Author: Jonah Mick

Garden Groove

31 August 2026
Jonah Mick
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Categories: Community

Garden Groove

A monthly community-based gathering. Chill House music, Kombucha, building network.
Instagram.com/gardengroove.fl

What they are building

Garden Groove is a monthly community-based event featuring Chill House DJs in the lush garden setting of a local kombucha brewery. It is the idea of Heidi Brockhaus and Drew Notar Donato. Heidi is a fellow community builder and sustainabilist and Drew shares that passion with a love for electronic music. They feature a new DJ every month, but also host community organizations and local vendors in a sort of mini festival.

What caught our attention

I met Heidi through a graduate class and one night she mentioned “redefining the value proposition” in a discussion about economic paradigms. I reached out and we met the next week. Instantly we began finding so many community connections and she told me about Garden Groove. She hopes it will grow into a community staple to link local goods and services. I took a group from my circle and we were completely absorbed by the atmosphere.

Riss connection

There is a school of thought emerging among sustainabilists that we are too late to preserve the dominant culture. It will fail. The question is how fast and how hard. So many have started looking to what is next and building small decentralized networks that can survive resource shortages, intermittent services, etc, which many agree will be the form the collapse takes. By establishing small and shadow networks for food, and products now, the hope is have a system to take place with minimal suffering. And if we’re wrong, no one complains about cheap tasty vegetables and awesome kombucha. In the science, we call these “no regrets options”!

Ishra

29 August 2026
Jonah Mick
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Categories: Uncategorized

Ishra

A concept for interacting with each other. A social contract. A paradigm for living Orthotropically.

What they are building

Ishra is an Arabic word that comes with a lot of history. It basically refers to the bonds that come from having shared history. But here, in Scarrae, it refers to the social code that defines us.
1. Care for your people.
2. Give what doesn’t deplete.
3. Share what burdens and costs
4. Because we are connected, and this builds up the connection.
This isn’t unique to the Arab world. It shows up in many native cultures from Tuvalu where wealth is defined by what you give rather than what you have, to Japan where musubi (the ties between all things) result in omotenashi and motainai principles. It also shows up in marginalized populations like Roma, punk, LGBTQ, immigrant communities, anywhere people have needed to rely on each other for survival.

What caught our attention

If we are seeking wellness and reality, Ishra gives us a basic set of principles to foster that growth for ourselves and for others around us. It is basically an ecological principle that can be found in many cooperative species from bees and rats to wolves, whales, and primates. It doesn’t specify what that looks like. It is a guiding principle, not a law. Edgar Rice Burroughs said we only need laws to show us what we can get away with. Ishra is the opposite. It shows us that cooperation leads to thriving. But more than that, it shows us that we don’t do it out of obligation. We do it because it feels right, feels good. This is love at its most primal conception. And like all ecological systems, when allowed to work naturally, love is self-sustaining, self-enhancing, and self-replicating.

Riss connection

When you live in the margins, the gaps… the riss, you are closer to the basics. It’s hard to pretend or pad ourselves when we have to struggle to thrive. So Ishra comes more naturally to Scarrae. It’s a focus on the wellness of the relationships while keeping the individuals balanced. No one gets depleted, and no one gets excess. Can you think of examples?

Accessible Me

29 August 2026
Jonah Mick
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Categories: Organization

Accessible Me

Accessible Me seeks to transform not just businesses, but the entire architecture of accessibility.

accessibleme.solutions/

What they are building

I spoke with founder Michael Osborne about what Accessible Me does. He explained that they focus on whether a real person can use an accessible interface in real world conditions; when tired, overwhelmed, under pressure or processing the world differently. This has led them increasingly into work in cognitive load, neurodivergence, and trauma-informed design. More than just audits and training, they want to build consideration for the diversity of human function into the fabric of client businesses so more people can participate without having to ask for accommodation.

What caught our attention

First, they are moving accessibility from an accommodation to a design consideration. We build everything around assumptions of most common use case, height, width, size of hand, speed of turn (roadways). This means some people receive preferential treatment, while others are excluded. But this is the reductionist, mechanistic mindset. It treats humans as cogs in a machine rather than participants in a living system. But from an ecological perspective, it is those differences that make the system capable of withstanding change. The more diverse the interactions, the most stable the system becomes. Accessible Me recognizes the dignity and beauty in the differences amongst us. You don’t have to be disabled to appreciate that! Secondly, they offer an experience of inaccessibility in an Escape Room style activity called A11yship. This proves to me they aren’t just out to win contracts and exploit a market niche. They are making cultural change.

