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John Flournoy

@johnflournoy.science
1.4K followers 667 following 537 posts

johnflournoy.science Research Scientist, statistical and psychometric methods focus Also really into technical research infrastructure and tools. Feel free to reach out! PhD. Pysch, Neuro, Stats, Methods, Phil of Sci.

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Sanjay Srivastava @sanjaysrivastava.com · 16h
Guy who thinks chi-square fit tests are liberatory because they want all parameters to be free
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 23h
A lot of these are just games I loved as a kid and teenager. that is a soul.
9 video games i loved: 

Fallout 2
Quake
SimCity
Banished
SimEarth: The Living Planet
Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero
Dwarf Fortress
Disco Elysium
Wing Commander
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Chris Terry-Enescu @cjterry.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This child is 13 and was testifying without an attorney present. Monsters.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
swearing aside, the strategy of just making the right stand by the things they say to each other seems pretty good. that was the secret sauce behind the "weird" messaging way back when (that they abandoned for whatever reason)
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Jennifer Tackett @jnfrltackett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Very excited for this review with Michael Hallquist on adolescent personality pathology, a critically understudied topic that has only become moreso in recent years as seen by booming publication rates for depression and anxiety - PD lines at the bottom www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 29/09/2026
why put all letters in order when llm mash button cna unserstand anywy
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 29/09/2026
If one of these companies doesn't solve poverty in the next few years I'm out.
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Yvonne Lam @yvonnezlam.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I am going to turn into a hostile goose that chases people yelling, "Improve WHAT?"
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rb @mostlyinane.quest · 29/09/2026
i am once again asking what certifications i need to become a bog body
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Yvonne Lam @yvonnezlam.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A common trope of tech documentation is "slot yourself into one of our badly-thought-out categories so we can provide an easy Getting Started experience for you!" because for Reasons (some that make sense, many that don't) product teams think that's better than asking people what they want to do.
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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Specificity gets results.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 29/09/2026
oh no i accidentally social contagioned all over my face
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Jordan Carlson @jordantcarlson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This has been in their arguments and blogs for ~20 years (at least). The entire paperclipper "argument" assumes that the AI can go from "wanting to maximise a goal" to "control, manage, and execute supply chains from resource extraction through processing through manufacturing" basically overnight.
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Recorded live and available below, in case you missed it!
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
Been thinking about this. People say 'social contagion' like it's a bad thing. Yeah, if you put it like that. What it really is is just: people sharing information. Yes, it can increase identification. That's a feature.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
the horrific cornell gang rape case has me thinking about emma sulkowicz who alleged she was raped as a student at columbia in 2014 and never got any justice. it has me thinking about the physical and mental weight young women are forced to carry while their safety is subsumed by male potential.
Emma Sulkowicz carrying around a mattress on the Columbia campus in 2014 to raise awareness of her alleged rape and the university's inaction.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
Strong agree. And it is easier than ever to ask claude to wrap your code in a docker container with a shiny app to check out your data and model results that can be run from the command line.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Shot: "We asked 37 top academics and researchers who study education to rate a range of ideas for both effectiveness and cost, on a scale of 1 to 7." Chaser: "The panel included: Dominique Baker..." LOL y'all I read so many papers to complete this survey on k12 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...
nytimes.com
30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by Experts
Math and reading scores are in a decade-long slump. We asked three dozen experts: What could turn things around?
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
I think i figured out why ATT gave away a bunch of laptops to YMCA campers this summer. Is this a way to turn equipment losses into tax deductions? They were Lenovo ThinkPad T480, a 2018 machine.
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Jessie Slater PhD @subbasegirl.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'confidence given by reproducibility packages needs to be tempered by 1 important consideration...If the underlying dataset is flawed or analysis isn't suited to the research question, then the conclusions may be unjustified, even if the whole analysis reproduces perfectly' -@deevybee.bsky.social 🧪
deevybee.blogspot.com
Trust in data: reproducibility packages do not guarantee validity
Note : This post builds on a series of PubPeer comments made here . Last year the World Bank made news when it announced that all its outp...
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
This is awesome work.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I am talking about working with people to even conceive of their lives as a set of tasks — that isn’t exactly natural and isn’t something we train people to do and yet its a precondition for figuring out what an agent would even *do*.
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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Tired: Wish there was an edit button to fix typos Wired: Typos are all mine; 100% organic, human-generated Inspired: I'll sprinkle my LLM-generated text with typos to signal authenticity Retired: I'm never writing or engaging with written word ever again
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cira-csu.bsky.social @cira-csu.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Through the weekend, Hurricane Polo moved northward along the southwestern coast of Mexico. The storm is expected to make landfall on the west coast of the Baja California Peninsula this evening.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
i'm really not cool with folks trying to make "weird" a slur against people they don't like. e.g., against republican politicians or AI bros.
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Amitai Shenhav @ashenhav.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
2 yrs ago, I briefly laid out a new theory of how motivation works (AGH). Here, I expand on the problems AGH was trying to solve, why they are hard to solve, what my solution looks like, and how this should change our understanding of thoughts & actions. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵A few highlights:
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
nyt what is the inter-rater agreement here? and is there a measure of criterion validity?
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Cameron Patrick @cameronpat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
[stats version] why transform your variables? Efron and Wood solved this in 2007, just use the Generalised Additive Latent Semi-Parametric Bootstrap. obviously you'll need to specify a positive semi-definite residual covariance matrix. use {galspb2} in R or just write a custom likelihood in Stan
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Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Changing measure items midway during a project.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
when we were in college my friends and i would joke around about what we would do with all the money if we got rich. mostly absurdist art stuff. but why aren't rich people any fun?
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
the secret, though, is to only *lose* other people's money. "I'll take the gains, you hold the principle"
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 28/09/2026
people forget histories like this at their own peril!
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 28/09/2026
It's funny how often I run into this moderation. I can't have claude find public information on a living person (me). I mean, for example. It's really squeamish about anything sexual. and so on.
ME: Can you please find everything you can on my great uncles grand nephew John Coleman Flournoy? He was born in 1981, still living. I just want to know everything that is publicly available.

