𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 (@CharlesCMann) / X

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗

14.1K posts

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗

@CharlesCMann

Writer of 1491, 1493, Wizard & The Prophet, etc. New: Everyday Abundance, podcast w/ @vpostrel on the history of things you didn't know even *had* a history.

Seized Nipmuc land

Joined August 2011

Pinned
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Feb 12, 2025
Here's my 1st piece of overt political propaganda--the first of a series about the systems that undergird our daily lives, which are always one generation of inattention away from catastrophe. Message: they're important! Paywall is lifted, please pass on.
We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It
From thenewatlantis.com
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Mar 30, 2024
A pal just sent me this comparison of a famous 1760s portrait of George III that I've seen in a zillion textbooks and the shape of England and I've been missing the point the entire time.
1.9M
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Apr 23, 2024
Amazing that a chip bricked in 46-yr-old Voyager I, preventing it from sending data, and NASA figured out how to split up and reallocate its functions to other hardware, sending code 15 billion miles away (45 hours round trip!)--and Voyager's back online.
Voyager Archives - NASA Science
From science.nasa.gov
1.1M
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Aug 4, 2025
An awful story. He was a teenaged boy who played tennis w/o socks because he thought it was fashionable. He got a blister on his toe and was dead within a week. Part of the legend of Silent Cal Coolidge was that he fell into deep depression after his son's death.
Megan McArdle
@asymmetricinfo
Aug 4, 2025
The president of the United States lost his healthy 16 year old son to an infected blister.
264K
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Jul 23, 2023
There is much, much more to do, but from what I can tell it is not widely understood that US per-capita CO₂ emissions have fallen below WWI levels: ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emi…
2.4M
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Mar 30, 2023
New Science paper argues horses came to the Americas earlier than previously thought—a conclusion that, if it holds up, rewrites the history of the N. American West. Strikingly, the article is from a team of archaeologists, geneticists, and Lakota researchers and elders. 1/15
1M
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Apr 24, 2025
Just got a phone call from an old friend (my college roommate!) about the cancelled NSF grants that DOGE is celebrating in the post below. He’s on the list. But they have the wrong grant. 1/6
Department of Government Efficiency
@DOGE
Apr 19, 2025
Great work by @NSF canceling 402 wasteful DEI grants ($233M in savings), including $1M for “Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation”. See the NSF update below. Grant awards will be based on merit, competition, equal opportunity, and excellence.
422K
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Jul 19, 2022
Modest proposal, occasioned by chats last night at a wedding with some smart, curious, well-educated 20-somethings: All high-school students should be required to take a course called How the System Works. 1/5
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Nov 7, 2025
Terrifically amusing @SmithsonianMag story from last month about Cormac Macarthy's absolutely gigantic personal library, which overwhelmed scholars are slowly going through.
186K
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Oct 6, 2023
When I wrote 1491, I began by describing the big earthworks ("geoglyphs") in western Amazonia. Now a 220-person(!) team uses Lidar to find 20 more all over the river basin, and uses computer modeling to argue there are 10-24k more hidden in the forest. science.org/doi/full/10.11…
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𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Mar 12, 2020
Just got off the phone with a Choctaw pal. He told me that the government was blocking Europeans from coming to America to infect the people who lived here with awful diseases. "About 400 years too late for that shit," he said.
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Jun 21, 2022
A few days ago, a Spanish publisher (@capitanswing) released a Spanish translation of my book, “1491.” News coverage led to a small kerfluffle, with various people denouncing me online. They got mad because my book supposedly attacks the Spanish Conquest of the Americas. 1/7
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Aug 4, 2025
I've been told that the AI models out there have been trained on super-huge corpuses of data--everything out there. So I've been asking it specific questions to see what it does. Today I asked it if Congress cut the budget of the Forest Service in 1910 and 1911.
93K
𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗
@CharlesCMann
Apr 17, 2019
Well-known: American chestnut was wiped out in the 20th c. by an exotic fungus. Less well-known: chestnut was an agricultural industry. Now blight-resistant chestnut is here. Last week we had a kickoff brunch to bring back the industry. (Image: young American chestnuts.) 1/16