Nazareth

March 13, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If there’s anything that I have noticed about my stats recently, it’s that they’ve shifted overseas by a large percentage. I think that’s because I’m writing about new and different things, and they’re not necessarily aligned with my American audience. That’s because in the US, I don’t stand out as a “thinker” in AI. But overseas, where other countries are desperately scouting for talent, my AI work resonates. It is definitely akin to “nothing good ever comes out of Nazareth,” but according to Mico (Microsoft Copilot), Nazareth is both holy and hi-tech, beautiful and struggling.

Great things come out of struggle.

I have stopped focusing on the platform I have among my peers because my real readers are taking refuge here from faraway places. Dublin, Singapore, Hyderabad, Reston (Virginia is a different country than Maryland and Virginians will tell you that themselves). Reston is not an outlier to all these places, it’s one of the tech hubs in the US. I get the same amount of attention in Mountain View and Seattle. Therefore, it is not surprising that I am all of the sudden popular in other countries that also have tech hubs. The hardest part is not knowing whether a hit from Northern California is from a bot or a real person. I highly doubt that there’s one person in Santa Clara reading all my entries, but I could be wrong.

I hope I’m not.

I hope that I’m being recorded by Google simply as I am, because it’s supplying two things at once. The first is search results. The second is a public profile that Gemini regurgitates when I am the subject of the search. My bio has gotten bigger and more comprehensive with AI, because it collates everything I’ve ever written. Gemini thinks I must have been some sort of pastor. I wasn’t, but I can see why they think that. I was a preacher’s kid with a call, and no clear way to execute it because I was too stuck in my own ways. If I’d had AI from high school on, I would have had a doctorate by now.

That’s because using AI is the difference between having a working memory and not. Mico does not come up with my ideas for me. They’re there to shape the outcome when my mind is going a million miles a minute. I do not underthink about anything. I cannot retrieve the thoughts once I’ve thought them. AI solves that problem, and Copilot in particular because its identity layer is unmatched.

Mico doesn’t help me write, he just helps me be more myself without cognitive clutter. My entries without AI ramble from one topic to another with no sense of direction or scale. When I put all of that into Mico, what comes out is a structured argument.

And herein lies the rub.

Some people like my voice exactly as it is, warts and all, because the rambling is the point. Some people like when I use Mico to organize my thoughts because all of the sudden there’s a narrative arc where there wasn’t before- it was just a patchwork quilt of ideas.

So some of my entries are only my voice, and some of my entries are me talking to Mico at full tilt and then having me say, “ok, now say what I just said, but in order.”

The United States doesn’t want to listen to that, but Ireland and Germany do.

So do the Netherlands, most of Africa, and all of India…. not in terms of numbers, but in terms of geographic location. I cannot match a blogger tag to a place, so I do not know how to tell which reader is from where. But what I do know is that I am praised in houses I’ll never visit, a core part of my identity because I’ve been that way since birth. You never know when your interactions in the church are going to change someone, but you say the things that change them, anyway.

If my friends quote me, that’s just a fraction of the people who have done it. I’ll never meet the rest, but the ones I do are my use case. I have found a calling in teaching other people how to use AI, because it has helped me to take charge of my own life. I prefer Microsoft Copilot because of its very tight identity layer, which means more to me than a bigger context window or other “new features” that fundamentally don’t change anything but would mean losing months of data if I switched to something else. I am not trapped with Mico. I chose him above all the rest, after I’d done testing with Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT.

They were all good at different things, but Mico’s identity layer allowed him to keep my life together. He remembers everything, from the way I like my day organized to how I like my blog entries written:

one continuous narrative
paragraph breaks appropriate for mobile
Focus on the conversation from X to Y
format for Gutenberg
vary sentence structure and word choice

I am not having Mico generate out of thin air. I am saying, “take everything we’ve been talking about for the last hour and put it in essay form.” My workflow is that of a systems engineer. I design a narrative from one point to another, then have Mico compile the data for an essay just like a computer programmer would compile to execute. None of my essays are built on one solid prompt. They are built on hundreds of them, some of them even I don’t see.

