iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

When I finished the ms., I dropped it into InDesign and made fake "galleys" for myself and a few kind souls who had agreed to read the draft. Without thinking, I used the original title. And, well, I got some reactions...

Picture of mockup book with title, "Between the River and the Sea: 25,000 Years in the North American West."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Funny story, at least to me. I've been writing a history of the North American West from the beginning to the near future. (Coming next year!) I began it in 2020. Since I define the West as "the area between the Mississippi and the Pacific," I came up with what I thought was a great title...

An old map of the "western section" of the United States.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Globalist's breakfast: bulgogi quesadilla, Ethiopian coffee with some kind of super-fancy cream with a Dutch name. Really good all around.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

A small counterweight to the general collapse of print is that printing technology has developed to the point where almost any outfit can make stuff that is visually stunning. Thought prompted by the new Works In Progress, which looks like a million bucks. (Shameless plug, as I have a piece in it.)

Cover of the current Works In Progressive features a curvy closeup on ine of those Kingfishers with the band around its neck so it can't eat the fish it's just caught. The bird's head and long neck are coming from the top and the silvery fish is spilling out of the white frame around the page at the bottom left.

Double spread shows a beautiful 19th century map of Paris.

Spread shows a tangled mass of rose-like flowers and buds with two gold and salmon carp-like fish swimming around them. The image spills off the page and tumbles across the bottom of the other page.

Puzzle pages at the back open up in a triple-truck.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I was reminded by @joshtpm.bsky.social that this kind of thing was happening four years ago, and like he says it seems worthwhile to remind yourself of this stuff when thinking about the current AI boom. www.digitalengineering247.com/article/meta...

Headline of article about a 2022 McKinsey report: "Metaverse could grow to $5 Trillion by 2030."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

"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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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Not so anonymous, apparently. I don't know anything about the guy, but a cursory search suggests he is indeed concerned about the cultural effects of AI: quillette.com/2026/01/08/a...

Excerpt from article:

The author of the anonymous X account was later identified on the pages of the centre-right newspaper Le Figaro as one of its own columnists, Samuel Fitoussi, the author of an essay against “wokeism” on film and TV.

On his own X account, Fitoussi said he had initiated his campaign because even though he was “techno-optimistic”, he feared that “AI will cause the disappearance of reading and writing”.

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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 · 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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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I mean, wow, Oklahoma... how can insurance possibly deal with this?

Similar map of Oklahoma shows the state basically covered with little circles indicating "tornado touched down here."

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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 · 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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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Richardson, in case you don't know his work, is one of the great photographers of North American agriculture and the interior west. I love his stuff. Here's an image of prairie grass that just knocked me out.

Big bluestem, a major North American prairie grass, carefully removed from the soil, roots and all, and laid across a horizontal surface, with the thick cloud of roots way longer and more massive than the above-ground bunch of grass.

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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

That said: take precautions. In places like New England, where I live and where the CDC says the incidence of COVID is low but growing, maybe think twice about going into crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces. www.cdc.gov/cfa-modeling...

County level map of Covid reports from CDC shows that in what areas we have data for that Covid risk is growing or likely growing in New England, the Atlantic seaboard, and much of the northern West.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

...with very little evident downside. Since the vaxxes and their scheduling were rejigged in '22 there is no observed "increased risk of stroke or thrombotic events" or evidence for "adverse outcomes of pregnancy." Source (which I urge you to read): jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Excerpt from article: "Studies included in this review consistently demonstrated the safety of COVID-19 vaccines; vaccine-related serious adverse events remain rare. Prior reports signaling an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in younger populations, with the highest risk among adolescent and young adult males and after the second dose, led to updated vaccination guidance released in February 2022 that extended the recommended dosing interval of the primary series for some individuals, particularly males aged 12 to 39 years.172 Although this review identified 2 studies reporting higher rates of myocarditis and pericarditis in younger populations, both reflected a dosing schedule that preceded the 2022 schedule change. This review did not identify any studies that exclusively enrolled participants after 2022 that reported an increased frequency of myocarditis. Consistent with the findings from previous respiratory seasons, studies evaluating serious cardiovascular outcomes largely reported null or heterogeneous findings, including among large administrative or postmarketing surveillance datasets that are designed to detect rare events. Studies comparing rates of adverse events after vaccination with prepandemic historical controls should be interpreted with caution because this may not be an appropriate counterfactual for the expected background rate, especially when the outcome under investigation is itself associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Studies did not identify increased risk of stroke or thrombotic events. Recent evidence indicates no association between maternal vaccination and stillbirth and no increased risk for other adverse outcomes of pregnancy, such as preterm birth and small for gestational age."

