A brace of cycling posters for you ...

Curing cancer? World peace? Supporting Ed Sheeran?

Is new Dublin restaurant Entrecôte connected to the French originals? All 3 Entrecôte restaurant groups in France have told us they're not, but almost every media outlet has reported otherwise... www.allthefood.ie/single-post/is-new-dublin-restaurant-entrec%C3%B4te-connected-to-the-french-originals

You could argue culture has been on an intellectual downward spiral since the Victorian era? Could you? They were watching men boxing donkeys, they liked seeing one-legged men riding bicycles, all we're doing is getting excited about boy wizards + Taylor Swift. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

€10 million for a fake-football game? You could get the Tour and the Giro together for that.

Ok @jenscer.bsky.social I have Netflix for the next few weeks and this popped up. Any opinions on it, if you've even heard of it?

If you think I'm a pedantic little shit...I take my hat off to this! 😉

So then. Netflix's ahistorical drama #HouseOfGuinness which opens with the 1868 funeral of Benji Guinness. We meet the Guinness clan in Iveagh House on Stephen's Green. Yes that Iveagh House that wasn't Iveagh House in 1868 + didn't become Iveagh House for another 70 yrs. Things only get worse...

I still can't find a good rhyme for Quinn Simmons.

I do not like that Chloé Dygert I do not like her, she's such a bigot. I do not like her MAGA views I do not like her in the news. I do not like her love of Barbie, I do not think it makes her quirky. As for her love of Charlie Kirk, That Chloé Dygert, she's such a berk.

It's almost time for all the Christmas stocking fillers to hit the bookshops

It's a lovely day + to ruin it we have a born-again couldn't-find-Rome-on-a-roadmap Christian preacher-man in the town square. He's banging on abt the pubs + the clubs + the dens of iniquity, the drink + the drugs + the pornography. I'm tempted to ask him where in the town all this is happening.

Well that was fun, Irish BlueSky, and I hope we get to do something like it again soon. Somehow I don't think it'll be the Rás for the Áras, but we might get lucky. #TraitorsIRL

Some more of Marie Marvingt's ballooning adventures! October 1909, she set of from Nancy and flew across the North Sea in a gale, landing in England. (Look, her Tour de France may be a cock-and-bull story, as may many of her other claims, but she did do some legitimately cool stuff as well.)

So I'll put this out there in case anyone is interested. The soigneur was Madame Biguet, wife of Monsieur Biguet. The team's claim to fame is that they signed Octave Lapize as a neo-pro. Biguet was described then as "a small, almost unknown manufacturer". It's still almost unknown.

If you squint really, really, really hard at this picture, past the guy in the middle-back with his arms in the air ... you still won't see Marie Marvingt preparing to set out five minutes after the men of the 1908 Tour.

This is the Place de la Concorde in Paris, in 1908. This is where the men of the 6th Tour de France gathered at 3 o'clock in the morning of July 13th, 1908, for the départ fictive. After riding the length of the arrow-straight Axe historique the départ réel was given at the edge of La Défense.

If I was a Traitor, I'd secretly write the name of my fellow traitor on the parchment when he wasn't looking. #TraitorsIRL

So Reg ... I'm not calling him Shirley, I giggle too much when I try ... so Reg was a roadie in the UK who turned pro in France in order to ride the Tour de France.

Marie Marvingt in Wales? How exciting can my day get! In 1914 she took part in a balloon race, departing Paris and landing near Aberystwyth, in Wales.

Back to the mines of Gallica as I've something about the 1908 Tour to write and the deadline is fast approaching! So of course I'm getting distracted. This is the 1911 Bol d'Or - the great 24-hour track race - and that's the boxer Jack Johnson 🇺🇸 with the starting pistol.

When they invent time travel, I'm going back to the '80s to fuck with the heads of Boomtown Rats fans by telling them Bob Geldof's an eFFin eFFer and goes for afternoon tea with Charlie Haughey in Abbeville. The looks on their sad little faces will be priceless.

One-legged men were much in demand at the end of the nineteenth century.

Brian Cookson calls for ban on nation states in cycling team names. FFS, it's no wonder they called him the Wallpaper.

My new neighbour has a dog. When she's out she leaves music on. For the dog. If I've no music on, I can hear a low, tinny sound through the wall. It always sounds like the same song, on repeat. I guess the dog must really like it. It also sounds like culchie + western music. The poor dog.