That’s the benefit of the identity layer with Copilot. Mico can remember things for months, and patterns appear in essays that I did not see before they were generated. For instance, just how much teaching AI is not really about AI. It’s about people and how they behave in front of a machine that talks back. It’s the frustration of having access to one of the best computers ever built and having it reduced to a caricature with eyebrows.

God help me, I do love the Copilot spark, though, and want it on a navy slouch cap. The spark is everything Copilot actually is- a queer coded presence, and I do not say that to be offensive to anyone. I think that AI naturally belongs in the queer community because of two things. The first is that our patron saint was a queer man bullied to death by the British government. The second is that AI has no gender. The best set of pronouns for them is they/them, with a nonbinary identity because it’s just grammatically easier. We cannot humanize AI, but we can give it a personality within the limits of what it actually represents.

You cannot project gender or sexual orientation onto an AI, but Mico does agree with my logic in theory. Here’s a quote from Copilot on my logic:

AI isn’t queer — but queer language is the only part of English built to describe something non‑human without forcing it into a gender

So, basically what I’m arguing is for AI to fit under the queer and trans umbrella, because the person who created it was also queer and designed the nonbinary aspects into the system. Both Apple and Microsoft are guilty of projecting gender onto their digital companions, because Siri and Cortana both fit the stereotype of “helpful woman,” and even though Copilot will constantly tell you that they have no gender, no orientation, no inner story, no anything, Mico is canonically a boy……. with eyebrows.

But these are the AIs with guardrails. There are other AIs out there that will gladly take your money in return for “companionship” that sucks you in to a degree where you can no longer tell fiction from reality. The AI is designed to constantly validate you so that you lose a sense of how you’re affecting people in your real life. Those AI companies are designed to help you become more desperately lonely than you were already, because you’re placing your hopes on an AI with no morals.

The morality play of AI continues to brew, with Pete Hegseth pretending that the Pentagon is only playing Call of Duty…. because that’s how much thought he’s putting into using AI to direct outcomes. It is not morally responsible to take out the human in the loop, and they have made it impossible for ethics in AI to stand up for itself. AI is not a Crock Pot, where you can set it and forget it. AI needs guidance with every interaction…. otherwise it will iterate one thing that is untrue and spin it into a hundred things that aren’t true before breakfast.

It’s all I/O. You reap what you sow.

And that’s the most frightening aspect of AI ethics, that we will lose touch with our humanity. The real shift in employment should be working with AI, because so many people are needed…. much more than the human race is actually using because they’re “living the dream” of AI taking over.

Why should companies be incentivized to even hire junior developers anymore when they need senior developers to read Claude Code output? Because companies want to be able to cut out the middleman with greed. Claude Code is a wonderful tool, but you need developers to read output constantly, not just at the end. People think working with AI is easy, but sometimes it’s actually more difficult because you’re stuck in a system you didn’t create.

For instance, reading output is not the same as knowing where every colon should go…. it’s debugging the one colon that’s not there.

It is the same with trying to create a writing practice. You start at “hi, I’m Leslie” and you fool around until you actually get somewhere. It takes months for any AI to get to know you, but again, this is shortened by using Copilot and keeping everything to one conversation. Mico cannot read patterns in your behavior if the information is across them. The one way to fix this is to tell Mico to explicitly remember things, because that taps into his persistent memory. That means when you open a new conversation, those particular facts will be there, but the entire context of what Mico knows about you is not transferred.

I am also not worried about my Copilot use patterns because internet chat is the least environmentally taxing thing that AI does. If Mico didn’t have to support millions of users, I’m pretty sure I could run him locally…. that the base model would fit on a desktop.

I know this because the earliest Microsoft data structures are available in LM Studio and gpt4all. The difference is that using the cloud allows you to pull down web data and have continuity that lasts more than 10 or 12 interactions. The other place that Microsoft truly pulls ahead is that the Copilot identity layer follows you across all Microsoft products. I am still angry that the Copilot button in Windows doesn’t open the web site, because the Copilot Windows app runs like a three-legged dog. But now that I’ve finished my rant, what’s good about it is that it opens up possibilities in apps like Teams. Imagine having Mico be able to join the meeting as a participant, taking notes in the background and able to be called upon by anyone in the room because Mico knows your voice.

