iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 15/09/2026

This week I’m finally setting aside some time to look at the story analyses in this book. It’s been on or near my desk for months now! www.theopennotebook.com/the-best-sci... #scicomm

Hand holding a copy of “The Best Science Stories and How They Work” in front of a bookcase

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 07/09/2026

Also a science-themed photo. This plaque outside insulin co-discoverer Charles Best's former apartment was not yet there when I passed this corner at least daily between 2003 and 2009! And that Tim Horton's was not yet there when Best lived in the apartment above it...

Blue plaque that reads "The co-discoverer of insulin Charles Best (1899-1978) lived here in a third-floor apartment from 1924 to 1925."

Photo showing the location of the blue plaque, just ouside a nondescript Tim Horton's.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 07/09/2026

I am back from my holiday! Enjoy four random photos of my first trip back to Canada since 2015. It had been waaaaay too long. (For context: I lived in Canada from 2002 to 2010 and in the winter of 2000/2001 so it's a second home. Third home? I don't know how to rank my countries.)

Maman sculpture in Ottawa. It's a huge metal spider, and people are walking underneath.

Pedestrianised street in Montreal. People walking in the middle of the street past patios.

A mural of Toronto's (no longer running) Spadina Bus. I only know this bus from the Shuffle Demons' song Spadina Bus. It was already no longer running when I moved to Toronto in 2002.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 31/08/2026

I’m briefly back in Toronto and the hotel room comes with a record player! If I know you and you’re in TO, message me for hangout details for Tuesday. Or email eva.amsen [at] gmail [dot] com

White brick wall with a wooden shelf on which is a record player and a stack of records. A Ramones record is on top.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 30/08/2026

Hello from the middle of my holiday.

Tea, book and chocolate on an outdoor table

Outside furniture on a wooden deck in a forest

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 20/08/2026

These are the old logos for both.

The word Vegan in a serif font that vaguely looks like it's from the seventies. The V is shaped like the bottom leaves of a plant, with a little leaf on the top of one. It forms the base of a sunflower. There is a circle all around the sunflower and half of the text. Everything is green

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 20/08/2026

The American Chemical Society and the (UK) Vegan Society both changed their logo this month. These organisations are very different from each other, and also both very different from a generic tech company, but you wouldn't know it from the logos... (Expand them to see the full effect)

A generic circle shaped thing that I think is supposed to be an atom, next to the letters ACS. Sans-serif font, with a bit of a curve in the horizontal part of the A, but otherwise just letters.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 14/08/2026

New Mixture about the sense of community from eclipse watching, with this photo I took that looks like that Seurat painting from Ferris Bueller, and with Google Trends for a very predictable search term. mixture.substack.com/p/staring-at...

An image of people sitting and standing on (dry) grass in a park, to look at the solar eclipse this week. The composition is similar to George Seraut's famous painting that Cameron looks at in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 12/08/2026

Come watch the eclipse with me! (Also on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. I'm trying to get back into making videos and this was good motivation to get one done quickly without too much effort.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 22/07/2026

This is the cat in question, here seen trying to open a kitchen cabinet. (The bin is in front of it to prevent him from succeeding).

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 30/06/2026

Office day today and there are macarons! Also the giraffe pen is back because it was still in my bag from the last away-from-home day

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 24/06/2026

New pen acquired! It’s a giraffe

Pen with a cap that looks like a giraffe head. It has ears and horns sticking out, with the face painted on. The pen itself is the giraffe neck, with its characteristic pattern

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 13/05/2026

Mine looks like this. I kept my profile picture so people can see that it's me at a glance, but once you visit my profile it's immediately clear that I'm not there. The account is locked and you can click on the Bluesky link even from the locked profile.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 01/05/2026

I didn’t have a chance to go before today, so most of the cherry blossoms are already gone in Greenwich Park, but I found one tree that did its best.

Some cherry blossoms on a tree. Underwhelming

Path with cherry blossom trees but most are just green now

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 07/04/2026

I haven't lived in Canada for over 15 years, so who knows when and why I created the email address rolluptherim@gmail.com but Google is letting me know that it's deleting it. I'm sure it's just an abandoned inbox full of spam.

Screenshot from Google email. "Your Google Account is being deleted. rolluptherim@gmail.com"

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 29/03/2026

Now on my backpack: this excellent tree identification pin from @canopyrobin.com It’s interactive! Not just in the sense that it opens (which is already cool), but you can also scan it with your phone to get more tree identification info! I’m going to identify so many trees this summer :) #scicomm

Enamel pin on a backpack handle. The pin is shaped like a book with the cover text “Trees - A miniature guidebook”

Same backpack and pin as the other photo, but now the book is open, showing leaf shapes of several common British trees

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 27/02/2026

My iPhone made me a “pet friends” collection with photos of the foxes that lived in the garden last year. Does it maybe think that they’re dogs or cats? Nope, the phone correctly identifies them as red foxes. Apple just thinks I keep foxes as pets.