“The UCI strongly condemns the exploitation of sport for political purposes in general, and especially coming from a government.”

Saying this again: In the three weeks that Spanish protesters disrupted the Vuelta, Israel - Premier Tech raced in the UK, in Maryland, in Quebec, in Montreal. None of these other races were impacted by protesters.

"To ride a bicycle is one thing. To learn to ride a bicycle is another. Did you ever see a man learning to ride? I saw one, and I laughed so much that I was too weak to eat dinner that evening." Nellie Bly, the pioneering American journalist, wrote about learning to ride a bicycle in 1889.

Never seen this before - a novel take on a chainless bicycle

"Golding ... says motion sickness specifically affects passengers because it is, in large part, related to being able to anticipate changes in movement .... He says the car industry is aware of motion sickness issues for some people in EVs + is looking at ways to help passengers"

Okay Bluesky, let's test your ability to recall really useless trivia with this one. I'm looking for TV shows in which bicycles were hung prominently on apartment walls. You know how it was, Jerry Seinfeld had one in his apartment, like he was an urban Big Game hunter and it was his latest kill.

UCI only has to act if there are sustained protests beyond Spain. But where is the appetite for Spanish levels of protest beyond Spain? The Tour of Britain last wk passed with just one tiny protest showing up on social media. Nothing was reported at Maryland. Let's see what happens in Canada...

I'm calling off my genealogical research. I've just found his voter registration for 1916 and he was ... a .... he was .... a Republican! 😉

A little bit of history for you... In the very, very early Tours, there was some local difficulties with stage ends and the stage would sometimes finish a few kilometres before the official finish line. Ultimately, this gave rise to the 'flamme rouge' signalling a kilometre to go. #LaVuelta25

Once again Egan Bernal benefits from a curtailed stage to claim a victory. 🤔 Look, one is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. If this happens a third time I want the UCI all over that man like a rash trying to work out how he's doing it. #LaVuelta25

Each time I find something on Ancestry, my admiration for people who can actually do genealogy increases. For me it feels like there's too many dimensions to it. Screw 4 dimensional chess, this is the feckin' multiverse, with details varying subtly from one record to the next.

If museums can have a sponsorship code of ethics, shouldn't sport have one too? "The guidelines recommend that museums should 'Transition away from sponsorship from organisations involved with environmental harm (including fossil fuels), human rights abuses'"

I am renewing my struggle with genealogy today. Having found Isaac yesterday (Take that, genealogy!), today I'm trying to find his wife, Delia. Whose parents were Irish. So far genealogy is winning, again.

There are three photos of Ike Johnson used in articles about him. This one is actually Martin L Kilson Jnr www.blackpast.org/african-amer...

After a frustrating day's digging and not finding what I'm looking for, finally a good result. You'll have heard me banging on about Isaac Johnson, the Black man the internet thinks invented the folding bicycle (he didn't). I've finally found a picture of the man.

It's official: I hate genealogical research. 😓 I had hoped having an 1892 address for this man would make my life easy but, no, all I'm doing is scrolling through screen after screen of census information with no end in sight. Also: America, what did you do to the 1890 census and why?!? 🤔

Sylvan Adams, showing if nothing else that he has a sense of humour: “I always say that the best thing you can do is win and silence your opponents. And I believe we can do that in the final stage in Madrid with Ethan Vernon, our sprinter."

Sylvan Adams: "If we give up, it's not only the end of our team, but also of all the other teams. Tomorrow they will demonstrate against the teams from Bahrain, the UAE, and Astana. There will be no end to the boycotts." That was said before he gave in ...

So Israel - Premier Tech has removed the word Israel from its jerseys in the Vuelta? Does that mean the Spanish protesters are winning?

Why are Humanists so evangelical in their zeal to convert people? Can't they just enjoy the light without insisting everyone else sees it too?

Impey. Jorgenson. Schoolyard. Lunchtime. Fight! Fight! Fight!

Well this is going to confuse some cycling fines: could their favorite flag-waver for a totalitarian dictatorship soon be waving the flag for a genocidal maniac?

"Yesterday, the finish to stage 11 of the Vuelta a Espana had to be cancelled because of a gang of flag-waving disruptors in Bilbao, depriving British rider Tom Pidcock of a decent shot at victory over the irritatingly faultless Jonas Vingegaard." At least he's clear on what really matters.

"The UCI reiterates the fundamental importance of the political neutrality of sports organisations within the Olympic Movement"