Paper Airplane magazine

Duel Airbags
#MildHorror

What’s the best part of making something? The creative collaboration? The tinkering? Releasing it into the world? Seeing it be enjoyed by people you’ve admired for years? By people you’ve never met? 

Yes. 

Make the thing. Release it into the world. See what happens.

Well done all around! So glad to hear it was satisfying—it was designed with that in mind.

Mulder, there's got to be a plausible explanation for why I'm in this 1930s anatomy pop-up book.

Thank you, Rob! Sincerely thrilled with your review of the magazine. Genuine and specific appreciation—truly the best kind!

SUCCESS!

"Paper Airplane makes me want to create art, a puzzle, a story or tell someone a cool fact just because." 🤩

An illustrated fantasy map with a key and labels of various features and landmarks.

Can you ESCAPE THIS PAGE using only the clues hidden in the map? Hint: You’ll probably need some hints. Get hints (and the full-page map) in the debut issue of Paper Airplane, only available at PaperAirplane.pub.
Puzzle by @pzlr.org. Map art by @laurbarian.bsky.social.

A great reminder to ignore “rules” when writing is that one of the most distinctive and impactful lyrical intros in rock history rhymes “masses” with “masses”

Paper Airplane magazine Paper Airplane magazine is the grown-up version of the kind of magazine you used to look forward to getting as a kid: fun, fascinating, uncynical—and no A.I.

Debut issue of the magazine is a fundraiser in support of refugees and immigrants www.paperairplane.pub

As I said just the other day: Online life has the potential to be like Busytown by Richard Scarry, but now it just feels like busywork for the rich and scary.

Let your mind wander in this exquisitely elaborate maze by Guinness World Record-holding mazemaker @boggessart.bsky.social, exclusively in the debut issue of Paper Airplane magazine.

A portion of an elaborate maze with many details, including bodies of water filled with sharks, ships, and sea monsters.

A portion of an elaborate maze showing a waterfall, a ship, and a sea monster.

A portion of an elaborate maze showing many details, including a whale, staircases, and the finish line.

Summertime is for getting lost on purpose.

I want spaces that subtract from distraction instead of extracting in fractions. Publications made to fill and feed, not just fill the feed. Places infused with the antidotes for doom and cynicism: joy and wonder and curiosity and play and creativity and weirdness, all for their own sake.

I don’t want more smoothness. But I do want more softness.

Less cutely: Online media doesn’t have to be mediocre on purpose. It doesn’t have to be designed to make you feel worse, to autotune writer voice and sever off all the serifs until every last messy edge has been smoothed into disposable flavorless sameness.

Online life has the potential to be like Busytown by Richard Scarry, but now it just feels like busywork for the rich and scary.

After you preorder, tide yourself over until the book arrives by checking out Kory's piece, "The Shape of Color," in the debut issue of Paper Airplane!

JAWN PREORDERED

You get about one perfect nectarine per year. Savor it.

Evie's 22nd Birthday Fundraiser By The Evelyn Swierczynski Foundation

I hope you'll consider donating to Evie's Birthday Fundraiser this year, and/or help spread the word. givebutter.com/evie22

“Paper Airplane” takes flight This new, independent digital magazine offers up some sorely needed wonder and whimsy.

“Paper Airplane will transport you to those summer days—before smartphones, before productivity—where time well spent was time lost to, in, the wonder of a wandering pillbug.”

Thanks to @mashedradish.bsky.social for the Paper Airplane appreciation!

mashedradish.com/2025/07/13/p...

The table of contents page in the debut issue of Paper Airplane magazine, including sections titled Q&A, Article, Art, Infographics, List, Comics, Wordplay, Games, Photos, and Activities.

The exact opposite of doomscrolling

*Roll call at Root Vegetable Prep*
“OK, I see Potato, Carrot… wait, who’s that in the purple?”
“Beet’s me, sir.”

READ YRSELF CLEAN

Em dashes

Be "deeply, beautifully inefficient."
"Highlight the beauty of things you like."
"Make a good, human thing."

Quick shout-out to the subtle punning of "Science Advances," which can be read 3 different ways—advances in science; science itself advances; and sciences advances us/everything.

Plexin/Semaphorin antagonism orchestrates collective cell migration and organ sculpting by regulating epithelial-mesenchymal balance An axon guidance factor restricts gap growth in a non-neuronal migrating cell sheet, allowing organ sculpting.

At Paper Airplane, it's not a coincidence that we highlight the work of journalists, artists, and scientists. Vol. 1 features a 2-years-in-the-making photo from the research team of @maikbischoff.bsky.social, who was just published in the journal Science Advances!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron?

"In commercial after commercial, humans are oblivious, enfeebled, barely functioning idiots beset by more tasks, stimuli and demands on their time than anyone could reasonably handle." (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/m...

An image of two buttons. One says "Generate," as in "Generate with A.I." The other says: "Start from scratch; accumulate years of ideas, instincts, and experience; collaborate with people whose ideas, instincts, and experiences diverge wildly from your own; learn from the messiness, the dead ends, the mistakes, the endless revisions that reveal the connections you’d never have found without embracing imperfection and every hard part along the way, because, as a flawed but fully human person once wisely said, the hard is what makes it great."

There are two buttons.