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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗

@charlescmann.bsky.social
7.8K followers 292 following 4K posts

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: bit.ly/4unQNCY

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 2h
Say what you like about Caitlin Flanagan's politics, but that woman knows how to write a lede. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Opening paragraphs of Caitlin Flanagan article: 

One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him—under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself—to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole.

Also on the deck, and also in the thrall of the night’s pleasures, was one Louis Helmburg III, an education major and ace benchwarmer for the Thundering Herd baseball team. His response to the proposed launch was the obvious one: he reportedly whipped out his cellphone to record it on video, which would turn out to be yet another of the night’s seemingly excellent but ultimately misguided ideas. When the bottle rocket exploded in Hughes’s rectum, Helmburg was seized by the kind of battlefield panic that has claimed brave men from outfits far more illustrious than even the Thundering Herd. Terrified, he staggered away from the human bomb and fell off the deck.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
TIL from @wapolicygreen.bsky.social about the super-useful term “ultracrepidarians”: people who think that since they're experts in one area, they're experts in all areas. E.g.s include scientists and businesspeople who opine on subjects out of their domain (physicists who decry population growth...
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Donald Trump has done something that decades of climate advocacy and international conferences have never achieved. [Due to high oil prices from his Iran war,] Global CO2 emissions look set to fall in 2026 by more than in any year since the pandemic." rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/trumps-car...
Chart of International Energy Agency projections of 2026 show demand for fossil fuels shrinking by 0.4%, and a decline in emissions by 301 million tons of CO2.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I sympathize. It really sucks when people just grab up your work without credit or payment and use it as a shortcut to make a product that might put you out of business.
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026
Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc
nyti.ms
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Well, this happened.
theguardian.com
Novelist accused of using AI to write book removed from French prize list
Thélyson Orélien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social media
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Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“At least six babies in Pennsylvania have been born infected with measles, with two so sick they had to be admitted to intensive care.” H/t @ameshaa.bsky.social
nbcnews.com
America had wiped out measles. Now babies are infected at birth.
Congenital measles has rarely been seen in the U.S. That’s changing as vaccination declines and more pregnant women become infected.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fine @countyhwy.bsky.social essay about 9/11, baseball, and childhood fandom. "I was a child terrified by the killing of thousands of people. I wanted to feel safe and help restore normalcy. There was nothing I could do. But I could root for the Yankees and the Yankees could heal the country."
countyhighway.com
The Yankees Win! | Sam Sussman
America's Only Newspaper
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Historians rightly say people's actions should be judged by the standards of their time. But what often gets lost is that those standards weren't what we think. Many 18thc Europeans hated colonialism--as an e.g., here's Immanuel Kant in 1795 castigating it as "truly appalling." It was contentious...
"Excerpt from Kant: "If one compares this with the inhospitable conduct of the civilized—and primarily commercial—states of our own continent, the injustice they display when visiting foreign lands and peoples (which they equate with conquering them) is truly appalling. To them, upon their discovery, America, the lands of the Negroes, the Spice Islands, the Cape, and so forth, were territories belonging to no one; for they counted the inhabitants as nothing. In the East Indies (Hindustan), under the pretext of merely establishing trading posts, they introduced foreign military forces—bringing with them the oppression of the natives, the incitement of the region's various states into widespread wars, famine, insurrection, treachery, and the whole litany of evils that afflict the human race.