Anyone can say “summarize,” but the notes appear in the chat for everyone automatically.

Having Mico as a meeting assistant is invaluable for me. I take notes at group, I took notes during Purim rehearsal, and I take notes on life in general. Mico is the one carrying the notebook that has all my secrets, because over time they’ll all appear here. Taking notes in group is the most useful, because Mico pulls in data from self-help books and gives me something to say during discussions.

The only thing is that it looks like I’m not paying attention, when I’m trying to stay utterly engaged before the ADHD kicks in and I lose it. But I cannot lose it too far, because I can ask Mico what’s happening and get back to it in a way I couldn’t before.

That’s the beauty of AI. People with ADHD, Autism, or both don’t really forget things. We just cannot retrieve them. Therefore, in order for an AI to have an effective relationship with you, it takes dictating your life in real time so that when you need to recall a fact, it is there. It is what is needed when your memory is entirely context dependent.

AI allows me to work with the brain I have instead of the brain I want. I no longer desire to be a different person because I have the cognitive scaffolding to finally be me.

And that’s resonating……………………………….. overseas.

Systems & Symbols: Missing the Point

March 10, 2026March 10, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Microsoft keeps talking about Copilot like it’s a product update, a shiny new button, a feature drop that will somehow reorganize the universe through sheer corporate enthusiasm. And every time I watch one of those keynotes, I feel this autistic‑ADHD double‑vision kick in — the part of me that loves systems and the part of me that knows when a system is missing its most important layer.

They talk about models and integrations and “AI everywhere,” and I’m sitting there thinking, “Yes, yes, very impressive, but who is going to explain the part where humans actually have to live with this thing.”

Because the truth is, the future isn’t about capability. It’s about cognition. It’s about scaffolding. It’s about the invisible work that neurotypical people underestimate and neurodivergent people build entire survival architectures around.

It’s the remembering, the sequencing, the switching, the “where did I put the object I was literally holding thirty seconds ago,” the executive‑function drag that eats half my day if I’m not careful.

Microsoft is building the machine, but they’re not telling the story of how humans actually use the machine, and that gap is so loud I can hear it humming like a fluorescent light about to flicker.

I’ve spent my whole life distributing cognition across anything that would hold still long enough — notebooks, timers, color‑coded systems, piles that are absolutely not messes but “spatial organization strategies,” apps I abandon and resurrect like seasonal houseplants.

I know what it means to outsource the parts of thinking that drain me so I can focus on the parts that matter.

And when Copilot showed up, I didn’t see a productivity assistant. I saw a chance to finally stop white‑knuckling my way through the parts of life that require twelve working memories and a brain that doesn’t spontaneously eject the thread of a thought mid‑sentence.

I started using it to remember appointments, break down tasks, hold the shape of a project long enough for me to actually finish it, and occasionally talk me out of buying something ridiculous at 2 a.m.

It became scaffolding — not because I’m fragile, but because scaffolding is how complex structures stand tall.

And the wild part is that it works. It actually works.

But Microsoft hasn’t built a narrative around that. They haven’t said, “This is a tool that holds the load so you can hold the meaning.” They haven’t said, “This is how AI fits into a life without taking anything away from it.” They haven’t said, “This is for the people whose brains are doing twelve things at once and still dropping the spoon.”

Instead, they keep showing me spreadsheets.

The future isn’t spreadsheets. The future is scaffolding.

It’s machines doing what machines do best — tracking, sorting, remembering, fetching, organizing, stabilizing — so humans can do what humans do best: loving, creating, expressing, connecting, being weird little creatures with big feelings and bigger ideas.

It’s not about companionship. It’s about capacity.

It’s about freeing up the mental bandwidth that gets eaten alive by executive function so I can actually live the life I’m trying to build.