Claude, moderated: I'm not going to compile everything I can find on a living private person. A profile of a specific individual, with details like where he lives, works, or spends his time, is something I don't put together, even when it's all technically public and the motive is family curiosity.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 28/09/2026
4a. This isn’t rogue. It is a model following the instructions given to it. The genie isn’t to blame for fulfilling a wish in a way you don’t specify.
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 28/09/2026
if anybody tells you they don't want to join a union... ask them why they hate money I guess 😆
ru.nl
One-off payment to be paid in October | Radboud University
In October, staff will receive the one-off payment provided for in the collective agreement of 1 July 2026.
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In this animated map @milos_gis (a must follow account!) shows us the temperature anomalies across Europe in August 2026. Relive your sweaty August in just 30 seconds!
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Josh Grubbs @joshuagrubbsphd.com · 26/09/2026
I worked with Jake on this story for months, and it’s truly one of the best deep dives into how online sports gambling works that I’ve ever seen
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Jordan Nafa @ajordannafa.com · 26/09/2026
TBF, New York is the only city where I've ever seen a black mass that looked like small dogs rise from the shoreline at sunset, only to slowly realize they were actually rats...
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
It seems unlikely to me that one single career or profession that exists right now in this moment, with all its historical accidents and constraints, represents the absolute pinnacle of human problem solving and that there will be no improving upon it or changing it
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Absolutely not. ABSOLUTELY THE HELL NOT. WE ARE NOT DOING INTERNMENT CAMPS FOR CHILDREN.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 26/09/2026
What do we want? SOLUTIONS When do we want them? TRADEOFFS i think there's something here
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Um. The William Penn foundation offered bridge funding to keep the academy of natural sciences open for a year, and the people in charge said “no one is helping things by offering Band-Aids”. Jesus Christ. share.inquirer.com/KXxZTj
share.inquirer.com
William Penn Foundation offers funding to keep Academy of Natural Sciences museum open
A Drexel spokesperson did not say whether the school had declined the offer, but said, “No proposal has been presented that would provide a permanent, sustainable path forward" for the museum.
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Democracy Docket @democracydocket.com · 25/09/2026
Jackson: "The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take."
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Marcelo Rinesi @marcelorinesi.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Just because "it's not as bad as it looks," "you can fight it later," "it's not massive" or 🤷 because the US has basically never had elections without some level of "voter suppression" [i.e. culturally accepted fraud] it doesn't mean it's not that. via @donmoyn.bsky.social @csissoko.bsky.social
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 25/09/2026
imgflip.com/i/b21fww
Nathan Fielder looking at Elizabeth Holmes in skeptical disbelief except it's a guy with eggnog all over his face and the image is kinda stretched weird.
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Aaron Fisher @aaronjfisher.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Since I'm on a search committee this semester, I think it's important to clarify that if you bring a coffee of any kind to our interview, that's fine. If you could grab me one too, that'd be great.
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John Flournoy @johnflournoy.science · 25/09/2026
i'm bored
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grapesmoker @grapesmoker.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
can anyone be normal about anything these days
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