@patwater

In the US, “nerd” is still basically a childhood insult. It carries the residue of being picked last, talked over, shoved into lockers literal or social. In other places that stigma never quite landed the same way. In parts of East Asia, Northern Europe, even India, being bookish or technical is closer to a civic virtue than a social failure. The result matters. When you grow up marinating in the idea that intelligence makes you weak or contemptible, success can feel less like stewardship and more like revenge. A lot of tech founders seem trapped in a bully complex in reverse. They cast themselves as heroes correcting an unjust world, but the script they’re acting out is still organized around domination. When you finally get power and still think you’re the kid being shoved, you don’t build institutions. You settle scores. At scale. With real consequences. The tragedy isn’t that the mammals became dinosaurs. It’s that they never stopped believing extinction was the only ending on offer.

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