𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗

@charlescmann

Author of "1491, "1493," and, most recently, "The Wizard and the Prophet." Podcast, co-hosted w/ Virginia Postrel, about the history of things you didn't know even *have* a history:

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 13d

This from p. 46 exemplifies what bugs historians. One thing to say that settlers saw natives as "primitive." Another to make that claim ("premoral, pre-Christian, low-barbarian") in your own voice, as Gwynne does here. Little wonder the Comanche nation officially denounced the book!

Excerpt from book: "Thus the fateful clash between settlers from the culture of Aristotle, St. Paul, da Vinci, Luther, and Newton and aboriginal horsemen from the buffalo plains happened as though in a time warp--as though the former were looking backward thousands of years at premoral, pre-Christian, low-barbarian versions of themselves."

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 15d

The White House's claim that "America’s skyrocketing autism rates have long been ignored if not mocked” is bonkers. Here's a chart of the number of science articles on autism and adult autism, the latter a relatively small subset of the total autism literature. The field is *drowning* in attention.

Explanation of chart from article: "A topic search on Web of Science we conducted using the terms “autis* AND adult*” demonstrates this expansion: between 1991 and 2000, 544 articles were published, between 2001 and 2010, 2,252 articles were published, and between 2011 and 2020, 10,469 articles were published. While the growth of adult autism research is considerable, it has come as part of a larger wave of increased publications on autism broadly. That is, as societal attention on autistic individuals has increased,6 autism research writ large has experienced corresponding increases."

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 15d

People say Trump has no real political convictions, but here it turns out he might have one, and it's idiotic. archive.is/4JkDr

Headline and dek of Wall St Jnl story:

Trump Turns up the Heat on RFK Jr to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines

President is focused on shots' alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to issue ahead of midterms

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 16d

Well, here we are. A few minutes into this podcast, the guest--a well-known conservative intellectual--says "the exorcists I have talked to." He evidently has them (plural!) on his contact list. The exorcists are "very worried" about Tucker Carlson, 'cuz he lives in the "demon-rich" Maine woods.

Post from Xitter from "the Jeremy Boreing show" shows an image of conservative pundit Rod Dreher looking pained. The text says "You need to talk to an exorcist" in quotes. Then it says: Rod Dreher tells the shocking story of getting two exorcists to work with Tucker [Carlson] after he learned of his demonic encounter--and why Tucker refused their help.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 17d

Just in case you were wondering if Habitat for Humanity would accept a donation of that leftover can of paint in your garage.

Text of Habitat for Humanity website:

PAINT

WHAT WE CAN ACCEPT: NO paint

WHAT WE CANNOT ACCEPT: Paint

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 18d

I was raised in the Pacific Northwest and will consider its landscape the epitome of beauty until I die, but I have to say that these Adirondack lakes are really something in the early morning.

Four canoes--three on the grass, one in the water--and a small dock point toward a crazy smooth lake ringed by pine forest. Two pine trees, both leaning a little from the prevailing wind, frame the image to either side. There's just a hint of dawn still in the sky.

View from canoe of the lake, with just a few tiny ripples now on the water. The sky is blue with scratchy cirrus up high on the left. We are heading toward a passage between an island and the lake shore. Both are glowing in the early morning light.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 19d

CDC: Measles cases this year (2,318) already surpass 2025 numbers (2,289)--and 2025 was the worst year for measles in decades. www.cdc.gov/measles/data...

CDC chart shows measles numbers soaring in2025 and 2026 from extremely low levels that continued up till 2023 (with eruptions in 2015 and 2019 that were bigger than those low levels but much smaller than current levels.)

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 21d

This conservative guy points out that modern conservative audiences wouldn't very much like a truly accurate version of the Odyssey.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 23d

I always feel guilty about enjoying mean book reviews, but this one about recent political books is a doozy--super-scathing on Vance's book, maybe cuz the writer edits a Catholic journal. This bit about Vance's constant invocation of Charlie Kirk made me laugh. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Excerpt from article: "If random disclosure of common-sense-defying detail is your idea of a searing, poignant journey into the light of faith, there’s more where that came from. Communion includes what is almost certainly the ne plus ultra of a new rhetorical trope—the posthumous invocation of Charlie Kirk to justify whatever the author or speaker wants you to believe or do. You know what I mean: the thing where a conservative podcast host assures his audience that a week or a few days or possibly just minutes before the man’s death, Kirk shared the secret gnosis about Israel, which is inevitably followed by a riposte from a Mar-a-Lago influencer insisting with equal stridency that milliseconds before (or perhaps even after) the shooting, she received private confirmation via text message of Kirk’s established public position. In this case, however, the spirit is summoned to explain why Usha had become pregnant again; specifically, we learn that Kirk’s widow, Erika, told Vance’s wife that she regrets not having more kids with Charlie, and that this moved Usha deeply and—*Marvin Gaye needle drop.*"

