NEW: D.C. has a reputation for being a place where you’re more valued for what you do than who you are. For our latest "Ask a D.C. Native" column, Rhonda Henderson shares how we can — and why we should — break out of the trap of asking people, "So, what do you do?"

I haven't rix-posted in a while Use `rix`. It's easy. It just works. You add the smallest bit of overhead so your project environments break *never*. It feels like cheating! Use Nix on it's own, cram it into a Docker container, whatever. Check it out. docs.ropensci.org/rix/index.html #rstats

New paper just out! We tend to think of rapid movement as something that blurs vision but for houseflies this does not apply. They turns fast motion into an advantage, reorganising visual signals so efficiently that perception keeps pace with behaviour almost perfectly www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/2 "There ought to be a lot more conversations about data and journalism. A panel yesterday at the Indigenous Data Sovereignty & Governance Summit 2026 was the start, I think, of a real important conversation." Mark Trahant.

Here's the latest episode of The Memory Palace. dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3...

A Corella (Cacatua sanguinea), living its best life. Bega, New SouthWales, Australia 🇦🇺 Video by Sharon Wells [FB] Note from the author: "If anyone is worried - it’s not stuck. I watched long enough to ensure this is deliberate fun". #birds #cockatoos #nature #fun #goodtime

Quick and by no means comprehensive guide to making the research code you share more use-able. collinschwantes.github.io/blog/2026/co...

Quick and by no means comprehensive guide to making the research code you share more use-able. collinschwantes.github.io/blog/2026/co...

Join our next MEPA session! Maya Juman (@mayajuman.bsky.social, Cambridge University) will present "Museum collections expand the spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scope of known host–virus associations". 🗓️ Wednesday - May 6 🕒 3pm US Eastern Time #science #pathogen #virus #museumcollections

every time i look up resources on agentic coding and whatnot, i browse through the github repo and look for the section that talks about how issues of confidentiality, regulatory compliance and data integrity can are handled when the agent is granted access. unfortunately, that section rarely exists

I was asked to speak with a graduate class today about research data management. I was asked, "How do people become convinced that beginning data management early on in a project is worth it?" Me: "Suffering. They usual have to suffer first." 😅

Still looking for any of these!!!! Thank you!!!!

A reminder of an essential webinar taking place this Thursday April 30th. Registration info below.

NEW: NSF has been funding research at a fraction of its historic rate. Last week, the agency finally began distributing money to its directorates and is now likely to pick up the grantmaking pace. But these allocations also amount to substantial cuts across the sciences. My reporting:

We are very happy that today Apple issued a patch and a security advisory. This comes following 404 Media reporting that the FBI accessed Signal message notification content via iOS despite the app being deleted.

Too many spiders? Ungoliant is here to help!

My biggest gripe with agentic work is that I've become a reviewer. Know what work task I like least? The task I find most boring? It's reading & reviewing. And now that's the whole game. That's left me bored & disinterested, & maybe even ready to move on from some areas in general. #rstats #databs

me to the IDE every time I encounter a slight inconvenience or annoyance, now that I've written my first VS Code/Positron extension

As some of you may know... we're down $5m and may or may not ever claw any of it back. So, we're writing new grants. If anyone would be willing to share a funded application for - NSF CAREER or NIH DP2 that is 100% dry lab-based - NSF BIO Capacity: Infrastructure I will owe you a coffee forever!

In preparation for the next iteration of my data science class, I've made many updates to our #JuliaLang species distribution package. There's now a "Getting started" tutorial that, I think, is pretty good, and is meant to get you started within 20 minutes! 🌏 poisotlab.github.io/SpeciesDistr...

I 💚 this especially the first one: "The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code" by Ally Piechowski piechowski.io/post/git-com...

#wormwednesday is the perfect opportunity to show off one of my favorite marine worms, Alitta williami. Simply because they are BEAUTIFUL

The variety of German bees before the Industrial Revolution (187, top) vs after the introduction of pesticides (43, bottom), DHM

Currently fixing path issues in a github action. Luckily, past me recognized that future me would completely forget how to do this and created a github action that tests those paths specifically and provides the correct paths.

🥚🐣 Did you know? The flightless Elephant Bird’s eggs are 7x larger than those of an Ostrich! Step into the Museum’s Ornithology Collections to discover the biggest and smallest eggs.

This is great data viz - striking and effective www.theguardian.com/science/ng-i...

