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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Aug 29

Simultaneously a good thing and not a good thing to be reading when planning a programme of fundamental research.

Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Aug 9

Leigh Bowery! at the Tate Modern. Artist, fashion designer, performer, provocateur. The full retrospective really makes you stop, think, reflect. Triptych of Bowery in “looks”; portrait by Lucien Freud; still from Charles Atlas’s “Hail the New Puritan” featuring Bowery, with music by The Fall.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 20

Two-bar electric heater…the grille on the front gives it away. Short seminar to follow on these twentieth-century icons, the horrific accidents they caused, and the fact that our electrical outlets are rated at 13 amps because of them!

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 19

Bucket list (and proud to be Irish) day at the start of Stage 14 in Pau. @cyclingireland.bsky.social @efprocycling.com

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 17

Absolutely buzzing seeing Ben Healy in yellow, and enjoying it so much. @cyclingireland.bsky.social @ciarancannon.bsky.social @efprocycling.com

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

And I’m finished. It’s time to let Daniel out of the lions’ den.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

Only 20km to go now, and the Pyrenees grow more vivid, until, through a break in the trees, I see Oloron-Sainte-Marie.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

And moments later, the walls of Navarrenx

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

The ancient road from Orthez to Navarrenx, trees planted generations ago to give shade to the traveller.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

This is the land of the Wars of Religion, and of Montaigne and Montesquieu. The placenames are a reminder of those wars: I pass through Labastide-Villefranche to Sauveterre-de-Bearn. Bastide: small fortified town. Sauveterre: safe ground. The view from Sauveterre-de-Bearn toward my destination.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

Backtracked along the south bank of the Adour to the confluence with the Bidouze, and followed the latter through Bidache, where the Chateau de Gramont commands a turn in the river, to Came, where I left the riverbank.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

Given that his writing had kept me company all the way, and on other journeys, it would have been rude not to climb the hill to the cemetery at Urt and pay tribute.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 7

France 2025 Day 10 last day: 140km from Dax to Oloron-Sainte-Maire. A day of riverside riding, from Dax along the north bank of the Adour to the bridge at Urt, the Pyrenees coming into view.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 6

…rolling towards Dax in the early evening.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 6

…followed by many hot hours through Les Landes…

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 6

…on past Les Grands Lacs…

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 6

…with views over the ocean, and inland over a stark sandy landscape to La Forêt de Gascogne…

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 6

France 2025 Day 9: 148km from Arcachon to Dax. Out, along the southern shore of Le Bassin d’Arcachon, and a short climb past the Dune du Pilat, the highest sand dune in Europe…

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 5

It resonates in particular with the current pervasiveness of generative AI, large language models feeding us the weighted average of what we have already written or mechanically reproduced, slowly driving giant graphite rods into the fissile energy of our creative core.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 5

“faced with this world of faithful and complicated objects, the child can only identify himself as owner, as user, never as creator; he does not invent the world, he uses it; there are, prepared for him, actions without adventure, without wonder, without joy”

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 5

He sees the modern plastic toy as merely “reduced copies of human objects” not designed to stimulate invention or creativity, but to mean and model the norms of the adult world, and so..

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 5

When cycling through France, I always bring one book to be with in the evening; this year it’s Roland Barthes’ “Mythologies”. The essay “Toys” is so resonant; though published almost 70 years ago, it is disturbingly timely.

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 4

The renowned Dublin physician Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880) - every medical student learns of ‘Corrigan’s pulse’ in aortic regurgitation - so espoused the beauty of Archachon and rhe health benefits of its climate that it stimulated tourism, and there remains here an Allée Dominic Corrigan

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 4

After that, I just turned the cranks to Arcachon

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Philip Nolan @philipnolanmu.bsky.social · Jul 4

There’s always something unexpected on a long trip. Just after Lacanau the greenway was blocked by trees that had fallen in the violent thunderstorms of 25 June. The middle of nowhere with no escape route, so I had to get the bike around, over or under each fallen tree, about 30 in total over 4km.

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