\n\nWild Abundance is a school for Carpentry, Earthskills, and Permaculture located near Asheville, NC.
\nWe share practical skills for personal empowerment and community resilience, with deep respect for the natural world.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-14T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.wildabundance.net/", "tags": [ "Asheville", "Nature", "School", "Lifelong Learning", "Carpentry", "Rewilding", "Permaculture", "Foraging", "Medicine" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/s002839322600076x", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/s002839322600076x", "title": "Aphantasia and visual working memory: No direct evidence of impaired visual working memory in aphantasics, either in behavioral performance or the accuracy of a multivoxel pattern classifier", "content_html": "We believe that humans have a beautiful potential to feel interwoven with the web of life, and to align our actions and our values. Sadly, we see modern life pushing people further and further away from the living world, from each other, and from the skills for empowered engagement. Our school is a place of hopeful resistance to this trend. We’ve shared skills and knowledge with thousands of students since we began in 2009.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-13T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002839322600076X", "tags": [ "Aphantasia", "Aphantasia", "Neurodivergence", "Api Design", "Neuroscience", "Brain", "Imagery", "Visualization", "Working Memory", "Mental Imagery", "Imagination" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/discipline", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/discipline", "title": "Neurodivergent Design as a Discipline", "content_html": "Visual mental imagery and visual working memory are often thought to be closely related. After all, both have been argued to involve the temporary maintenance of visual representations in conscious awareness. We might expect, therefore, that individuals with aphantasia would show impairments in visual working memory performance. However, demonstrating this has proven surprisingly difficult. Most studies have failed to find evidence that aphantasia impacts visual working memory, possibly due to methodological designs that have allowed aphantasics to compensate for any impairments. To test this, we conducted three studies: two behavioral studies with tasks intended to prevent compensation and one that utilized multivoxel pattern analysis of fMRI data. Unexpectedly, we found no significant differences between aphantasics and typical imagers, either in behavioral performance or in the multivariate analysis. This may suggest that aphantasia is a variation in conscious awareness, rather than an inability to generate or maintain visual representations.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-12T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://stimpunks.org/discipline/", "tags": [ "Neurodivergent Design", "Emergent Practice", "Craft & Practice", "Design", "Design Theory", "Process", "Purpose", "Naming", "Disability", "Neurodivergence", "Neuroaffirning" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/osjhv8", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/osjhv8", "title": "A pragmatic guide to browser support", "content_html": "", "date_published": "2026-03-12T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://noti.st/rachelandrew/osjHV8#sW4InBs", "tags": [ "Baseline", "Browser Support", "Css", "Web Development", "Progressive Enhancement", "Baseline", "Presentation Slides", "Talk" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/bad-at-css", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/bad-at-css", "title": "Bad At Css", "content_html": "", "date_published": "2026-03-11T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/bad-at-css/", "tags": [ "Css", "Color", "Web Color", "Color Math", "Oklch", "Cool", "Fun", "Css Variables", "Railroad Diagrams", "Escaping Css" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/openhub", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/openhub", "title": "Open Hub, the open source network", "content_html": "Neurodivergent design is the study and practice of shaping environments around the diversity of human minds.
\nRegulation and participation are ecological achievements, not individual responsibilities.
\n
Discover, Track and Compare Open Source; Indexing 255,914 open source projects
", "date_published": "2026-03-11T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://openhub.net/", "tags": [ "Open Source", "Open Source Tools", "Repository", "Database", "Resource List", "Free", "Software" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/too-much-color", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/too-much-color", "title": "Too Much Color", "content_html": "", "date_published": "2026-03-11T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/too-much-color/", "tags": [ "Color", "Web Color", "Oklch", "Oklah", "Cie", "Color Spaces", "Calculating Color", "Visual Perception", "Just Noticeable Difference", "Cool", "Geeky", "Css", "Css Minification", "Browsers" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/a-lot-of-journalism-folks-are-offering-editing-advice-as-grammarlys-ai-experts", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/a-lot-of-journalism-folks-are-offering-editing-advice-as-grammarlys-ai-experts", "title": "A lot of journalism folks are offering editing advice as Grammarly’s AI “experts”", "content_html": "\n\n“Instead of producing what looks like a generic critique from a nameless LLM,” Wired reported last week, Expert Review “lists a number of real academics and authors available to weigh in on your text. To be clear: Those people have nothing to do with this process.”
