Stimpunks Foundation

Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

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This site is like Wikipedia because it effectively is an encyclopedia, an encyclopedia of disability and difference. It’s chock full of answers and knowledge and experience on living in this world as neurodivergent and disabled people. Learn about yourself. Learn about your family. Learn about your friends, co-workers, patients, and students. We offer lots of free resources for navigating our current society and building a more inclusive society. We offer validation for thirsty souls yearning to be seen, heard, and understood. We offer words on your behalf, ones which call out to include you. We offer community and belonging.

There are over seven hundred and fifty pages to explore in our encyclopedia of disability and difference. We are building a global knowledge commons, at the edges. Our glossary, library, courses, and field guide are vast.

Below, we’ve collated some of our most referenced resources.

Table of Contents

⛰️ A Journey Through the Rough Terrain of Lived Experience

The first five pages of our website are a scrollytellying journey through the rough terrain of lived experience punctuated with spectacular art and music. Made with agony and joy, this is our story of surviving, reframing, and finding like-minded misfits.

  1. Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People (the page you’re reading now)
  2. Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
  3. Our Umbrella: It Is Time to Celebrate Our Interdependence!
  4. Reframe Disability and Difference: We’re Going to Rewrite the Narratives
  5. Happy Flappy: Let’s Bolster Against Stress and Pass Bodily Survival Knowledge Down

Pages in the journey are connected with a “Continue” button at the bottom of each page.

Mind Maps

Here’s a mind map of our pillars and philosophy.
Stimpunks-Pillars-7Download
Here’s a mind map of the themes on our website.
  • Sustainability
  • Culture and Identity
  • Place and Space
  • Continuity and Change
  • Citizenship and Social Responsibility
  • Design and Technologies
  • Social Organization
  • Creative Expression
  • Health and Wellbeing
Re-Humanizing Education: Exploring Thematic Design | SLIDE DECK (1), Exploring Thematic Design | Planning Pathway Learning Map – Google Docs
Stimpunks-Themes-6Download

⏭️ Skip To

We invite you to keep on scrolling. Art, music, poetry, and prose from our community of neurodivergent and disabled people await. Join us in challenging the norm and changing the narrative by reframing our states of being. However, if you’d like to skip to other parts of our website, here are some buttons to popular destinations and a carousel of recently added pages.

Donate
Request Financial Aid
Request Creator Grant
Volunteer
Meet Our Team
Connect
Visit Our Learning Space
Learn the Neurodivergent Love Languages
Take the Monotropism Questionnaire
Humans and a dog sit at a cafe with a bridge and skyscrapers in the background. Everyone is wearing a bubble helmet.

by Heike Blakley

🤖 Search and AI

We provide a Search box in the header and footer of every page as well as one inline below for convenience. Type to search our encyclopedia of disability and difference. Type to discover yourself and others.

You can also use the AI offered by our web hosting provider to ask our site a question.

  • We’re still testing this and can’t vouch for the results.
  • Initial testing suggests that this offers useful cognitive accessibility to our encyclopedia.
  • There are flaws when summarizing fine distinctions.
  • Members of our community use AI as assistive tech.
  • We are very interested in AI’s potential regarding accessibility.
  • We are concerned about the ethics of AI.
  • Our AI glossary page contains our developing philosophy on AI.
  • We include guidelines and disclosures from our AI vendor in an accordion below.
  • Let us know how it goes.
AI output might be surprising or flawed. Due to the nature of AI, output could be inaccurate, offensive, biased, harmful, or just plain false. You’re responsible for any output you use, as if you were the original or sole creator, so you should always thoroughly review output before using it.

Here are AI guidelines from our AI vendor.

