iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 18/09/2026

I’m making a book! The book consists of pairs of images joined by text. I use a custom embedding-based system to pick images which rhyme, then write between the pics, focusing on what the camera misses I'm starting with a limited-edition booklet Follow along at pairwisebook.substack.com/subscribe

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 12/06/2025

how it started vs. how it's going on the Elizabeth Line

a bench against a pale grey wall with a darker grey silhouette smudged on the wall above each seat on the bench

a bench against a pale grey wall with a colorful sticker on the wall above each seat on the bench

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 08/05/2025

and Rufino Tamayo's 1925 Fábrica (the Tina Modotti photograph above is called Telephone Wires, and she made it between 1923 and 1929)

a red brick factory with a black pitched roof. in the foreground is a black water tower perched on narrow legs connected by trusswork. black smokestacks are attached to the factory, and putting out pale clouds of smoke or steam. next to the black water tower is a dark pole from which are stretched wires cutting across the sky and through the clouds of smoke.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 08/05/2025

god these are so good! here's Fermín Revueltas' 1921 painting Subestación (La Indianilla)

a painting mostly in tones of ochre of a single-story building with a pitched roof. it is connected to another similar building. to the right, we see poles bringing a dense skein of wires down to the ground, where they gather at a point. in the foreground at the bottom of an image is a body of water where the wires and the poles create a wavy reflection. in the background are four large black pillars -- perhaps smokestacks in the distance -- joined by a series of trusses.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 08/05/2025

it feels appropriate that the cover would call out to me with a picture by Tina Modotti, since the first I remember thinking about the aesthetics of telephone poles was in a class on Mexican art. Almost ten yrs ago, I wrote a paper on the wires of her contemporaries Fermin Revueltas & Rufino Tamayo

a row of telephone poles, perfectly lined up so that the poles are all hidden behind the frontmost one, and only the crossbars can be seen growing ever smaller as they recede towards the bottom of the frame. the telephone wires mostly echo this same perspectival recession, except for a few wires strung from left to right across the upper portion of the image. the background is a rich brown, lighter at the edges. along the bottom of the image can be seen a few distant telephone poles.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 08/05/2025

take photos and videos of telephone wires for fun, so...obviously I'm gonna be excited about a book called "The Architecture of the Wire: Infrastructures of Telecommunication". yes PLEASE!

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 08/05/2025

sometimes I come across a book in a bookstore and think: this was written SPECIFICALLY for me. never more than today, tho:

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/04/2025

it's not just the color scheme, though -- it's the way the metro line COMMITS to its bit: that tight grid (grey on the walls, yellow on the ceiling); those 45-degree angles tapering to sharp points used to finish the support posts

a staircase. grey stone floor, grey stone walls. to left and right, on either wall, are yellow banisters fixed to the wall with circular red pins. at the bottom of the stairs is a brightly-illuminated wall, grey with a tight grid pattern, and a pair of bright red doors. above the doors is a horizontal line of small square lights

a fare barrier on the Milan metro. the barrier is made of panels of dark grey glass held up by a support post painted bright red. the support post has a cruciform plan, with the arms of the cross tapering at a forty-five-degree angle to a point at the top. the glass panels are attached to the red support post with four bright yellow rectangular panels.

the end of a bright yellow banister, fixed to the grey stone wall behind it with a circular red pin.

a yellow railing on a warm-toned stone base, seen against a cooler-toned grey marble wall.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/04/2025

I wouldn't expect grey, yellow, and red to go together, but somehow the M3 metro line in Milan makes the combo look SO cool. I look forward to any chance I get to ride this line as an opportunity to be immersed in this crazy color world

on the left side of the image, a yellow banister descends diagonally along a grey stone wall, presumably follow the tread of stairs which are out of view below frame. the yellow banister is fixed to the grey wall with circular fittings painted a contrasting bright red. natural light -- perhaps from a subway entrance -- illuminates the upper left part of the image. on the right the grey stone of the wall changes to a horizontally-striped wall covering made out of metal and painted red

a grey wall with a grid pattern topped by a row of square lights in a long metal yellow fixture. along the base of the wall, five bright red circular seats

a ceiling with a square lattice painted bright yellow. the lattice is almost as deep as each square is wide -- perhaps three inches. in the foreground are two ceiling light fixtures with the bulbs set in decorative round mesh circles painted yellow (one with a red border). in the background are four triangular yellow lights, also fixed to the ceiling

a barrier on the Milan metro. the verticals are painted red and have pointed tops; the tubular barrier itself is yellow. everything else (floor, walls) is grey -- the floor is steel tread plate, while the walls are stone (granite?)

