Brett Holman
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airminded.org
Brett Holman
@airminded.org
3.9K followers 1.4K following 3.9K 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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Stop scrolling and post two characters that bring you happiness
Lieutenants Kim Kitsuragi and Harry Du Bois.
January 14, 2026 at 4:13 AM
airminded.org
"the server is out of the room for what that means"… ???
"That is a colossal challenge for Australia and the national security establishment ... the server is out of the room for what that means, not just for Aukus but for the alliance.
January 12, 2026 at 8:17 PM
airminded.org
- be a 1989 person
- realise that the paper magazine is doomed b/c of the Japanese somehow
- get excited for the paperless magazine. get excited for VidScan™
- stand by my VCR with my finger hovering over the freeze frame button on the remote
- wait 37 years
- …
- ok maybe next year
Consumer videotape recording technology is evolving fast. VidScan is a new way of combining existing communications technologies. New computer animation software and sophisticated 24-bit color graphics software combined with new 16 and 24-bit color NTS frame-buffer cards open up the capacity to transmit sophisticated still images over broadcast and cable television channels. Future Media will bring you 300 page electronic magazines in 30 second ad spots over television airwaves and cable TV networks. You can tape these VidScan magazine spots with your VCR in 30 seconds. Later, view it with your freeze frame remote control advance. We'll send you each edition of our Inside VidScan newsletter which will include the VidScan table of contents with frame-by-frame briefs, the transmission schedule, and other secret information. We'll let you know when and where our first edition will be playing in your area by return mail.
January 12, 2026 at 5:11 AM
airminded.org
Readings, Carlton #HistBookChat
Paul Knox, London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings.
January 6, 2026 at 4:29 AM
airminded.org
Melbourne Museum #HistBookChat
Dawn M Hadley and Julian D Richards, Life in the Viking Great Army: Raiders, Traders, and Settlers.
January 6, 2026 at 4:27 AM
airminded.org
The first game I was ever into (but was never any good at)
January 5, 2026 at 10:52 PM
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Dymocks, Melbourne CBD #HistBookChat
Karl Bell, The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic; David Van Reybrouck, Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World.
January 2, 2026 at 6:56 AM
airminded.org
On Wednesdays We Wear Black 🖤🎉
Space Commander Travis from Blake's 7.
December 31, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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Avenue Bookstore, Albert Park #HistBookChat
Philip Dwyer, Barbara Alice Mann, Nigel Penn and Lyndall Ryan, Empires of Violence; Jonathan Healey, The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642; Mike Pitts, Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island.
December 31, 2025 at 4:47 AM
airminded.org
December 28, 2025 at 7:50 AM
airminded.org
post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or alice in chains
Portishead, Dummy.
December 28, 2025 at 12:47 AM
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Kobo #HistBookChat
Adam Roberts, The History of Science Fiction.
December 26, 2025 at 11:19 PM
airminded.org
The Mark Peel discussed here as the compiler of a database of British civilian casualties in WW2 would appear to be the same Mark Peel who is a notable Australian historian, whose academic work had nothing to do with the Blitz, bombing or war at all, afaict. Fascinated by this trajectory
For the retired academic Mark Peel, it was a passion to record "the stories of people who would otherwise be silent" that fuelled his decades-long work, in his free time, compiling a new dataset of civilian casualties of the second world war in Britain. Painstaking efforts were made at the time to record the identities of people killed in bombing raids, he says. By combining the names recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with contemporary street maps, burial registers and other sources, his data offers much more texture and detail about those who died. "People did the most amazing things in the most harrowing circumstances to make sure that people weren't forgotten and just lost," says Peel, who began his work while working in his native Australia and now lives in Leicestershire. "And that was part of it for me too. I want these people to be there in the record, with something very tangible. Here are their names, here are their relationships. Here is where they died. "I think that each of these people has a story, and each of them is owed a remembering, and not because they were heroes. They weren't. They were caught up in something appalling, and we need to remember that it was appalling."
December 26, 2025 at 9:46 AM
airminded.org
submitted for your consideration
Curséd table with numbers written as words.
December 18, 2025 at 3:14 AM
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Kobo
Sam Willis, The Fighting Temeraire.
December 17, 2025 at 9:27 AM
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Gift #HistBookChat
Rick Atkinson, The British are Coming: The War for America 1775-1777.
December 15, 2025 at 2:11 AM
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Kobo #HistBookChat
David Cordingly, Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Thomas Cochrane.
December 11, 2025 at 10:01 AM
airminded.org
It's this one
The pub in Wake In Fright (1971).
December 11, 2025 at 4:50 AM
airminded.org
In 1913 a phantom airship buzzed the trawler Othello and circled it twice before flying off

airminded.org/2013/03/05/w...
There was also no air defence capability save for the machine guns of the naval vessel. The LÉ Yeats has no air radar capability. It is understood that deck look-outs who were working on the ship spotted the drones, which were lit up against the night sky.
December 5, 2025 at 3:15 AM
airminded.org
Braudel in the archives: EXTREMELY relatable
to use a camera to photograph documents and for the next three years he spent his winter holidays in Mediterranean archives 'making kilometres of microfilms' which he then read in Brazil during the term: 'I was shooting 2,000-3,000 photos a day.' Before long, his thesis became unmanageable.
November 30, 2025 at 2:58 AM
airminded.org
Key scene in Brief Encounter (1945), most film critics don’t understand this
A large scale model of what looks like a Gloster Gladiator in RAF camouflage. Also in the scene is a young boy sitting up in bed, probably to do with the plot or something.
November 29, 2025 at 5:25 AM
airminded.org
Post something random
Detail of a painting show the head of a terrified horse.
November 27, 2025 at 10:15 PM
airminded.org
Introduce yourself in four spaceships
Moon Rocket (Destination Moon). Eagle Transporter (Space: 1999). Gunstar (The Last Starfighter). Argo (Starblazers).
November 26, 2025 at 11:09 PM
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Ha, you're exactly right
message to Supt.s
November 26, 2025 at 3:38 AM
airminded.org
OK, I give up. Anyone have any idea what this is supposed to read? They're from the same document, initials from the context but seem to be stylised/overlapping
A squiggle plus the date "28/9/17". A squiggle.
November 26, 2025 at 2:45 AM