Dave Thomer

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

There used to be a Spaghetti Warehouse I would pass on my way to work at my last job. It closed and the space became a concert venue where I have seen several good shows. So I feel good about how I played that hand.

I realized today that 2026 is 30 years after I wrote my senior thesis about the philosophy of artificial intelligence and 20 years after I finished my dissertation about democracy and reform movements. If nothing else, I am going to pat myself on the back as being really good at picking topics.

There was a fucking hole in our planet’s *atmosphere* Like a legit, no joke, “this will unravel our entire ecosystem” hole in the world, and then we fixed it by working together across national and political lines As a species we decided, “we will survive” Let’s do that some more

Meta took down the No Kings organizing page today - the biggest day of protest this fall. They provided zero explanation. It stayed down for the entire afternoon until most of the protests were done. Outrageous. Put this on the January investigation list.

Update: WE ARE BACK IN! We can post again. This was utter bullshit on the biggest early vote effort in history. But it will not stop what we're building. No Kings means no kings in the White House or in Silicon Valley.

Today is the birthday of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, who changed the pop culture landscape in a single bound. There wouldn't be a comic book business as we know it without him. We all stand on his shoulders.

Update: without explanation, and after being suspended for more than an hour during peak mobilization time, Zuckerberg's Instagram restored the No Kings account but we still lack admin access. More to come. Rest assured we will not stop organizing against this regime and its collaborators.

This is the LAST weekend to get registered to vote or update your registration before the Oct. 19 deadline. Make sure you’re ready to cast your vote in the general election at vote.pa/check.

I'm going to say one more thing about this. A meta-thing, if you will. I think legal commentators with elite legal backgrounds (all of them, not just Steve) need to reckon with the fact that they have a personal interest in maintaining the panache of their credentials.

This song was released during my first year in grad school so it was nice of the band to write me a theme song.

Today's #TheMuppetShow GIF of the Day is...

I just came down off of Pikes Peak for our annual Sunrise Ceremony for Indigenous Peoples Day. Wish you could've been there but here are six recent books on Native history that you might enjoy. Some are deep dives, some are for non specialists. I tried to cover different places and eras. Enjoy. 🧵

I would love, absolutely love, at least one prominent contender for the Dem POTUS nomination in 2028 to start threatening this now. "Trump is right that lying on immigration forms is a serious offense. Here are the people my DOJ will investigate on Day 1: Musk, Melania, etc." Put fear in them NOW.

Jenette Khan was named DC publisher at the time I became a serious comics fan. I grew up with her as DC Comics' guiding light. Her vision brought us: Dollar Comics, the British Invasion (Hello Messers. Bolland, Moore, Gibbons & Davis), prestige formats, Vertigo and more. She is a true legend. 👏👏

The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965) by Jules Feiffer Growing up, this book and The Steranko History of Comics were considered the gold-standard of comic history books. Incredible that for YEARS some of reprints in this book were the only available scans/photos of the original comic pages.

Jenette Kahn gets the very very rare comic book awards show standing ovation - and so richly deserved. There is no one who has had more impact on the comics world we live in now. She gets the hall of fame award. #nycc #Harvey

Obviously isn't going to happen before unified Dem government, but the time to push for it is now and soon - Dems should be making DC statehood (and PR if they want it) a key plank in the democracy agenda and a litmus test for presidential candidates.

I am thrilled and proud beyond measure to support the amazing workers who create and design the games I and my loved ones have spent a lifetime playing. I implore everybody to sign the petition and signal boost the campaign as far and wide as we can!

Once again: If Dems do well in November, absolutely everyone should interpret it as a definitive statement that the US electorate rejected a disgusting smear campaign against trans people.

Hee-yah!

Happy birthday Ramona Fradon 10/2/1926 - 2/24/3024

Sadly, Russ Heath had to rely on doing art commissions and on donations from @heroinitiative.bsky.social to survive in his later years. Roy Lichtenstein got four million dollars for blatantly stealing/swiping Heath's work -- Russ Heath got nothing. ...not even enough for a glass of wine.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. One thing that makes me less optimistic about the human ability to learn is that more of our decision makers apparently haven’t learned Goodhart’s law yet. I’m probably gonna need to read John Dewey’s Democracy and Education again.

@musicologyduck.bsky.social - my high school students are still singing Hamilton songs and Philly just did a screening on Independence Mall. I do teach kids at an arts-based school and it is Philadelphia, so calibrate your evaluation of the evidence accordingly.

The feeling of understanding something that I didn’t understand, of taking that new insight and seeing how it ricochets off the ideas I already have, can be satisfying. It can make me happy. Other times, it’s just something I need to know to get on with my life and I just need to do the work.

Here’s an in-progress shot of inks on a portion of a page by Dan Jurgens for the Superman 30th Anniversary Wedding special, out in a month from DC Comics! Fun to do finishes over Dan again!

People ask “Do you still play Don’t Let’s Start?” And the answer is YES.

Happy Batman Day to all who celebrate! Here’s a retro Dynamic Duo on a facsimile cover!

Got mine last weekend.

I played this noise for my 12th grade students this week and they were quite taken aback by it. I was trying to explain to them what "broadband" is and what it replaced.

I love this album, and I love that I've been able to take it along for the ride for the last 30 years. A few words of appreciation: www.notnews.org/culture/old-...

Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...

💣 Harley vs Kara ❤️

I really like this analysis b/c I loved Coyote v Acme and felt it wasn't really a legal drama/satire - the case was mainly a way to show who the characters were. But as David Allen Green points out, that actually makes the movie more realistic about the law and litigation than many legal dramas.

I still have the copy of SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD I got from the Science Fiction Book Club back when I was in high school. It was good reading, and apparently there’s a lot more where that came from!