@anth I've never seen my Mac do this? Hmmm 🤔

The man command does not calls home. Not on my macOS 26, at least, but it shouldn't on any other.

@bender It certainly doesn't here. I've even traced it's network calls. it makes none.

Because OP twtxt seems to be a cross-post from the Fediverse, I am bringing some context here. It refers to this GitHub issue. This comment explains why the issue described is happening:

This is usually due to notarization checks. E.g. the binaries are checked by the notarization service ('XProtect') which phones home to Apple. Depending on your network environment, this can take a long time. Once the executable has been run the results are usually cached, so any subsequent startup should be fast.

OP network must be running on 1,200 Baud modem, or less. 🤭 I have never, ever, experienced any distinguishable delays.