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-10T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/a-lot-of-journalism-folks-are-offering-editing-advice-as-grammarlys-ai-experts/", "tags": [ "Plagiarism", "Consent", "Gammarly (company)", "Theft", "Identity", "Generative Ai", "Lack Of Consent", "Wow", "Wtf" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/journal/bad-brain-days", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/journal/bad-brain-days", "title": "Bad Brain Days", "content_html": "I’ll stress again that none of these people gave their permission to have their names used by this feature. In fact, that’s something Grammarly itself, in the style of noted legal scholar and digital copyright expert Pamela Samuelson, flagged when I ran an early draft of this story through it.
\n
As I was growing up, sometimes my mom would say or notice I needed a mental health day: a day to stay home from school to do nothing, rest, or play.
\nThat was my first foray into naming periods of intentional rest that are typically unacceptable in neuronormative society. I continued that practice as I grew up—during University, then in mid–later twenties. There were some days that I needed to call in sick because, otherwise, I would get sicker and performance would degrade in the longer run.
\nSince my late-realized neurodivergence and burnout in 2020, I've gained a framing for why that happens and have evolved the name for when it does—because...there're different types of days needed.
\nToday's been a bad brain day for me.
\nThere's a variety of reasons, but one of the largest is lack of sleep across multiple days. Not that I didn't try to fall to sleep, it just didn't happen until 0430 one morning and 0230 the day after (in-between both, time also sprung ahead).
\nAs I started my weekday rhythm, I continued to be sluggish. Lengthy time between getting out of bed to feeling awake. My morning shower didn't even help much. Limbs felt weak while walking the dog. Even after appropriate amount of time for my long-release ADHD meds to kick-in, the fogginess was still there.
\nA taste of recognizing how I recognize it's going to be a bad brain day.
\nTypically, it's a general fogginess and lack of ability to focus my brain. It's a thing ADHDers tend to experience, as well as people with Long COVID.
\nIt's not an official medical term, but that's what it can feel like. Wading through a soup of a cloud that's settled making it difficult to see where your flashlight of attention is pointing. The light gets ricocheted around the water droplets and obfuscates whatever blurry shape you're trying to make sense of with a little bit of focused attention.
\nFunnily enough, there's a Wikipedia entry around it, titled clouding of consciousness.
\nThe clouding doesn't just impact the ability to focus, or describe the experience of navigating in a deep fog. There's also a memory and information recall impact that makes it difficult to find, identify, and retrieve specific thought.
\nIn a knowledge work environment, where focused task-work is needed to get the job done, that makes the barrier of working on those days even more difficult.
\nWhen I'm able to identify that it's going to be a Bad Brain Day—as I'm going through it; it's not something I plan ahead to do—I need to follow the my energy flow.
\nI can still be \"productive\" in the day, but it's not going to be anything I had originally planned on. Writing this up is one of those things that could qualify as productive, but not actually doing the work I had intended to today. I've also jumped around writing a few other posts, reading, and working on organizing thoughts as I can.
\nIt means that there'll likely be some additional naps in the day—today there's been two: 45-min and 1-hr. It means there'll be less communication with other humans, as that can take additional toll, decreasing effectiveness of the purposeful, intentional rest. It means there'll be more focus on grounding, bedtime transition rituals—making sure to have my teas, going to bed earlier, and trying pay off the accumulated sleep debt.
\nI've realised these sorts of days are something I need to build into a personal access requirements document (that I intend to write one day).
\nAccess requirements are a clearer way to say \"disability accommodation\" as it's not just an accommodation it's one of those things that's required in my working environment. I need to be able to have days where I can say, \"Nope. Energy's not there today.\"
\nWhile working in the Netherlands, I regularly got scoffed at by doctor's offices when I asked for a note for work. In the office handbook, it clearly said a note was needed from a doctor if you were out sick or needing to go during work hours. Culturally, that's not so much a thing in the Netherlands—personally, that's a tell an American's hand was involved in writing the handbook.
\nThey'd say:
\n\n\nYou're an adult! You don't need a note to say you're sick or you came here.
\n
\nWe also didn't have an allotted number of sick days. When sick, the days off weren't stolen from our contractually & federally mandated paid time off. Those days were meant for relaxation, disconnection, and recharge.
When you're sick—or have bad brain days—they aren't typically too relaxing or recharging.
\nI hadn't experienced that much before, apart from those rare, early school days where my need was seen (not necessarily by me). I've learned a lot since those days, from my time in the Netherlands, and as I've delved into understanding my own needs with my neurodivergent, AuDHD framing.
\nIt's been difficult to do while working self-employed though.