  • AI output might be surprising or flawed. Due to the nature of AI, output could be inaccurate, offensive, biased, harmful, or just plain false. You’re responsible for any output you use, as if you were the original or sole creator, so you should always thoroughly review output before using it. For example, if you use an AI feature to help you write a description of a product you’re selling in your WooCommerce store, give it a read and edit to ensure it’s accurate! And keep in mind that the AI might not have been trained on the most current data; ChatGPT for example currently has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021.
  • Be thoughtful about what data you put in. Your input will be shared with third party AI providers and may be used to train their models — more on that below.  Think twice before inputting any confidential or sensitive information. 
  • We don’t claim any ownership over the content you generate with our AI features. Please note that you might not have complete ownership over the generated content either! For example, the content generated by AI may be similar to others’ content, including content that may be protected by trademark or copyright, and the US Copyright Office is still figuring out when AI-assisted content should get copyright protection.
  • Please be transparent when you use content that was generated with the help of AI. We hope to be thoughtful stewards of AI, so we believe this is always a good practice, but this is particularly important when it’s possible that someone could potentially be misled or harmed by the content.
  • Let us know if something isn’t helpful (or worse!). We’re constantly fine-tuning and enhancing these new and experimental features, so we’d appreciate your feedback. In some cases, you may be able to provide feedback within the product (👍/👎), but otherwise, please contact us.
AI Guidelines – Automattic

🪵 Latest Blog Posts

Our blog is active. Here are the latest blog posts.

📚 Read In Another Language

We provide AI generated translations of our most popular pages. Human editors review and edit some pages, but not all.

Required Reading

To understand us, read “🌈♿️ Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice “

Stimpunks Guide to the NeurodiVerse

Our Guide to the NeurodiVerse publishes an accessible summary of neurodiversity and disability related research every week.

Stimpunks Guide to the NeurodiVerse Issue #5: Redefining Autism Science with Monotropism and the Double Empathy Problem

If we are right, then monotropism is one of the key ideas required for making sense of autism, along with the double empathy problem and neurodiversity. Monotropism makes sense of many autistic experiences at the individual level. The double empathy problem explains the misunderstandings that occur between people who process the world differently, often mistaken for a lack of empathy…

Stimpunks Guide to the NeurodiVerse Issue #4: From an Ivory Tower Built on Sand to Open, Participatory, Emancipatory, Activist Research

Autism research is out-of-touch with the “real” world Frontiers | From ivory tower to inclusion: Stakeholders’ experiences of community engagement in Australian autism research Our “Stimpunks Guide to the NeurodiVerse” series surveys recent neurodiversity and disability related research. In this issue, we highlight how the vast majority of autism research is divorced from the lived…

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Podcast

Our podcast is published bi-weekly on Mondays.

Stimpunks Podcast Episode 3: On Jordan Neely and Support Systems – Stimpunks Foundation

In this episode, Inna reflects on what happens when a neurodivergent person’s support system goes away and society fails them. Transcript Our Loved Ones are Jordan Neely  So, I’m sitting here by the lake, and it’s so peaceful and beautiful. The water is really clear and I could see the fish and the turtles, and […] The post Stimpunks Podcast Episode 3: On Jordan Neely and Support Systems appeared first on Stimpunks Foundation.
  1. Stimpunks Podcast Episode 3: On Jordan Neely and Support Systems
  2. Stimpunks Podcast Episode 2: Learning from Rockets
  3. Stimpunks Podcast Episode 1: The Logistics of Inclusion

The Accommodations for Natural Human Variation Should Be Mutual

Enable Dignity

Real inclusive organizing should at a minimum include: Incorporating disability into your values or action statements; having disabled people on the organizing committee or board; making accessibility a priority from day one; and listening to feedback from disabled people.

Education Access

We have turned classrooms into hell for neurodivergence. Students with conflicting sensory needs and accommodations are squished together with no access to cave, campfire, or watering hole zones. This sensory environment feeds the overwhelm -> meltdown -> burnout cycle. Feedback loops cascade.

Wheelchair in a maze

Healthcare Access

They don’t take disability studies classes.

They don’t socialize with us.

They don’t listen to us.

Wanted: hospitals and doctors’ offices that…

Green, yellow, and red folders with the words GREEN, YELLOW, and RED on them. The green folder has a circle on it. The yellow folder has a triangle. The read folder has an octagon.