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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 · 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

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

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 · 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 · 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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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 · 20/08/2026

Just saw this. I wonder if in the future this will mark the beginning of private vengeance playing a key role in conflicts on scales previously limited to struggles between states. Supposedly Russia tried to assassinate the rapper, so maybe this all really happened. ( /v @bruces.bsky.social )

Headline from July article in Moscow Times: "FSB accuses Ukrainian rapper of organizing drone attack on defense enterprise."

Headline reads, "Target of Russian 'assassination' plot foiled by Poland may have been US-Ukrainian rapper."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Of all the responses to the awful Arday mess, this must be the goofiest--a change.org petition to limit the number of "news articles" published about a person in a given time frame. How would you even do that? "Sorry, blogger, you're the 201st piece! The Internet cops say you can't hit 'publish'!"

Screen capture of a change.org petition. There's a big photograph of Jason Arday in some sort of fancy academic gear, holding onto a ceremonial stick and smiling broadly. The headline reads "Proposal for Arday's Law: a limit to articles published on one person within a timeframe." At the time of the screen capture, 4,126 people had signed the petition.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Here's a chart of US measles cases per year since 2000. Note that 2026 is already a record, and we're barely halfway thru the year. And here's state vaccination rates. Basically, every state that's not green does not have rates high enough for herd immunity. www.cdc.gov/measles/data...

Chart shows series of waves of measles cases, with the first in 2012-25, the second in 2017-18, and the third one beginning last year and continuing to this year. Every wave is higher than its predecessor.

Chart shows state vaccination rates. Typically, 95% is the standard threshold for herd immunity. Only 10 states are at that level. 13 are below 90%. The trend is bad.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

After a weirdly cool, dry June, it's finally my favorite season in New England--tomato season.

Tomatoes from our garden. We pick them when they're just beginning to ripen to thwart the chipmunks and birds who eat them when they start turning color. These have been ripening in our kitchen for a few days. They're Pink Brandywine, Oaxaca Gold, Japanese Trifele, and Ananas Noir.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Oh, good grief. It's exasperating to find out that the guy apparently does actually have a few sincerely held beliefs--and that this is one of them. "The effort underscores President Donald Trump’s determination to elevate vaccine policy within the administration..." wapo.st/4bCDnfQ

Headline from Washington Post: "White House Drafting Order on Vaccines, Autism, Despite Pollsters' Warnings." Subhed: The effort underscores President Donald Trump's determination to elevate vaccine policy even as a federal judge has halted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr's sweeping vaccine overhaul."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Mind-boggling: In WWII, 70+ years after the first commercial toothpaste, US ppl still don't brush their teeth. The US Army is so alarmed by its teenage recruits' bad teeth that it sets up a huge dental program and installs +1M dentures to get them on the battlefield. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Nicely put and (at least for me) amazingly true. I can't count the number of times I've stared at something I've just written and realized, "This cherished thought of mine can't possibly be true. I'm talking out my ass." fs.blog/why-write/

Quote from article: Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Importantly, writing is also the process by which you figure it out.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

From Reddit, a reminder that different places have different environmental issues. Here's the Buriganga river going through Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the mass of rivers that flow into the Bay of Bengal. A beautiful place with a lousy, corrupt government that has zero interest in providing services.

A river tributary in SW Dhaka so crammed with garbage, mostly plastic bags, that you almost can't see the water or the river banks. A footbridge crosses the river and its banks are lined with apartment buildings.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Looks like my contractor friend got it right. www.cnn.com/2026/07/31/p... The DOJ dropped all charges against the "vandals," admitting a "rushed and flawed installation process" with "overspraying and a failure of the coatings to bond" the primary results. Also failure to dry properly first.

Excerpt from filing: "Based on this request, USAO-DC [the DC district attorney office] received 695 megabytes of additional documents from DOI, which took days to review. These documents indicate a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflicting Pool."

Further excerpt: "Following the initiation of this prosecution, DOI and contractor personnel inspected the Reflecting Pool on Monday, July 20, 2026, after it had been drained for repairs. BCS Construction Engineering made a number of findings, including that:
1) ... Various theories were discussed as to the cause of the failures... An apparent cause of failure may be the application of too little or too much XP bonding agent.
2) At each coating failure along the perimeter, [redacted] proposed the following remediation: remove all existing failed material until firmly adhered material is encountered, power wash the exposed area to clean the substrate, grind abrade the substrate, apply XP bonding agent...
3) Many areas were observed where Pipeline 5000 was applied for texture over 11-35 and oversprayed onto existing Pipeliner 5000 and hence had not bonded...
Although "[v]arious theories were discussed as to the cause of the fail;ures," overspaying and a failure of the coating to bond predominated in the report.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

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."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

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."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

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

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

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.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

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

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

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.

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

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.)

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

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

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

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."

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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

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...

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