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 30/03/2025

The London County Council has been defunct since 1965, and this coat of arms hasn't been officially in use since 1986, when Thatcher abolished its successor the GLC. But in some parts of London at least, the seal is still lovingly kept up!

a colorful heraldic crest on a stone pillar. Above the crest, on a sky-blue scroll, the words "London County Council." Below, on a similar scroll, "Maitland Park Estate." The crest itself consists of blue and white wavy horizontal lines representing the Thames surmounted by St George's cross (red cross on white) covered by a golden lion surmounted by a golden crown

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 02/02/2025

learned enough about metalworking this weekend to make a rough-and-ready stand for a corn bulb by welding steel rods together 👨‍🏭

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/01/2025

oops nvm, I just did. I get it. This one is hard. It's not exactly fair. Still, a decent image-based geolocator should at least pick a place where there's enough foliage to make the image plausible. The random street it picked has a bit of ivy on top of the concrete retaining wall, but not enough!

on the left, a picture of goats behind a temporary fence eating the lush green undergrowth; in the middle, a map view of San Francisco with a dot along the winding streets just west of Mount Davidson Park; on the right, a StreetView view up a street with houses on one side and a high concrete wall surmounted by green ivy on the other side

on the left, goats behind a temporary fence eating the lush green undergrowth; on the right, a map view of San Francisco with a red pin in Mount Sutro Open Space Preserve

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/01/2025

thank goodness I didn't try it on this pic of goats used to keep weeds under control

goats behind a temporary wire fence against a backdrop of lush green undergrowth

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/01/2025

Here are the actual locations. There just aren't that many exposed outcroppings of red rock in San Francisco. There is red rock in Corona Heights Park, but not the random street GeoSpy picked. The red brick buildings are obviously the Golden Gateway Center, built in 1967 near the Embarcadero.

on the left, red rocks bathed in golden afternoon light; on the right, a map view of San Francisco with a red pin at Corona Heights Park

on the left, a view over the back of some houses with Sutro Tower in the background against a smoky sky; on the right, a map view of San Francisco with a red pin at the eastern edge of the Mission District, just west of the 101

on the left, a dusky view of a courtyard surrounded by blocky red brick buildings; on the right, a map view of San Francisco with a red pin just inland off the Embarcadero, slightly northwest of the Ferry Building

on the left, a pink and yellow house seen through flowers and foliage; on the right, a map view of San Francisco with a red pin on the Potrero Community Garden

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/01/2025

very underwhelmed by GeoSpy. Just tried it out with a bunch of pics I took when I lived in San Francisco. I selected these pics to be difficult, but not impossible. They all show public places. GeoSpy seems almost completely clueless about anything that's not a typical StreetView-type photo.

a screenshot showing three images: on the left, some red rocks bathed in golden afternoon light; in the middle, a map showing Glen Canyon Park in San Francisco; on the right, a StreetView view down a road with some single-story houses on one side

a screenshot showing three images: on the left, a view over the back of some houses with Sutro Tower in the background against a smoky sky; in the middle, a map showing the 101 ramp towards Market Street in San Francisco; on the right, a StreetView view down the 101

a screenshot showing three images: on the left, a dusky view of a courtyard surrounded by blocky red brick buildings; in the middle, a map focused on the outer Mission in San Francisco; on the right, a StreetView view down a road in San Francisco with two- and three-story stucco apartment buildings on either side

a screenshot showing three images: on the left, a pink and a yellow house seen through flowers and foliage; in the middle, a map centered on Noe Valley in San Francisco; on the right, a StreetView view of a yellow house flanked by two green houses in San Francisco

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 17/01/2025

London Short Film Festival is back!! Loved the kickoff program of short films from the '90s, especially "Latifa and Himli's Nomadic Uncle" by Alnoor Dewshi player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...