Interaction Access

Interaction badges are useful tools. Their red, yellow, green communication indicators map to our cave, campfire, and watering hole moods. The cave, campfire, watering hole and red, yellow, green reductions are a useful starting place when designing for neurological pluralism.

Close-up of a keyboard with the Russian alphabet for the blind. Braille.

Communication Access

“Written communication is the great social equalizer.” It allows us to participate and be a part of things bigger than ourselves.

Young Asian Cute girl studying with laptop at home during pandemic stock photo

Technology Access

Our multi-age learning community sets up and runs our organization. We don’t use learning management software. Instead, our learners use the professional tools of a modern, neurodiverse organization, without all the ed-tech surveillance baked in. We use technology to co-create paths to  equity and access with our learners.

Let’s organize our lives around love and care.

A group of disabled queer Black folks talk and laugh at a sleepover, relaxing across two large beds. Everyone is dressed in colorful t-shirts and wearing a variety of sleep scarves, bonnets, and durags. On the left, two friends sit on one bed and paint each other’s nails. On the right, four people lounge on a bed: one person braids another’s hair while the third friend wearing a C-PAP mask laughs, and the fourth person looks up from their book. In the center, a bedside lamp illuminates the room in warm light while pill bottles adorn an end table.

Mission

We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.

We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.

Hands overlapping with a heart painted in the middle

Creed

I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges. I center neurodivergent and disabled experience in service to all bodyminds.

A disembodied arm with blue skin and a self-care tattoo flashes the sign of the horns

Covenant

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Two cosmic beings, one bearing a red hue and one bearing a blue hue, share a spark inducing kiss

Philosophy

We steer by these acquired phrases. They are compasses and stars that align us on our mission.

Rainbow woven cloth evoking our diversity and interdependence

Interdependence

It is time to celebrate our interdependence. Interdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected and what you do impacts others. Interdependence is the only way out of most of the most pressing issues we face today.

The many forms of difference. Adaptive Behavior Assessment (ABAS-3), Adult ADHD Self-report Scale (ASRS-v1.1), and Behavior Rating Inventory Executive Function (BRIEF 2) forms spread across a wooden table

Edges

Our designs, our societies, and the boundaries of our compassion are tested at the edges, where the truths told are of bias, inequality, injustice, and thoughtlessness.

Let's organize our lives around love and care
Let's write each other letters and call it prayer
Let's congregate in the place that isn't anywhere
At the temple of broken dreams

Pillars

A young woman looks up toward images flowing from an open book with pages riffling

📓 Learning Space

Stimpunks Learning Space offers community and space for passion-based, human-centered learning with purpose. Our learners collaborate on distributed, multiage, cross-disciplinary teams with a neurodiverse array of creatives doing work that impacts community. Via equity, access, empathy, and inclusivity, we create anti-ableist space for the neurodivergent and disabled people most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“.

A green-skinned humanoid with 10 arms and a tree sprouting out of its open heads holds 10 objects: paintbrush, magnifying glass, book, stopwatch, smoking herbs, broom, smartphone, mortar

🧐 Open Research

Our emancipatory research efforts focus on the sweet spot of digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. We improve the scientific
experience for the disabled and the
neurodivergent by restoring the humanities. We bring voice into empirical constructs and translate voice into academic comprehension.

A group of disabled queer Black folks talk and laugh at a sleepover, relaxing across two large beds. Everyone is dressed in colorful t-shirts and wearing a variety of sleep scarves, bonnets, and durags. On the left, two friends sit on one bed and paint each other’s nails. On the right, four people lounge on a bed: one person braids another’s hair while the third friend wearing a C-PAP mask laughs, and the fourth person looks up from their book. In the center, a bedside lamp illuminates the room in warm light while pill bottles adorn an end table.

⛑️ Mutual Aid

Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society. We provide real help against the onslaught through mutual aid. We believe that direct support to individuals is the most effective approach to alleviating the barriers and challenges that prevent neurodivergent and disabled people from thriving.