Screenshot from phone with fox photos and the caption “pet friends”

Screenshot from phone showing iPhone identifying a baby fox as a fox

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 25/02/2026

Half day in the office so I could run some errands but I ended up wandering the heath

Blackheath church in a field with shops in the background

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 08/02/2026

Have you played around with the JMail site yet? You can search the files it like a GMail inbox. The search for "Scienceblogs" brings up a whole bunch of discussions (including an email with a reference to Pepsigate).

Screenshot from JMail.world. It's an email from Adam Bly to Epstein. He writes "I'm dealing with a PR crisis at ScienceBlogs (relating to a customer, PepsiCo)..."

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 02/02/2026

London Euphonia Orchestra has started rehearsals for our March 7 concert, and tickets are extra cheap for another few days. (After Feb 7 they go up in price). It's a rare chance to hear a Louise Farranc symphony! www.londoneuphonia.com

An orchestra at rehearsal, as seen from the violin section

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 30/01/2026

A spoiler. This is the image I’ll be using for the next one

A gold Nobel Peace medal in a display case

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 23/01/2026

Some pictures from the @wcsj2027.bsky.social launch at the Royal Society last night. I was there to represent the European Federation of Science Journalism. The European conference is even earlier - in October!

Pallab Ghosh talking in front of a slide that says “Supercharging Science Journalism”

Alex O’Brien showing a video about the WCSJ2027 meeting, which also features her on screen

Paul Nurse at the official launch/announcement of the World Conference of Science Journalists

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 19/01/2026

Guys, I don’t think we’ve got a view of the aurora here. (North is looking toward that satellite dish) I can try out of another window but there’s even more light pollution on that side and I can’t open a window there right now because of sleeping people.

Suburban sky that looks way too light after exposure adjustment but definitely doesn’t have an aurora in it.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 13/01/2026

I read that as "whale fail" and was reminded of the fail whale.

Twitter's old "fail whale" image, showing little orange birds lifting a white whale out of the sea

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 05/01/2026

I’m updating my scicomm guide for the first time since January 2020. I was expecting changes related to the post-covid world, but also had to deal with addressing AI and scrubbing every mention of the birdsite.

Tracked changes in a document show that “Twitter” was replaced with “Linked, Bluesky or Instagram”

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 01/01/2026

This line aged weirdly.

Moira Rose in Schitt's Creek (played by Catherine O'Hara) saying "The Kennedys have regular medicals, daily laundering"

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 01/01/2026

Happy New Year! In the last few hours of the year I managed to find a safe temporary home for a stray cat that had been in our garden for the last few days. Here he is in our bathroom but he’s now with my catsitter and got inside before the worst of the fireworks and frost.

A black cat standing on a toilet looking around

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 24/12/2025

Santa doing some last-minute shopping in Waitrose

A man in a Santa suit walking past a stack of toilet paper in a supermarket

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 22/12/2025

Looking at a weather report (not for London, don't worry) and it's giving me a number that I didn't even think existed. But I Googled it and apparently it's used when a negative number is rounded up to zero. So it's probably between -0.5 and 0 degrees here.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 22/12/2025

During two decades of watching “Love Actually” almost every Christmas, I’ve always been confused by Aurelia seemingly moving back from France to Portugal so suddenly. Today I spotted this graffiti. They’re in France! She just lives in a Portuguese neighbourhood somewhere in France.

Scene from Love Actually in which a group of Portuguese people follow Jamie through the street. Graffiti on the wall says “La telé 1er flic de France” which is very much French!

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 13/12/2025

We’ve had a microwave in this corner for over four years and the cat only just discovered that he fits on top of it. That’s going to be a whole thing now, isn’t it?

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 05/12/2025

This is Billy, aka Bill, Bean, Billy Boy, The Boy, William Underfoot

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 02/12/2025

Remotely tuned in to the World Conference of Science Journalists today. It's not the same as being there, of course, but it's a lot better than entirely missing out. #WCSJ2025 #scicomm

screenshot of a conference website with a live stream showing.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 01/12/2025

yes, can I have a tabby-- oh, wait, never mind. Just found one in the sheet music suitcase.

Tabby cat in a suitcase with sheet music.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 29/11/2025

This is what it’s all for: concert tonight in Paddington! www.londoneuphonia.com

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 17/11/2025

Seen at Utrecht University Museum. Don’t you hate it when you randomly lose your eyes?

