Nerd Q&A: Swimming in the Mainstream

I'd like to be able to send a message back in time to my teen self and answer this question: 

I am a socially awkward nerd. How can I become more social and mainstream?

Being social is something everyone learns, just like talking or writing, so you just need to approach it as such.

The number one thing to do is to get practice by talking with more people. It doesn’t matter if these are co-workers, members of a hobby club, or people in a class. Just get outside your home and talk with people.

Don’t worry about the “nerd” part of your question, focus on the “more social” part.

If you’re not sure how to behave, here are some tips:

Nerd Q&A: Are You Offended?

Vasilis - Nerd Broche

Just in case anyone else was wondering:


Does it offend you if someone calls you a nerd or geek?

Not at all. 

Some people might feel hurt because of the negative connotations associated with those terms. Other people might be downright offended at being called a nerd if they identify as a geek (or the other way around). 

I'm fine with people calling me either nerd or geek because I identify with both. I realize that these terms have negative origins in the previous century, and some people still use them as an insult, but I have always taken them as terms indicative of intelligence and passion, so I have no problem with the words or even the people who use them.

Side note: if someone calls you a nerd or geek with the intent of insulting you, consider the fact that nerds and geeks pretty much control all the information on the planet, so you've just been equated with the most intelligent and potentially powerful people on Earth. That's a fairly poor insult, but a nice compliment. Maybe smile and say, "cool." Then walk away.

I openly call myself a nerd, associate freely with other nerds, and talk with both nerds and non-nerds about my nerdy interests.

I don’t call myself a geek because my interests are so varied that I don’t think I’m quite passionate enough about any single thing to qualify as a geek, but when people say I’m geeky I take it as a compliment because they’re implying that I know a lot about whatever I’ve just said or done.

If another nerd or geek calls me a nerd or geek…that’s like a professional acknowledging another professional, and I take it as the ultimate compliment.

DIY Nerd: Atari 2600 Cartridge Wallet

What's nerdier than a wallet made from an Atari 2600 cartridge?

Not much.

Sure, you can buy a wallet with an Atari 2600 image imprinted on it, but if you really want to show your nerd cred, you'll make your own wallet out of an actual 2600 game cartridge.

It's actually pretty easy. Want to know how? Watch Bob Clagett's video (or just read the blog post on his website) and you'll have your own cartridge wallet in no time.

Now I just have to go dig up an E.T. cartridge from the landfill.

Real-Life Nerds: Protecting Public Data from Big Brother

Zoë Schlanger spent the day with a group of nerds who gathered at the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library on the Saturday before President Trump's inauguration day. Archivists, hackers, scientists, programmers, and librarians scraped data from government databases run by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other government sites threatened with deletion, alteration, or removal from the public domain by the incoming administration.

Some members of the group sent spiders to crawl web pages and send the contents to the Internet Archive (archive.org). Others worked through data sets looking for ways to download the information without breaking it and preserve it at DataRefuge.org. Librarians established a chain of provenance to ensure the data could be trusted if future researchers needed to rely upon it.

By the end of the day, they had everything from data on Ice core samples, coastal ocean current velocities, EPA air quality sensor data, the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility data, the Department of Transportation’s Hazmat accidents database, and EPA rules violations.

Was this a political action? A Quixotic task? Hacktivist preservation of vital data? Perhaps it was all of these things, and perhaps it was unnecessary. But considering the evidence--the Trump administration’s EPA transition team has admitted their intent to remove climate data from the agency’s website, incoming EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has sued the EPA multiple times to repeal air pollution regulations, and all White House website mentions of climate change were scrubbed at noon on the day Trump took office--perhaps it was a day well spent.

Read more about this diverse team of data preservationists in Zoë Schlanger's Wired article "Rogue Scientists Race to Save Climate Data from Trump"

Nerd Q&A: Why Are Smart People So Quiet?

I've heard the phrase "still waters run deep" too many times to count, so I think most people (and I include myself in that group) consider intelligence and silence directly connected.

Before I go on, I need to get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: not all smart people are quiet.

But this is still a fair question that has a lot going on behind it.