Six filmmakers and one producer standing on a stage holding mics at a Q&A

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

Sitting at the end of the bench in the middle of the room, I can see the painting at last. It’s better in person, I promise.

a field of taupe with a column of paler, slightly cooler taupe close to the left edge, and another column of the same color on the right edge. at the base of each column is a rectangle of cool, dark gray-taupe. along the bottom edge, there is a slightly redder square

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

If I just bend my knees and lean to the side a little further, perhaps I can shunt the air vent on the wall behind me up and out of the picture.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

Or does the painting in fact have the upper hand as it absorbs the gallery into its world of just-barely-perceptible variations of taupe?

dim, hazy reflections of picture frames. what is in the frames cannot be made out. taupe-on-taupe

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

Perhaps the artist, who throughout his work played incessantly with reflections, would be tickled that these pictures are so bedeviled.

a field of taupe with a diagonal line cutting almost-horizontally across, dividing the field into slightly darker taupe (above the line) and slightly lighter (below)

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

When I stand in front of the painting, my own obscuring figure fills the frame.

a person taking a selfie in a mirror, taupe-on-taupe

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 04/01/2025

I lean forward to get a better view of the painting, but the couple behind me is in the way.

two figures facing each other, taupe-on-taupe

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 01/01/2025

Top exhibitions I saw this year (in no particular order): Anthony Gormley: Time Horizon @ Houghton Hall (UK) Gala Porras-Kim @ MCA Denver Elizabeth Englander, Eminem Buddhism @ Aldrich Museum (CT) Tom of Finland / Beryl Cook @ Studio Voltaire (London) Lygia Clark @ Whitechapel Gallery (London)

a painting showing a man wearing nothing but a posing pouch holding a stripper's pole. he is standing and is surrounded by grinning, laughing women, all dressed for a night out, who are craning to see as he leans forward and pulls down the posing pouch. everyone's contours are large and rounded

a bronze figure of a man embedded at the waist in a grassy field

a sculpture of a human figure, seated with legs crossed. the figure is made out of the components of a Thonet chair, like a line drawing in space

an arrangement of white rectangular pedestals in an art gallery. each pedestal is topped by a jointed aluminum sculpture.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

8. Howard's End WOW does E. M. Forster know how to plot a novel. Truly a master. One of the most satisfying and surprising novels I've read in years. If you read it, follow it with the gorgeous Merchant/Ivory film adaptation. search.worldcat.org/en/title/422...

a pattern of polka dots, closed umbrellas, open umbrellas, and umbrella stands with one or two umbrellas, or a cane, or a cane and an umbrella. in the middle, "Howards End" and "E. M. Forster"

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

7. Five Ways to Forgiveness (Ursula K. Le Guin) Stories of people bearing injustice with dignity and rising up against their oppressors. Beautiful, sad, haunting.

white text on a grey background describing a scene from a book in which a group of enslaved people make music on the plantation by gathering together and brushing their hands together to create an almost-silent rhythm, with whispered fragmented words on top of the rhythm

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

6. Contact: Art and the Pull of Print A satisfying slab of the best art writing I've read in years. Art-historically ambitious, deeply informed by craft and technique, and luxuriantly attentive to multilayered meaning. h/t to Robin Sloan for the rec. search.worldcat.org/en/title/138...

Irregular white diagonal lines on a black background which are finer and closer together at the top of the image, and wider and further apart at the bottom.