𝘈𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘶𝘳𝘺𝘢𝘭𝘦 is a newly discovered species of wingless #fly from China that lives in a very specific home: the base of a horseshoe bat's ear! 🦇 Access the full study here: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1273.183551 @ucph.bsky.social #bat #parasite #endoparasite #morphology

Lots of neat stuff in March's @ropensci.org update, including: - O nosso guia agora é trilíngue (Inglês, Espanhol e *Português*)! - @mpadge.bsky.social's {pkgmatch} is now run on all submissions to help find reviewers and discover prior art in similar packages! ropensci.org/blog/2026/03... #rstats

Python package developers, what does your documentation workflow look like? Sphinx feels incredibly clunky but maybe I'm doing it wrong? #Rstats devs are spoiled by usethis, devtools, and pkgdown

slop is something that takes more human effort to consume than it took to produce. When my coworker sends me raw Gemini output he’s not expressing his freedom to create, he’s disrespecting the value of my time

Join EFI and the @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Statistical Ecology Section for the next Stats Methods webinar on Monday, April 13, at noon US ET. Abby Keller will present on “The {eDNAjoint} R package to analyze environmental DNA data.” eDNA = environmental DNA Register at: bit.ly/40TyxVy

🌈 rainbowR APAC meet-up: Monday March 30th, 2am 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 & EMEA/AMER times via rainbowr.org/meetups

Ok folks do you have any suggestions for papers that used #wikidata and #entomology collection data? I’m thinking not just collector data or citation data - though also gratefully received - but trait data, other identifier linking etc.

Today is the last day to apply for an Opportunity Scholarship for posit::conf(2026)! Our Opportunity Scholarship provides travel, lodging, & registration to attend posit::conf for underrepresented groups in data science. Learn more & apply by midnight tonight: posit.co/blog/apply-t...

"it’s going to be fine … so don’t worry" has never made me feel less fine or worry more.

Join ROR and OpenAlex on March 19th for the webinar "Accurate Affiliations, Accurate Attributions: How Institutions Can Improve Institutional Research Tracking with OpenAlex & ROR." Openness makes everything possible! #metadata ror.org/events/#open...

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record." Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

Study links working while sick to higher risk of future absence Employees who work while sick have a roughly 30% higher likelihood of later absenteeism than those who don’t. www.cidrap.umn.edu/p...

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate the many women who shape rOpenSci every day. 💙 From software development and peer review to mentorship, community leadership, and training, women are building and strengthening open science across our global community. They play key roles across […]

Grant Witness is hiring! We're seeking a full-time data scientist to join our team building data resources to support journalism, litigation, and activism protecting science, public health, and the rule of law. grant-witness.us/apply.html #rstats

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

The second #kakapo chick of the #kakapo2026 breeding season hatched this morning: Hine Taumai-A1-2026 on Ako's nest on Te Kākahu. We transferred the egg from Anchor two nights ago. This is Ako's first-ever chick, which is just a few hours old in this video. #conservation #birds #parrots

Reading this for my ecological genomics class. Pretty mind-blowing stuff, even identifying insect-bacterial symbionts from high covariance in airborne eDNA!

🤔Looking to make your #code more #reproducible? Check out our new and improved guide to Reproducible Code! 🧪🌍️ Find it here👇️ buff.ly/10TeNok @nhcooper123.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org

📢 Applications are open for the 2026 Modern Meta-Analysis Research Institute (MMARI). This 5-day workshop funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is tailored for early-career education researchers with little to no prior meta-analysis experience. Apply by 3/15: www.meta-analysis-re...

❤️ Happy Love Data Week! #LoveData26 Coming up 2/11: Improving Data Sharing w/ GREI’s Submission Checklist Learn to plan, prepare, & publish data in a generalist repository. This webinar shares steps to more FAIR data, ft. examples from NIH-funded researchers. Register:

Message received 😆

"Ten simple rules for teaching data science": arxiv.org/abs/2602.02874 A new preprint by @minecr.bsky.social and myself. We'd love any feedback!

🚨 GAMs have moved on—so it’s time for an update. On March 3, 2026 (17:00–19:00 CET) I’ll be livestreaming an updated introduction to Generalized Additive Models in R 📺 YouTube livestream link: youtube.com/live/A9U8e1K... #RStats #mgcv #GAMs #gratia #statistics 🧪