Continued: "People decide to have children for every possible reason or none. But until recently, the actual circumstances leading up to their conception were generally a private matter. If a dead friend inspired me and my wife to renew our acquaintance with the facts of life, I would probably not feel comfortable immortalizing his influence in my spiritual memoir slash campaign manifesto. But over and over again in these pages, Vance gives the impression that his book is meant to provide some kind of quasi-evangelical impetus to aspiring parents. If the right-wing dads of America start using “Let’s do it—for Charlie!” as a come-on, the U.S. birth rate is going to drop below that of Vatican City."

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 24d

Startling NYTimes graphic. The Trump ppl have charged 558 ppl w/ assaulting ICE agents. 463 cases have been resolved. Just 4 have been convicted at trial. 191 have been dismissed. 246 pleaded out, usually to lesser charges. Usually the gov't wins 90% of the time. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/u...

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 26d

Left: Ontario's burn area, from www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/ForestFireIn... Look at areas logged since 1976 (www.nrdc.org/sites/defaul...). Now add in dams (geohub.lio.gov.on.ca/datasets/mnr...) and fire suppression (files.ontario.ca/197-2-1en-fi...). LOTS of change in land use.

Map of Ontario burn area shows fires throughout the whole province, but especailly in the west and northwest.

Map of logging since 1976 shows a big sweep across the southern half of Ontario. Some of far southern Ontario is not shown as logged, because it was totally logged before 1976.

Map of dams in Ontario shows them all over the southern 2/3 of the province, with big clusters north of Thunder Bay and on the border with Manitoba, as well as huge numbers of them along the Great Lakes.

Map divides Ontario into fire zones where forest fire suppression takes place.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 26d

So we can say the European heat wave is almost certainly a symptom of climate change. But note that wildfires and especially severe convective storms (thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes) get lots of ink but are NOT well linked, 'cuz there's too much other crap going on that affect them. 3/4

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· 28d

3000+-yr-old bristlecone pines, Great Basin National Park, Nevada.

Bristlecone pines against the blue blue sky. The wood is super-resinous so dead trees don't decay for centuries or even millennia.

Bristlecone pines have these distinctive bottlebrush branch tips that are perfectly arranged against the sky.

Dead bristlecone trunk is almost the color of the stones it lays on.

These trees were more than 3000 years old when they died 800 years ago.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 11

Globalization FTW! Super-good Turkish coffee and snacks in a cafe in an early 20th-c. manse in downtown Salt Lake City.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 11

Nice point from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social: Big Tech's emissions are rising as the firms go all-in on AI (see chart). But the single biggest driver of their emissions isn't electricity use but construction--a reminder that the built env't remains a giant climate issue. heatmap.news/daily/google...

Chart shows how emissions from Microsoft, Google, and especially Amazon are climbing despite all 3 companies' promises to zero them out by the 2030s.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 10

Firefly season in New England. A photo sent to me by a pal from a trail a couple miles from my home.

A meadow at dusk with a shrubby, waist high conifer in the right foreground. Haze hovers over the grass and in the haze are countless tiny yellow streaks of light--fireflies.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 8

It is kind of funny, as @timothynoah.bsky.social notes, that the Trump people just denounced the Smithsonian's Natl Museum of American History for ignoring the Founders when this statue of George Washington is what you see when you walk into the building. timothynoah.substack.com/p/trumps-smi...

Enthroned Washington, by Horatio Greenough, 1841. Washington is in a toga-ish kind of garment while seated on a bench and is holding up an admonitory finger on his right hand while his left hand holds a sheathed sword by the blade. The statue is weird and bad, I gotta admit, but it is right there in the entrance.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 8

This 1853 Santa Fe Gazette editorial really lays out how things were then. The logic makes a turn at the end. "It is now quite time to teach these Red-men, that they must respect their treaties and not molest their white neighbors. And it is quite time also, that the mawkish sympathy for Indians--

Excerpt from editorial that is quoted in main text of post.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 7

My thanks to the kind soul who sent me this chart of the technology different Amish groups allow themselves to use. All use the electric washing machine--the one modern convenience they won't do without. Further evidence of our thesis about its importance in history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subgrou...

