CANNOT WAIT! We’re going from “what even is base R?” to fixing a bug in the C source code in under an hour. In a live demo. What could possibly go wrong? NOTHING! #RStats #baseRgirly

Absolutely fantastic news for #RStats 🎉 Heather has been integral in efforts to secure the long-term sustainability of The R Project, and building the R community, especially for folks from groups underrepresented in software. She's also an excellent R contributor herself. Very well deserved!

Announcing localtime, a #QuartoPub extension for displaying times in the reader's local timezone e.g. {{< localtime 2026-03-09 20:30 UTC >}} will render as 2026-03-09 21:30 for someone in CET. Has nice formatting options, and automatically accounts for daylight saving. github.com/EllaKaye/loc...

Come join us!

The brilliant charity, Lucy Faithfull Foundation, is recruiting a Data Scientist/Analyst, to support their mission of preventing child sexual abuse. UK-based, Edinburgh or Espsom (hybrid). www.lucyfaithfull.org.uk/careers/data... Q&A webinar about the role, team and context on Feb 3rd 12-1pm UTC.

🌈 rainbowR meet-up & AGM*: Wednesday Jan 28th, 4:30pm UTC 🌈 - vote on constitution* - elect leadership committee* - connect with other LGBTQ+ people who code in #RStats 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ ➡️ Registration via rainbowr.org/meetups

New! Ella Kaye on the R Contributors project—R Dev Days, office hours, and how GitHub helps lower barriers to contributing to base R - plus a “learn with joy” story and history of rainbowR for LGBTQ+ folk who code in R r-consortium.org/posts/contri... @ellakaye.co.uk #rstats #opensource

Is there an issue with #RStats CRAN submissions at present? I submitted an update of a package a couple of days ago, got an email, ticked the boxes to confirm, clicked to send then the screen went blank and I haven't heard anything since. Now I can't even open the link from the original email.

An #RStats blog entry by Heather Turner explains the new Research Software Maintenance Fund grant. blog.r-project.org/2025/12/17/r...

Huge congratulations to @heathrturnr.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy for putting together a fantastic team of collaborators and a brilliant proposal. I'm so happy to be a co-lead on this project, continuing to work with Heather and many others on the sustainability of the language and community we love.

🎉 Big news for the future of #RStats. The project "Enabling the next generation of R contributors" has received £500k over 2 years. - mentoring expert contributors - modernising infrastructure - improving governance - strengthen communication and outreach www.software.ac.uk/rsmf-round-1...

I wrote a long thread about contributing to base R, highlighting the resources and opportunities provided by the R Contribution Working Group. contributor.r-project.org #RStats

I'm R-Ladies RoCur this week - follow at @weare.rladies.org. I'll be posting about contributing to base R, the joy of R community, @rainbowr.org, Forwards, R packages (mine and my favourites), Research Software Engineering and whatever else I think of over the next few days!

🌈 The website for the inaugural rainbowR conference is now live! 🎉 🗓️ Save the date: Feb 25th-26th, 2026 📣 Call for submissions is open 👯 We're bringing together LGBTQ+ R users to promote our work and foster connections among community members conference.rainbowr.org

Always wanted to learn how to create your own R Packages? Then take a look at this upcoming workshop with @ellakaye.co.uk ⬇️

Unit tests deemed unnecessary

📣We're hosting a rainbowR conference, to connect and promote LGBTQ+ people in the #RStats community and to showcase examples of working with LGBTQ+ data 🌈🎉 To help us plan, if you'd be interested in attending or speaking, please fill in this very short form (1-2 mins) docs.google.com/forms/d/1Tx0...

@cscheid.net at #PositConf2025, working to make #QuartoPub 100x faster 🤯🤯🤯🎉🎉🎉

After 7.5 years in development (on-and-off), I am beyond excited to announce the release of the #RStats {pregnancy} package for tracking dates and medications in pregnancy and fertility treatment! There's a lightning talk about it at #PositConf2025 at 1pm EDT today. ellakaye.github.io/pregnancy

R Developer Day at University of Warwick brought together R-Ladies from around the world 🌎. Spaces like this remind us how powerful our global community is when we learn, collaborate and build together. Thanks to Heather Turner for making this possible 💜 #RDevDay #rladies

Packages are essential to the #rstats ecosystem for sharing code, data, and documentation. Join @ellakaye.co.uk's #GESISworkshop to learn how to write your own R 📦 from scratch, covering the whole process from setup to publication More information & registration ➡️ t1p.de/R_Pack_Dev_25

Once again, @davisvaughan.bsky.social's extrachecks have saved me from a likely CRAN rejection for an upcoming #RStats package submission. Thanks Davis! github.com/DavisVaughan...

The R Contributor Site is now in #QuartoPub! Check-out the new look, and all we do to support contributors (and aspiring contributors) to base #rstats, including events, tutorials and demos, and a Slack group. https://contributor.r-project.org

🌈 rainbowR meet-up: Wednesday August 27th, 4pm UTC 🌈 - connect with other LGBTQ+ people who code in #RStats 🏳️‍🌈 - ask questions about R 🙋 - tell us about an R package you like 📦 - show us something R-related you’ve been working on 💻 ➡️ Registration via rainbowr.org/meetups

@djnavarro.net just came across your blog post blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2021-0... and it contains the solution to exactly the problem I was having - trying to get {cli} messages to format nicely in Quarto output. Thank you for figuring this out and taking the time to write it up and share 💜

Today is my last day as a Research Software Engineer. From tomorrow, my promotion kicks in and I'll be a Senior Research Software Engineer!

