Petulant Skeptic
@petulantskeptic.bsky.social
📤 618
📥 173
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Pediatric intensivist. former Army officer. Husband. Father. Waffle expert. Opinionated.
pinned post!
Four rules of medicine: Give a shit Know your shit Take no shit Shit happens
over 1 year ago
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Was there ever a Bluesky discourse about the Netflix movie War Machine bc oh man. I just watched it and it was one of those rare masterpieces that’s so bad it horsehoes its way to being a great time to watch
2 days ago
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reposted by
Petulant Skeptic
SickosFC
3 days ago
Think your day is bad? What if you messed up Bucharest and Budapest?
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Petulant Skeptic
Aubrey Gilleran
3 days ago
I love that there's incontroverible proof Talarico is straight in this picture and it isn't the girlfriend.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Why isn't there a headline grabbing lawsuit about someone who claims to be Catholic being fired for refusing to use AI after the Pope's encyclical? Or is there and I just haven't seen it yet?
5 days ago
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About two years ago I stopped punishing my kids with time out (because it wasn't really working) and switched to having them run laps of our cul-de-sac (the worse the weather the better). We've since added push-ups, burpees, and wall sits My kids aren't better behaved now but they're much more fit
6 days ago
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Petulant Skeptic
Kail
6 days ago
Just when you thought you'd seen it all
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Petulant Skeptic
Eric Columbus
10 days ago
Sean Trende’s piece on his son’s last day of school is full of joy and sadness and love and is well worth your time.
www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/202...
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Petulant Skeptic
Trish Greenhalgh
10 days ago
Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed.
slate.com/technology/2...
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Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.
https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-children-how-to-know-when-someone-is-in-trouble-in-the-water.html
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I love that this Thailand itinerary article in the NYT has a photo of the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho despite there being numerous signs within Wat Pho asking people not to take pictures, particularly of the reclining Buddha. (I have a photo of the reclining Buddha from my honeymoon)
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The Ultimate 10-Day Thailand Itinerary, With Options for Saving or Splurging
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/t-magazine/thailand-travel-itinerary-bangkok-chiang-mai-phuket.html
13 days ago
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Going to cause so much constipation from all the generic Miralax people didn't know they were drinking in their tap water.
add a skeleton here at some point
14 days ago
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I just found out that Washington will let me customize my license plate with medals and awards from my military service and I am extremely tempted to pay the $19 to get a National Defense Service Medal emblem license plate
14 days ago
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LLMs are very good for information transforms (a term of art I picked up from electronic health literature where info is in one place / format and you need it in a different one). It parsed the Excel spreadsheet with my schedule on it and reliably created ics files for import into my actual calendar
14 days ago
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Destroyed myself in the gym as punishment for being lazy yesterday which means I'm going to be sore af tomorrow which means that I'll do nothing or something easy which means I'll repeat this whole cycle for awhile because I am an idiot
14 days ago
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If I ever find the guy who hung all the doors in my house during its remodel before we bought it I am going to punch him in the mouth. They drilled every pilot hole for every interior hinge ~1/64" too wide, so every hinge is in the process of its screws loosening and needing me to fix it
15 days ago
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Cool. I have no doubt that SCOTUS will find a way to neuter this though.
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Hawaii Just Found a Way to Keep Corporations Out of Politics - The American Prospect
A new law makes clear that corporations derive their powers from states, and they don’t necessarily include the right to spend on elections.
https://prospect.org/2026/05/18/hawaii-state-legislature-citizens-united-corporations-politics/
15 days ago
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Saw an IG post that reminded me of this time I was a research assistant in a chemistry lab and we had a bunch of liquid helium running through some tubing and there was a metal connector. It would ice up and drip onto the counter. We were speculating about what it was so put a cup under it to catch…
16 days ago
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I would rather give a Nigerian call center access to my bank accounts.
add a skeleton here at some point
16 days ago
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reposted by
Petulant Skeptic
Frankly Very Boring Popehat
16 days ago
ALSO I HEAR THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE A BLACK PERSON ON THE NEW X-FILES. NOW MULDER AND SCULLY WANDER AROUND WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY AND NEVER ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING AND CAN’T EXPLAIN WHAT THEY DO. THAT IS A FUCKIN WHITE MAN’S JOB
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I don't think people are reckoning with what a military looks like if the only people who join are true believers in its most mistaken uses. How much capability would the military be deprived of constituted that way? Don't we want the best and brightest and most capable effecting our national will?
