I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real.

Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to.

The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic problem-solving says you subtract the 6 from both sides, then divide by 3. So "3x = 3" then "x = 1." Easy. But I learned pretty early on that I could do it in my head. It was a little bit challenging, but then I wouldn't have to waste the time of writing it out, and I wasn't handicapped like all of those suckers who had to go through the motions no matter how simple the problem was. If the teacher wrote "x + 1 = 6" I didn't have to subtract 1 from each side, I just thought about it logically and knew the answer. Of course, the math got more complex, but I was good enough at doing it in my head that, at least for a long time, it never really mattered.

I thought it was because I just "got" math, and the other kids were on a lower level. But as the math grew in complexity, I fell behind. By the time we reached Calculus I was still doing most of it in my head, as I had never really learned to write it out on paper. And the complexity of the math outgrew my capacity to visualize. I showed up to my AP calculus test without a calculator, partially because I was forgetful and partly for fun, and it wasn't until I got my score back (a failing 2 of 5) that it finally hit me: I was actually behind. In school. I was cocky enough that this was a slap in the face.

I had to start from scratch, and I'm still not sure if I've made up for a lot of that. I ended up in more creative fields, mostly because I felt inferior to those who had learned the rules and not been cocky douchebags like I had been in the beginning.

This really sucks to write. I frequently wonder what could have been.

It is my sincere hope that this understanding becomes pervasive in society, such that the inane social movements based upon naught but angry emotional mob mentality become part of history.

As it stands, young boys are medicated with psychiatric drugs for beings boys, and this is deemed acceptable by society. Boys are failing at every step in public institutions, with higher drop out rates at all levels of schooling.

All of this based upon the misguided idea that a Y chromosome is equivalent to an X chromosome, such that sex differences are "socialy conditioned". This madness must stop now, before our children are harmed any further.

All of the people who built the site and the banner are volunteers who met on HN across various threads, and not members of any of the advocacy orgs or companies listed on the site. We're really interested in getting feedback on how future campaigns can be better, and happy to discuss some of the decisions we made. The non-profits involved did all the legal and organization lifting, and this is a great opportunity to donate to the EFF and Demand Progress if you haven't recently.

Likely the most impactful thing you can do right now is to add the banner to your own site and ask the companies you work for to do the same. We've tried to make it as easy as possible to add the banner; you can find all the options (including a Cloudflare app and Wordpress plugins) here: https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js

Pushing for technical solutions to the surveillance is also really important. Friends at Fight for the Future are launching a campaign along those lines as soon as this one wraps up, and there are a lot of open source projects (e.g. the great work done by [Whisper Systems](https://whispersystems.org)) that deserve attention.

But legislation and technology need to work hand in hand for things to change in the long run. Even if we have decent technical solutions, legal measures can easily limit the scope of their success (see Lavabit).