I'm doing a workshop on R package development with Positron on Jan 15 2026. Register for the virtual workshop here: sites.google.com/view/dariia-... I'll cover devtools, usethis, testthat, covr, and a few AI tools along the way to help. #Rstats

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.

Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

At next week's RSS conference I'll be presenting a poster (a first for me...it's about time!)

"Tetraplot displays of UK General Election results" shows how to graph GE 2024 vote shares across 4 parties in a useful way.

Full PDF poster at:
github.com/DavidFirth/t...

It's actually not possible to drive a truck from Germany to Kyrgyzstan without passing through Russia. So no surprise that much of what Germany says gets exported to Kyrgyzstan (black) never actually gets there (blue). Kyrgyzstan is just what gets written on the invoice. Stuff never goes there...

Essential, horrifying reading on.ft.com/4m0enBH

Waarschuwing vanuit Helsinki: Europa ‘finlandiseert’
Mijn column in @nrc.nl

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

A long thread about mpox and the context specific nature of outbreaks prompted by the large outbreak of MPXV Clade IIb happening at the moment in Sierra Leone:

You might be wondering why we haven't updated outbreak.info for months.

Well, the reason is that GISAID cut our access in January - as they did others. Without telling us.

After a ♾️ back and forth, that is now permanent.

More on that soon - and why GISAID should not be trusted with critical data.

Amazing work from our colleagues in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and elsewhere, making the first sequences available from the ongoing Mpox epidemic in Sierra Leone.

More to come - for now, head over to @pathoplexus.org:

pathoplexus.org/seqsets/PP_S...

On June 13, we will have a workshop on Using LLMs by @hadley.nz
More info: bit.ly/4jmEAJW
Please share!
#RStats #EconSky #AcademicSky

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