Owais Gilani

THREAD: Encounter with the Thought Police (Remarks delivered at the Fletcher School's Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies)

Just imagine we had the recording of a 6 year old Israeli girl, desperately ringing the emergency services after Hamas militants slaughtered her relatives in a car, including 3 other kids. Imagine we also had a prior recording of her 15 year old cousin, desperately pleading for help, before you hear her being violently murdered by Hamas gunfire. Imagine then an Israeli ambulance sent to rescue this little girl was then blown up by Hamas militants, killing both paramedics. What would be the response? You know what the response would be. It would be offered up as evidence of the supreme evil and barbarism of Hamas. We would be told it showed they’re worse than the Nazis. It would also be offered up as justification for the need to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. Every politician in the West would issue statements dripping with grief and righteous fury. None of that has happened here. Instead, the West continue to arm and back Israel’s mass slaughter, with occasional handwringing which its politicians know has zero impact on the behaviour of Israel. Even as Israel commits some of the worst atrocities of the 21st century - live streamed for the world to see - these Western powers refuse to describe a single act of Israel as a war crime. Two things. Firstly, none of this is to downgrade the value of Israeli civilian life. The value attacked to Israel innocent civilians’ lives is correct. It is just transparently not applied to Palestinian life. Indeed, secondly, it is nauseating that I even have to indulge in these “imagine if!” scenarios. It becomes necessary because Palestinian life has been stripped of nearly all value. In South Africa’s submission to the ICJ, this horror was described as the world’s first live streamed genocide. I think even more than that, it’s the live streaming of the suicide of the West. Much of the world already regarded the West’s claims of moral superiority with contempt. Well, contempt doesn’t even begin to describe those sentiments now. I don’t think it’s remotely appreciated how much fury at Western power - which has shrunk with every major conflict involving Muslim nations in the 21st century - is being whipped up. Finally, this nauseating episode has answered a question I’ve always been haunted by when studying the atrocities of the past. How did so many people who regarded themselves as humane, moderate, “normal” become so willingly complicit in self evident evil, either by not speaking out or actively cheering it on? Well, think of the badly decomposing remains of Hind and her family, and the incinerated remains of the paramedics sent to save her, and there’s your answer. There’s your answer!

The images from Gaza of the Rafah massacre by Israel last night look like a horror movie. Children dangling with limbs blown off, or crawling screaming with their dying breaths. Parents picking up the heads of their babies that are barely recognizable. The hundreds stacked like bodies in a slaughterhouse. The fact that their stories will be erased in mainstream media while videos are being suppressed on social media tells you all you need to know. Any semblance of international law or standard for humanity is dead. Palestinian life under occupation never mattered to you before, so our deaths under genocide don’t matter to you now. Don’t ever lecture us on morality again. Your hearts are dead. #SuperBowlMassacre

Thanks to @guardian @JessicaGlenza for writing about the important topic of prior authorizations for medications for opioid use disorder. It was helpful to discuss our recent @JAMAHealthForum study and to hear from other experts like @c_m_andrews. theguardian.com/us-news/2024/f…

It is a psychosis to have the expectation that we are to believe and accept that Palestinians should not be resisting against this; that they are ‘wrong’ to resist against the state that does this.

Hamas drops videos of Palestinian fighters inflicting considerable damage on Israeli troops. The Israeli army gives us TikToks in the homes of Palestinians they’ve displaced& stylized videos of civilian men, women & kids stripped down, cuffed &blind-folded in razed stadiums. 🧵

Dear world, Israel just bombed a Christian hospital in Gaza and murdered over 500 Palestinian civilians. White phosphorus chemical bombs confirmed by human rights watch was not enough to open your eyes. Over 1000 dead children wasn’t enough. Will you open your eyes and act now?

most statisticians feel like we get our ass beat by statistics on a daily basis. so it’s kinda wild to us when some twitter dudebro is like “nah bro, this shit is easy”

@malco_barrett, @travisgerke, & I have a preprint with details: 🔗 arxiv.org/pdf/2304.02683… Also the {quartets} package includes the datasets if you’d like to play with it yourselves! r-causal.github.io/quartets/

Dear world, Happy #InternationalWomensDay! In honor of #IWD2023, I am extremely excited to share with you a new #childrensbook featuring some brilliant #Women in #Statistics and #DataScience! 📖 book: stephaniehicks.com/superwomen 💻 blog: stephaniehicks.com/blog/super-wom…

Our new paper on how chronic infection improves both tolerance and resistance to future infections in fruit flies is out! Check out the awesome work of undergrads @BucknellCAS ! Another collaborative effort with @OGilani14 involving many students. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/ia…

Your expertise could help shape the #SDSS2023 program and future of #statistics and #datascience. Submit an abstract by December 15! ww2.amstat.org/meetings/sdss/… #machinelearning #datascience #datavisualization

In my opinion, the core teaching of statistics is this: It’s not enough to estimate things. You also need to accurately quantify the uncertainty in your estimates. The history of humans and data is just people painfully relearning this lesson over and over again.

Remember nights catching fireflies as a kid? Three @BucknellU undergrads helped us figure out what impacts fireflies ability to withstand bacterial infection!! First collaborative pub with @seslower is out! doi.org/10.1111/een.13…

What a great way to kickoff the ESA2022 weekend! New paper asks how fireflies respond to bacterial infection doi.org/10.1111/een.13… Bucknell student research FTW! @moriacc @BucknellU

Twitter laid me off today. If you know of any open positions for project managers or senior software engineers, let me know. I was in charge of the feature that made sure every time you tweeted about machine learning you were served an ad for an intro stats course.

I'm just going to optimize this one line of code.

I found an intro to stats joke I quite enjoy.

It was a magical evening yesterday. Thank you again to all the players and fans who were here to share this moment with me. It means the world ❤️😊🙏🏼