In the middle, a mustard-yellow rectangle with the words "Contact: Art and the Pull of Print" and the name "Jennifer L. Roberts"

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

4. If on a winters night a traveler This had been on my list for ages, and I finally decided to go for it (clearly I was on an OuLiPo kick 😂 iykyk). This book does a LOT of things that I didn't know books are ALLOWED to do 🤯 Read this if you want to stretch the possibilities of the novel

a book cover with a green border and a black backdrop and the words: "Italo Calvino: If on a winter's night a traveller." Below the title, but smaller, an identical book cover with the same title; inside that, but even smaller, an identical book cover with the same title.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

2. The Knife Thrower, Stephen Millhauser I've been obsessed with Millhauser this year. I've read three of his collections (We Others and Disruptions) and am halfway through a fourth (Dangerous Laughter). His stories are just SO SO good, and The Knife Thrower has some of his best.

an oblique view across a stage. front left, a man in a tuxedo holds a knife by the blade in his right hand. back right, a woman wearing a glittering leotard stands against a black wall with one hand up against the wall. above it all, the words: "Steven Millhauser: The Knife Thrower"

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 31/12/2024

1. Dante's Inferno Picked up Clive James' translation of the Divine Comedy from the library on a whim and liked it so much I memorized 250 lines of it and performed them for my friends in a sauna on my birthday search.worldcat.org/en/title/812...

a book cover with the words "Dante: The Divine Comedy translated by Clive James" on a gradient which goes from white at the top through blue to orange, red, burgundy

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 19/12/2024

when this one is done, it'll be a bigger version of this little guy

an angular blue sculpture made out of cut and folded paper

a sculpture made of cut and folded blue paper with stripes of sunlight and shadow cutting across it

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 19/12/2024

making a Christmas gift for my mom: a set of David Umemoto's beautiful cut-and-fold paper sculptures davidumemoto.com/architecture...

a sheet of blue paper with a metal ruler on top of a black cutting mat with a white ruled grid. next to the paper is an xacto knife and a rotary blade

a sheet of blue paper lying on a desk with two cutting blades in the foreground. In the background, a jade plant in a concrete pot and a small paper sculpture made out of the same blue paper

light coming through a sheet of blue paper with cuts in it. the blue paper mostly looks green; it only appears blue where the light bounces back through a cut onto the paper

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 18/12/2024

I thought I was too late to snag an Antistatic Print Object this year bc when I tried to sign up for one, they were already maxed out. But I guess I must have signed up earlier and then forgotten because GUESS WHAT JUST ARRIVED!!!

a printed zine with a darkly inked cover showing a solar eclipse. below the zine is the envelope it came in.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 02/12/2024

louise nevelson on the brain

in blue ink on white paper, a rectangular grid, each cell taller than it is wide. each cell is filled with a different set of biomorphic shapes. the shapes are mostly white against a dark blue background.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 24/11/2024

tired: flying carpets wired: flying urns

a person in a richly patterned blue robe tries to squeeze out of the narrow neck of a large brown urn. In their right hand they hold an axe with a red handle. Their hair is covered by a white cloth (a turban?). Blue-grey clouds swirl around them.

a large figure of a man with a long black beard and an orange robe riding a dun urn. Around him, many smaller figures dressed in orange, red, yellow, and white robes ride smaller urns. Some carry bows. Others carry spears. In the lower right corner, someone is pushing out of an urn. In the lower left corner, someone grips the mouth of an urn and looks into it. All of the figures are facing to the left, as if charging into battle. Blue-grey clouds swirl all around.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 22/11/2024

perhaps not altogether unlike the jinn Aisha Qandisha, known as "the opener," who Allahyari included in her earlier project "She Who Sees the Unknown" (I notice with delight that Allahyari's chosen illustration of Qandisha features octopi in the corners!!) shewhoseestheunknown.com/aisha-qandis...

a tall woman with two faces and long black hair, locks of which twine and wrap around men in robes who struggle to get free

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 22/11/2024

The narrator at the end of Morehshin Allahyari's new film "Speculations on Capture" says that her wish for objects in the V&A's collection (and at other museums) -- like the Iranian astrolabes, celestial globes, divination bowls -- is for them to become shapeshifters and escape the museum

an open book inside a glass display case with stripes on the glass obscuring the contents of the display case

two display cases in a museum showing open books and an astrolabe hidden behind a striped glass

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 22/11/2024

curator bending over backwards to ignore every time the artist they invited says she wants objects in the museum to go back to Iran 😂🙄 ...hoooo boy I'm not sure the museum understood what they were in for when they invited Morehshin Allahyari to do a project

a museum curator and an artist sitting facing each other under a projection of a person holding an Iranian celestial globe

