HPC and computing resources now reach an ever increasing and wider audience, extending out from the “usual suspects” in traditional modeling and simulation, into what is now being called the proverbial “long tail of science”. In support of this long tail, a new breed of research software engineers, research computing facilitators and scientists are needed. Even the very computer systems themselves are getting monikers related to such “long tails”. Recent NSF machines Jetstream and Comet as two very visible examples are each named as a hat tip to “long tails”.