\nLearning how to define boundaries and give myself permission to do this, even when I have to bring the money in, have deadlines to work with, and collaborate with others. It's a loss of income that I'll need to make-up in the days after.
\nThis is one of those reasons many disabled people have to grow income through self-employment—spiky skills and inconsistent, unpredictable energy changes.
\nThere's privilege in being able to pursue and earn enough to get by to do this. There's also a big privilege in working in the Netherlands where sick days aren't a loss of paid time off, where I learned this was a need that I just had to do sometimes.
\nBad Brain Days happen—to me, to disabled people, to allistics. They can happen to everyone.
\nBy Naming them, I'm able to talk more clearly with others about it. I don't apologize for taking the time & space for the rest—I name it and say, \"I'm having a bad brain day, need to take the time to rest. Be back in tomorrow.\"
\nBecause I rested today, I can get back to things tomorrow;
\n...typically.
", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "tags": [ "Bad Brain Day", "Neuroqueering", "Rest", "Spoons", "Work", "Labor", "Rhythm", "Rituals", "Sleep", "Boundaries", "Naming" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/journal/growth-statuses-continued", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/journal/growth-statuses-continued", "title": "Growth Statuses, Continued", "content_html": "Back in February, I wrote about hitting the wall of scale concerning tags on my site.
\nThis is the next step.
\nI've added the growth statuses to all the pages, while refactoring and merging templates to ultimately have more a unified data structure.
\nI've made each of the statuses:
\nThis works great for statuses of publication, but I'm finding what's working well—for me—in means of writing & production.
\nI'm typically using my /journal for initial thoughts that I want to get through, as well as an actual journal. I do the same with /articles and /essays, but because they're in different physical views, via the Kirby Dashboard, I don't actually tend to them as much as I want. I haven't looked at my /books in a long while, and that's what I ultimately want to grow towards.
\nThe next phase here, then, should be limited statuses per each content type.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://askjan.org/a-to-z.cfm", "tags": [ "Accommodations", "Disability", "Accommodation Process", "Support", "Accessibility", "Support", "Resource", "Resources", "It Me.", "Self Advocacy", "Tool", "Accommodation" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/all-topics", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/all-topics", "title": "Master list of #AutChat topics – autchat", "content_html": "JAN provides the following A to Z listings by disability, topic, and limitation. This information is designed to help employers and individuals determine effective accommodations and comply with Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You will find ADA information, accommodation ideas, and resources for additional information.
\nJAN's A to Z is a starting point in the accommodation process and may not address every situation. Accommodations should be made on a case by case basis, considering each employee’s individual limitations and accommodation needs. Employers and individuals are encouraged to contact JAN to discuss specific situations in more detail. To get started, choose one to find what you are looking for.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://autchat.com/all-topics/", "tags": [ "#autchat", "Autism", "Community", "Social Media", "Asynchronous Communication", "Neurodivergence", "Disability", "Resource", "Audhd" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/design-is-never-neutral", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/design-is-never-neutral", "title": "Design Is Never Neutral", "content_html": "AutChat is an ongoing Blusky hashtag and weekly scheduled chat for autistic people and people with similar neurodivergences. We began as a Twitter hashtag, but have moved to Blusky as of summer 2024. Self-diagnosed / community-recognized people are welcome, as are people questioning / wondering whether they might be autistic.
\n
\n\nSo, what can we do about it? Honestly, I don’t know. The work I’m doing with the Designer’s Resistance Toolkit didn’t stop mattering this week, but it did start to feel painfully small. And that’s a harder thing to sit with. That realization isn’t defeat. It’s what happens when you fully grasp the scale of what you’re up against.
\n
\n\nBut that reaction misses the point: the same corporate and technological systems that profit from our convenience are often the ones funding, enabling, or normalizing that harm.
\nThen this morning it really hit me. I can’t control much, but I can control where my money goes, and I’ve been trying to stop it from directly supporting any of this. But as I tried to cancel my Prime, switch my phone away from AT&T, and find a different internet provider than Comcast, all companies profiting from the current situation, it became clear. Ethical design is relevant. Not just because unethical design supports a propaganda machine and helps divide us, but because unethical design is making the simple act of opting out of these systems almost impossible.
