Gareth (Gary) Kantor

Improvement scientist | anesthesiologist | healthcare for "what matters to you" | air quality | @uctanaesthesia @Insight_SA @CWRUSOM views are mine

[Gareth (Gary) Kantor @garykantor]

@damianplayer CLAWDBOT

[Damian Player @damianplayer]

https://t.co/bD2fm56ELt

[Gareth (Gary) Kantor @garykantor]

@paulrubens 🔝 e sowedx as as a

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

My opinion of @elonmusk
I like his cars (I own a 2015 S, and 2023 S), his rockets, his solar energy systems, and his satellite communication system.
I also like his positions on open source and patents.

But I very much disagree with him on a number of issues.

I disagree with how he treats his scientists.
Technology/product development may not need openness and publications to advance, but forward-looking *research* sure does, whether it's in AI, neural interfaces, material science, or whatever.
Secrecy hampers progress and discourages talents from joining the effort.

I also disagree with the hype. I mean, expressing an ambitious vision for the future is great.
But telling the public blatantly false prediction ("AGI next year", "1 million robotaxis by 2020", "AGI will kill us all, let'spause",...) is very counterproductive (also illegal in some cases).

More importantly, I think his public positions on many political issues, journalism, the media and the press, and academia, are not just wrong but dangerous for democracy, civilization, and human wellfare.
Say what you want about "traditional media" but you can't really have reliable information without professional journalists working for a free and diverse press. Democracy can't exist without it, which is why only authoritarian ennemies of democracy rail against the media.

Finally he doesn't seem to hesitate to disseminate batshit-crazy conspiracy theories as long as they serve his interests (e.g. boosting "PizzaGate", "illegal immigrants corrupt elections in the US", "person X is a pedo",...).
One would expect a technological visionary to be a rationalist. Rationalism doesn't work without Truth.

This has become particularly concerning since he bought himself a platform to disseminate his dangerous political opinions, conspiracy theories, and hype.
He has been quite naïve about the difficulties of running a social network and the (legal) necessity of doing content moderation. One can claim to be a 1st Amendment absolutist, but a lot of content *must* be taken down by law, e.g. terrorist propaganda, child exploitation, blatant hate speech (in the EU and other regions).
Then, there is dangerous disinformation that puts public health in danger or corrupts the democratic process. You have to moderate that too.
Content moderation is a complicated problem whose best answer is not an attitude of total laissez-faire but a complex trade-off.

[Gareth (Gary) Kantor @garykantor]

Remarkable success of modern anaesthesia and surgery masks a major public health problem - preventable mortality and harm after, not during, surgery. Three focus areas and opportunities to reduce the THIRD biggest global cause of death - https://t.co/XuUOI8PJCX

[Gareth (Gary) Kantor @garykantor]

Noise exposure https://t.co/Kca2TrcRVR hurts us so many ways. Hey @virginactiveSA - check the dB levels in your spinning studios! Are you improving our health or damaging it?

[Ayaan Hirsi Ali @Ayaan]

“In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks it became apparent that horrific sexual violence was used as a tool against Israeli girls and women. Women were not only gang raped but had sharp objects shoved in to them, or shot between the legs. None of this seems to have merited any attention from the MeToo crowd. This tells me that, at its heart, MeToo is not about liberating women from the confines of sexual patriarchy. There are real patriarchies existing right alongside us, which few if any on the Left are willing to criticize for fear of being called racist.”

The MeToo movement has been shown for the hollow shell it really is. Read my takedown at Restoration: https://t.co/sf7OsKNJxM

[Gareth (Gary) Kantor @garykantor]

“Give your body what it deserves” is a great slogan @virginactiveSA - but does it deserve >100dB music in spinning studios = above safe limits for hearing loss. Do you monitor? Do you warn members about the risk? https://t.co/vF7VaHr8em

[Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger]

🧵Probably the most sophisticated Al Jazeera "journalist" psy-op yet:

You may have seen the headlines today about Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, who was apprehended by the IDF in Shifa Hospital while it was battling terrorists.

Given the multiple instances since October 7th of Al Jazeera journalists moonlighting as Hamas operatives (or vice versa), I figured I’d take a look into al-Ghoul as well.

