Independent publication by Kanav Jain · Since 2024
The Crumple Zone
Essays on how power, technology, and institutions push human beings into the crumple zone.
Long-form essays about AI, disability, care, medicine, and the systems that offload their failures onto everyone underneath them.
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Autism essays
Writing on autistic life, accommodation, masking, fragility, and design under constraint. 28 essays in this theme.
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How to Design for Cognitive Scarcity
Stop designing for the idealized "Hero User." Learn how to build resilient interfaces that work when your user is stressed, tired, and operating on 15% battery.
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The Death of Slack
It appears we have successfully eliminated the margin for error. That's terrifying.
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You Can Design Harm Out
How to design systems that protect human limits and reject harm as the path of least resistance
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Do I Have the Energy to Start Over in Therapy?
Before my autism diagnosis, therapy—as it turned out—was reinforcing my masked self
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Performance Reviews Mess With Your Head
For the unknowingly neurodivergent, they can be devastatingly confusing
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What is Autistic Hazing?
Internalized Oppression, Dangerous Ideologies, and Parent-Child Relationships
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The Thermodynamics of Power, Meaning, and Masks
Burnout as a Non-Metaphor and Unmasking as a Revolutionary Act in Neurodivergent Experience
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US Bill of Rights, Autistic Translation
The first ten amendments, but written with clearer guardrails based on current application.
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Writing for People Born Without Autism
Blending Seriousness with Wit for the Neurotypical Mind
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Autistic Flourishing and Autistic Futurism
A better world for the neurodivergent is a better world for everyone.
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Neurodivergent and Crip Strengths in Labor Organizing in the 21st Century
on chokepoint detection, precision targeting, and (of course) autism
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Neurodiverse Justice can be Reparative and Remunerative
It's not about dimmer light fixtures in prison cells, but a hell of a lot more
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Embracing the Diversity of Allistic Experiences in an Autistic-Normative World
Let's take a closer look at non-autistic people
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Interiority Theater and Cognitive Self-Annihilation
What does it mean if we're experiencing the effects of neuroplasticity in the constant presence of a hyperreal self?
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Masked Justice: Reimagining Legal Systems for Universal Accommodation
legal systems should assume everyone involved could potentially be autistic and be unaware of if
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An Autistic's Guide to Vaping Less
the reasons you vape might be different from the reasons your friends do
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Autism, Careerism, and Cultural Pressures as a Jain Indian American
Internalized ableism and its ties to South Asian American mental health awareness
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Who Was I That Whole Time?
Autism, Clubbing, and Unseen Joys in the Tyranny of Unwritten Rules
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Introduction to Normative Medical Inversion
connecting Deaf Gain, the neurodiversity movement, and queer critical theory
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