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 22/11/2024

love it! the balconies feel sort of Gerrit Rietveld-y

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/11/2024

a Hammershøi or two would fit beautifully into such a show! legacy.davidmus.dk/en/collectio...

a view through a window made of four panels, two above and two below, with each panel consisting of six panes. Beyond the windows, there is a room and then another set of windows. The foreground is a dim brown while the space between the two sets of windows glows with golden light.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 18/11/2024

that parkour center gives me strong Judd vibes

three concrete boxes under a grey sky. the one on the left is open to the horizon. the two on the right are closed at the back. the concrete is beginning to be darkened by rain

two long concrete boxes angled towards each other under a gray sky. the left side of the left one is glossy with rain, dark brown of the wettened concrete reflecting the gray sky.

arrangement of concrete boxes on brown dirt under a gray sky. the three closest are open all the way through, almost more like rectangular tubes than boxes. rain is starting to turn their dull grey to a glossy brown

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 18/11/2024

@langealexandra.bsky.social have you come across anything like this before? It literally stopped me in my tracks, it was so unexpected, like some piece of absolutely unforgiving minimalist sculpture that is also unmistakably a playground

an arrangement of concrete slabs and steel tube railings in a grassy field against a backdrop of willow trees

steel tubes delineate geometric forms in space, from rectangular prisms to trapezoidal forms. they are situated in a grassy field against a backdrop of sycamore trees.

steel tubing welded into a geometric structure silhouetted against the sky

concrete slabs standing on their ends in a grassy field. warm sunlight strikes the slabs from the right. behind, trees.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 16/11/2024

how did all-over multicolor diamond patchwork ever go out of style?

a porcelain figurine of a harlequin wearing leggings and a top made of diamond patchwork. The patchwork of his leggings is made of yellow, black, red, and white; his top is purple, yellow, and green. His face is painted white to exaggerate his facial features. He holds a hat in his right hand and a lidded jug in his left. His torso twists to the right, as if he might be offering to pour whatever is in the jug.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 10/11/2024

the physical structure of installation looks good. good quality fabrication, high level of production.

In the center, a golden plate with an image of a boy holding an old horn-like instrument called a "lur". To either side, white shutters chased with gold imagery partially conceal an array of GPU fans. The whole arrangement is symmetrical and evokes the appearance of a church organ.

A tall narrow room with brick walls. In the center of the room, a large horizontal white circle hangs from the ceiling, about ten feet above the ground. The circle has plaster figures of a procession of singers with faces picked out in gold. Four lecterns hang from the white circle, presenting sheet music at eye level.

A microphone stands in front of a white panel with gold figures advancing up through a landscape. At the top, a gold plate shows an engraving of a woman playing an ancient wind instrument called an aulos.

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 01/10/2024

for YEARS I've stuffed my bag full of Diaspora spices whenever I travel from the US to the UK. So excited that Diaspora is now going to be available in the UK. best turmeric I've ever had 🟡💯

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 21/07/2024

libraries are the best 🤍📚 that's why I lead a bicycle tour across London surveying the history of libraries in the UK! just led a tour yesterday, and will be giving the tour again in September as part of Open House: programme.openhouse.org.uk/listings/11975. Come along if you're in London!

a group of cyclists looking towards a low modern brick building with an extravagant gothic brick building behind it while a man facing them speaks and gestures

a group of cyclists standing with their bicycles along the sidewalk in front of Gay's the Word, a bookshop in London

cyclists on a guided tour through London

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 20/07/2024

just came across the most extensive list of titles I've ever seen in a dropdown menu and...I don't even know if I'm angry or impressed

a list of about 30 different titles, including religious and military titles

a list of about 20 more titles, including religious, military, and language-specific titles

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Justin Manley @justinmanley.world · 27/03/2024

it's been said before, but I'll say it again. Cohen's sense of color is amazing.

a painting of brightly colored flowers outlined in black

a watercolor-style painting (though possible made with ink rather than watercolor) in which washes of color fill blobby round forms

a painting of brightly colored flowers and stems with all forms outlined in black

a painting of a hand with four fingers against brightly colored flowers and stems. All forms are outlined in black.

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