Sharon Machlis

"Open a geospatial file in VS Code [or Positron!] and see it on a map and in an attribute table, query it with spatial SQL, style it, and export it" Includes map controls, a search box & more. Open-source extension open-vsx.org/extension/ar... Try on the Web ar-puuk.github.io/spatial-sql-... #GIS

Ollama, best known for letting you easily download and run LLMs locally, also has a cloud service for running larger models. They’ve just added an option for pay-per-usage pricing, with no monthly subscription needed. (Previously it was either a limited free plan or a subscription.)

👀👀 Great resource if you’re coding maps, even if you’re not doing the 30-day map challenge! #RSpatial #GIS ⬇️⬇️⬇️

The story doesn’t mention the company name, but the guy who “viciously mocked his Republican rival including over the death of his son“ in the GOP primary and put up a 12-ft-high Trump sign at his business, founded Sticker Mule. Won’t be buying from there. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/n...

This has been true for Black Americans in significant parts of the US for a long time. (I've never had to wait 5 hours to vote. ) But I agree it's even more widespread and threatens more voters and more results. Let's fix this for everyone if/when pro-democracy forces control the US govt #USpoli

Wow www.reuters.com/world/europe...

“We will publish a new comprehensive portrait of how each of the key demographic groups in the country voted,” says Nate Cohn at the NY Times: age, race, education & gender. But not religion. When measuring response to a white Christian nationalist party. Can’t get the data? At least say so. #uspoli

If you're looking for an RSS reader with a throwback feel, this seems interesting! Even if you're not, the curated topic lists in the blog post are worth a scan. (I'm currently happy with Inoreader. Or, you could always code your own RSS reader in R 🤣 #RStats www.infoworld.com/article/2337... )

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Oct 23, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 156 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

The {ggindex} #RStats 📦 “marks selected points of a ggplot2 plot with numbered markers and explains the numbers in a legend, as on an annotated map.” And also on an sf map. discindo.github.io/ggindex/

🖇️ readxl 1.6.0 is released 🖇️ It includes fixes for several CVEs and can read password-protected xlsx files 🗝️ #rstats readxl.tidyverse.org/news/index.h...

The grammatical 'colon' and the anatomical 'colon' are not etymologically related. The anatomical 'colon' comes from the Greek ‘kolon’ which means “large intestine.” The grammatical 'colon' comes from the Greek ‘kōlon’ which means “limb.” Both are a means to an end.

Per a database of discrimination complaints obtained by @propublica.org , Trump's Department of Education is actively ignoring reports of rape and assault on campuses so they can instead focus on transgender athletes. Their obsession with trans people is actively putting women and girls in danger.

tigris v2.3.0, one of the major milestones from this summer's R Consortium grant, is now on CRAN. - The package has a modern httr2 backend now, which will help the package last into the future; - New features include `population_centers()`, shown here; - The open issue count is now at zero!

Love this piece from @smachlis.bsky.social about the value of enjoying the leisurely life in retirement... this is my current goal! nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2026-1...

Being happy doing nothing (as well as when you're busy) is an underrated life skill - especially in a culture that glorifies work. That's especially true in retirement! My latest #NextChapter post: nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2026-1... #Retirement

Glorious autumn day here today [Photo is at the Sudbury River in Framingham, Mass.]

Wild stat in this morning's charity 5K race! How could I finish in the top half of all women but the bottom half of women age 60-69? Because 60-69 yrs had the *fastest median finish time* among all female age groups!😲 I'm guessing a higher % of younger women signed up to walk it & support the cause

On Sunday, November 15th, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first release of data.table!!! 🥳 👩‍💻 This remote event features talks from data.table superstars, tutorials for all levels, and prize giveaways! 🎟️ Get your tickets here:

The full R+AI 2026 schedule is up! Nov 10-11. 100% online. Keynotes, talks, lightning talks, a workshop, and a tutorial. A taste: statistical thinking when AI writes the code, agents in R, private AI for sensitive data, and shipping R models to production. rconsortium.github.io/RplusAI_webs...

Latest RStudio (2026.10.0) can auto insert a + instead of a |> pipe if you're coding a ggplot2 dataviz and use the ctrl-shift-M shortcut. It also lets you save a plot at a specific size instead of whatever your preview pane size is. Both very handy! 🎉 #RStats #RStudio

Your periodic reminder that religion is a MUCH more powerful predictor of white voting preferences in the US than things like age or gender. But most polls don't weight for religion. Also, modeling turnout in a volatile political environment is hard. I expect some surprises on Election Day. #USpoli

“I ask myself, ‘Who am I?‘ and the reply, with increasing frequency, is, ‘I don’t know.’ “And yet. . . . on a recent and brilliant autumnal afternoon, the air is sweet and radiant, the sky an azure blue and the sun, warm with the promise of hope.“ Such a beautiful, moving piece. ⬇️⬇️

The step-by-step guide, now open to anyone, walks through how journalists use sorts, filters and pivots to interview public data and turn numbers into news. https://palewi.re/docs/truth-telling-101/weeks/week-2/

You may be paying Amazon's prices, even when you're not on Amazon. This blew my mind: If you sell products on Amazon, you CANNOT sell them cheaper elsewhere. So when Amazon raises its fees, products across the Internet get more expensive. www.not-ship.com/how-amazon-p...

“Build blazingly fast R packages with Rust” The {extendr} 📦 suite “provides developer-first tooling and support for publishing to CRAN.” #RStats #rust extendr.rs

If you don't find a way to restore joy to the work of the best human code reviewers on your team, and to honor their craftsmanship? Then they will become disillusioned with your team. And I will hire them!😀 And they will find joy working for me. And they will increase *high quality* velocity here.

Shouldn’t have bothered #nyg #nygiants #giants #NFL

That’s what I get for thinking. the Giants finally found themselves a great kicker. #nyg #nygiants #giants #NFL

I did come back in time to see the Giants tie the game 😮 #nyg #nygiants #giants #NFL

OK I’m done with this game, at least for awhile. Ugh. What is the point of a 3-1 record and being in first place in the division if the team is too painful to watch? #nyg #nygiants #giants #NFL

What is the time of possession in this game, Washington 90% Giants 10%? #nyg #nygiants #giants #NFL

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Oct 9, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 185 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

I kind of like "simulated intelligence" (that's what I initially thought "SI" stood for). Or "imitation intelligence", which I first encountered from a @simonwillison.net talk in 2024 simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/14/... But the little 4B LLM running on my PC, while impressive, isn't super intelligent

"Frisket is an open-source AI spreadsheet for reporting! for research! for investigations! You can drop in documents, audio, video, emails, spreadsheets, etc. Ask questions, get structured data back." - Columbia Univ data journalism prof @dangerscarf.bsky.social frisket.dev

My Amazon About You page includes “Has a phone that is 3 inches wide.” Which seems like a somewhat random thing to care about?

New unofficial Google Gemma 4B LLM for better speech to text? “This is not an officially supported Google product.” “[D]esigned to post-process, correct, and optimize automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speaker diarization outputs.” huggingface.co/google/Diari...

Pick six counts 😃 #Giants #nyg #NYGiants #NFL

More touchdowns than turnovers would be nice #Giants #nyg #NYGiants #NFL

WHY are the Giants going for 2 with an offense that can't get the ball into the end zone??? #NYG #Giants #NFL #NYGiants

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Oct 2, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 189 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

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