Penguins give each other pebbles. A penguin will search the whole beach for the smoothest, most perfect stone, carry it across the colony in its beak, and set it down at the feet of someone it has chosen. It isn’t useful. You can’t eat it. It just says one thing, completely: I thought of you. I wanted you to have this. I care.

We do this too. The twig from the walk. The meme you screenshotted because it was so exactly your friend. The song you sent at 1AM with no message attached. The link that meant here, this is what’s alive in me right now, I’m trusting you with it. Many of us have been doing it our whole lives without a name for it. The name is penguin pebbling, and it’s one of the Five Neurodivergent Love Locutions.

Tonight’s Infodumplings is an open mic for exactly this. We’re going to play a round of Penguin Pebbling — the neuro-affirming card game Helen Edgar of Autistic Realms and Ryan Boren built together this year — and we’re going to update our community Pebble Board live, together, in real time. Bring the pebble you’ve been carrying. The song, the video, the poem, the photograph, the artifact of something you love. Set it down at the feet of the colony.

There are no winners. There is no wrong way to play. Come as you are, and bring the thing you’ve been waiting for someone to ask about.

Playlist

What we’ll explore together, and the context around it.

Penguin Pebbling: A Game of Creating Belonging, Building Connection and Understanding Autistic Identity — Autistic Realms. We’ll walk through the interactive game together and play a round. You can follow along with the on-screen widget, or grab three real pebbles (or three of anything you collect) and play with us from home.
The community playlist — your pebbles. Tonight the “watch together” is whatever you bring. A curator will screen-share featured pebbles from the board, and the open mic is yours to add to it. Our website turns links to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, and more into embeds we can play and pause as a room.

The game is the live, synchronous version of pebbling. The Pebble Board is the version that stays. Tonight we do both.

The Stimpunks Frame

Stimpunks is a neurodivergent- and disabled-led community built on a few bedrock beliefs. Tonight, the format is the belief.

Tonight, the Format Eats Its Own Thesis

Infodumplings has always rested on a single premise: that infodumping — sharing what you love, in depth and at length, with your whole chest — is not a deficit to be corrected. It’s connection. It’s care. For monotropic minds, the thing we can’t stop talking about is the thing we’re offering you. Special interests are love languages, and listening to someone infodump is a way of saying I want to know you.

So an open mic pebbling night is Infodumplings turned all the way up. Infodumping is itself one of the love locutions. Pebbling is another. Tonight we’re not learning about the ways we connect — we’re doing them, in the room, on purpose. The lesson and the practice collapse into the same hour.

The Five Autistic Love Locutions

The game — and the night — is built around five ways neurodivergent people show love. Amythest Schaber (Neurowonderful) named them; Stimpunks documented them; Helen Edgar and Ryan turned them into a deck of cards. Here they are:

Infodumping — sharing what you love, in depth and at length. A sign of deep trust. Letting people in.
Parallel play — being alone, together. Body doubling. Connection without demand, presence without performance.
Support swapping — mutual aid at the human scale. Capacity fluctuates; needs are not a weakness; we carry each other, taking turns.
Deep pressure — regulation is relational. Weight, pressure, texture, warmth. Being held in our environment.
Penguin pebbling — “I saw this and thought of you.” Small gestures that build pebble bridges of relational closeness through shared attention and co-created meaning.

None of these is small talk. All of them are how a lot of us actually do intimacy.

A Pebble Says “I Thought of You”

Here’s how the game goes, so you know what you’re walking into. Everyone takes three pebbles and holds them — feel the weight, notice the texture; they’re yours to keep, pass, or just hold. A pile of extra pebbles sits in the middle: the pebble bank. Someone draws a card and reads it aloud — or asks someone to read it for them — and then chooses how to answer: speak, write, draw, use AAC, gesture, or just be. Some cards ask nothing of you except presence. You can always pass. No explanation needed.

And when something someone shares lands with you — when you feel heard, or recognize something in what they said, or just want to say I’m glad you’re here — you pass them a pebble. No words required. The pebble holds the meaning. This is pebbling made literal: the gift that says I care, offered without the burden of having to explain it. It’s also a quiet bridge across the Double Empathy Problem — connection built on our terms, in our locutions, instead of translated into someone else’s.

The Pebble Board Is a Community Weaving

The Pebble Board is pebbling that stays. It’s where our community sets down its favorite pebbles for each other to find — songs, videos, poems, quotes, photographs, art, our samefoods, our SpInfodumps, our fandom, anything made by us or by anyone. It’s bricolage: a collective made out of whatever each of us brings, woven together into a snapshot of who we are right now.

We restart the board periodically, and submissions are open for the first half of 2026. Tonight we update it as a community — adding the pebbles we brought to the open mic so they outlast the hour. Let’s capture this moment, weaving the individual into a collective right now. If you’re in our community or an allied one, your pebble belongs in the weaving.