China and Japan (Nippon)—having had experience with such guests—wisely restricted access: the former permitted entry but not full admission, while the latter granted even that limited access to only a single European nation, the Dutch, whom they nonetheless kept isolated from the native population, much like prisoners."
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
SW Kansas is North America's beef-packing center--a prosperous and incredibly diverse place, both thanks to the thousands of immigrants, Asian and Mesoamerican, who came there to work in the '90s. It's also super-Republican. If these guys are pushing back on ICE, it really marks a turning point.
kcur.org
After ICE sweeps Kansas, schools warn families of detentions and a meatpacking plant delays shifts
After federal immigration enforcement action in western Kansas, a meatpacking plant delayed some shifts Wednesday and a school district warned that students may have had family members detained.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This has all the suspense and humor of that great Jennifer Egan short story told wholly in tweets, except that no terrorism or gunplay is involved. I'd call it the "New Yorker short story" version of that story, except that I think that Egan's original story was actually published in the New Yorker.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Speaking of AI, there's a fascinating dispute brewing in the French press about a new French-Canadian novel, C’était ça ou mourir, which is tipped for all kinds of prizes, but is also being accused of being 100% AI written (says Pangram, anyway). Haven't read the book or know of the writer, but...
Cover of the book with an excited blurb: "I read this novel in one sitting, breathless. A powerful text. A balm as much as a slap in the face." The title means, "It was that or die."Picture of someone who fed the first two chapters into Pangram and got back the assurance that it was 100% AI generated.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Gender-affirming care, MAGA-style. I am happy to note that the actual issued clinical guideline is apparently called, "Testosterone Deficiency in the Male Service Member". Images from press release: www.war.gov/News/News-St...
Department of War, press release, 17 Sep 2026. Headline: " Department Releases Guidance on Implementing Testosterone Deficiency Screenings for Male Service Members"A real sentence from this press release: "For service members with testosterone deficiency, replacement therapy or other hormone treatments will be an option."
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Theodore Grunewald @tedgrunewald.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Can't recommend this book highly enough...
"Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm" by Thomas J. Campanella, Yale University Press (2003). Cultural and architectural history. The rise of the American elm as a defining symbol of the American landscape and urban design.  Winner of the 2005 Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. The American elm, elegant and highly adaptable, was an essential feature of America’s cultural landscape for more than a century, forming great verdant parasols above—and giving its name to—streets all across the nation. The elm became a defining element in the spatial design of America’s villages, towns, and cities, first in New England, and—with the westward transit of Yankee culture—eventually throughout the United States. This fascinating and generously illustrated book traces the elm’s transformation from a fast-growing weed into a regional and national icon, and shows how Elm Street satisfied America’s quest for a pastoral urbanism imagined since the time of Jefferson. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300184471/republic-of-shade/
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Last weekend so many of my friends went out to look at the new supernova, SN 2026aaiv. It’s been 400+ years since a supernova in the Milky Way (1604, Kepler’s star), and we're way overdue. But while we're waiting this fella, in galaxy NGC 7331 in Pegasus, ~45 million light years away, will do.
skyandtelescope.org
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Just came across this map of tornadoes in Massachusetts since 1950 and am again impressed with the worthlessness of my intuition about weather. I would've said New England has basically zero tornadoes and that any that show up are scary oddities that shld be treated as signs of change. Which, nope.
Map of tornadoes in Mass since 1950 from https://data.telegram.com/tornado-archive/. Basically, this place I thought was tornado-free has had scores of them since 1950--I just don't know about them.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
New DNA study of Thomas Jefferson's hair uses advanced techniques to confirm he fathered children with his enslaved mistress, Sally Hemings. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/a... /v @agordonreed.bsky.social (who proved the link with archival documents 20+ yrs ago, but it's nice to see this).
nytimes.com
Two Centuries On, Smithsonian Connects Jefferson’s Hair to Hemings’s Children (Gift Article)
A new book describes how cutting-edge genomics techniques yielded “extraordinary proof” that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
@tedgioia.bsky.social making the case that Philip K Dick's "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," one of his most bonkers novels when it came out in 1965, is now a work of social realism. www.honest-broker.com/p/my-favorit...
Gioia on Dick: What a crazy book! Or at least that’s how it seemed back in 1965, when Philip K. Dick published The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It was a strange book in a strange year.

But not anymore. The most demented things in this story are now a reality. Just consider….

    A ruthlessly ambitious CEO who wants to relocate to Mars, and gets caught up in a fierce rivalry with another space-traveling technocrat.

    All this is financed by the sale of addictive technology, which now becomes the focal point of people’s leisure hours.

    Unwary citizens find themselves addicted to tech platforms, where users are represented by avatars. But the real goal of powerful tech enterprises is to lure users into compulsive behavior that can be monetized. And not just once—but day after day.

    As a result, huge numbers of people waste their free time and spend all their money inside these make-believe platforms. They want to escape reality, not live in it.

    Can you blame them. Global warming is out of control, and beyond any point where it can be fixed.

    Meanwhile, a few wealthy elites are obsessed with transhumanist technologies for extending life—which often backfire.

    In their struggles to maintain sanity in a dystopian world, people now get therapy from a chatbot—accessed via a device they carry with them wherever they go.

