A war on nerds? Could be.

Fixing your shit for you, because you Normies can't read the manual.

I've noticed, over the years, that everybody likes to push the nerds around. We're "weirdos." We act "funny."

Yeah, we do. Because our fucking brains work different than the Normie brain. Usually, better in most respects. We actually know how to program the VCR. That absent-minded dork you're making fun of? He's doing calculus in his head, trying to figure out how to make your friggin' iPhone work better.

But we can be annoyingly dense in social situations. Its true. We actually annoy each other.

Normies like to pretend that our failings are some kind of choice to misbehave, a moral failing, the result of Mommy Issues or some other need to be nonconformist square pegs in a world of round holes. But that is not the case, my friends. The difference is literally bone deep. We have different DNA than you Normies. We're built to be this way from the ground up.

What's that like? Its like being a Ferrari Dino, living in a world made for Volkswagen Beetles. Everything moves too slow, the speed limit is too low, all the other cars are sluggish and they get in the way. The best part of life is when you find a piece of open road. Then you can put your boot down and hear that engine roar like the raging beast that it is, eating up the miles and leaving the little piss-can Beetles in the dust.

Beetles don't like that. They gang up and trap you in traffic. That's what its like. Thanks, Normies. You pricks.

So how far would the Normies go to be rid of the annoying Nerds?

Two fairly scary news items tell the tale when you put them together.

First, a very large scale DNA survey study claims to have found genetic markers unique to ADHD.

Geneticist Ditte Demontis and her colleagues used data from more than 20,000 people with ADHD, comparing them to a control group of 35,000 people without an ADHD diagnosis. They found 304 points where tiny differences in DNA—like single letter swaps—were distributed across their two groups in a statistically telling way. If any of those variants were very close together, the researchers counted them as representing the same stretch of DNA, grouping them together into 12 important regions.

The authors of the study emphasize that there is no "gene for ADHD," but they have found that in their study population genes common in ADHD were also common in other disorders, like Autism and Schizophrenia.

Which sounds about right. People with Aspergers or more pronounced Autism often are also diagnosed with ADHD. Twenty or thirty more years of research in that direction, they may be able to isolate all or most of the markers for a wide range of behavioral neurology.

Nerds will be instantly identifiable with a cheek swab. How do you like that?

Second, the Chinese have been gene-editing humans. Link to Nature article here.

They finally hatched two that lived.

A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.
If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.
A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.

Taken with a grain of salt, this claim is a bit questionable. Nobody really knows if they actually managed it. But the thing is, they clearly want to, and eventually they will manage to gene-edit human beings and bring them to term.

Therefore China will be the first country to discover just how bad an idea it is to meddle with the Human genome. If they really did bring two baby girls to term, my prayers go out to those two babies. I really hope that the eggheads didn't frig something up. But they probably did, and nobody will ever know exactly what.

Well, so what, Phantom? What's that got to do with nerds?

If you can identify nerds with a simple test, and you can modify DNA at will, how long before nations (or companies!) start demanding citizens weed undesirable nerd traits out of their offspring? 

Particularly tech companies. They've shown a fine disregard for privacy and basic human rights, and they really don't like depending on guys like James Damore to create their products.

Damore is a great example. He's a huge Nerd. He's famous for being the guy who put his foot wrong in a typically Nerd way, by pointing out the elephant in the room at Google. They need his Ferrari 500hp brain to solve their problems, but they can't stand the way he doesn't know to shut up like any Normie would. He uses his brain to discover Truth in places where they don't want him to. But they NEED him, because they are all just fucking Volkswagens where it counts.

(And you better believe that every Nerd in Silicon Valley was watching that whole thing. If there's one thing nerds all know, its bullies. Like nerds everywhere they made plans to deal with it. Are you watching Google and Facebook stock prices tank? That's what happens when you piss off the Nerds. They are subtle and quick to anger.)

Wouldn't it be nice if the authorities could chop and channel that nerd-brain into something a little more Normie and a little less annoying and loose-cannon? Wouldn't China, and probably Google, love the chance to -make- people get their children edited?

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

We could actually live to see that. And the terrifying Revenge of the Nerds that inevitably followed. It would be legendary.

Dear Normal People: please realize that the last guy on Earth you want to toy with is the guy that designed everything that keeps you alive. There's no more dangerous creature than an engineer with a grudge. So cut us weirdos some social slack and get the fuck out of the way. We've got stuff to do.

The Phantom

Update! In case some of you think I was a little harsh lumping Google in with the Chicom government as a force of diabolical oppression in the world, guess what? You're wrong. I was not harsh enough:

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/28/google-employees-chinese-surveillance-tech/

Google employees unhappy with the project, which would extend China’s surveillance state by creating an application that would further censor Chinese search engines, renewed their protest in a new letter published Tuesday by Medium, which has about 435 signatures.
 “Dragonfly would also enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely,” the open letter reads.
The signatures on both letters objecting to Project Dragonfly reveal a growing internal concern among employees who do not wish to be part of a company that allows governments to censor its citizens and enable a surveillance state.

However, around twice as many employees signed a letter in April opposing Google’s involvement in a Pentagon program, Project Maven, that aimed to improve drone analysis to better identify civilians, thus reducing the amount of accidental civilian casualties.
This opposition letter was signed by between 3,100 and 4,000 employees between April and June and included dozens of senior engineers, according to another Times report.
Thousands of Google employees addressed their letter to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive officer, asking that Project Maven be canceled.

 Now, I don't know about y'all, but in my school days 4,000 is more than twice as many signatures than 435. 4,000 is an order of magnitude larger than 435.

An order of magnitude more Google employees object to working for the United States government than object to working for the Communist Chinese government.

Upperdate! The Chicom government blinks!

China’s government ordered a halt Thursday to work by a medical team that claimed to have helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies, as a group of leading scientists declared that it’s still too soon to try to make permanent changes to DNA that can be inherited by future generations.
Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping told state broadcaster CCTV that his ministry is strongly opposed to the efforts that reportedly produced twin girls born earlier this month. Xu called the team’s actions illegal and unacceptable and said an investigation had been ordered, but made no mention of specific actions taken.

 I would like to think that this move was brought on by a sudden attack of conscience on the part of the Minister of Science and Technology. I would like that a lot. But the cynic in me suspects it may have more to do with the Party being made to look bad in front of the international community.

The cynic also suspects that Dr. Evile was spirited off by the Chinese Secret Squirrel Squad to a secret lab on a mountain peak somewhere, and set to work making more CRISPR tots.