iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 17/09/2026

East coast/Boston-area friends and space fans — I'll be in Concord, NH this weekend giving a keynote about #scicomm at NASA for the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center's annual AerospaceFest. Come through!

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 01/07/2026

Doing research for a NASA podcast episode and came across this absolute banger of an ebook cover

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 25/06/2026

One of my story sources found a copy of my Nat Geo piece on landslides in a cafe in Taiwan! Blowing my mind that people are finding and reading this story all over the world. 😍

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 18/06/2026

Nothing like a post-supercell sunset over a Midwestern gas station

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 11/06/2026

Why? Why is it going to be a problem??? I actually don't understand these takes man

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 11/06/2026

Here's the thing: I don't care! I'm making my tiny scrap of land healthier for wildlife in the time it's mine. If people really think the above photo looks better than the below, I really don't know what to say lol.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 30/05/2026

Was not expecting this at all... but my science story for the @nytimes.com made it into the print edition! I learned this via an email from a reader asking me if I saw the face of an 18th-century raccoon hunter in the photo of the cliff, lol.

A photo of the NYT Science Times section. The story is "A Landslide-Induced Tsunami Signals More to Come."

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 15/05/2026

The Nat Geo graphics team did a phenomenal job with this map of giant landslides in Alaska for my magazine feature story. Note the overlap between where giant, potentially tsunamigenic landslides are on the landscape and popular cruise ship routes.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 11/05/2026

My 28th birthday present today: 21 pages in National Geographic magazine, Volume 249, Number 06. My feature story, about a one-man battle against giant bedrock landslides in Alaska, will be online next week.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 09/05/2026

For the @nytimes.com, I covered a massive landslide in Alaska last August that generated the second-largest tsunami wave on record. Here's the story, in video form.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 14/04/2026

So thrilled to see my feature on cold-water coral research for Hakai Magazine / @biographic.bsky.social Magazine is an honorable mention in the outstanding feature writing category in the @sejorg.bsky.social awards this year. Looking forward to the conference!

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/04/2026

By far my fave image from Artemis II so far

A small round Moon (the full lunar disk) is visible through the Orion spacecraft's window.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 06/04/2026

The Artemis II crew names a lunar crater in memory of Reid Wiseman's late wife, Carroll. Giving new meaning to "I love you to the Moon and back!"

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 22/02/2026

I also like how it let me do like four searches and then told me I was out for now. And it doesn't say when the searches will "replenish." Google advertises this as a secure tool for journalists to search through documents. What if that journalist is on a deadline (it's me, I'm that journalist)?

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 22/02/2026

Not "international-sounding names" 😭 First and last time I try to use Google Pinpoint/Gemini to search/fact check my reporting documents

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 18/02/2026

maybe this is a stupid question but why do all AI models do this thing where they tell you something that's false and then you say "hey that's not true" and then they "go sorry, you're right"? Whenever I get the idea to mess around with one this happens to me and I give up & think they're useless.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 10/02/2026

Since you were, I'm sure, curious, here's your toilet. And don't worry, per the NASA website, "The hygiene bay also has noise dampening foam inside to suppress reverberation during Universal Waste Management System use."

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 10/02/2026

And you don't HAVE to be as jacked as Victor Glover, but it does help in case you need to row the spacecraft home

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 10/02/2026

One thing you'll learn about—the Orion spacecraft's "Flywheel Exercise Device," basically a space-age rowing machine. Representation for my favorite mode of at-home workout!

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 10/02/2026

In our latest episode of NASA's Curious Universe podcast, I report out on the science behind the Artemis II mission—both the lunar observations the astronaut crew will make and the human health experiments of which they'll be the subjects. Listen to the full episode: www.nasa.gov/podcasts/cur...

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 29/01/2026

Hasn't quite sunk in for me yet, but NASA astronauts could fly around the Moon for the first time in 50 years as soon as next week. If you haven't been paying attention, it's time to get excited! We made a podcast series all about Artemis II and it's featured today in Spotify's "not to miss" list:

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 26/01/2026

If you gotta say "which can make mistakes" every single time all over the place why even bother. What was wrong with just not having mistakes. Just go awayyyy

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/01/2026

Finally got my Artemis II merch from the NASA exchange store. It's getting real!

