
November 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
drlindseyfitz.bsky.social
The most helpful phrase of 2025 👇
Schrödinger’s Douchebag. A guy who says offensive things and decides whether he was joking based on the reaction of people around him.
November 13, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
beebrookshire.bsky.social
One of the ones blaring that correlation and causation are the same. One of the ones parroting nonsensical claims about Tylenol.

LLMs are, in science writing as in everything else, representing the average to below average of what exists. They're mediocre at best. Why would you want to BE that?
November 13, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
beebrookshire.bsky.social
I also note what they found: that the LLM can rehash, summarize, stuff that's already been written.

It cannot interpret. It can't put the correct context around the work.

Basically, ChatGPT in some ways CAN be a science writer: It will be one of the SHITTY ONES.
November 13, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
moiradonegan.bsky.social
There’s definitely a socialism of fools going on—men are being offered domination over women so that they won’t notice how brutally and sadistically they themselves are being dominated by the rich.
November 13, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
in-otter-news.bsky.social
Please can you all stop calling him Steve. This phase will probably only last a day or two. Thanks.
November 13, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
in-otter-news.bsky.social
Steve contemplates shenanigans
November 13, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
datadrivenmd.social
::Simon and Garfunkel harmonizing:: 🎶 Hello insomnia , my old friend
I've come to scroll with you again
Because a feed softly creeping
Left its snark while I was sleeping
And the feed that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence 🎶
datadrivenmd.social Jorge A. Caballero, MD @datadrivenmd.social · Dec 7
"Why am I always so tired? He wondered to himself as he lay in bed scrolling through Bluesky shortly after midnight
December 12, 2024 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
davidrvetter.bsky.social
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says that the British Medical Association, which represents Britain's doctors, is a threat to the NHS. Streeting took a record £225k from private healthcare-related donors in just two years.
British Medical Association ‘threat to future of NHS’, says Streeting ahead of doctors’ strike
Health secretary accuses doctors’ union of ‘cartel-like behaviour’ and tells it to ‘get real’ over pay demands
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
kevinjkircher.com
The final version of this paper is paywalled, but if anyone's interested, here is an open-access preprint:

kevinjkircher.com/wp-content/u...
November 11, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
bmj.com
Children are now using e-cigarettes at higher rates than adults.

Tom Gatehouse and colleagues argue for an approach to regulation that prioritises children’s rights and protects them
www.bmj.com/content/391/...
Teenager vaping
November 13, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
kaminskimed.bsky.social
time to end the exploitation!
Researchers should get a part of the profits make on their publications. Reviewers should be paid for reviewing. Simple.
#Pay4MyPapers #Pay4PeerReview
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 3d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 13, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
profmarciniak.bsky.social
Despicable nicotine-addiction industry being its terrible itself, as usual. This time with a neocolonial spin.
November 13, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Reposted by Lucilla Piccari
grahamwalkernrg.bsky.social
Moreover, "it's more complicated than that" and "adults in the room" is just as much a projected image as "man of the people, common sense." It's down to voters to discern the authenticity of those positions.
November 13, 2025 at 7:56 AM