Brett Holman

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

"Journalists often use the words 'unsubstantiated' or 'uncorroberated' when referring to the allegations victims have levied against powerful men, like Trump. Instead of saying these women’s accounts are not corroborated, maybe it’s time we say they were not investigated in spite of clear patterns."

UK Daily Mail newspaper editorial cartoon by Leslie Gilbert Illingworth [1902-1979]. 10/29/1962.

🔭 Rosetta's Selfie Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA ap261024

Just going to leave this inspiring story right here…sweet dreams…

‘… what were all that about?’

'Le Vice Supreme' (1884) by the always on-the-edge Felicien Rops. #31DaysOfHalloween #horror #findesiecle #decadence #Victorian

I seriously think that if you view paying tax at 47% on marginal income as anything other than an extremely modest contribution to pay in exchange for getting to live in a decent society, then you are morally subhuman and the world would be better off without you www.mediaweek.com.au/ruby-tuesday...

lula

The true insanity levels involved are signalled by the ‘imperial units’ garbage. Just grow up, Bob.

"SOVIET MILITARY CAPABILITIES S-100-18-85 BOX 1 OF 2," slide 12 of 40 [gallery]

"Can you direct us to the naval base in Alameda? It's where they keep the nuclear wessels."

Neither of the people in this photograph are qualified for an academic job (see also "Professor" Bill Shorten). I like Ardern a lot, and creating a role using her experience for mentoring is great, but hospitals don't say "we've hired Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman to do heart surgeries this month."

This man was dead weight, hanging high above the ground after touching a high-voltage line. His coworker climbed up, held him in place, gave him mouth-to-mouth. Randall Champion survived—and lived another 35 years. Rocco Morabito’s photo, “The Kiss of Life,” won the Pulitzer Prize. True heroism.

I of course loved him as Chekov, but playing Bester on BABYLON 5 really showed his range. You really forgot the guy ever *was* Chekov in that role. RIP Walter Koenig.

RIP to an incredible actor, Alfred Bester is one of my all time favorite Lawful Evil villains

AVIATION/AI_G_006.GIF

RIP Walter❤️

I’d like to report a guy who asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to cook up "11,780 votes” so he could win the state.🙋🏻‍♂️

it’s amazing how these billionaire tech freaks *love* mainstream sci-fi and superhero movies, and also manage to completely miss the incredibly unsubtle and heavy-handed “we need to protect human creativity and freedom” moral that essentially all those movies are imbued with

I continue to be fascinated by the official photos released by the White House. This one looks like a high school student's artsy darkroom experiment.

I think the lesson from Lula is not never talk about the opposition; it's articulate a positive vision that's basically, We Can Just Do Things. That's why Mamdani-ism is so popular - voters have an intrinsic sense that their electeds have agency they're not using

So I think this is both true and untrue. Musk is obviously a self-centered, narcissistic oligarch bent on hoarding wealth and avoiding regulation. BUT he is also genuinely and thoroughly captured by his own delirious posting. He really is off his rocker about immigration and gender issues.

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

Spiral staircase Traer, IA

People are celebrating or mourning the Ant IPO, but I'm still trying to understand the worldview where frontier labs not being profitable *would have proven* AI isn't transformative. I think it's maybe a capitalist mysticism where social life is mostly Illusion, and only the Profitable is Real?

This went on for the rest of the full hour, at which point the BBC apologised for having to go to the weather and urged viewers to follow continuing live coverage on iPlayer. Forty-one minutes of unfiltered, unchallenged propaganda by a far right party with 8 MPs, now third in the polls. Discuss.

Just updated my Moodle profile. Turns out you can still enter: ICQ number; Skype ID; AIM ID; Yahoo ID; MSN ID. Is Moodle also a portal to 2004?

To round off our #ShortlistSpotlight series, we introduce @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social and 'Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples' shortlisted for the 2026 #WolfsonHistoryPrize. Congratulations to Francis Young and @universitypress.cambridge.org 🎊

(it dodged a badly configured paywall to access read-only statistical information that was already available to anyone willing to pay a few dollars. Anthropic notified the Georgia government of the breach and they ignored it) www.axios.com/2026/10/25/a...

Wargames Clip number 0337 #Wargames #hackbot #hacktheplanet

Genuinely I don't know that it comes across to people who haven't been here to watch how almost unbelievable this was, just people taking something that looked impossible and dragging it kicking and screaming all the way to inevitability.

Dept. Of Odd Things I Stumbled Across: Battle of Britain Operations Room Diorama. $275. 4 WAAFs wearing headsets, 1 RAF sergeant, heptagonal map table, and tall wall chart listing Royal Air Force fighter units. I presume these are 1:35 (or "54mm") scale.

🧵The history of visitors to the Devil's Arrows reveals that this site has fascinated travelers, treasure hunters, and scholars for over 500 years. Because Boroughbridge sits directly along the historic Great North Road (close to the ancient Roman route of Dere Street), it was

This is a good time to be taking a ferry, yes?

Let me tell you a story about the politics of Australia: Over the last 28 years generally, but over the last decade particularly, I've done a lot of politics outside of Australia. Last week, an organisation I work with called me in for a meeting mostly among people like me around the world /n