10 years. I miss Prince.

Fellow Prince fans: whats a song or two of his that you think is underappreciated?

His collab with Kate Bush “Why Should I Love You” is such a strange, awesome little song that gets overlooked by fans of either artist. And I feel like “Breakfast Can Wait” should be featured more often on Prince highlight reels.

Highlights from Git 2.54 The open source Git project just released Git 2.54. Here is GitHub’s look at some of the most interesting features and changes introduced since last time.

New in Git, ✨ git history ✨ (I don't mean the Git history 🫠 )

😰 Oh shit, that old commit's message had a typo!
😌 git history reword <commit-id>

😰 Oh shit, that old commit is too big!
😌 git history split <commit-id> (to split it into two commits)

github.blog/open-source/... (h/t Hugo Gruson)

I'm back to working on the @pyladies-bot.bsky.social and @rladies-bot.bsky.social bots 🥰

Do you have a blog or a YouTube channel and want it featured? Let me know or learn more about it here: cosimameyer.github.io/community-bo...

#pyladies #rladies

📝 "So… What’s the deal with rlang, a…"

Demystify rlang: its power & role in R.

👤 Veerle van Leemput (@veerle.hypebright.nl)

🔗 hypebright.nl/en/r-en/so-whats-the-dea...

#rladies #rstats #r

Nice post! This is instantly going into my bookmarks tab for when I’m working on Python packages

Nice to see that space finally reoccupied! My guess is they’re pricing with the expectation that customers are going to be hanging out there for awhile rather than just taking out.

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

Introducing Great Docs: Beautiful Documentation for Python Packages Great Docs is a new documentation site generator for Python packages. It auto-discovers your API, builds a modern site with Quarto, and ships with LLM-friendly features and one-command deployment.

We just released a blog post about something I'm very excited about: Great Docs. Post is in the *new* Posit Open Source site:

opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-04...

Great Docs is a #python pkg for creating beautiful Python package websites. We make it easy to use but also give you lots of options.

New post. You built an ML model with {tidymodels} that you want automated in Dagster. Engineering's reply: "Sorry, we need this rewritten in Python to deploy." No more. With the {dagsterpipes} R package, you can run R code in Dagster with full observability. #rstats

joekirincic.com/posts/use-r-...

Poll results for Calvin's Dad Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and ...

Someone compiled all of the Calvin and Hobbes strips about Calvin’s polls of his Dad, which is proof that good people do exist on the internet

imgur.com/a/poll-resul...

🤖 🚨 "No x. No y. Just z." 👈🏼 tell-tale sign a clanker wrote your blog

Screenshot of the announcement by Simon Urbanek regarding Tomáš Kalibera’s untimely passing. It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tomáš Kalibera on 1 April, a valuable member of the R core team for close to 10 years and a good friend, after a short but aggressive illness. Tomáš brought in fresh perspective and knowledge, enabling him to improve many aspects of R, including performance and reliability. He created many tools aimed at aiding package authors to make their packages more reliable, and was instrumental in modernizing the Windows build of R. He was an active member of CRAN and the R community, providing help to package authors, and he was the most prolific writer on the R core blog. He will be remembered for his profound contributions to R by millions of users. He is survived by his wife and 1 year old son. A full obituary will be posted in due time. Respectfully, Simon Urbanek

RIP Tomáš Kalibera. #rstats lost a huge contributor today. Condolences to his young family.

stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-...

This is a huge loss. He was such a thoughtful and prolific contributor to R. Sorry to hear this

👀 looks like the core Stan folks are pretty bullish on Jax as the software of choice for fitting Bayesian models

bob-carpenter.github.io/dj-paper/

Just learned about the {anvil} #rstats 📦, analogous to Jax. Write R code that gets JIT compiled and has easy autodiff. Seems promising for ML and Bayesian methods.
r-xla.github.io/anvil/

Screenshot of CRAN check warnings for the S7 package, showing a warning about non-API calls

It’s been a slog for lots of folks to keep up with. Like even {S7} from the R Consortium is getting these warnings and is threatened with archival by next week.

Look at this technological stack that @samclark.net uses in his new paper, look at the screenshot: : python, positron, uv, quarto, duckdb — all the best new tools 🤩 (well, except for python in my case, I guess I stay with R #rstats)

The #demography paper:
🔗 arxiv.org/pdf/2603.24299

"To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago."
If you think it is necessary to be on Twitter to communicate your fact-based worldview, the reality is that worldview is being smothered.

Whatever happens, this is a deeply shameful episode in American history that will leave a permanent stain on the country.

Repeatedly vowing to commit war crimes against millions of innocent civilians is beyond the pale.

What a beautiful moment.

@quarto.org v2 on the way!! So much to love:

⚡Rewrite in blazingly fast Rust
🚧Improved error messages
🤝Collaborative editing

COLLABORATIVE WRITING

Image from main submissions form

🚀 The R Consortium Technical Grant Cycle is now open!

Have an idea to improve R’s technical infrastructure? Apply for funding!

📅 Apply by May 1
📅 Decisions by June 1

r-consortium.org/all-projects...

#rstats #opensource #datascience #rconsortium #rcommunity

The US Administration is implementing its $100,000 tax on entry by high-skill foreign workers.

It's by far the largest tariff on services trade in history.

A single document has emerged to make the Administration's economic case for the tax. Incredibly, it is packed with basic, large errors.

🧵—>

All but three (!) of the 1,651 refugees admitted into the United States in the three most recent months we have data are white South Africans.

For comparison, in 2024, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees. It's an explicit white supremacist project.

www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

NOW AVAILABLE at DCMetrostore.com

The Metro bed collection:

Bedtime Bus – SKU: MB-BUS003
Sweet Dream Access – SKU: MB-ACC002
7000 Series Sleeper – SKU: MB-RC7000

Each model is designed for a smooth journey to dreamland 🙂‍↕️💤🛏️ All orders ship Neveruary 1.

I thought this was an April Fools joke for a moment but after reading that it sure would be an elaborate prank. Looks useful!

Listening in to the birthright citizenship oral arguments. I won't be fully live-posting through them, but will highlight some comments. I'll have a quick analysis up after the arguments, later this afternoon.

Survey researchers of blue sky! Behold: the cursed survey!