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Brett Holman

@airminded.org

3.8K followers 1.4K following 3.5K posts

Independent PhD historian (aviation, bombing; #WW1, #WW2; Britain, Australia; emotions, spectacle); books (Home Fires Burning (WW1 air raids on Britain; in progress), The Next War in the Air). Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. He/him. airminded.org

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Brett Holman @airminded.org · Nov 10

Hi! I’m a historian of early 20th century Britain and Australia. I study the cultural and emotional history of aviation, interested in what people thought and felt about aircraft as much, or even more than, what aircraft actually did. My first book was on the fear of bombing in Britain

The Next War in the Air

Brett Holman. The Next War in the Air: Britain's Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. The Next War in the Air: Britain's Fear of the Bomber, 1908-1941 is my first book...

airminded.org

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Brett Holman @airminded.org · 10m

After what seems like eons of transcribing sources, 900 words down for the chapter intro today. Pretty good for my first day of proper writing in months - let’s hope it’s sustainable

Brett Holman @airminded.org · 1h

inside: yes; trapped: maybe; microscope: no

Brett Holman @airminded.org · 1h

Where am I?

The image shows an abstract pattern on a textured gray surface. The surface is covered with multiple overlapping circular engravings and scratch marks. The circles vary in size and are etched with uneven depth, creating a complex visual texture. The surface is slightly reflective, catching light in certain areas, emphasizing the depth of the scratches and engravings. There is faint discoloration in some parts, which adds to the pattern's complexity.

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Brett Holman @airminded.org · 2h

I'd almost watch an X-Files series cut without the conspiracy arc episodes but then you'd miss out on CSM, X, and Krycek

Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 8h

Ok so the consensus seems to be:

Overall: meh

Monster of the week episodes are good. Overall conspiracy doesn’t hold up.

Too many episodes fall prey to the 90s “none of this would have happened if we had call phones” trope.

Everyone fucking loves Gillian Anderson.

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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 8h

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 2h

it’s genuinely hilarious when people assume I’m some sort of drone rights activist and that this is the equivalent of posting a snuff video at me

The Transmetropolitan Review (Unofficial) @transmetropolitanr.bsky.social · 2h

you

here, check this out

triggered at seeing a drone plummet to the ground. remind you of your drone girlfriend?

youtu.be/NIOh9-RoAaE

Chile: Protesters bring down a police drone using dozens of laser pointers ⚠️ Flashlight Warning ⚠️

YouTube video by Perseus999

youtu.be

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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 7h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Brett Holman @airminded.org · 3h

andre you can just catch a plane to and from the airport, it's literally what it's for

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Jen Mercieca @jenmercieca.bsky.social · 4h

Gen X, assemble.

A Prom Queen, a Jock, and a Burnout sitting at tables in a school library.

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Stuart Palmer @spalm.bsky.social · 3h

ABC struggling with the concept of personal privacy.

ABC News (Unofficial) @abc-news.bsky.social · 5h

Diane Keaton's family kept 'sudden' health decline private: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-13/diane-keaton-cause-of-death-private-health-decline/105883902

Diane Keaton's family kept 'sudden' health decline private

The actor's cause of death has not been made public, but with US media reporting her family chose to keep her health decline private.

www.abc.net.au

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Jon Piccini @jonpiccini.bsky.social · 2d

The war against 'false news' is not 'new', but has been a concern of international organisations for over 100 years. The ever captivating Roland Burke launches a new Guardian column, Past/Present, sponsored by the @austhistassoc.bsky.social.

The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price | Roland Burke

The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore

www.theguardian.com

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 16h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Leona Scream @editor.scot · 7h

Can a duck feel ashamed?

by
Phillip Creosote

Post from the London Review of Books. There’s a black-and-white vintage pic of a white man playing a cello. Text says ‘Can cellos remember? Thomas Lacquer’.

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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 7h

You know who I’m sick of? Astronauts. “The eagle has landed” “I’m on the moon”. Shut the fuck up

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Geoff Barker @spritebark.bsky.social · 8h

Two Chinese men in the street, Sydney, 1885-1890, Arthur K. Syer, vintage albumen print. Uploaded to #Wikipedia by @StateLibraryNSW en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...

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Brett Holman @airminded.org · 6h

Fiasco, and I've never even played it

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 7h

Most of these people are deeply trained, or at least highly educated, in humanities. Knowing isn’t being.

brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 12h

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 7h

I have been working on and writing about civilian drone regulations for a long time, and I have learned many people genuinely have *no clue* that stuff like “shining lasers at aircraft” is incredibly illegal and dangerous.

Which is why I think it’s very important to repeatedly explain this stuff.

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Ross Sharp @aviationhistory.bsky.social · 6h

My new website, AviationHistory.UK has just launched. Do drop by! aviationhistory.uk Many thanks to Jo for the design and the hosting!

Aviation History UK – Research, Events, Writing & Media

Discover in-depth UK aviation history. Lectures, research, publications, museum consultancy, broadcasting & aviation photography.

aviationhistory.uk

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pinko_machinist @pinko-machinist.bsky.social · 16h

I genuinely hope Tolkien rises from the grave and [redacted] these losers in their sleep

It plans to start yith an 18-metre test satellite named Earendil-1….

Earendil is a character from JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarilian. He’s a sailor who has a special jewel affixed to the mast if his ship that is then set to forever cross the sky

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Tiffany @webinista.com · 11h

At some point people started conflating “contrarian” with “smart.”

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 9h

Top marks for this diorama from The Fram Museum. it has a theodolite and huskies (two dogs are toppled, which merely hints at their fates).

diorama with a model of a ship stuck in ice with models of people and dogs, supplies, instruments etc around it.

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ABC News Bot (unofficial) @abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 10h

As Western Sydney University prepares to shed hundreds of staff due to its dire finances, leaked documents reveal it is paying consultants as much as $2,850 a day.

Uni staff 'very, very angry' as high-paid consultants work on redundancies

As Western Sydney University prepares to shed hundreds of staff due to its dire finances, leaked documents reveal it is paying consultants as much as $2,850 a day.

www.abc.net.au

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CNN @cnn.com · 16h

Calls for the United States to return astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade have been increasingly loud and frequent, emanating from bipartisan lawmakers and science advocates alike. But underlying that drumbeat is a quagmire of epic proportions.
https://cnn.it/4oejhw7

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Nina Baker @ninabake2.bsky.social · 12h

🧵Dr Gwendoline Marjorie Roper (1901-72)
Truly, there is always more to know. Yesterday I bought this newspaper at a boot fair for a quid, not even realising it had half a page about women in aviation until I was reading it on train home. 1/3

@politicdormouse.bsky.social @stockotrader.bsky.social

Front page of The Times Survey of British Aviation Sept 1956

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