Wikipedia chart shows a couple dozen Amish subgroups on the Y axis and a long list of modern conveniences on the X axis. The main conveniences that most Amish groups won't give up are the washing machine, which basically everybody uses, and, somewhat less popular, the chain saw, and pressure-driven tools and lamps. Link in the post.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 7

A neighbor friend passed on this picture of fireflies in a meadow down the way from us. I love this time of year.

A meadow ringed by pine trees with the setting sun just peeping through the upper branches. In the shadow of the trees hundreds or thousands of fireflies are swarming, making tiny streaks of yellow light against the dark trees.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 7

Sadly, this tale of my youthful revolutionary laundry fervor is 100% true. Source: my discussion with Virginia Postrel on the remarkable impact of the electric washing machine. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d... Pedantic note: I believe the subtitles should say "squdge" instead of "squedge."

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 3

I like this bit that Virginia found--surely one of the first uses of comics to sell electricity via tales about washing machines. From a forthcoming episode of our podcast about the history of things you didn't even know had a history, this one on washing clothes. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jul 1

Then he points out that this is just an example of how AI's ability to generate coherent sentences from a corpus of text is not evidence of purpose or consciousness, but simply an unexpected property of language, "which is a topic worthy of investigation." (2/5)

Excerpt from article: "My intention is to highlight the fact that LLM conversations are cleverly disguised examples of sentence continuation, but this is not to deny how impressive LLMs can be at generating conversational transcripts. At times, they do this extraordinarily well; the fact that this is possible indicates something completely unforeseen about the statistical properties of large corpuses of text, which is a topic worthy of investigation. But if the Caesar character were to become dispirited by something that the Genghis Khan character said, we shouldn’t become concerned in the slightest. The conversation might contain multiple sentences that eloquently convey sadness, but no one is actually sad."

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 27

The great bulk of textiles now are mixed fabrics, e.g., spandex mixed with wool. None of these can be recycled, because the fabrics can't be disentangled. As a result, the Atacama desert is being filled with fast fashion. My pal would like do something about it now, rather than moral posturing.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 27

This is a key point. "AI is not simply translating the scrolls. Instead, it is helping researchers detect and visualise ink that the human eye cannot see. The reading, interpretation, editing and understanding of these texts still depends on papyrologists, classicists and historians."

Excerpt from article: But it is important to be clear about what AI is, and is not, doing here. AI is not simply translating the scrolls. Instead, it is helping researchers detect and visualise ink that the human eye cannot see. The reading, interpretation, editing and understanding of these texts still depends on papyrologists, classicists and historians. In other words, the technology is opening the door, but human scholarship is making it meaningful.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 25

At last, a rationale for seizing Greenland that all Americans can get behind.

Headline from New York Post: Trump official says US control of Greenland could bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 25

Here, nicely summarized, are the stakes.

Excerpt from the initiative's webpage:

Today, we treat respiratory infections like the cold and influenza as a minor nuisance. The evidence increasingly suggests otherwise.

*Healthy people spend roughly 15–25 days each year—about 5% of their lives—sick with respiratory infections like the common cold and flu.

*Infections from common respiratory viruses can lead to severe outcomes. In 2021 alone, there were 12.8 billion infections globally. Annually, over 65 million of these progress to serious lower respiratory disease and account for ~7% of deaths from major causes in the U.S.

*Respiratory infections raise our risk of serious illness, often years later. While researchers are still early in establishing these connections, it seems plausible that society has meaningfully underestimated the significance of seemingly benign infections on short and long-term health.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 24

Well, that signature move didn't last long. With 222 flu cases in Lackland Air Force base (up from 159 last week), the military seems to be going back to vaxxing recruits, and the mandate is spreading to other types of service people.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 23

Here's a cheerful snippet--think of this maybe as counter-programming or palate-cleansing.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗@charlescmann· Jun 23

There are only two places in the world free from brown rats: South Georgia Island, in the far S. Atlantic, and... Alberta, Canada. S. Georgia Island is rat-free because it's remote; Alberta, because it's been operating Earth's only successful anti-rat campaign. worksinprogress.co/issue/albert...