17 days ago
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I am absolutely gobsmacked by the number of current and former service members on my feed right now self flagellating about how it was their own fault they served in a military that was used in ways they disagree with. Leaders who misuse the military are responsible for those choices!
17 days ago
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Petulant Skeptic
I fundamentally reject the idea that whether or not one joins the military should be a referendum on its past, present, or future use. Service members deserve thoughtful teammates and leaders of all persuasions and society's leaders owe it to service members to use their service thoughtfully.
17 days ago
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Looking at Afghanistan health statistics on OurWorldInData and it says that Afghanistan presently spends 23% of its GDP on health care and while I know their GDP is quite low… can anyone explain it? Are they capturing the outlays of NGOs and dividing by Afghan GDP?
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Afghanistan - Health Country Profile
Data on Afghanistan’s life expectancy, deaths, risk factors, and healthcare system.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/health/afghanistan#how-much-does-afghanistan-spend-on-healthcare-as-a-share-of-gdp
17 days ago
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TIL Washington State banned noncompetes as of June 30 2027. 🎉
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HB 1155 Washington State Legislature
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1155&Initiative=false&Year=2025
17 days ago
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I do not know a single intensivist who is not deeply aware of the interstitum and its ability to move fluid around the body, yet the NYT is talking about its "discovery" as a brand new thing that's upending medicine. I don't get it
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The Astounding Discovery That Could Link Eastern and Western Medicine
The detection of another circulatory system in the human body could have enormous scientific implications.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/05/11/magazine/interstitium-anatomy-acupuncture-medicine.html
17 days ago
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Post a meme made by you
add a skeleton here at some point
17 days ago
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One of my favorite things to do living in liberal western WA is to explain to ardent "environmentalists" how recycling is actually hastening global warming and watch the "reduce-reuse-recycle" programming of their youth fight an existential battle against their adult understanding of climate change
19 days ago
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I propose we move to a fee-based system for corporations who profit off of the freedom of navigation the US Navy provides; in keeping with the US move away from taxation for widely available services to fee-based levies for specific services.
add a skeleton here at some point
20 days ago
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I think a lot about how the March of Dimes invested heavily in iron lung ventilators for polio victims and became fixated on the use of only iron lungs, which led to death from bulbar polio and forced the development of tracheostomies and positive pressure ventilation (the modern standard) to Europe
20 days ago
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Have you ever heard another person in your field of expertise synthesize information and then come to a conclusion that had never occurred to you but seems incredibly obvious in retrospect? I have, many times, and it motivates me to think more and harder. AI doesn't offer that.
24 days ago
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Absolutely incredible that the words "smoking" and "cigarettes" do not appear in this article about why athletes are suddenly able to achieve elite performance later into life. It's just a bunch of sane-washing expensive placebos and ignoring the primary contributor.
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The Longevity Secrets Helping Athletes Blow Past the Limits of Age
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/magazine/pro-athletes-longevity-secrets-age.html
26 days ago
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My tweets on infant mortality and our retreat from science brought to you by this heart breaking ProPublica piece. (Though I do take issue with the quote that "a lot of the providers don’t have this on their radar" -- it's one of the first things I look into after stabilizing crashing infants)
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Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth
A lifesaving injection given at birth to prevent severe bleeding has become collateral damage of the anti-vaccine movement.
https://www.propublica.org/article/more-parents-decline-vitamin-k-shot-newborns?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=propublica-bsky
27 days ago
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I will never forget when my son was born at a local hospital in Seattle, WA and the newborn nurses came in the morning after his birth and asked (verbatim), "Are you all interested in the vitamin K shot and his vaccine?"…
27 days ago
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Everyone who declines a medical recommendation for their infant should be shown this picture and have it explained to them. The natural state of things is an infant mortality of >15% (1880 American mortality rate for infants <1 year).
