⬡ Today, we become the Institute for Research Software. For 15 years, we've worked as the Software Sustainability Institute to make research software more sustainable and properly recognised.

There has been a significant breakdown of anti-racism norms in British politics and it’s impossible not to see a connection with how X has changed as a platform and the unwillingness of gatekeepers in Westminster to speak up.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is the quality of online discourse behind inventing "Yookay" as a pejorative for Britain & ethnic minorities who think they are British. But we now have peers & MPs starting to use it bsky.app/profile/sund...

This piece rather misses the fact that large corporates are increasingly becoming direct political players, and arguably in doing so undermining the notion of free markets that The Economist is supposed to support.

Archie Hall@archiehall.bsky.social · 3w ago

BRITAIN WOULD BE BONKERS TO DITCH PALANTIR New @economist.com leader from me on Palantir. I most wanted to highlight its critics' troubling illiberalism—many seem far too blasé letting politics determine which businesses governments buy from. You can read it here: www.economist.com/leaders/202...

I find this take infuriating even though it's what I've come to expect from the Economist; just seem to be intentionally obtuse. Of course politics should determine if some businesses are beyond the pale, especially if their leadership is trying to pull down liberal democracy generally.

Archie Hall@archiehall.bsky.social · 3w ago

BRITAIN WOULD BE BONKERS TO DITCH PALANTIR New @economist.com leader from me on Palantir. I most wanted to highlight its critics' troubling illiberalism—many seem far too blasé letting politics determine which businesses governments buy from. You can read it here: www.economist.com/leaders/202...

I’m not sure whether this is just a psychological difference or AI bros fundamentally don’t understand the nature of an artistic experience, but: I don’t want a personalised film/book/podcast. I want to see/read/hear the same one as everyone else, so I can read reviews or discuss it with my friends

We’re not asking the right question, which is: “Why is there a Spanish enclave in Africa in the year 2026?”

“Twelve years ago, Modi rode to power and pioneered in many ways, leveraging social media platforms to reach the masses. Today, Gen Z is flipping his Hindu majoritarian party’s dominance on social platforms, weaponising against it the very tools the Bharatiya Janata Party has long relied on.”

‘Televising our revolution’: India’s Gen Z flips Modi’s social media game

For 12 years, Modi and his party have dominated Indian social media. Now, youth use the same platforms against him.

aljazeera.com

I'm happy to share `ir`, a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and Quarto documents. It's inspired by my two favorite parts of `uv`: self-describing scripts and tools you can run without installing first. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

ir 0.1.0: self-describing R scripts and Quarto documents

`ir` is a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and rendering Quarto documents whose package requirements, and optional R selection, live inside the file itself.

opensource.posit.co

The Implosion of Modi’s West Asia Policy: How New Delhi made itself irrelevant in the region’s most consequential crisis. ..easy to dismiss the current Indian quandary as a collection of isolated diplomatic missteps, when it is a systemic failure of Modi’s over-centralised foreign policy apparatus.

How New Delhi made itself irrelevant in the region’s most consequential crisis

By embedding India’s geopolitical interests so deeply within the Israeli security paradigm and offering tacit diplomatic cover to its destructive war effort, Modi compromised India’s historical standi...

caravanmagazine.in

I found this surprisingly thoughtful and balanced: r-statistics.co/R-vs-Julia.h... (although some of the labeling on Figure 2 is a little confusing)

R vs Julia for Statistics: Julia Is Faster, But Is That What Matters?

Julia benchmarks faster than R on tight loops, but R ships 21,000+ statistical packages and a huge community. Honest trade-offs with real benchmark code.

r-statistics.co

Got some nice improvements to high quality water rendering coming to #rayshader 👀 (it's amazing what realistic sky and sun rendering can do for a scene!) #RStats #rayrender #rayverse

Hopefully scanning the horizon for storm clouds like Wellington looking out for Von Blücher.

This is SUCH a cool report. Data nerds will love playing with the sliders and toggles. The takeaway is clear, though: solar + batteries are coming for *everything*. www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/harnessing...

Harnessing the Sun: The Solar + Battery Atlas

How batteries turn variable solar into firm power

electrotech-revolution.com

Sometimes I treat myself by cycling a lap through the largest bicycle parking facility in the world. Just for fun. Because cycling infrastructure can be both fun and practical!