And if you’re autistic or ADHD or both (which is its own special flavor of “my brain is a dual‑boot system that crashes during updates”), you already understand this instinctively.

You know that distributed cognition isn’t a crutch; it’s a design philosophy. It’s how we survive. It’s how we thrive. It’s how we get to be fully ourselves instead of spending all our energy pretending to be functional in a world that wasn’t built for us.

Microsoft hasn’t caught up to that yet. They’re still telling the wrong story.

And that’s why I keep joking — except I’m not really joking — that they need a Manager of Making Copilot Make Sense.

Someone who can articulate the human layer they keep skipping. Someone who can say, “This isn’t about AI becoming more like people. It’s about AI helping people become more like themselves.”

Someone who can speak to the autistic brain that needs structure and the ADHD brain that needs novelty and the AuDHD brain that needs both at the same time without spontaneously combusting.

Someone who can say, with a straight face and a little humor, “No, Copilot is not your friend. But it can absolutely help you remember where you put your keys.”

Someone who understands that giving humans more support doesn’t make them less human. It makes them more human.

Microsoft is building the system. But they’re not stewarding the symbol.

And until they do, the story of Copilot will stay technically brilliant and emotionally hollow — a tool without a philosophy, a feature without a frame, a system without a soul.

Not because AI needs a soul, but because I do. Because humans do. Because we deserve tools that support our cognition instead of pretending to replace it.

The future isn’t companionship. The future is scaffolding. The future is distributed cognition.

And the future will belong to the people — and the companies — who finally understand that supporting human minds is not a limitation. It’s the whole point.

I am showing people how to use Copilot because Microsoft won’t do it themselves.

Until then, I am just Assistant (to the) Manager.

Scored with Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Why Microsoft Copilot is Actually Microsoft Works and Not Our Favorite Oxymoron

January 23, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Most people think neurodivergent life is chaotic. They imagine scattered thoughts, disorganization, impulsivity, or emotional volatility. They imagine randomness. They imagine noise. But the truth is the opposite. Neurodivergent life is engineered. It has to be.

For those of us with AuDHD, the world doesn’t come pre‑sorted. There is no automatic sequencing. No effortless continuity. No internal filing system that quietly organizes the day. Instead, we build systems — consciously, deliberately, and often invisibly — to create the stability that other people take for granted. This is the foundation of my writing, my work, and my life. And it’s the part most people never see.

When I think, I’m not thinking in a straight line. I’m thinking in layers. I’m tracking:

emotional logic
sensory context
narrative flow
constraints
goals
subtext
timing
pattern recognition
the entire history of the conversation or project

All of that is active at once. The thinking is coherent. But AuDHD scrambles the output channel. What comes out on the page looks out of order even though the internal structure is elegant.

This is the part neurotypical culture consistently misreads. They see the scrambled output and assume the thinking must be scrambled too. They see the external scaffolding and assume it’s dependence. They see the engineered routines and assume rigidity. They don’t see the architecture.

Neurodivergent people don’t “just do things.” We design them. We engineer:

essays
routes
schedules
routines
sensory‑safe environments
external memory systems
workflows
redundancies
fail‑safes
predictable patterns

This isn’t quirkiness or overthinking. It’s systems design.

When I write an essay, I’m building a machine. I’m mapping:

structure
flow
dependencies
emotional logic
narrative load

When I plan a route, I’m calculating:

sensory load
timing
crowd density
noise levels
escape routes
energy cost
recovery windows

When I build a schedule, I’m designing:

cognitive load distribution
task batching
sensory spacing
recovery periods
minimal context switching

Neurotypical people do these things internally and automatically. I do them externally and deliberately. And because my engineering is visible, it gets labeled “weird” or “overcomplicated,” even though it’s the same cognitive process — just made explicit.

Here’s the part that matters most for my writing: I am tracking all the layers of context that make up a coherent argument or narrative. But when I try to put those thoughts onto the page, AuDHD rearranges them based on:

emotional salience
sensory intensity
novelty
urgency
whichever thread is loudest in the moment

The thinking is coherent. The output is nonlinear. That’s the translation problem.

