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Colin Cooper

@colincooperish.bsky.social
87 followers 107 following 28 posts

Retired psychologist in Ontario... Editor in Chief of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and author of textbooks on individual differences . Previous president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID).

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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The cover of the 5th ed of "Individual Differences, Personality and Intelligence" has now been finalised, so the book should go into production soon - and will be available worldwide from Routledge. It was a major, exhausting, re-write, and as always I learnt a lot - which is why I do it, really 😁.
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Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
With AGI overwhelming the news again, I repeat: There is no path to intelligence via LLM. But an LLM botnet choking the internet, or someone using a local model to attack aging infrastructure, are both real risks and too late to prevent. Pay no attention to the bogeymen, the harm is here today.
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Man builds supersonic trebuchet in his backyard www.popsci.com/technology/s...
popsci.com
Man builds supersonic trebuchet in his backyard
The customized siege weapon hurls projectiles at 776 mph.
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Someone meaner than I would ask whether her family has been consulted.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
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Richard M. Nixon @dicknixon.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Larry laid his mouse in front of the press to be photographed. Lest you ask, this is a real photograph via the Press Association.
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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
7. Clever 1981 Toilet Seat Henflap Upcycling Experiment Blows Tiny Minds Of Bored Cornish Chickens.
A "chicken flap" in the wall of a Cornish chicken house, made out of an old toilet seat. (If they'd flipped it around, they could have also had a little entry ramp.)
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Do please consider signing this... how can a university threaten to fire an entire research group because they focus on basic (rather than applied) research?
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Shibley Telhami @stelhami.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Businessman who sold land for Kushner resort in Albania suspected of faking the deeds www.reuters.com/world/europe...
reuters.com
Businessman who sold land for Kushner resort in Albania suspected of faking the deeds
Residents of the village ​of Zvernec near the project have been contesting Artur Shehu's claim on the land in court cases that date back more than a decade.
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵
technosphere.earth
The bonfire of the humanities
150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
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😈🎃Patti Stixx🎃😈 @pattistixx.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Isaac Newton demonstrating that going outside is gay (c. 1670)
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Brian Sletten @bsletten.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
After all this time looking for it! #humor #math #foundontheinternet #nerdhumor
A beach by a lake in the mountains. Blue sky, trees, pretty water. In the foreground there are the remnants of a tree trunk on its side. Roots are exposed. There are two prominent branches at 90 degrees that have another 90 degree turn in each direction to meet back up in what appears to be a natural rectanglish shape.

