Introducing Stimpunks Foundation

Stimpunks is created by and for neurodivergent and disabled people. We provide mutual aid, learning opportunities, human-centered research, and living wages for our community. We presume competence, and we believe in self-determination.

We, Stimpunks

Stimpunks Foundation is a nonprofit by and for neurodivergent and disabled people.

Stimpunks Foundation challenges the typical approach to helping people who are neurodivergent or disabled. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Stimpunks knows that neurodivergent and disabled people have human needs. We offer a humane approach to help our community thrive.

Through Stimpunks Foundation, we:

  1. Offer financial and mutual aid;
  2. Hire our community members as consultants;
  3. Provide a learning space designed for our community; and
  4. Support our community’s open research efforts.

One in four U.S. adults have a disability. However, our community receives only 2% of US grant funding, and only 19% of us are employed. We can’t just let that be the truth. We have to challenge the norm and change the narrative around people who are neurodivergent or disabled.

Our website at stimpunks.org is an outpouring of neurodivergent and disabled art, culture, and perspective. Our front page is about reframing what we think we know about neurodivergence and disability.

Reframe these states of being that have been labelled deficiencies or pathologies as human differences.

Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences

Content note: Our website includes music, lyrics, writing, and art that address ableism, eugenics, exclusion, mental health, depression, dysphoria, behaviorism, abuse, chronic pain, and death. There are a few swear words in quoted materials.

Also included is an outpouring of neurodivergent and disabled perspective, culture, and joy.

Ready, Punk? Rock onward!

How to Web in a Post-Employment Economy

Teach children how to web and how to side-hustle in a post-employment economy. Our family is doing that by starting an online jewelry store.

Behold our nascent family business: Stimpunks

For the last few years we’ve been hearing a good many people (most of them computer programmers) say that every child should learn to code. As I write these words, I learn that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has echoed that counsel. Learning to code is a nice thing, I suppose, but should be far, far down on our list of priorities for the young. Coding is a problem-solving skill, and few of the problems that beset young people today, or are likely to in the future, can be solved by writing scripts or programs for computers to execute. I suggest a less ambitious enterprise with broader applications, and I’ll begin by listing the primary elements of that enterprise. I think every young person who regularly uses a computer should learn the following:

  • how to choose a domain name
  • how to buy a domain
  • how to choose a good domain name provider
  • how to choose a good website-hosting service
  • how to find a good free text editor
  • how to transfer files to and from a server
  • how to write basic HTML, including links to CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files
  • how to find free CSS templates
  • how to fiddle around in those templates to adjust them to your satisfaction
  • how to do basic photograph editing
  • how to cite your sources and link to the originals
  • how to use social media to share what you’ve created on your own turf rather than create within a walled factory

Source: IASC: The Hedgehog Review – Volume 20, No. 1 (Spring 2018) – Tending the Digital Commons: A Small Ethics toward the Future –