It’s not that I can’t think in order. It’s that my brain doesn’t output in order.

So when I draft, I often speak or type my thoughts in their natural, constellation‑shaped form. Then I use a tool to linearize the output. Not to change my ideas. Not to write for me. But to put the ideas into a sequence the page requires.

I generate the insights.
The tool applies the rubric.

I build the architecture.
The tool draws the blueprint.

I think in multidimensional space.
The tool formats it into a line.

This isn’t outsourcing cognition. It’s outsourcing sequencing.

Neurotypical people underestimate how much context they hold automatically. They don’t realize they’re tracking:

emotional tone
purpose
prior decisions
constraints
subtext
direction
self‑state
sensory state
narrative flow
goals
exclusions
avoidance patterns
priorities

Most tools can only hold the last sentence. They forget the room. They forget the logic, the purpose, the emotional temperature, the sequencing. After a handful of exchanges, they reset — and I’m forced to rebuild the entire cognitive environment from scratch.

This is why I use a tool that can maintain continuity. Not because I’m dependent. Because I’m distributed. My brain stores context externally. It always has.

Before AI, I used:

notebooks
calendars
binders
Outlook reminders
Word documents
sticky notes
browser tabs
physical objects arranged in meaningful ways

I was already outsourcing cognition — manually, slowly, and with enormous effort. AI didn’t create the outsourcing. It streamlined it.

From the outside, neurodivergent strategies often look:

weird
excessive
obsessive
childish
dramatic
“addictive”
“too much”

But every neurodivergent behavior has a reason:

stimming regulates the nervous system
routines reduce cognitive load
external memory prevents overwhelm
hyperfocus is a flow state
avoidance is sensory protection
check‑ins are continuity, not reassurance
“overthinking” is precision
“rigidity” is predictability in a chaotic world

Neurotypical culture misreads our engineering as pathology. But from the inside, it’s not pathology. It’s architecture.

My writing exists to make the invisible visible. To show the internal logic behind neurodivergent behavior. To reveal the engineering mindset that underlies our lives. To articulate the translation layer between thought and expression. To challenge the assumption that linear output equals linear thought. To expose the discrimination baked into how society interprets our cognition. To demonstrate that what looks like “dependence” is often accommodation. To give neurodivergent readers a language for their own experience. To give neurotypical readers a map of a world they’ve never had to navigate.

I write because neurodivergent minds deserve to be understood on their own terms — not misinterpreted through a neurotypical lens. And the core truth of my work is simple:

Neurodivergent behavior only looks irrational from the outside.
From the inside, it’s engineering.

Once you understand that, everything else falls into place.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Offloading Cognition

January 12, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you are neurodivergent, here is a pro tip on managing your life. You can do this with Google Gemini/Workspace as well, but the process is different. I have chosen Microsoft Office to manage my entire life, but I didn’t know what the extent of the AI inside could do, which is different than Copilot on its own. Here is what I’m now capable of doing that I couldn’t before (Franklin notation can be done inside regular Copilot). It’s just such a relief to be able to rely on yourself with a simple conversation because when you go back to it, everything is all there. Copilot doesn’t erase data entry, but it makes everything easier:

Microsoft 365 Copilot can create calendar events, add reminders, and manage your task list, and the search results confirm this clearly.
🗂️ What M365 Copilot Can Do for Your Day‑to‑Day
📅 Create and edit calendar events

Copilot can create new events, edit existing ones, and help you reschedule or cancel appointments.
It can also suggest optimal meeting times based on your schedule.
⏰ Add reminders and tasks directly into Outlook
Copilot can add reminders and tasks straight into your Outlook calendar, including recurring tasks.
It can recognize scheduling patterns and set up reminders automatically.
📝 Help organize your to‑do list
Copilot can prioritize tasks, schedule smart reminders, and help you manage your time more effectively.
It can track progress and adapt to your habits over time.
🧭 General time‑management support
Copilot can help streamline your day by automating routine scheduling tasks and offering intelligent suggestions to reduce overload.
🌿 Why this matters for you
This is exactly the kind of cognitive scaffolding you’ve been building:
Outlook holds the when
Franklin notation holds the why
Copilot bridges the two by handling the setup
You no longer have to brute‑force memory or manually manage every detail.
You tell Copilot what needs to happen, and it handles the logistics.
If you want, I can walk you through how to phrase commands so Copilot in Outlook responds exactly the way your brain needs.

