Clive Thompson

Keri Russell’s Emotional Transparency Has Anchored Three Decades of TV But, offscreen, she’s not even sure that she wants to be an actress.

My profile of the delightful Keri Russell, the darkly funny, surprisingly introverted former New Mickey Mouse Club member who—even after Felicity, The Americans and The Diplomat!—has never fully embraced the idea of herself as an actress: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

ack! that is a brutal energy bill ... I'm so sorry

it's certainly worked for me

yeah quite possibly

Why Balcony Solar Panels Haven’t Taken Off in the US In countries like Germany, balcony-mounted solar panels are all the rage. But from breaker-masking to voltage mismatches, America’s grid isn’t ready for it—yet.

precisely

they need to make it sweeter for landlords

also, an intelligent federal government would work hard to create safety standards for "balcony solar", like Germany did -- so renters can buy panels that drape out a window or a balcony: www.wired.com/story/why-ba...

cool stuff if done right!

lol

I dunno, for me it's definitely worth paying something to have a grid managed

grids are good things! they need to be modernized, but as a technology they're key for clean-energy resilience

that would kind of make a badass sci fi story reall

The Day The Sun Never Rose

oh, they do regular on-the-surface-of-the-roof installs too, I think! But I don't know if they serve connecticut

it really isn't

technically were I ever to sell the place, it'd add to the value, so amortization is not really a big issue in the first place

and oh yeah, my sense is that a lot of these solar door-to-door sales are often for sketchy companies

particularly the ones where you don't own the panels -- the company owns 'em, so there's no/little money upfront

me, I was lucky, I could afford to just *buy* mine, from a legit dealer

Brooklyn SolarWorks! They're a terrific longtime local company, with amazing leadership and service

they pioneered the "canopy" style -- i.e. panels mounted high off the surface of a flat roof, so you can get lots of panels but leave room for the fire dept to walk around if there's a fire

(that former post is courtesy of the "tell me you're late-filing your taxes without telling me you're late-filing your taxes")

holy crap, solar panels are productive! even in Brooklyn

our electric bill for all 2024, for an entire house:

$499.29

($240 of this is the monthly connection charge, so: only $260 for actual electricity)

installed in 2018, the panels amortized last year, so now it's just crazy-cheap juice

MinnPost Festival - MinnPost Tickets on sale now for MinnPost Festival 2025 on Sept. 27. A full day on conversations with local and national newsmakers on Minnesota's future.

Excited to head out to Minneapolis for The Minnpost Festival on Saturday! www.minnpost.com/festival-2025/

yep yep

New Yorkers are *busy* and in a *rush*, which gets mistaken for rude

but if you really need help they step up immediately

If a government tells you that you can’t call it authoritarian, it’s authoritarian.

Yes! Stuff like this happens all the time — very similar things have happened to me

Anyone who thinks NYC is a crime ridden hellhole… anecdata but still data: I did not realize that I lost my credit card in a large market. Not only did an employee notice & keep it, she gave it to the manager of the mall, who called me back on her personal cell phone to make sure I got it back. 💚🍎

Why This Pennsylvania City Put Its Streetlights on a Dimmer

Let there NOT be light… or at least so much of it. Good news about night-friendly street lighting coming to Pittsburgh. Would love to see this emulated by other cities. (Hello, L.A....)

#environment #sustainability

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/c... cc @crosstownla.bsky.social

The opposite of doomscrolling: Clive Thompson's Linkfest 'The opposite of doomscrolling: Every two weeks (roughly) I [Clive Thompson] send you a collection of the best Internet reading I've found -- links to culture, technology, art and science that...

Aha, @metafilter.bsky.social has discovered my "Linkfest" newsletter!

www.metafilter.com/210445/The-o...

that's fun, the newsletter definitely has a metafilterian vibe lol

I Played In The NFL. Should I Care If My Son Doesn't Like Football? | Defector “Look! Over there! That was my first apartment when I moved here to play for the Broncos.” My son could not have cared less about the “playing for the Broncos” part. “Were you on the top floor?” he as...

Oh my goodness, this essay: defector.com/i-played-in-...

the writer is super thoughtful and self-reflective, which is great

but my own father was incredibly sporty, played amateur hockey, and was *crushed* that I had zero interest (aversion, really) to sports

kinda drove a wedge between us, tbh

@clivethompson.bsky.social Have you seen this yet?

Holy crap I hadn’t seen that!!

the mortal enemies of the briny deep

caught on film

wooo, glad you enjoyed it!

aha, super cool!

This doesn’t only happen with experienced mathematicians! @marthaalibali.bsky.social’s research shows that children’s gestures signal their conceptual breakthroughs in math.

This image shows a chalkboard covered with mathematical diagrams and trigonometric equations written in white chalk. On the left are sketches of right triangles labeled with sides A and B, alongside trigonometric identities such as sin(300°) = cos(30°). In the center, a large circle encloses a right triangle with an angle marked α, radius r, and arc-related labels. To the right, several equations involve fractions with π, r, and α, representing formulas for arc length and sector area. The board has a dense, slightly chaotic look, typical of an active math or geometry lecture.

it turns out that if you videotape mathematicians working on hard problems at the chalkboard ...

... you can see their bodies give off a "tell" just before they have an "aha" breakthrough moment

super cool research

item #7 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Yeah I really agree — locally trained and run private models are interesting/fun as heck and are a nifty way to re-see what we’ve written and thought

I get why everyone is dunking on this, but, having trained a very simple model on the ~3 million words I’ve written over the last 25 years, it’s actually very interesting to explore what’s there, to see what’s surprising or where I’ve changed my mind, or where my opinion diverges from its output.