From the Desk of The Last Autistic

Why maintain a Substack? Why post blurry iPhone shots of landscapes that somehow still feel majestic?

The exciting answer: I’m from a far more prosperous and stable Earth. There, I’m among the last remaining autistics. Productivity growth never faltered after the Oil Crisis, and global wealth kept rising. Strict, merit-based immigration means fewer taco trucks and curry houses in the West—yet Westerners routinely board supersonic flights to Mexico City or New Delhi for the real thing.

In my world, as many Westerners dream of IIT Delhi as Asians dream of Berkeley (see Mumbai’s booming artisanal cheeseburger scene for proof).

In your world, college is a middle-class entryway. In my world, the sharpest teenagers often graduate by eighteen, work in frontier labs, or roam the planet on cheap high-speed rail and cut-price Concorde revivals. The boldest go farther: my brother’s old pot dealer is building the first lakefront spa on a Martian Planetary Park.

That world has no room for me. When society is optimized for hyper-functional, deeply empathetic high-achievers, autistics whose best isn’t enough are quietly left behind. That’s why I’m here.

The boring, true answer: My name is Lap Gong Leong. I’m twenty-nine. In 2025, I lost my father in January and my favorite brother, Cliff, six months earlier. Those deaths transformed my book, Minority of a Minority, from a quirky essay collection into a deeper, angrier meditation on modernity, autism, and enforced equality.

The manuscript is finished. Now I’m free to write what I love most: speculative dispatches from a better future facing better problems, alongside serious articles on complex issues. This Substack is their home.

I hope you enjoy reading The Last Autistic as much as I enjoy writing it.