The text says, “I finally found it… the square root”.
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Luca @lucagalletti.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, (along Maligne Lake Road)🇨🇦 nationalpost.com/video/d2114a...
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
There's a recent review of my 2023 book “An Introduction to Psychometrics and Psychological Assessment” in the journal Psychometrika. tinyurl.com/mv8a97hc. Surprisingly positive! (Apologies for the shameless self-promotion, but the royalties pay the gin bill!)
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Selecting an effect size for power analysis is hard. Many researchers fall back on Cohen's thresholds, but they have no empirical basis and vary wildly by field. Our new paper offers a better option: field-specific effect size distributions built from meta-analytic data doi.org/10.3758/s134...
Abstract
Effect sizes are useful for understanding the magnitude of study results and for planning new studies via power analysis.
However, despite their wide usage, effect sizes are often misinterpreted. This is mostly due to an over-reliance on general
effect size benchmarks that were not intended for broad application across diverse research fields. Inaccurate effect size
interpretations can lead to incorrect conclusions about the magnitude of study results and incorrect sample size estimates,
thereby increasing the likelihood of false-positive results. This article introduces the ESDist R package, which is designed
to calculate empirically derived effect-size benchmarks or a range of reliably detectable empirical effect sizes for a specific
research question or field of interest by computing effect size distributions (ESDs). This package can be used on data that
can be easily extracted from pre-existing meta-analyses to help researchers more accurately plan new studies or to better
understand how an individual study might relate to other studies in their field. ESDist includes a set of features that make it
easy to use in a priori power analysis. Moreover, the package includes a feature for estimating effect size benchmarks that
account for publication bias and are weighted by effect sizes' variances, which addresses existing limitations of using ESDs
for study planning or interpretation.
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Steven Beschloss @stevenbeschloss.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.
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David Colquhoun @davidcolquhoun.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
This is VERY serious -please read.
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
A dominant theme of Hitler's speeches in the late 1930s is that Germany was surrounded by threats. These threats were imaginary: it was Nazi Germany that threatened other nations. But they were used to justify pre-emptive attacks. Trump is following this script.
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Krassensteins @krassenstein.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
BREAKING: Trump just TAXED Americans another 10% for imports from Canada…. All because of a commercial that was run during the World Series. What a child.
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
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Bob Schulhof @bob-schulhof.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
My therapist suggested that I write letters to all the people who have wronged me and then throw them into a big fire. I did that, and I do feel better, but I don’t know what I am supposed to do with all these letters.
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🇨🇦Greg Stefan aka Fella Dogfather 🇨🇦 @ih8handles.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
🤔
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
Camper ‘singing his heart out’ triggers search and rescue response in B.C. www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/ar...
ctvnews.ca
Camper ‘singing his heart out’ triggers search and rescue response in B.C.
A solo camper belting out a plaintive tune was mistaken for someone in distress, prompting a full search and rescue response – including police and a drone team, in B.C.’s Okanagan last week.
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Clare O'Brien @clareobrien.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
This is one of the traditional ways in which unwelcome people have been greeted in Scotland. 🤭
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Axel Bruns @snurb.info · 17/07/2025
Someone here just used the term ‘Anglo-Saxophone’ rather than Anglophone, and I’ll totally use this from now on. 🎷 #IAMCR2025
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Pierre Polyester @canadian-critic.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
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David Colquhoun @davidcolquhoun.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
This is true. The gullibility of politicians, and, worse, some scientists, who have fallen for the hype, is likely to prove disastrous.
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
21 gun salute is for KINGS. I suppose Trump can pretend that the parade was to celebrate the anniversary of the US army, and not his birthday. But the 21 gun salute is normally reserved for royalty in Europe. Pah.
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Mike Levin @mikelevin.org · 18/05/2025
To the cartoonist who drew this, well done.
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Brexit has never looked quite so ruinously insane as it does right now. And it’s always been idiotic. Alone, outside the EU, needing to improve our relationship with our own continent but also terrified of the wrecking-ball lunatic in the White House. Cornered by our own ‘sovereign’ stupidity.
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Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Yep. Increasingly, distrust driven by lies & ideology. Why Do People Distrust Science? www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/self... "Distrust in science is fueled by misinformation, cognitive biases, and past mistakes." "Skepticism is healthy. Blind distrust is not."
psychologytoday.com
Why Do People Distrust Science?
Science skepticism is rising. Learn why people distrust science—and how to think critically in a world full of misinformation.
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
"Governor Carney..." <interrupts> "do I infer from this that you would like me to refer to you as Governor Trump?"
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
In the UK the most heinous thing a prime minister can do is deliberately lie to the House of Commons. On the very rare occasions it happens there is a grovelling apology followed by a correction to the official record.
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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
French Senator Claude Malhuret: "Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine... We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor."
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
BBC News - Fact-checking Trump claims about war in Ukraine www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Fact-checking Donald Trump's claims about war in Ukraine
President Donald Trump appeared to accuse Ukraine of being responsible for the war with Russia.
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Susie Dent @susiedentwords.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Word of the Day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a puppet individual whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else.
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Anton Gerashchenko @antongerashchenko.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
⚡️ The historic moment of Estonia leaving the Russian-fed power grid. On February 8, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia left Russia and Belarus energy system. By the end of the day today, they will have joined the European grid.
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Comfortably Numb @numb.comfortab.ly · 08/02/2025
“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats”
A gray tabby cat with green eyes sits upright, wearing a blue collar with a small tag. The background features semi-transparent white curtains with a black floral pattern, and the cat is perched on a cardboard cat bed with a lemon design along the edge.
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Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Super key! The Square One Fallacy www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/... @jonathanjarry.bsky.social "We’re about to see an awful lot of this square one fallacy, as disingenuous actors and their ignorant followers argue that we have never studied things that have a large scientific literature behind them."
mcgill.ca
The Square One Fallacy
I recently had the chance to speak to an anti-vaxxer in person. Of course, he did not identify as such: they never do. He didn’t want to be pinned down and was just asking questions about vaccine safe...
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Alex Cole @acnewsitics.com · 04/02/2025
This is so good.
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Dr. Kevin “IQ” McGrew @iqmcgrew.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
www.iqscorner.com/2025/02/new-... #intelligence #cognitive #scholarship #research #schoolpsychology
iqscorner.com
New journal in intelligence: #Intelligence and #Cognitive #Abilities
Passing this long to professionals interested in intelligence and cognitive abilities research. Dear Colleagues and Friends, Intelligence & ...
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The tragic air collision revealed Trump’s rancid, irredeemable character once again | Sidney Blumenthal
Trump’s pretense as king has quickly devolved into his strutting insult routine. He will always exploit tragedy to display his self-regard
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Here's my column this week, about the astonishing moment in which we find ourselves: facing the greatest predicament humankind has ever confronted, and doing sweet FA about it. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Picture an all-seeing eye scanning the dying Earth – and then lighting on our ‘solutions’ at Cop29 | George Monbiot
What would it witness in Azerbaijan? A species that knows it is destroying itself but is too greedy to change course, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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Colin Cooper @colincooperish.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Hi everyone! Have just migrated here from 'the other place' though it's a bit of a shame more of my contacts aren't on here ... but time to make some new ones! Happy to chat about scientific approaches to personality, intelligence, their assessment and applications. Or Ontario/academia/anything!
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