Mitch Jafery's Friday Gallery at The Row DTLA installs the Mother Tongue lending library and popup bookstore, a weaving together of perspectives on power and language: from the conversations of plants, to the secret lexicon of an extinct female-only language. It will span cultures, eras, and genres: from protest poetry to con artists, from political philosophy to comic books.

My own contribution was one of my favorite peculiar books, “The Velvet Monkeywrench” by John Muir with these exquisite hand-drawn illustrations by Peter Aschwanden. And this deserves a short explanation.

The first car I ever bought — that beige VW Rabbit — came with a repair manual that had these awesome hand-drawn illustrations. It was a proper repair manual whose idiom was somewhere between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the meaning of mechanical contrivances. I still have that book.

Then there was the ‘73 Toyota Landcruiser, then the Acura Integra, which took me across the country to a summer in Boulder Colorado, working as the fryer operator at the Rio Grande Restaurant. One night, out in the back alley disposing of the spent fryer grease, one of the other guys I would yap with after work — a certified longhair Boulder hippie cat — came over to me, floating about 1/2 a centimeter off the ground and, with a reverential gesture, handed me this book and said, “this is the manual I was talking about.” And then he glided away into the kitchen.

I immediately recognized the same illustration style as that peculiar repair manual I had from my old VW Rabbit. Peter Aschwanden.

The book is a trip. Get the original; do not bother with the reprint — every once and again they pop up on Ebay or Abe Books.

Parkour in the 1930s?

This pseudonymously authored book (“Whipplesnaith”) describes this secret group, led by the mysterious ‘Butterfly Catcher’, as they scale the Cambridge University buildings in the darkest hours.

(I'm still not sure if this is an elaborate fiction or historically accurate!)

Shawn Chiki pulled this off his wall while I was at Liam Young's studio at SCI-Arc doing a marathon of deeply engaging one-on-one's with the students. Shawn's portfolio and thesis work encompasses virtual, scale, and otherly dimensioned structures that look imminently climbable, so it's no wonder that he'd have this historical reflection on humans clambering.

Piet Zwart is a Dutch designer known for his innovative approach to typography and design. As part of the “Neue Grafik/New Graphic Design/Graphisme actuel Facsimiles” collection, his work is available through the Letterform Archive. The book — “NKF: Piet Zwart’s Avant-Garde Catalog for Standard Cables, 1927–1928” — features a facsimile reprint of an original issue highlighting Zwart's work, accompanied by an introduction that situates his contributions within the broader context of twentieth-century graphic design history.

Windstar blends psychology and sound to help you rewrite your mental script. Their Solutions Seminar uses music, guided audio, and a unique video brochure to help you break free from old patterns and unlock your potential.Change your story, change your life—Windstar’s Solutions Seminar mixes music, memory, and a dash of 80s flair to help you take charge of your future.

I worked at a branding agency in NYC once. Not for very long. Culture clash. I'll never forget the one guy who sat over there with a few contrivances to bind and cobble presentation and PowerPoint pitch decks for 'leave behinds'. No one else could mess with his kit. He'd totally mad dog any one who came around. He was king of his somewhat sad little castle.
Presentation startup Gamma just raised $68 million at a $2.1 billion valuation, boasting 70 million users, profitability, and a lean 52-person team. The company is taking on PowerPoint and Google Slides with AI-powered, instant presentations. Gamma is shaking up the presentation world, turning text into slick slides with AI and racking up millions of users—all while staying lean, profitable, and ambitious enough to take on the industry’s biggest names.

AI is hurtling forward, but the money to keep it from going off the rails is barely a blip. Stanford’s Charles Jones says we should be spending billions more to keep humanity safe—because the stakes couldn’t be higher.

According to a report from Android Authority, Google Maps is developing a feature that enables users to select routes with increased shade, thereby allowing pedestrians to avoid sunnier, potentially hotter paths. This initiative appears to be a response to rising concerns about heat exposure linked to global warming.

GenAI may be powerful, but writing studies has its own principles. Found this quickstart guide for educators who want to say ‘no’ to generative AI—not out of fear, but out of respect for the messy, diverse, and meaningful practice of writing. This guide champions a thoughtful, disciplined refusal of generative AI in writing studies, grounded in the belief that writing is more than efficiency and to think of it as such could possibly lead to its homogenization.