iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Some old dog is unsure about her new raincoat.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A hummingbird moth visited my flowers today. #hummingbirdmoth #moth

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Posit @posit.co · 17/09/2026

posit::conf(2026) is outta here! 👋 From Wes McKinney's AI keynote to Quarto slides, Shiny apps, & termite colonies, Day 2 was radical. Share your photos and reflections with the hashtag #PositConf2026 ❤️ See you in Seattle Sept 13-15 for posit::conf(2027). Until then, keep it real!

A speaker wearing glasses, a black t-shirt, and dark jeans stands on a brightly lit stage during a presentation. Behind him, a large textured wall is illuminated in warm orange light, displaying white text that reads "posit conf(2026)". The silhouettes of audience members are visible in the dark foreground.

A crowded conference hall filled with people sitting at round tables during a lunch or networking session. Feather banners with numbers and the phrase "Birds of a Feather" mark different table sections throughout the room. In the foreground, several attendees are seated around a circular table with plates of food and drinks, engaged in conversation.

A woman wearing a pink conference t-shirt and a man with glasses leaning over a small round table at an event booth. The woman is holding a smartphone and smiling while looking at it with the man. On the table sits an open laptop facing away from the camera, along with small promotional materials. In the background, a large dark blue banner displays branding for "Posit Assistant" and "Positron" along with the text "Work as fast as you think."

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Sharon Machlis @smachlis.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"We have a lot of R fans on my team" NY Times graphics editor @christinezhang.bsky.social tells #PositConf2026 🎉 She also said she often sketches out graphics using #RStats ggplot2 and is a frequent user of the Positron IDE.

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Frank Amari @frankamari.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas." -- Johnny Cash, who died #OTD 2003

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 07/08/2026

I find this, 1806 letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Jenner, so moving 🥺

To Dr. Edward Jenner Monticello, May 14, 1806
The Letters of Thomas Jefferson

SIR,
-- I have received a copy of the evidence at large respecting the discovery of the vaccine inoculation which you have been pleased to send me, and for which I return you my thanks. Having been among the early converts, in this part of the globe, to its efficiency, I took an early part in recommending it to my countrymen. I avail myself of this occasion of rendering you a portion of the tribute of gratitude due to you from the whole human family. Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility. Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was a beautiful addition to our knowledge of the animal economy, but on a review of the practice of medicine before and since that epoch, I do not see any great amelioration which has been derived from that discovery. You have erased from the calendar of human afflictions one of its greatest. Yours is the comfortable reflection that mankind can never forget that you have lived. Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome small-pox has existed and by you has been extirpated.

Accept my fervent wishes for your health and happiness and assurances of the greatest respect and consideration.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 06/08/2026

I understand that funding bodies want to go all in on AI as the shiny new innovation thing. But if all the grants start going to AI at the expense of everything else then the research sector is going to end up looking like a farm with dozens of threshers hacking away in a field with no wheat.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I have been damned with faint praise by the Wordle Bot this morning.

Wordle Bot headline indicating a score in the top 72%

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

If the plot is “no price is too high to pay to bring Matt Damon home”, I am fully sat for the movie.

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Yours in negritude, Ryan K. Smith @mewefree.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Two people tried to enter a screening of The Odyssey without buying tickets after hiding inside a miniature model of the Trojan Horse. 😂😂😂

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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

“… the CDC lab that responds to outbreaks of the parasite cyclospora was downsized from 11 people to just 3”

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 27/06/2026

absolute height of comedy is when they cut to the goal and you see how many kid keepers they've got

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 17/06/2026

Messi xkcd.com/3260/

Comic. Lionel Messi: World Cup Goals per game. [Graph with x axis as year and y axis as number of goals per game, ranging from 0 to 3. Data points: 2006 (~1/3), 2010 (0), 2014 (~1/2), 2018 (~1/4), 2022 (1), 2026 (3) with parenthetical (so far). Behind the line connecting the points is a grayed out curve showing the trajectory.] [caption] At this rate, by 2040 Messi will be scoring hundreds of goals per game.

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Carson Sievert (he/him) @cpsievert.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I'm thrilled to share that #querychat now supports more exploratory visualization powered by #ggsql. We're excited about what this direction can unlock for data scientists looking to curate "tidy" data for others explore. Expect more on this in the coming months. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-06...

opensource.posit.co

Ask more of your dashboard with querychat and ggsql

querychat now supports ggsql-powered visualizations — users can ask "show me" questions and get charts rendered directly in the chat, alongside SQL queries and reactive filtering, all without arbitrar...