Stimpunks Creator Badge An umbrella inside a circle surrounded by the text "Stimpunks Creator" with rainbow stripes in between

🧰 Creator Grants

We pay creators to create. We buy space to breathe and make. Creativity is a vital force that drives positive change in society. We provide financial support to creators across various fields, including art, advocacy, research, and beyond.
 We aim to enable creators to fully immerse themselves in their work. We recognize the importance of investing in the creative process and the impact it can have on communities and individuals.

Learning Space

Lit up tree
Learning Space
stream of information

Online: Bringing Safety to the Serendipity

Online, we bring safety to the serendipity with our distributed community and communication stack. Chance favors the connected mind. Our learners connect using 1:1 laptops and indie ed-tech. We give our learners real laptops with real capabilities, and we fill those laptops with assistive tech and tools of the trades.

Two children having an adventure, climbing and stepping in a river exploring a beautiful natural area.

Offline: Fresh Air, Daylight, and Large Muscle Movement

Offline, our learners enjoy fresh air, daylight, large muscle movement, and the freedom to stim and play. Ensure there is quiet space and outdoor space that people can access at any time.

Man sitting in the mouth of a cave with open sky and mountain showing beyond the cave

Cavendish Space: Caves, Campfires, and Watering Holes for Dandelions, Tulips, and Orchids

We provide psychologically and sensory safe spaces suited to zone work, intermittent collaboration, and collaborative niche construction

Hands overlapping with a heart painted in the middle

We Believe: Human-Centered, Trauma-Informed, Self-Determined, Equity Literate, Interdisciplinary, Open Technology

Learning is rooted in purpose finding and community relevance.
Social justice is the cornerstone to educational success.
Dehumanizing practices do not belong in schools.
Learners are respectful toward each other’s innate human worth.

Why We Reframe

  1. Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People
  2. An Encyclopedia of Disability and Difference
  3. Take Them Together: Neurodiversity and Disability Justice
  4. Our Umbrella: It Is Time to Celebrate Our Interdependence!
  5. Reframe Disability and Difference: We’re Going to Rewrite the Narratives
  6. Happy Flappy: Let’s Bolster Against Stress and Pass Bodily Survival Knowledge Down

Reframe Aid

  1. ⛑ Mutual Aid: Real Help Against the Onslaught
  2. ☂️ Community Care

Reframe Learning

  1. ♿️📚The Need: Anti-Ableist Space for Human-Centered Learning
  2. ❤️ The Answer: Reframing, Respectful Connection, and the Presumption of Competence
  3. ⚡️🦅🌈 The Feeling: Electric Belonging and Soaring Inclusion
  4. 📚 The Learning: Passion-Based, Human-Centered Learning Compatible With Neurodiversity and the Social Model of Disability
  5. The Gift: Learning Disabilities Reframed

Reframe Research

  1. 🗂 Facts, Fire, and Feels: Research-Storytelling from the Edges
  2. Questions for an Industry: Are You Disregarding Harm and Profiting From Our Misery?
  3. Participatory, Emancipatory, Activist Research
  4. Useful Autism Research: Welcome to This Very Important Update

Reframe Services

  1. 🧰✊ Services: Know Our Rights, These Are Our Rights

Take the Reframer’s Journey

Anti-Ableist Space for Human-Centered Learning

A wheelchair user approaches a bathroom door with a closed sign on it

The Need

Space without Behaviorism, Segregation, or Ableism

Concept of romantic relationships and marriage with handicapped man. Vector illustration of love. Family with disabled man. Human relations vector illustration. Man in wheelchair.

The Answer

Reframing and Respectful Connection

Young person in wheelchair with raised arms and a smile

The Feeling

Electric Belonging and Soaring Inclusion

Happy young man using wheelchair admiring piece of art, flat vector illustration. Arts therapy, healing and mental wellbeing.

The Learning

Passion-Based, Human-Centered Learning Compatible With Neurodiversity and the Social Model of Disability

Beautiful young girl in headphones listening to audio book. Audiobook concept. Woman listening to books, podcast online, enjoying literature, learning. Audio bookworm.

The Gift

We have created a system that has you submit yourself, or your child, to patient hood to access the right to learn differently. The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis.

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