\nThe cancellation processes are abhorrent, and the stranglehold that we've allowed the likes of Amazon and Comcast to have on us is directly related to how easy, convenient, and deliberately hard to quit those systems were designed to be.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.lisawoodley.com/writing/2026/1/13/design-is-never-neutral", "tags": [ "Ethical Design", "Resistance", "Power", "Scale", "Responsibility", "Deceptive Design", "Transparency", "Equity", "Purpose" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/microsoft-ai-entry-level-russinovich-hanselman", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/microsoft-ai-entry-level-russinovich-hanselman", "title": "Microsoft execs worry AI will eat entry level coding jobs", "content_html": "Using design to empower people to recognize that they deserve transparency and equity from any entity they interact with. Using design to bring us together and remind us that humanity, above all else, is our top priority.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/microsoft_ai_entry_level_russinovich_hanselman/", "tags": [ "Generative Ai", "Software Development", "Ai Agents", "Career Development", "Career", "Coding", "Learning", "Early Career", "Process", "Talent Pipeline", "Sustainability" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/resistance-infrastructure", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/resistance-infrastructure", "title": "Resistance Infrastructure", "content_html": "The paper is presented as opinion from Russinovich and Hanselman, not as official Microsoft research. \"While AI is boosting software development, examples of frontier coding agents exhibiting intern-like behaviors demonstrate their limitations,\" the pair state, reflecting a more nuanced view than that given by the relentless promotion of AI from their company.
\nIt's not clear if Microsoft itself has caught up with these recommendations. In May last year, the company revealed plans to reduce staff with software engineering suffering the largest cuts, and in their podcast, Russinovich remarked \"we're starting a pilot on this at Microsoft.\" Hanselman was asked on LinkedIn whether senior engineers will now be assessed on their human as well as their product impact, to which he replied: \"That is our goal.\"
\n
\n\nWhen I interviewed historian Timothy Synder, author of On Tyranny, on my podcast at the end of January, he said the current state of American politics is best understood as a system of competitive authoritarianism. A democratically elected leader erodes checks and balances, attacks institutions, and weaponizes the justice system against his opponents. “There will still be elections, but you don’t wait for the opposition party,” Synder said. “Instead [the people] have to push out ahead of the opposition party. You have to set the moral terms, take risks, and build a coalition of which the opposition party is a part, but isn’t necessarily leading.” Pro-democracy movements aren’t created by political parties, they’re created by people.
\n
\n\nOur goal is to demonstrate to consumers that they wield enormous power, as their spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Your wallet is a weapon, and in a capitalist society the most radical act is withholding your money. Deployed broadly across the economy, however, a consumer boycott is a blunt instrument that maximizes damage while diluting influence. We prefer surgical strikes to carpet-bombing.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://www.profgalloway.com/resistance-infrastructure/", "tags": [ "Resistance Infrastructure", "Resistance", "Protest", "Boycott", "Economics", "Authoritarianism", "Competitive Authoritarianism", "Community", "Politics", "Purposeful Friction", "Power" ] }, { "id": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/slow-design-as-a-radical-act", "url": "https://jonathanstephens.us/links/slow-design-as-a-radical-act", "title": "Slow Design as a Radical Act", "content_html": "Recognizing the friction in our politics isn’t an invitation to opt for the path of least resistance; it teaches us that saving democracy requires the same things that build lasting relationships: showing up, enduring discomfort, and wielding the power we actually have rather than waiting for someone else to fix our problem. Finally, action absorbs anxiety. It feels good to do something with others — that whole community thing. Or put another way, stop doomscrolling/hectoring/complaining … and do something.
\n
\n\nThe intersection of slow design and technology presents a unique opportunity to rethink how we integrate innovation into our lives. Rather than rejecting technological advancements, slow design invites us to consider how these tools can enrich, rather than deplete, both human well-being and the planet’s ecosystems. This approach encourages us to design digital experiences that align with natural human rhythms, supporting deep work, mental clarity, and reduced digital overload.
\n
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-09T00:00:00-04:00", "external_url": "https://magazine.designmatters.io/slow-design-as-a-radical-act/", "tags": [ "Move Slow And Bake Things", "Slow Design", "Slow Movement" ] } ] }To integrate slow design principles into digital products, I’m considering the following ideas:
\n\n
\n- Framing time as cyclical, not linear: Many cultures see time as something to be experienced and savored. Software could embrace natural rhythms rather than artificial deadlines, encouraging users to engage with technology in a more mindful and intentional way.
\n- Encouraging meaningful pauses: Instead of constant notifications, imagine software that suggests when to stop rather than nudging us to continue. By building in moments of digital rest, we can create experiences that support mental clarity and well-being.
\n- Building in digital rest: Just as architects design rest areas in physical spaces, we need moments of quiet within digital experiences. Features like guided meditation, wind-down modes, and focus timers can help carve out space for presence rather than passive consumption.
\n