Tidying my bookcase. I knew I had two copies of 'Modern Applied Statistics with S' but didn't realise that one used to belong to Brian Ripley and the other is signed by Bill Venables. Unfortunately I don't have the 3.5" diskette!

Thanks for the mention @bsky.chrisbrownlie.com

This was so much fun! Thank you R-Ladies Philly and @pipinghotdata.com for inviting and hosting me, and to those who attended for their time, interest, and thoughtful comments and questions.

So excited for this! As well as ‘C for R users’ I’ll be talking about contributing to base R more generally, and doing a live demo of the R Dev Container. #RStats

🔗 To register for a free ticket, visit: rss.org.uk/training-eve... @altealorenzo.bsky.social @rainbowr.org @ellakaye.co.uk #books #LGBTQ #data #statistics #classifications #categories #datascience #research #queer #queerdata

💻 Forwards Package Development Workshop A free short course on how to create an R package. Choose your cohort: 1️⃣ Every other Monday from June 2, 09:00-10:30 UTC: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/qBJ_VAEfQHCU-DZKogPuGg#/registration OR 2️⃣ Every other Tuesday from June 3, 14:30-16 […]

Thanks @njokinjuki.bsky.social for this wonderful endorsement of the @rainbowr.org buddies scheme 🌈👯‍♂️ rainbowr.org/buddies

One of the warmest and most empowering communities I’ve found in the R world is @rainbowr.org 💜 ✨ Their mission? To connect, support, and promote LGBTQ+ people in the R community and to spread awareness of LGBTQ+ issues through data-driven activism. 🌈📊 #RStats #RLadies

Calling all #rstats friends in Australia/Oceania! Exciting news! Fonti Kar (@fontikar.bsky.social) and I are forming a "C Study Group for R Contributors" in 2025. It's like getting skills to help build the Millennium Falcon of programming languages! 1/n

Thanks! I did initially find it confusing (especially since this chart was adapted from one of my previous penguins plots). I ended up using the really helpful converter function by @ellakaye.co.uk to fix it for me: ellakaye.github.io/basepenguins/

A quick plot for #TidyTuesday this week - celebrating the addition of the penguins data into base R 🐧 I used {ggdist} to plot the distribution of body weights with four different chart types in one! 📊 I couldn't quite decide whether I prefer the light or dark version💡 #RStats #DataViz #ggplot2

‘gait’ is only the second array in R’s datasets package! All the examples in #RStats help pages that used ‘iris3’ have now been replaced to use ‘gait’ or another built-in dataset. This is especially neat for ‘duplicated()’ because ‘gait’ features genuine duplication - one boy was measured twice.

I just made a couple of edits, as I discovered the `news()` function! This loads the R news! No more browsing the internet to look at the news! There's also a way to query the NEWS files using that function too, which I think is super neat.

Thanks @njtierney.bsky.social. As you point out, penguins in 4.5.0 has some shorter variable names. Check out the new {basepenguins} 📦 to convert scripts that use {palmerpenguins} to use the native version, taking care of these differences. ellakaye.github.io/basepenguins

R 4.5.0 has penguins! Having the `penguins` data in base R makes it more accessible and easier to get started with (no need to load external package). It's a great dataset for teaching, and an excellent alternative to `iris`. journal.r-project.org/articles/RJ-...

R 4.5.0 is released and includes the `penguins` data popularised by {palmerpenguins} 📦! Some variable name changes means that scripts need editing to use the built-in datasets. The new {basepenguins} 📦 automates that! ellakaye.github.io/basepenguins #RStats

R version 4.5.0 "How About a Twenty-Six" (source version) has been released. (You can find it in cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/, or wait for CRAN to be updated.)

Very excited for the final session of our book club tomorrow, where we'll be joined by @kevinguyan.bsky.social to discuss the conclusion of Queer Data, and for a Q&A. Thursday April 10th, 4pm UTC. See rainbowr.org/book-club for more details and Zoom link.

I love that there are so many strong women in the #RStats community (@pipinghotdata.com and @tanyashapiro.bsky.social come to mind, and I know there are many more). Here are my powerlifting efforts. github.com/EllaKaye/pow.... Lifting 1.5x my bodyweight feels a bit like a superpower 💪🏋️‍♂️

My first submission of a new (or indeed any) package to CRAN since 2017! 🤞

I’m about to submit a new #RStats package to CRAN. Should I add the CRAN badge to the README before the submission, or after it’s accepted?

Last year, we celebrated that 41% of the @softwaresaved.bsky.social #Fellows are #women, a percentage that grew to 46% in the 2023 cohort. This year, women made up 35% of applicants, but they excelled at every stage of the selection process. #InternationalWomensDay

Last day to sign-up for this round of the rainbowR buddies scheme to be randomly paired with someone else LGBTQ+ who codes is #RStats (well, by 8am UTC on Monday Mar 3rd please)!

I guess the above comment is to say I love the R community! It’s super diverse and accepting. There’s groups like @rainbowr.org for lgbt folks using R. The greatest strength of R will always be its community.