27 days ago
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It is done. 🎉
27 days ago
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We need to teach children (and adults) in America that "regret minimization" is often a better decision strategy than "reward maximization"
28 days ago
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reposted by
Petulant Skeptic
McSweeney's
29 days ago
"For this focus group, conducted shortly before a sustained green glow began emanating from the station’s superlaser array, we spoke with residents who said they had backed Emperor Palpatine but now felt conflicted."
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“They Would Never Use the Death Star on Us”: Alderaan Residents Reflect on Their Support for the Empire as a Large Imperial Installation Enters the System
“For this focus group, conducted shortly before a sustained green glow began emanating from the station’s superlaser array, we spoke with residents who said ...
https://buff.ly/RgB6H2A
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It's a very good documentary of the aftermath
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Fun story from clearing the other day at the hospital EOC: “Hi, I need to out process” “Ok write down your name and email and final out date on the paper. You also need to go upstairs to clear the operations office since we only do <other thing>” “Got it.” …
about 1 month ago
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I'm getting out of the military and a number of people feel the need to constantly remind me, "You know there's lots of hassles and inefficiencies in regular hospitals too" and I've been saying this so I made it a comic
about 1 month ago
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The logical thing to do if we wanted to make society safer would be to restrict access to the tools that make individuals so dangerous. It goes unmentioned that the "open society"
@radiofreetom.bsky.social
talks about here is awash in guns and doesn't have to be. There is another way
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We Cannot Harden the World Against Every Attacker
Tragedy was averted at a Washington hotel, but such moments will happen again.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/whcd-shooter-harden-trains-hotels-ballroom/686957/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweBAPnxbtY5D1Z-409BqheBU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
about 1 month ago
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Absolutely end stage empire for half the country to be pearl clutching about an attempt on the President's life that was without incident but unmoved by children being murdered in schools on the regular
about 1 month ago
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I wonder if we're thinking about Donald Trump's visible decline wrong. It certainly seems to have accelerated since he started spending more time physically near JD Vance and we know how Vance's presence has affected others…
#justaskingquestions
about 1 month ago
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Funny story to read after spending a few weeks at Camp Ethan Allen in VT and the ominous, very loud sounds that some unspecified General Dynamics testing on the Camp produce unpredictably
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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We have such a stupid Rube Goldberg healthcare system. There's no way to "fix" this system, just throw it out. Every incentive it sets up is perverse and gets manipulated.
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A $440,000 Breast Reduction: How Doctors Cashed In on a Consumer Protection Law
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/us/politics/doctors-insurers-arbitration.html
about 1 month ago
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Isn't declaring a ceasefire during a war you started with an adversary who isn't participating in talks just a unilateral cessation of hostilities?
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Petulant Skeptic
Micah
about 1 month ago
surely no army in military history has ever been laid low by disease, a famously uncommon problem among people living in enforced close quarters
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How to make a CIF clearing appointment: Out brief: You must use the online portal Website: No appointments available Phone: You have to come and make an appointment in person so you can show us a copy of your orders Me: Can’t I just tell you final out date and make an appointment on the phone? …
about 2 months ago
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Robby’s swaddle job at the end of tonight’s Pitt was absolutely dog shit. Clearly never rotated in a NICU. Needs a NICU or nursery nurse to teach him
about 2 months ago
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This is a political version of the Kendrick-Drake feud. Can't wait for Pope Leo to drop a Papal "Not Like Us"
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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One of the big downsides of being a physician parent is that you know lots of easy ways to alleviate your childrens' myriad minor complaints which they extrapolate to an ability to eradicate all discomfort if they can rouse you to action. No matter how many times you say there's nothing you can do
about 2 months ago
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