No One Ever Runs Out of a Way to Care

The most quietly radical rule in the game is the pebble bank. If you want to pass a pebble and your hands are empty, you take one from the middle. There is no limit to how many you can give or receive. No one is ever without a way to show they care.

That’s the whole ethic of this place in one mechanic. It’s support swapping and mutual aid rendered as a pile of stones: care is not scarce here, and your capacity to give it doesn’t have to be full for you to participate. On the days you have nothing, the bank carries you. On the days you have plenty, you refill it. Belonging is built like this — not from everyone arriving whole, but from a room arranged so that no one runs dry.

Join Us

Infodumplings happens every Thursday at 7PM Central, online via Discord. No preparation needed. No expertise required. Come as you are.

Our open mic pebbling night and community Pebble Board update is Thursday, June 25. You can participate by video, voice, text chat, or just by being in the room. All modes are welcome.

Cameras optional. Chat-only participation fully valid.
Stims, movement, and fidget tools encouraged.
No one will be called on. Silence is participation.
Want to play along with real pebbles? Grab three small objects you like before we start. Or use the on-screen game widget. Or just listen.
Bring a pebble to share: a link, a photo, an object, a sound, a sentence. Or come to receive other people’s.

Join our community to get access, then find us in our online space. Our Infodumplings page describes what to expect.

How the Hour Goes

Timestamp	Session
0:00	Welcome & Grounding — Brief framing: penguins, pebbles, and the five love locutions. No wrong way to be in this space.
0:05	Hold Your Pebbles — Everyone takes three (real ones, or the on-screen kind). Feel the weight. Notice the texture. We set up the pebble bank together.
0:10	Play a Round of Penguin Pebbling — Draw cards, share in whatever way feels right, pass a pebble when something lands. Speak, write, draw, AAC, gesture, or just be present.
0:30	Bodymind Break — A few minutes to move, stim, stretch, breathe. Intentional and encouraged.
0:35	Open Mic: Sparkles in the Dark — Bring your pebble to the colony. Share the song, the video, the SpIn, the artifact you’ve been carrying. No polish required.
0:50	Update the Pebble Board — We add tonight’s pebbles to the community board so they outlast the hour. The weaving grows.
0:57	Close & Resources — Links, gratitude, gentle goodbye. Set your pebbles down.

Reflection Questions

On the pebble you’ve been carrying

Penguin pebbling is the gift that says I saw this and thought of you — offered not because it’s useful, but because it’s a way of letting someone in. Most of us have a pebble we’ve been holding: the song we keep meaning to send, the thing we love that we’ve been waiting for someone to ask about. What is it? Who is it for? What has been stopping you from setting it down at their feet — and what would it take for tonight to be safe enough to do it here?

On infodumping as intimacy

For monotropic minds, the thing we can’t stop talking about is often the thing we’re offering you. Sharing it, at length and in detail, is how many of us say I trust you. When did you first learn that your enthusiasm was “too much”? Who was the first person who leaned in instead of backing away — who asked you to keep going? What did it feel like to be received instead of corrected, and how do you offer that same reception to someone else?

On the pebble bank

The most radical rule in the game is that no one ever runs out of a way to care: if your hands are empty, you take from the bank. Most of us were taught the opposite — that care is earned, rationed, conditional on being useful or whole. What would change if you believed your capacity to connect didn’t have to be full for you to belong? On the days you have nothing to give, can you let the bank carry you? On the days you have plenty, do you remember to refill it?

On the weaving that stays

The Pebble Board is pebbling that outlasts the moment — a collective made out of whatever each of us brings. There’s something tender about leaving proof: I was here, this is what I loved, this is what was alive in me. What pebble do you want in the weaving? What would you want someone who finds the board next year to know about you — about us — about this particular room on this particular Thursday night?

Resources

Pebble Board — Stimpunks Foundation
Penguin Pebbling: A Game of Creating Belonging, Building Connection and Understanding Autistic Identity — Autistic Realms
Penguin Pebbling – An Autistic Love Language — Stimpunks Glossary
Infodumplings: Bring Your Muchness Down the Rabbit Hole — Stimpunks Foundation
Glimmers: Autistic Joy and Monotropism — Autistic Realms

Penguin Pebbling: A Game of Creating Belonging, Building Connection and Understanding Autistic Identity was developed by Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms and Ryan Boren at Stimpunks (2026), grounded in the Five Neurodivergent Love Locutions coined by Amythest Schaber (Neurowonderful) and documented by Stimpunks Foundation (2022). The penguin pebbling locution draws on Helen Edgar’s writing at Autistic Realms (Edgar, 2023), framed through Milton’s Double Empathy Problem (2012) and monotropism theory (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). Free to use and share for non-commercial purposes.

Infodumplings: I Saw This and Thought of You