What I found was a highly sophisticated, concerted effort to – for lack of a better word – manufacture a "legitimate journalist" out of whole cloth.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

-Nate White

[David Nunan @dnunan79]

Lots of takes on this. Many are what people have anyway regardless of this paper, such is the general diet/nutrition discourse, and particularly around UPF.

For those of you interested in what an actual evidence-based approach to this paper looks like, buckle up🧵

1/

[Jesse Pujji @jspujji]

The most impactful quote on God I’ve ever read:

(Also apparently Einstein and Spinoza were Sikh!?)

When Einstein gave lectures at U.S. universities, the question students asked him most was: Do you believe in God? And he always answered:

I believe in the God of Spinoza.

Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.

According to Spinoza, God would say:

“Stop praying. I want you to go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

“Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.
“Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything that others made you believe.
“Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes—you will find me in no book!

“Stop asking me, ‘Will you tell me how to do my job?’ Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry or bothered. I am pure love.

“Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you, I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies, and best of all, free will. Why would I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How could I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?

“Respect your peers, and don't give what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life—alertness is your guide.

“My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, not a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now—and it is all you need.

“I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

You are absolutely free to create in your life. It’s you who creates heaven or hell.
“Live as if there is nothing beyond this life, as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist. Then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is an afterlife, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask, ‘Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?’

“Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

“Stop praising me. What kind of egomaniac God do you think I am? I'm bored with being praised. I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That's the way to praise me.

“Stop complicating things and repeating as a parrot what you've been taught about me. Why do you need more miracles? So many explanations?
“The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.”

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The New Rape Denialism

On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless.

Yet Hamas denies that its men sexually assaulted Israelis, calling the charges “lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.” And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-described progressives, parrot that denialism in the face of powerful and deeply investigated evidence of widespread rapes, documented most recently in a United Nations report released on Monday.

The interesting question is, why? Why the refusal to believe that Hamas, which butchered children in their beds, took elderly women as hostages and incinerated families in their homes, would be capable of that?

https://t.co/DVlPM4ubBj

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

Wow.

Here’s Robert De Niro’s full statement about how Donald Trump should NEVER be president again:

“I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men.  I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty.

Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly.

I see an evil one.

Over the years, I’ve met gangsters here and there. This guy tries to be one, but he can’t quite pull it off. There’s such a thing as “honor among thieves.” Yes, even criminals usually have a sense of right and wrong. 

Whether they do the right thing or not is a different story — but — they have a moral code, however warped.

Donald Trump does not. He’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself — not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him, blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his “friends.” He has contempt for all of them.

We New Yorkers got to know him over the years that he poisoned the atmosphere and littered our city with monuments to his ego.  We knew first hand that this was someone who should never be considered for leadership.  We tried to warn the world in 2016.

The repercussions of his turbulent presidency divided America and rattled New York City beyond imagination.  Remember how we were jolted by crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world.

We lived with Donald Trump’s bombastic behavior every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbors piling up in body bags.

The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behavior.  That was the consequence of New York’s warning getting ignored. Next time, we know it will be worse.

Make no mistake: the twice-impeached, 4-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can’t let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously.

So today we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke — right here in the beating heart of New York — to the rest of America:
This is our last chance.

Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator.

And it won’t overcome evil if we are divided.

So what do we do about it?  I know I’m preaching to the choir here.  What we’re doing today is valuable, but we have to take today into tomorrow – take it outside these walls.   We have to reach out to the half of our country who have ignored the hazards of Trump and, for whatever reason, support elevating him back into the White House. 

They’re not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice.  Our future doesn’t just depend on us. It depends on them.

Let’s reach out to Trump’s followers with respect.  Let’s not talk about “democracy.”  “Democracy” may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they’ve already turned their backs on it. 

Let’s talk about right and wrong.  Let’s talk about humanity. 

Let’s talk about kindness.  Security for our world. 

Safety for our families. 

Decency. 

Let’s welcome them back. 

We won’t get them all, but we can get enough to end the nightmare of Trump, and fulfill the mission of this “Stop Trump Summit.”

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

A little history for those wanting to 'restore Palestine'.

1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state.

2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state.

3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state.

4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid Arab-Kurdish Empire, not a Palestinian state.

5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Frankish and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a Palestinian state.

6. Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a Palestinian state.

7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state.

