While reading up on the stress model of autism, I came across the Dandelions, Tulips, and Orchids framing via @peripheralminds. Peripheral Minds@PeripheralMinds · Aug 30, 2019 Tom Boyce compared normal people to dandelions and people with a brain difference to orchids. While dandelions are able to thrive anywhere, orchids are more beautiful and fascinating, but they don’t thrive anywhere, … Continue reading Dandelions, Tulips, Orchids and Neurological Pluralism – Ryan Boren
Neurodiversity and the social model for bodyminds are about the “foregrounding of complexity as the baseline.” I foreground all of this to underscore that there is a neurological difference, or a spectrum of neurology, that must be attended to. The movement for neurodiversity is not interested in homogenizing experience. We are different and we require … Continue reading Foregrounding of Complexity as the Baseline – Ryan Boren
Three reads to go with the college admissions scandal: One of the hazards of life in the 9.9 percent is that our necks get stuck in the upward position. We gaze upon the 0.1 percent with a mixture of awe, envy, and eagerness to obey. As a consequence, we are missing the other big story of … Continue reading College Admissions Scandals, the New Aristocracy, and the Grading and Ranking of Children – Ryan Boren
Autistic man Freestone Wilson suggested in the 1990s that autistic people are functioning as the “miners’ canaries” of civilisation. When the air in the mine is poisoned we do not prevent canaries being born in case they suffer from the poison and upset us: we clean the air or close the mine. Source: Discussion paper on … Continue reading Autistic Canaries – Ryan Boren
So, how on earth have we ended up with this many myths continuing painfully from one decade to the next?I’m afraid the answer is that too much of the training has been stuck in the 1940s. Too much is done by non-autistic people, often ones who happen to know an autistic person in some way … Continue reading Behaviorist Ed-tech — Ed-tech from the 1940s – Ryan Boren
I highly recommend Liz Jackson’s episode of UX Cake, Changing the Disability Design Narrative, to all designers, tech workers, and educators. Selected quotes: …how do we insert somebody with a disability studies background into a design space so they can start asking the hard questions and the right questions so that we can get past this — this … Continue reading We Exist As Friction – Ryan Boren
By stepping away from the familiar and searching for potential friction points, however, a writer can better understand how particular tools or formats shape and structure their work. Source: Writing Workflows | Chapter 1 I’m a few chapters in and enjoying the pre-peer review draft of “Writing Workflows: Beyond Word Processing”. It looks at the workflows of … Continue reading Workflow Thinking and Purposeful Friction – Ryan Boren