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 17/01/2026

You might be cool but are you "fly yourself to the Cape from Houston in a T-38 to watch your ride to the moon roll out to the launchpad" cool?

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 12/01/2026

Thanks @walthickey.bsky.social for the feature. Subscribe to @numlock.com! And find my piece on prairie cemeteries at @noemamag.com.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/01/2026

One thing about cemetery prairies that blew my mind—when you place these little plots, never plowed (for obvious cultural taboo reasons), they can sometimes truly tower over the surrounding farmland. Iowa has lost so much topsoil to industrialized agriculture, but usually you don't notice it.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/01/2026

But Rochester Cemetery has a guardian—Jacie Thomsen. She's one of the few people who sees this place as both a natural and cultural treasure. She maintains a fragile balance. Through her, this pioneer cemetery may still be the key to Iowa's prairie revival, instead of its final resting place. 6/7

Jacie Thomsen stands in front of a gravestone among prairie grasses

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/01/2026

As Iowa's climate changes, scientists are desperately trying to restore prairie across the state to preserve biodiversity and the myriad ecosystem services native species offer. Cemetery prairies are one of the few places they can source the seeds of a lost Iowa to grow prairie anew. 4/7

A queen bumblebee pollinates a shooting star at Rochester cemetery. The bees evolved to pollinate these flowers with the vibration of their wings.

Lousewort, a rare parasitic prairie plant, thrives at Rochester Cemetery.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/01/2026

Over the past two centuries, settlers transformed 80% of Iowa's prairie into what today is essentially an agricultural factory—endless fields of corn lined with stick-straight ditches. Pioneer cemeteries, never plowed, are among the few places the landscape still remembers what it once was. 3/7

Prairie grasses among gravestones in Rochester Cemetery

A typical cemetery in Iowa (Credit: Stephen Longmire)

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/01/2026

Rochester Cemetery, established in the 1830s, isn't just an active burial ground—it's also one of the rarest ecosystems in the world: an oak savanna. Gnarled oaks tower over a sea of prairie grasses and pink shooting star blossoms. Most of Iowa once looked like this. No longer. 2/7

Old gravestones under mighty oaks in Rochester Cemetery

A field of blooming shooting stars—more may exist at Rochester than anywhere else in Iowa.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 31/12/2025

Yesss 👏 this is a solid list www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 20/12/2025

The stupid gemini AI built into YouTube is trying to tell me the International Space Station doesn't have a toilet and I fought it for long enough it gave up its game plan for how to deal with me 😭

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 17/12/2025

They really need us to like AI don't they. The desperation of "AI companion cannot be closed"...

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 07/12/2025

NYU's annual magazine (with my feature) arrived! Always so fun to see a story in print.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 24/11/2025

I just tried to highlight a section of text in a PDF about deep-sea mining regulations and I accidentally clicked "Generate Image" instead of highlight and I HATE AI I HATE IT I DON'T WANT AN IMAGE OF WHATEVER THIS IS IN MY PDF PLEASE MAKE THE AI GO AWAY

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/11/2025

Spending my Sunday reading about the BBL community

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 18/11/2025

I love writing book reviews. If you'd told 10-year-old me I'd be getting paid to read books I got in the mail I simply would not have believed you.

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 16/11/2025

"Recognized by AI" not a selling point 😭

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/10/2025

Oh and even better, here are JFK's post-speech action items, if someone knows how to get these to him?

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/10/2025

We've been putting old speeches and mission recordings into Otter for an upcoming podcast series and its so funny to see the AI try to do a meeting summary of like, JFK's Moon speech

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/10/2025

although i am sad my poop mentions keep getting cut

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Christian Elliott @christianelliott.me · 23/10/2025

Unironically I LOVE getting my features fact checked. You are so right, mallard ducks and quails do sometimes eat insects. Saved me from looking like a fool in front of the birders 🦆

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