8. Before the Byzantine Empire, there were the Sassanids, not a Palestinian state.

9. Before the Sassanid Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state.

10. Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire, not a Palestinian state.

11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonean state, not a Palestinian state.

12. Before the Hasmonean state, there was the Seleucid, not a Palestinian state.

13. Before the Seleucid empire, there was the empire of Alexander the Great, not a Palestinian state.

14. Before the empire of Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire, not a Palestinian state.

15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a Palestinian state.

16. Before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a Palestinian state.

17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a Palestinian state.

18. Before the kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, not a Palestinian state.

19. Before the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a Palestinian state.

(The Kingdom of David - historic map for those wondering how the region looked over 2000 years ago, and how deep the roots of the Jewish people run in these lands)

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

The reason people say "river to the sea" is because they believe the entire land is Arab land. The reason they believe the entire land is Arab land is because they don't know that even throughout all the 1,000+ years of Caliphate colonialism, the land was still split between Jewish and Arab majority areas. The reason they do not know that there have always been Jewish majority areas, alongside Arab majority areas, is because they don't know that the land was once entirely Jewish majority land as the indigenous population before Christian & Islamic conquests (and others), bringing in various other (often transient) populations. The reason they don't know any of that, despite this factual and well-documented information being available for the last 5 months, much less the last 5 decades, is because, well, they are antisemitic. Calling for the entire land to exist as an exclusively Arab ethnostate under Islamic rule, when the demography of the land has never—in all of history— existed as such in these ethically diverse regions, can be categorized by nothing other than ultra-nationalistic supremacy & virulent hated of Jewry.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Lord Andrew Roberts, war historian, journalist, and member of the House of Lords: Even if you take Hamas’ wildly inflated numbers as fact, the ratio of civilian death to militant death is less than 2:1.

For reference, the average ratio for modern urban warfare of this kind is 9:1, where civilians account for 90 percent of casualties.

This ratio is “astonishingly low,” especially in a war in which one side, Hamas, routinely uses civilians as human shields.

While every civilian life lost is a tragedy, it is a testament to the care, professionalism, ethics, and values of the IDF and Israel.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

Some public service announcements.

- Starting a war and losing doesn’t make you a victim.

- Self defense against a brutal, savage, and barbaric enemy isn’t genocide.

- Siding with the weaker side even though they started the war in the most atrocious way imaginable doesn’t make you compassionate or moral. Quite the contrary.

- Fighting for human rights only when the victim isn’t Jewish doesn’t make you a human rights activist. It makes you an antisemite.

- Denying events that were documented and proven because you think they were somehow justified makes you a liar.

- Someone who murders, rapes, burns, and kidnaps innocent people is not a freedom fighter. You spelled terrorist wrong.

- If you think rape or burning a family alive is ever justified under any circumstances, you are morally bankrupt.

- If you chant ‘Believe all women’, but refuse to believe Jewish women, you’re not a feminist or a women’s rights activist, you’re a Jew hater.

- If you support Hamas, you’re not progressive or liberal. You are a fundamentalist and an extremist.

- If you think an Arab state of Palestine ever existed, you’re fabricating history.

And finally, if you think this war is about a state, if you think giving them land will satisfy them, then you are ignoring the many times that they had a chance for a state and rejected them.

If you think Hamas and Hamas supporters want anything less than every single inch of Israel, and every single Jew dead, you’re not paying attention, which makes you an ignorant fool.

[Joel Mowbray @joelmowbray]

Jerusalem is -- at most -- the third-holiest site in Islam. Even then, that overstates its significance in Islamic history.

But history makes the issue of who should control Jerusalem very simple.

When Jordan controlled Jerusalem from 1948 - 1967, no Jews could visit the Western Wall -- for 19 years. Not one Jew allowed at the holiest site in Judaism. Zero.

And of the 58 synagogues in the Old City as of 1948, three were converted to stables, as in for horses. The other 55 were completely destroyed. And the Western Wall of the Temple Mount was where Jordan dumped trash, turning Judaism's holiest site into a garbage dump.

When the Jewish state reclaimed its eternal capital of Jerusalem, what happened? Not a single mosque was destroyed. Not one.

And since 1967, Israel has preserved the right of Muslims to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount -- directly above the very Western Wall Jews were prohibited from praying at for 19 years.

The world cannot allow anyone but Israel to control Jerusalem. History shows us why.