Tell an LLM your target audience if it's documenting software! If the target is you, make sure your CLAUDE.md or agents.md file explains your knowledge levels. If the target is the public, say something like "the audience is an intermediate R user with only basic LLM knowledge". It matters!

Emerson poll last week had El-Sayed beating Stevens 54-39 in the Michigan US Senate primary. Results are actually still too close to call. Huge miss.

Sharon Machlis@smachlis.bsky.social · 15h ago

My news-consuming life has been immeasurably improved by ignoring political polls! Data just aren't reliable. * People who answer polls aren't the same as those who don't * Religion is a critical factor for white voters yet is rarely included * Modeling who will vote is increasing difficult.

My news-consuming life has been immeasurably improved by ignoring political polls! Data just aren't reliable. * People who answer polls aren't the same as those who don't * Religion is a critical factor for white voters yet is rarely included * Modeling who will vote is increasing difficult.

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

Episode 232 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/... 🏆 Rousseeuw Prize for R! @r-foundation.bsky.social 🎉 Celebrating package maintainers @yabellini.bsky.social @ropensci.org 🤖 10 AI tips @smachlis.bsky.social h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social 🙏 #rstats #databs

Issue 2026-W26 Highlights

The R Core team receives a prestigious award in the world of Statistics, a month-long recognition of the rOpenSci package maintainers, and a collection of…

serve.podhome.fm

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Jul 31, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 310 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

2 years of retirement bring a lot of changes! Some thoughts: nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2026-0... #Retirement #NextChapter

Two Years Retired! – My Next Chapter: A Retirement Journey

Wow do I feel changed

nextchapter.machlis.com

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Jul 24, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 311 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

Useful LLM tip for data journalists from @kylewalker.bsky.social : “Google gets a lot of criticism for falling behind on agentic coding, but Gemini 3.5 Flash has long been my daily driver for agentic document extraction, which is one of the highest-value use-cases for LLMs, in my opinion.” #DDJ

Google LLMs vs Gemini 3.5 Flash for Agentic Coding | Kyle Walker posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Google gets a lot of criticism for falling behind on agentic coding, but Gemini 3.5 Flash has long been my daily driver for agentic document extraction, which is one of the highest-value use-cases for...

linkedin.com

From Anthropic: ‘Claude Opus 5 verifies its own work without being told to. If your prompt contains explicit verification instructions ("include a final verification step for any non-trivial task," "use a subagent to verify"), remove them.’ platform.claude.com/docs/en/buil...

Prompting Claude Opus 5

Behavioral differences and prompting patterns for Claude Opus 5, covering response verbosity, agentic narration, task scoping, subagent delegation, self-correction, and output artifacts when thinking ...

platform.claude.com

NEW: At least five media companies are using algorithmic pricing to decide how much news subscribers should pay. If you've been told that your news subscription price was determined by an algorithm using your personal data, please take the survey at the end: www.niemanlab.org/2026/07/this...

“This price was set by an algorithm”: News subscribers are surprised by a new line in their renewal emails

Outlets like Wired, NJ.com, and The Wall Street Journal are setting renewal prices just for you — and being forced to disclose it.

niemanlab.org

Turns out $100 free credit from Anthropic for Fable use doesn't go very far. 🙁 I'm updating an R script and Shiny app and doing 2 other very small project improvements, I've already blown through one-third of it in less than an hour. Seems like I'll need to learn to like OpenAI's GPT-5.6 sol LLM.

New #RStats 📦: If you have an Enphase solar electricity system, use R to query the API for data on production. With functions to authenticate, store and renew authentication tokens, and pull daily production data in 15-minute increments. smach.github.io/enphaseR/

If you're a Census data user and there are features you'd like to see in either package, now is a great time to file an issue or feature request. tigris: github.com/walkerke/... tidycensus:

GitHub - walkerke/tigris: Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R

Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R - walkerke/tigris

github.com

Starting Monday, only Claude Max and Team Premium users will have access to the Fable LLM as part of their subscriptions, Anthropic posted on that other network. Other paid users only get it by buying extra usage credits (which burn quickly); they also get a one-time $100 credit.

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Jul 17, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 154 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

The Year in Claude: Anthropic’s Cat Wu (Head of Product, Claude Code) and Thariq Shihipar (Engineer, Claude Code) chat with @simonwillison.net at AI Engineer’s World Fair youtu.be/uU5Gv2h8-9g?...

Simon Willison in conversation with Cat Wu & Thariq Shihipar, Anthropic

YouTube video by AI Engineer

youtu.be

Hummingbird in the yard!

1. Carefully source your lettuce and other leafy greens from trusted retailers 2. Don’t re-elect incompetent but corrupt fascists who appoint vicious cranks to be Secretary of Health and Human Services 3. Avoid buffet-style salad bars

Good news for journalists who use R to analyze US Census data: @rconsortium.bsky.social awarded a technical grant to @kylewalker.bsky.social to “lead a focused maintenance and modernization project” for the tigris and tidycensus #RStats 📦s r-consortium.org/posts/r-cons... #DDJ

This Certo report on how abusers are using Chrome sync for stalking is an important reminder that tech-enabled abuse isn't just limited to stalkerware: www.certosoftware.com/insights/cyb...

Cyberstalkers Are Exploiting Chrome Sync to Spy on Victims | Certo Software

Certo's research team reveals how cyberstalkers are quietly switching the signed-in account in Google Chrome to remotely monitor victims' browsing history and saved passwords with no warning ever show...

certosoftware.com

Why do some people willingly collaborate with regimes that violate their own deeply held values? What makes others stand firm? @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu posted a gift link to her article from 2020, History Will Judge the Complicit www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

History Will Judge the Complicit

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

theatlantic.com

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Jul 10, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 186 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

This is a really nice user interface. When you ask a question, the app generates SQL, shows the SQL and the data results, gives an AI-generated interpretation of results, links to a downloadable PDF explanation and markdown transcript, and lets you edit the generated SQL.

Derek Willis@dwillis.bsky.social · 4w ago

Really excited that my friends at @biglocalnews.bsky.social have released DataTalk, a federal campaign finance agent that turns your questions about FEC data into data-backed answers. I helped a bit with this, and am very interested in feedback (as are the BLN folks). datatalk.biglocalnews.org

Offside xkcd.com/3268/

This Egypt-Argentina World Cup game is quite exciting, even for someone without a rooting interest!

Spain still hasn’t allowed a goal in this World Cup???!!! 🤯

Weekly number of Bluesky posts with the #RStats hashtag (case insensitive) Sept. 2024 - Jul 3, 2026, excluding the CRAN Package Updates bot. Weeks run Sat–Fri. This past week: 205 posts Coded with {bskyr} and {ggplot2} [Posted via cron job. Tx for ur patience if something went awry] #RStatsStats

I wasn’t going to watch the World Cup again until tomorrow, but this Cape Verde Argentina game is amazing