    But some heavy users are so deranged by the emerging technology…..Cover of 1980s paperback version of the book features a bonkers, industrialist-looking guy with bulging fish eyes and light beams emerging from his head in the shape of a Greek cross while he gesticulates meaningfully. His suitcoat is transforming itself into batwings in a creepy fashion.
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(numunu, quahadis band) - Sky Kwihnai Pihi (name) @anarcho.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/a...
nytimes.com
An Indigenous Painter Sees a Vermeer, and the Sparks Fly
For a new show at the Frick Collection, Kent Monkman imagines what Indigenous people see when they see fur trappers, General Custer and even Jeff Bezos.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Worth noting that we are seeing the quietest Atlantic hurricane season since sorta decent record-keeping began in 1851.
arstechnica.com
This Atlantic hurricane season is about to do something that hasn't happened in 175 years
But there may be a price to pay for a quiet Atlantic hurricane season.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Just stumbled across these terrific Jim Richardson photos of the annual spring prairie burning in Kansas's Flint Hills. Remarkable to think how native peoples set these enormous fires in the grasslands every year for centuries upon centuries. www.jimrichardsonphotography.com/index/G00002...
In an aerial fire, flames make serpentine patterns at dusk over the rolling terrain of Kansas's Flint Hills.Two burned trees are silhouetted against a sinuous arc of fire that twists toward the horizon at sunset.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Since I got my Covid vaxx yesterday, I thought I'd look up the latest estimates of its effectiveness. A JAMA overview published on Sept 2 provided good news: vaccines aren't perfect but do cut "COVID-19–related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department/urgent care visits" by ~50% ...
Excerpt from article: "Data from 155 recent publications indicate that COVID-19 vaccines continue to reduce the risk of severe disease across all ages, including among individuals with underlying medical conditions. Seasonal patterns of SARS-CoV-2 remain difficult to anticipate because epidemiologic trends depend on the emergence of new variants, waning immunity, and population dynamics, among other factors.173 Evidence suggests that even in the context of cocirculation of variants outside the JN.1 lineage, such as BA.3.2, vaccination continues to provide measurable benefit against severe infection. Vaccine effectiveness is generally highest for children and older adults, who also have the highest baseline risk of COVID-19–related hospitalization. Estimates of VE from the most recent 2025-2026 season demonstrate that COVID-19 vaccination (LP.8.1-adapted vaccines) are associated with significant reductions in the risk of COVID-19–related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department/urgent care visits among adults, generally reducing the risk of these events by half, which is consistent with the effectiveness reported since vaccines were updated to target new variants (JN.1 lineage) in 2023."
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Regardless of what you think about AI, Kevin Kelly's description of what it is doing is quite interesting. IMHO, he makes a good case that AI itself isn't infringing copyright--but his arguments don't apply to the AI firms' initial choice to use databases of pirated works to train their models.
kevinkelly.substack.com
Arguments in Favor of AI Fair Use
I made some notes on the nature of the training of LLMs, and about whether we as a society should consider the material used to train them as a fair use of that material.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Just came across this weird, funny story from July of a NYTimes writer finding some guy was selling a crappy AI-slop biography of her--and her subsequent discovery of a flourishing sub-industry of AI-generated crap bios of not-very-notable people. (gift link)
nytimes.com
I Got Slopped (Gift Article)
Someone used A.I. to write my biography. Thousands more of those books are polluting Amazon. Who is behind all this drivel?
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I think Guillermo del Toro is onto something here--he's capturing what I hear from writers, artists, composers, etc. What they worry about is 1) AI use impeding young people from developing Fingerspitzengefühl--the subtle, instinctual "knowledge" you gain from working on something with your hands...
reddit comment: 

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply: 

