Mastodawn

We’re excited to host a panel on:
Working Smarter in R: Tips, Tricks & Real-World Lessons

📅 April 22, 2026
⏰ 6 PM - 7 PM BST / 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT

Join an amazing group of speakers as they share:
- Productivity tips & workflows
- Data cleaning strategies
- Data visualisation & communication
- Debugging approaches
- Advanced R practices
•- Lessons learned along the way

Featuring:
@nrenniefosstodon.org, @paocorralesfosstodon.org, @meghansharrisfosstodon.org, Soraya Campbell, @ivelasq3fosstodon.org & Crystal Lewis 💜

🔗 https://www.meetup.com/rladies-remote/events/313908392/

#RStats #RLadies

Maëlle Salmon 5h ago

Mark Dingemanse 6h ago

This is stunning. Vasily Grossman in Life and Fate 1960, writing on "this machine whose dimensions and weight will continually increase as it attempts to reproduce the peculiarities of mind and soul of an average, inconspicuous human being."

And pointedly noting in the same breath: "Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people."

(I looked this up because of a post by @maelle)

#AI #GenAI #fascism

Show thread

Maëlle Salmon 9h ago

"The machine will be able to recreate all of this! But the surface of the whole earth will be too small to accommodate this machine – this machine whose dimensions and weight will continually increase as it attempts to reproduce the peculiarities of mind and soul of an average, inconspicuous human being.

Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people."

Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

Maëlle Salmon 9h ago

A page in Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" (written in 1959):

"An electronic machine can carry out mathematical calculations, remember historical facts, play chess and translate books from one language to another. It is able to solve mathematical problems more quickly than man and its memory is faultless. Is there any limit to progress, to its ability to create machines in the image and likeness of man? It seems the answer is no."

Rest in the book and https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/19595.Vasily_Grossman?page=3 (sorry)

Vasily Grossman Quotes (Author of Life and Fate) (page 3 of 11)

330 quotes from Vasily Grossman: 'Everything that lives is unique. It is unimaginable that two people, or two briar-roses, should be identical . . . If you attempt to erase the peculiarities and individuality of life by violence, then life itself must suffocate.', 'The nationalism of a small nation can, with treacherous ease, become detached from its roots in what is noble and human. It then become pitiful, making the nation appear smaller rather than greater. It is the same with nations as with individuals; while trying to draw attention to the inadequacies of others, people all too often reveal their own.', and 'Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.'

Maëlle Salmon 4d ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@maelle/116085078372293783

I taught "Oops, Git! How to recover from common mistakes" today at Workshops for Ukraine. 🇺🇦

I learnt a lot from participants' questions! GitLens in Positron is even better than I had realized.

Thank you Dariia Mykhailyshyna for organizing. 🙏

Materials (you can still purchase the recording by donating): https://masalmon.eu/talks/2026-03-19-oops-git/

Maëlle Salmon Mar 10

The R Foundation

Mar 9

Opening for a tenure track position in statistical computing:

https://wirtschaftsuniversitaet-wien-portal.rexx-systems.com/Assistant-Professor-tenure-track-qualification-agreement-eng-j2682.html

As dept chair, R Core member Kurt Hornik invites applications from people who could make substantial contributions to #RStats, including base R.

Deadline Mar 18!

Job opportunity Assistant Professor, tenure track, qualification agreement at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Jobportal

others in Wien

Maëlle Salmon Mar 9

Noam Ross Mar 6

UPDATE (2026-03-22): We are no longer accepting applications.
---
We are hiring a full-time data scientist at Grant Witness, our project to track grant terminations and changes to U.S. Federal funding for the sciences + public health. We also have part-time positions.

It's a great team and making real impacts. We're scraping government and court data, re-assembling it, doing forensic analysis and providing data and analysis for activism, journalism, and litigation.

https://grant-witness.us/apply.html

Job Opening: Data Scientist – Grant Witness

Grant Witness seeks a data scientist for a full-time position on our team tracking changes to U.S. federal grantmaking. We are also hiring for part-time/contract positions. Join us!

Grant Witness

Maëlle Salmon Mar 5

Yani Bellini Saibene Mar 4

Now the @RConsortium has ROR!

ror.org/01z833950

So, if you have received a grant for your package, you can now acknowledge it by adding it to the DESCRIPTION file.

Here are more details:

https://ropensci.org/blog/2025/05/09/ror/

#RStats

Roaringly Acknowledge Organizations with ROR IDs in DESCRIPTION

A few years ago, the R community started using ORCID (“Open Researcher and Contributor ID”) to persistently and uniquely identify individual authors of packages in DESCRIPTION. The idea is the following: you enter authors’ ORCID as a specially named comment in their person() object. For instance I can be represented by: person("Maëlle", "Salmon", , "[email protected]", role = c("cre", "aut"), comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0002-2815-0399")) Although anyone could use your ORCID, maliciously or inadvertently1, you definitely benefit from using your ORCID in your work. In the case of R packages, CRAN pages and pkgdown websites feature a pretty icon linking to your ORCID profile that in turn can link to your favorite online presence. Recognition! Personal branding!

Maëlle Salmon Mar 3

rOpenSci Mar 3

📝 [blog] How do we keep software peer review human-centered in the age of generative AI?

That’s the question behind our latest post at rOpenSci, where we describe:
• new expectations around AI use
• what this means for authors, reviewers, and editors
• why transparency matters more than ever

This is an evolving area, and we’re learning as we go.
💬 We’d love your feedback
https://ropensci.org/blog/2026/02/26/ropensci-ai-policy/

#RStats

Software Review in the Era of AI: What We Are Testing at rOpenSci

rOpenSci is testing preliminary policies on the use of generative AI tools, with proposed updates to documentation and procedures for authors submitting software for review, for editors, and for reviewers.

Maëlle Salmon Mar 3

Today, I gave a talk about what to replace git checkout with:

🌳 git switch to change branches
↩️ git restore to restore a file to a given state

Including demos of the commands with {saperlipopette}

https://masalmon.eu/talks/2026-03-03-bye-git-checkout/

Home	https://masalmon.eu/
GitHub	https://github.com/maelle
Pronouns	She/her
Profile pic by	Julie Noury Soyer https://photographe-julienourysoyer.com/index.php