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Goutweed vs hastas…. A fight we can watch over stop action.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Wordle 1,817 2/6 ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I should just quit while I am ahead today.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

My bird of the day #borrowedplaces is a rainstorm drenched Northern cardinal drying out among friends. #BirdOfTheDay #birds #cardinal

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Justin Ling @justinling.ca · 06/06/2026

Here's a gift link: www.thestar.com/gift-redeem?...

thestar.com

Gift-redeem

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Justin Ling @justinling.ca · 06/06/2026

Over the past year, I've been talking to the scientists, doctors, and civil servants trying to predict, prevent, and prepare for the next pandemic. Donald Trump has fired them, defunded their work, and hunted them down. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

thestar.com

Justin Ling: Trump’s war on science ensures the next pandemic will happen sooner — and be deadlier

I’ve spoken with several U.S. scientists and public health officials in the past year. What they've told me is unnerving.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Some recent shots from the TBM Avenger Reunion airshow in Peru, IL. Ilford 100 B&W and the newly released Kodacolor 200 (!!). I have missed film photography. I have plenty of iPhone 17 Pro videos and pictures, but enjoy shooting film again ! #film #35mm #warbirds #ilford #kodacolor

A T-6 starts up for a flight at the 2026 TBM Avenger Reunion

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean monitoring network 900+ sensors tracking climate currents, fishery health, ocean carbon absorption, and coastal flooding along the East Coast. Ships go out in June to start pulling it up. Congress funded it twice after Trump

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

From my first film roll shot in my newly refurbished AE-1. I’ve had the AE-1 since 1979 or 80. #35mm #film #photography #kodacolor200

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Matthew Kling @matthewkling.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Announcing #RStats package ggcube, now on CRAN -- make 3D #ggplot2 figures using `coord_3d()` matthewkling.github.io/ggcube/

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026

Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

At the TBM Avenger Reunion in Peru, IL. #warbirds

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🧵Hillary Moyer🪡 @headoverhills.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Accidentally said "rotisserie phone" instead of rotary but I think with the right investors this could take off

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I think this meeting happened in my backyard !

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 28/04/2026

Hold on. We the taxpayers are going to pay companies $900 million, which is more than 6x what we spend on wind power R&D, to NOT build wind power at a time when electricity prices are spiking and we need more clean power?

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Lauren Donovan Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

“I have a PhD in atmospheric physics. I spent a decade measuring greenhouse gases from satellites. The thing that made me good at it was reading poetry. It trained me to notice what was not being said in a dataset. Every critical decision I made as a scientist was interpretation, not computation.”

theslowai.substack.com

The Humanities Are the Moat

Twenty years of defunding the disciplines that teach judgement. Now we are surprised nobody can tell when AI is wrong.

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Foxes in my urban back yard this morning. #foxes

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Great horned owl tail feather in my yard. #bird #owl.

A mans hand beside a great horned owl tail feather.

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Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · 20/04/2026

I am excited beyond description to lift the veil on what we have been working on in 2026: Please meet ggsql! A new extension of the SQL language for creating visualisations using the grammar of graphics. Read all about it in the blog post or visit the website at ggsql.org

opensource.posit.co

ggsql: A grammar of graphics for SQL

Introducing ggsql, a grammar of graphics for SQL that lets you describe visualizations directly inside SQL queries.

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Okay, I think it's probably over-dramatized - I don't recall anyone threatening anyone at Hofdi House - but @fpriorbis.bsky.social and I gotta go see this one

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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

The key to democracy is showing up in large numbers

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randy @deimachy.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Nobody in modern history will ever be as vindicated as George Lucas is rn

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Lizard @lizardky.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Saving for "State your mood in one image" threads.

A street corner, with a sign reading "Play Area & Cholera Burial Ground".

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Hubert Hickman @hhickman.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Was watching the Artemis feed while cooking. For those wondering about the location of the famous space toilet - here it is ! #artemis

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/04/2026

This is the face of a lunar scientist who has just been told that the #Artemis II crew saw SEVERAL impact flashes (the flashes when meteors hit the lunar surface) in real time 😃 🌓💥

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/04/2026

A few have suggested that some aspects of this mission--joy, international teamwork, diversity--are being played up to stick it to the hateful attitude of the administration. But I don't think it's that. I think it's just that those things are essential to and inseparable from a mission like this.

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Jacob Harris @jacobharr.is · 06/04/2026

Realizing that some of my inexplicable sadness about the Artemis II stuff is that it feels like a trans-dimensional communication from an America that took a different path and chose joy instead of fear and hate.

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatic ethnic or religious… identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.”

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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

LOOK AT THE BABY.

Screenshot of a baby chick, fluff backlit by the dawn, with a half-hatched sibling beside and a parents beak coming down from above the frame.

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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I wonder if there was some sort of reason the Founders routed the war power through Congress rather than the whim of one person. Probably not.

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Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

This is real It’s being done in our name Congressional Republicans are okay with this

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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Think about Eisenhower’s conduct during WWII – his clear sense of mission, his diplomacy toward allies, his acceptance of personal responsibility if things went wrong. Compare that to the toddler in the White House now. How far we have fallen.

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