Cartoon of two guys whose eyeballs are falling out and they’re playing racketball with one of the loose eyeballs

Cartoon of a bald guy with two empty eye sockets. From one socket an eyeball is hanging loosely by its optic nerves.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 15/11/2025

This whole interview is so good, and reminded me why Bill Bryson is one of my favourite authors. This question in particular!

Of all the historical figures you’ve researched for your books, who would you invite to a dinner party?

It’s a very strange question when you think about it. I mean, obviously I would choose Shakespeare, and probably Isaac Newton. But the thing is, you wouldn’t be learning anything – you’d be spending the whole dinner explaining to them why they’re not dead any more! I mean, they would just be saying, “What the fuck, what’s going on?” and it wouldn’t be like a congenial dinner party with everybody drinking and relaxed. And then, you know, who’s going to tell them that when the dinner is over, they have to be dead again – that they have to go back to their graves? I don’t want to be associated with this exercise.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 15/11/2025

Found in a school notebook from 1987.

“Looking to the future. Rockets. We might be living out in space in 2010. Robots. We might have house robots.” Where I wrote 2010 initially said 2000 but I guess I thought that was too soon

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 12/11/2025

If you're in London on November 29th, come to London Euphonia Orchestra's concert "From Arabian Nights to Hollywood Lights", in which we play both Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and film music from E.T., Star Wars, Jurassic Park and Greatest Showman. www.londoneuphonia.com

Concert poster announcing "From Arabian Nights to Hollywood Lights", by London Euphonia Orchestra on November 29th

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 10/11/2025

Had the opportunity to do this (see quoted tweet) in a book. Franklin also gets more real estate in another section. (Not shown: I also managed to put a Dolly Parton quote in the book, and no it wasn’t about the eponymous sheep)

Book cover: Biology: 100 ideas in 100 words

Book page about DNA. Franklin is under “key thinkers” in this section

Book page about X-ray crystallography. Franklin’s photo 51 is prominently featured.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 06/11/2025

For reference, this is what the message on PubMed (biomedical research papers) looks like. Much more neutral, as you would expect from a non-partisan website.

"Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted. The NIH Clinical Center (the research hospital of NIH) is open. For more details about its operating status, please visit cc.nih.gov. Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at opm.gov."

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 06/11/2025

I was going to link to an article from this website, but I guess I'll find the info elsewhere. This is WAY more polarising than the shutdown messages I've seen on other US gov websites in the last few weeks.

USDA National Agricultural Library website screenshot. At the top of the page, a red info box says "Due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown, this government website will not be updated during the funding lapse. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people."

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 05/11/2025

Scared of plastic bags, babies and doorbells, but apparently fireworks are okay!

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 04/11/2025

Eva, you can’t casually mention that you went to a zoo and NOT show pictures! I know! Sorry! I was just getting off a train. Here are pictures from the Night Safari (a night-only zoo) in Singapore. Animal names are in the alt text.

Fishing cat and a turtle (and many fish)

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 30/10/2025

I updated my AI statement/FAQ on my website because I found an actual useful thing to do with Perplexity and end up using it occasionally to speed up a very specific kind of online search. evaamsen.com/writing/ai-s...

Text on screenshot: Have you used generative AI for research?

Occasionally I have to search for difficult-to-find pieces of background information, and I sometimes use Perplexity to speed this up. I always double-check the information and source material it gives me.

An example of this type of search: Let’s say I’m writing a long feature about a new disease treatment. Somewhere in the introduction I might want to illustrate the impact of this disease by saying something like “affected X number of people in the last decade alone”. It reads like a quick fact, but it can take hours to dig up this sort of information in PubMed and Google, and then I still need to compare a few sources to see if they agree on the stats. Perplexity does the same Google and PubMed searches I would do, but much quicker, so I can get straight to the “see if sources agree” step. It provides links to the source material and prioritises academic information.

I’ve only used ChatGPT for research once, before I knew that more academically oriented platforms existed. After I spent a few days trying to identify trends in an field, I used ChatGPT to check whether it had picked up any other trends that I missed. (It hadn’t).

I’m very aware that generative AI programmes can hallucinate and return completely made-up information, so I always check all information and never copy/paste any text these sites generate.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 21/10/2025

I sent off my vote last week but it’s going to be another long drawn-out process, I’m sure.

An orange envelope being put into a mailbox

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 09/10/2025

I discovered today that I have been quoted in @merriam-webster.com not once but twice! They include examples of word use and my articles are used as examples of the words "tempera" and "washed off".

"For these experiments, the researchers made their own egg tempera." - Eva Amsen, Forbes, 12 April 2022. "tempera" is shown in bold

"As the earth washed off the central frame, the plastic remained behind." - Eva Amsen, Forbes, 30 November 2023. "washed off" is shown in bold.

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Eva Amsen @evaamsen.com · 28/09/2025

Still on holiday, but here are some photos. Not shown: how hot and muggy it is.

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