Since 2013, researcher Mohammed Abu Daya has monitored fisheries' impacts on spinetail devil rays in Gaza. Operating from a displacement camp with limited resources, his ongoing work underscores the extreme conditions under which frontline marine data is being gathered. A interview by Lyse Mauvais.

Studying giant devil rays through war in Gaza: Interview with Mohammed Abu Daya

On the messaging platform WhatsApp, Mohammed Abu Daya’s profile picture features an aerial view of Gaza City before the current war. A clutter of high-rise buildings rises against the sky; at their…

mongabay.cc

The objection is not to social liberal policies per se, but to the existence and influence of urban/educated cosmopolitan populations. A very large bloc of voters are simply never going to vote for a party that is associated with those people.

Mikhail Gorbaechev@mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Parties of the center-left can't convince people that they're not the parties of social liberalism essentially no matter what they do. If they try to "move to the center," they come across as fake while also bleeding from their base, and the combo just kills them.

It's not a mystery why I don't like this Labour government; they didn't want me to like them. A key part of who they are trying to advertise themselves as is - party that would not appeal to urbanite lefty professor like me! It worked, they successfully positioned themselves as opposed to my values.

Let's remember one thing before Starmer goes: this is the man who thought it would be a good idea to risk thousands upon thousands of deaths in poor countries by cutting aid to own the libs. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, mate. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-to-reduce...

UK to reduce aid to 0.3% of gross national income from 2027

The UK will reduce aid spending to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027 (the lowest level since 1999) to fund higher defence spending.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk

ECMWF weekly mean temperature anomaly shows the highest category (>10°C above normal) over France this week. Typically, these colors appear only during winter warm spells, when temperature variability is the largest. Seeing them in mid-summer says a lot about the intensity of this heatwave.

The 2026 Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics has been awarded to the R Project. #RStats www.rousseeuwprize.org/2026

We used to argue about how to win elections. Now we argue about whether our remaining voters are too girly.

Jordan@jordanpfot.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Are you not embarrazzed

This is nuts. Yes we need better protections online, but this is a massive overreach by Starmer. For many young people, especially marginalised ones such as trans and neurodivergent, online spaces can be a safe place for them to develop a genuine support community www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Starmer to announce ‘Australia plus’ ban on social media for under-16s

Sources say hardline measures will also prevent young users from being to talk to strangers on gaming apps

theguardian.com

The only conviction Keir Starmer and indeed his cabinet and senior Labour figures around him is to restrict personal liberty. It’s the one consistent through line in absolutely everything they do.

Dan Sohege@danielsohege.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This is nuts. Yes we need better protections online, but this is a massive overreach by Starmer. For many young people, especially marginalised ones such as trans and neurodivergent, online spaces can be a safe place for them to develop a genuine support community www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The package

This just feels like the completely predictable result of interdicting allied ships and going so far as to fire on them when they are supposedly out of compliance with our demands. Everything we do to compel Iran has blowback and nobody in this administration cares at all.

Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · 3mo ago

US has killed 3 indian sailors! "Three dead sailors, three struck tankers in four days, and a summoned diplomat: How Washington’s aggressive enforcement of the Iranian blockade has triggered an explosive geopolitical feud with New Delhi" energygeopoliticsandstatecraft.substack.com/p/us-strikes...

... and multi-file export, spot colors, better convergence debugging, an explicit path type, and more 🤩 staging.typst.app/docs/changel...

0.15.0-rc.1 - Typst Documentation

Changes in Typst 0.15.0

staging.typst.app

Typst@typst.app · 3mo ago

Test for compatibility with your projects now, locally or in the web app. Typst 0.15 has variable font support, MathML, multiple bibliographies, and a print version of the docs.

This has nothing to do with stopping crime. It is to do with a global far-right movement, coordinated on X, organised by some of the most powerful men in the world from Silicon Valley to the White House inews.co.uk/opinion/fara...

We are currently working on the igraph 3.0.0 release which will bring big changes to the #rstats package! One that just landed on GitHub is a new, modern printing method that uses cli 🙂 Check it out at github.com/igraph/rigraph

Belfast last night is the future for the U.K. some people want. The political voices condemning it so far seem to be mild and weak. We need a wall of outrage from people of influence to make it crystal clear that this is not who we are and will not be tolerated.