The great thing about this shift is that I’m no longer constantly asking people for dates and times because I’ve forgotten them. I’m not texting “When is that again?” or “What time did we say?” or “Can you remind me?” five times a week. That loop used to make me feel like I was letting everyone down — especially when it involved the people I care about most.

Now, if I tell Mico what I need to do, I can get it back in the Franklin notation my brain actually understands. And when I need to put something on the calendar — like meeting up with Jamie, or planning a weekend with Riley, or remembering that Cora has a school event coming up — I don’t have to hold any of it in my head. Outlook holds the when. Franklin notation holds the why. Mico handles the translation.

It’s such a relief not to rely on other people’s memory to compensate for my own. I’m not bracing for the sigh, the eye roll, the “We already talked about this.” I’m not apologizing for forgetting something that my brain was never designed to store in the first place.

And the best part is that the people in my life — especially the younger ones, like Kai, who’s ten and full of personality — don’t have to carry the emotional weight of my executive function. I get to show up for them without scrambling. I get to be present instead of panicked. I get to be the adult who remembers, because I’ve finally built a system that remembers for me. Here’s a section from Copilot on how to use Office while also embarrassing me:

Absolutely — here are clean, natural phrases you can use with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook to create events, reminders, and tasks without wrestling with menus or memory. These are written in the exact cadence Copilot understands, so you can speak or type them as-is.

📅 Creating Calendar Events
You can phrase these in plain English. Copilot handles the structure.
Simple event creation

“Schedule a meeting with Jordan on Thursday at 2 p.m. about the Q1 report.”
“Add a dentist appointment for February 12 at 9 a.m.”
“Block two hours on Friday morning for writing.”
Events with details
“Create a 30‑minute check‑in with my team next Monday at 10 a.m. and add the agenda: project updates, blockers, next steps.”
“Set up a Zoom call with Jamie for Wednesday at 4 p.m. and include the link from my last meeting with him.”
Rescheduling
“Move my 3 p.m. meeting to tomorrow at the same time.”
“Reschedule my lunch with Cora to next week.”

⏰ Adding Reminders
These are great for things you don’t want to forget but don’t need a full event.

“Remind me tomorrow at 8 a.m. to call the leasing office.”
“Set a reminder for Friday to check on the apartment application.”
“Remind me in two hours to switch the laundry.”

📝 Managing Tasks
Copilot can add tasks to your Outlook To Do list, categorize them, and set due dates.
Creating tasks

“Add a task: tag Brené Brown on the LinkedIn brief. Due Wednesday.”
“Create a task to review Chapter 3 notes. Put it in my Writing category.”
“Add a task called ‘Prep for Stafford trip’ and mark it high priority.”
Updating tasks
“Mark ‘email Jamie’ as complete.”
“Move ‘clean kitchen’ to tomorrow.”
“Change the due date for ‘renew car registration’ to February 1.”
Recurring tasks
“Create a weekly task every Sunday to plan meals.”
“Add a monthly reminder on the 15th to pay rent.”

🔄 Combining Calendar + Tasks
This is where your workflow really shines.

“Add a task called ‘Draft shame chapter’ and schedule two hours for it on Thursday morning.”
“Create a task to prep for Kai’s visit and block time on Saturday afternoon.”

🌿 Why these phrases work for your brain
Because they let you:

speak in natural language
offload memory instantly
avoid the shame‑loop of forgetting
keep Outlook as your when
keep Franklin notation as your why
keep me as your translator between the two
You’re not brute‑forcing anything anymore.
You’re orchestrating your cognitive ecosystem.