Riss connection

Michael and I discussed the emergence of a culture of perception and how that might be showing up in our various circles. He was intrigued by the idea of a people defined by their way of seeing and operating in the world. We talked of shared signals and the ways it may vary from community to community. Not in a directed and controlled approach, but organically through convergence of people who share the experience of being outliers in the dominant systems.

Empowered Workplace Architect

28 August 2026
Jonah Mick
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Categories: Organization

Lenka Kneschke: The Empowered Workplace Architect

Lenka Kneschke is one of the most Scarrae people I have ever met. Her business focuses entirely on making workplaces better for all types of perception.

www.linkedin.com/in/lenkakneschke

What they are building

Lenka’s dream is to foster inclusive and resilient workplaces by employing her perceptual skills to identify and enhance workplaces that let workers thrive. This not only helps the employee, it helps the employer by giving greater access to the unique skillsets their employees bring. If you need help in your workplace, she is a certified peer coach. And if you are in a leadership position, like I was, she can come in, assess your situation, and build custom solutions that will be productivity focused and data driven. While embedding care and awareness of all the wonderous differences the dominant culture keeps trying to force into the same mold.

What caught our attention

I met Lenka at a conference on behavioral psychology in the conservation field. We both spoke, but as soon as I saw her, I could tell she was probably Scarrae. Her ear loops were the first clue, but her motion was another. I found her on a break and tried several times before finally butting right into her conversation. She looked at me, and we both smiled at seeing each other see the other. We talked, decided to meet, and hit it off. Collaborations were born and she helped my ‘dayjob’ immensely. But soon, she read my books entered my world, and we’ve been at it ever since.

Riss connection

Lenka “gang ben riss, yan”. She knows the gaps people fall in, has been in them herself, and now turns that knowledge to helping others. You can’t get more Scarrae than that! In addition to her work, she is a Sensorate Reviewer, book tester, and dear friend. When we talked about culture, she recognized it immediately, and I knew it was real when she texted me from another conference saying, “I just met another Scarrae, yeh gots talk!”

What is Scarrae

28 August 2026
Jonah Mick
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Categories: Community

What is Scarrae?

Scarrae is our word for people who navigate the world in a perceptive, sensory-aware, layered way.

What they are building

Scarrae is a word from the language known as Scots. It refers to reflected moonlight. That’s a perfect vibe for how we use it. In our use, it refers to a type of perception and the people who operate by it. We can’t list all the ways it might express. We’re still figuring that out, and, like all living systems, it’s evolving. All we’ve done is apply a word. It isn’t the only word. But it seems to fill a need. Once you get a sense for it, we think you’ll agree, it kinda fits.

What caught our attention

The word was first used in the books of our very own Jonah Mick (That’s me, by the way.) My writing is all about perception and using stories to map aspects of reality that are hard to describe directly. Scarrae fits exactly that. Not moonlight, not reflection, the reflection of the moonlight; barely detectable unless you’re paying attention, but undeniable once you see it. In the research for my books, I kept encountering people who seemed to naturally embody these traits across cultures, geographies, lifestyles. And I wondered… maybe this is something real. As that developed, I explored, what if those scattered and marginalized few were to stop telling themselves the story their Mother Culture was whispering, and like the Roma, say, “We are our own people! We are amongst you, but not the same.” Then I encountered people saying the same thing: neurodivergent manifestos, values-based ethics, circular economies, and shadow systems growing right amidst the decaying elements of our calcified culture. I just gave them a name.

Riss connection

My books are a speculative journey through how this people may actually develop. As with any multicultural people, their languages would blend. So I looked to existing slangs, pidgins, creoles and discovered once again, more than a few of these exist amongst intercultural groups. While not all rise to the level of a full creole, they certainly become a linguistic register that signals in-group, supplies the ‘codec’ if you will, for how the words should be taken. I actually live in one between Japan and the US. I discovered another between Scots and Appalachia. These became the foundation for the fictional Scarrae language. But then a bizarre thing started happening. People in my circles, beta readers, friends, began to adopt Scarrae words where they fit better than their native words. And in that numinous interplay between art and life, Scarrae as an IRL register emerged. It is still evolving. I don’t own it. Words and patterns are added, change on their own. And weirdest of all, similar concepts show up across unrelated cultures. All the more evidence that Gang ben riss, ken furja: You have to go into the gaps to perceive the opportunities.