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Fine piece that explores the Navier-Stokes proof, as well as the messy details of the non-collaborative collaboration that led to the sorta-kinda "AI proof" from OpenAI.
quantamagazine.org
AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problems | Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
For the record, it turns out that you *can* take the pits from supermarket mangoes, stick them in a pot, and nine years later get a dozen or so mini-mangoes, even if you live in New England.
One of the mango trees in our foyer  which luckily has a tall ceiling. Closeup on a cluster of ripening mangoes, the skylight above them in the background. Three mini-mangoes ripening in a yellow bowl.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Lovely story in the NY Times today about a 92-year-old mathematician and a high-school kid working together to produce a major result in topology. This kind of working together is the best part of science, and frankly of being human.
nytimes.com
The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice (Gift Article)
Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The impact of removing wolf protections is much less than either supporters or opponents would have you think. Protections were removed a long time ago in WA, ID, MT, WY, and half of OR and UT. In the West, where the fight is, they're only listed in CA, the upper Midwest, and parts of OR and UT...
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Very good ground-level piece from @citizencohn.bsky.social on the battle about measles in Pennsylvania, and why all this stuff matters. www.thebulwark.com/p/rfk-jr-sic...
thebulwark.com
RFK Jr.’s Sickening Measles Victory Lap
While Pennsylvania struggles to contain an outbreak, the anti-vax health secretary keeps trying to score political points.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
That sound you hear is of economists banging their heads on their desks. /v @rajakorman.bsky.social
Image is of a Donald Trump post on X on Sept 6. The text: "Canada's (currency) Dollar imbalance with the U.S. is unacceptable. It has been that way for years - but no longer! President DJT"
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Yes, RFKJr., measles killed that poor kid. lancasteronline.com/news/local/6...
lancasteronline.com
6-week-old Amish child died from measles, Lancaster County coroner confirms
A 6-week-old Amish girl with a neurological genetic disorder, Amish lethal microcephaly, died from measles at home in Lancaster County, Lancaster County coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni said today.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Like almost all journos, I don't like it when Washington attacks us for what we write, tries to get us to reveal souces, etc., all of which has steadily worsened over the years. But this stuff--targeting ordinary people for writing angry letters or posts--is much, much more pernicious. (gift link)
wapo.st
He wrote a scathing message to ICE. Federal agents showed up at his door.
David Streever of Rochester, New York, sued Department of Homeland Security officials on Monday, saying the agency’s actions violated his First Amendment rights.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
After years of testing, USDA has just approved releasing GMO American chestnut trees, potentially giving us the chance to bring back an iconic species destroyed in the early 20th century by an imported disease. (Chauvinistic note: I've had American chestnuts, and they are better than European ones.)
esf.edu
USDA Approval Advances Efforts to Restore the American Chestnut
Efforts by researchers at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) to restore the American chestnut tree to the American landscape took a significant leap forward with an approved desi...
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
AI is creeping into the the op-ed columns: "Pangram also identified an Aug. 9 guest column in The Washington Post, 'Universities are Fighting AI Cheating,' by Dartmouth provost Santiago Schnell, as 100% AI-written."
semafor.com
Exclusive: AI writing has already begun to appear on the opinion pages
About 10 — of 310 — contributions to The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times over the past month appear to have been written by AI models.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Nice piece about the demise of Hampshire College. I'd be tougher on the former school administrations than the author--they never addressed the school's obvious financial issues until about 2010, though they were obvious 15 yrs before -- but the gist of the piece is spot on.
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hannah gais @hannahgais.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Hampshire College started with a grand promise: to serve as "a vehicle for the realization of self in society." This fall, the school will close its doors. I talked to some of its founders, faculty, students, administrators, and board members about what its loss means thebaffler.com/latest/class...
thebaffler.com
Class Dismissed | Hannah Gais
Private liberal arts schools were never going to kickstart the revolution. But the closure of Hampshire College further narrows the political imaginary.
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Feeling very honored and grateful today. Some of the journalists whose work I admire most have received this prize in the past and at a time when journalism is under threat in so many ways it’s just really heartening to be recognized by people who care deeply about journalism.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I'm in southern British Columbia and out of curiosity I searched for "Lake Ontario" on Google Maps and got this result. Call Mark Carney!
Google Maps automatically switched a search for Lake Ontario to Lake America and displayed the lake as such on its map.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Osoyoos, BC.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
This particular policy shift seems to have been working out well. (My thanks to the pal who sent me this, chortling.)
CBS headline from April 18, 2025: "FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say"
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
A great pleasure of my current trip was reconnecting with Duane Mistaken Chief, a great linguist who is the only reason I might not make a fool of myself in my discussion of the ancient and beautiful Blackfoot language in my current project. Thanks, Duane! (L-R, my wife, Duane, me, Duane's partner)
In a Calgary restaurant, my wife on left, holding a box of leftovers, Duane in his trademark black cowboy hat next to her, then me, then Duane's partner Nina, holding a copy of the Kiliii Yuyan's fabulous book on Indigenous conservation.
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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
*Okay, maybe the AIs *did* have a Stalinist Crime Boss, and he liquidated a large fraction of his underlings and simply hasn't been identified
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Whoops! Forgot to say that all those are Banff. Turns out Banff is super beautiful! Who knew? Except everyone!
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Lake Minnewanka, early morning, absolutely still, the Canadian Rockies rising on all sides. Just outside Banff, Grotto Canyon, a hike down a dry-in-summer riverbed that runs through steep rocks studded with leftover pitons from climbers. Two Jack Lake, bighorn sheep watching, late sun just glancing off the cliff-like face of the mountain beiind.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This NY Times article documents a very real problem--hotter, "stand replacing" wildfires--but inexplicably focuses on climate change (a long-term problem that for forests is poorly documented) and doesn't say Word One about 100 yrs of misguided fire suppression that boosts fuel load...
nytimes.com
Wildfires Are Turning Forests in the American West Into Shrubland
Towering woodlands in the West are being permanently replaced by tracts of spiky shrubs. Conditions “just aren’t normal anymore,” one researcher said.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I really like buffalo. This is the Shoshone herd, about 320 animals, in the Wind River reservation yesterday afternoon. It's sobering to consider that the entire world 's supply of free-ranging bison in 1885 was one-fourth the size of this group. We almost lost these guys.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
When the mind behind Plants vs Zombies says you are hot beans, well, what can I say? Day. Made.
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Colorado Springs, CO. (Is it OK to post clouds on Bluesky?)
A small plane, silhouetted against gray cloud, flies from an immense storm cloud that is sweeping over the yellowed shortgrass prairie in eastern Colorado.
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