October Issue, 2026
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
The fire tells a cloud story: Letter from the editor, October, 2026
Trying the strength of the thin yet oddly strong threads that connect my thoughts like spider webs.
Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge
“Mastering the full range of subjects taught in medieval universities normally required many years of hard and expensive study. From the thirteenth century on, however, an anonymous work known as the Ars notoria promised, through diagrams, incantations, and arcane rituals, to rapidly transmit to scholars the total knowledge of anything they might need.”
Fiction: Every Dream Come True
“And though it’s always sweet sorrow to part, you know you’ll always remain in my heart, Good night, sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you, Here’s a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true.”
Mykyta Ryzhykh: Three Poems
3 poems from Mykyta Ryzhykh
Being or Living
In a world that constantly pushes us toward speed, replacement, adaptation, and whatever comes next, perhaps the most meaningful form of resistance is not to stop time. It is to commit enough time to something that it can begin to matter.
Why Human Painting still Matters in the Age of AI
“A human painting is produced inside a life. The painter gets tired. Attention shifts. A hand hesitates. A decision made in the morning may be reconsidered at night. A mark can be the result of confidence, frustration, correction, discovery, or fatigue. Some of these conditions are visible in the final work and some are only indirectly present, but they belong to its formation. The painting has duration.”
Thirty Minutes After Thunder: a Poem
“Maybe that is what a life is:
learning which deadlines are real,
which are merely printed,
which walls deserve a name,
which storms are not asking
to be overcome.”
Magpies Mix Tape: Working on Something Good
This playlist celebrates the joys, sorrows, doubts, and soul-nurturing importance of the labor of creation.
Gendered Contempt and the History of Language
“In the end, gendered insult reveals that language is one of the most durable carriers of inequality. It stores contempt in ordinary forms. It turns hierarchy into shorthand. It allows long histories of valuation to survive in single syllables and familiar phrases.”
