I'm in love with the universe. I'm currently haunting the Berkeley physics graduate department, although I'm technically supposed to be working in a webdev collective. My original realm of work was cosmology & high energy theory and I intend to return.

I also happen to be an anarchist (second generation, published, friends facing prison... that level). Basically what that means is that I'm really diligent and proactive about ethics. Tackling the material conditions, narratives, infrastructure, game-theoretic space, et al. that make our present society so conducive to sociopathy and communication logjams is a deliciously complicated problem, but definitely solvable. Ask me anything.

I am hella passionate and intense. I endeavor to be, if allowed, empathic and honest to the point of nuance where it becomes tactful again. I am frequently described by people I am close to as piercingly sincere and vigilant. Although they do not always end up considering that a virtue, and virtually everyone finds it unsettling. Partially as a consequence I've long defaulted on habits of hesitancy, shyness, and deference with strangers or acquaintances.

For a year and a half now I have been quite bored with love, or rather with the difficulties, impediments, and wild improbabilities involved in our present social context. If there's anyone out there actually into honest-to-god real human contact then, great, I'll blow your mind. But obviously I didn't create this profile to seduce or dazzle towards that aim. I'm new in town and would just like to meet people. Let's meet.

Find important tasks that no one else is doing and do them, find important battles that no one else is fighting and fight them. Constantly seek out and create new perspectives, try to translate or reduce them into each other in as many ways you can find and map the transitions, then take another step back. Seek out those with the least options or connections and figure out how to give them more. Iterate.

I'm not nearly as cute as my 10th iteration was.

Also: "When I first met you I despised you because you sounded so joyous, like the most joyous person I had ever encountered. I was like, who the hell is this disgustingly posi person? But then later I realized you were bitter and full of snark, and I liked you. Later I realized it was both and they were inseparable, and I was okay with you."

I've always wanted to capitalize on the whole brazen charisma thing by finding some kind of masculinity that would actually play, and I keep making sad efforts at twink hipster geek, but at the end of the day I always default on cuddly academic. This far too frequently ends up frazzled, tired puppydog.

I am of split instincts: On the one hand I love the unabashed passion of geekdoms and delight in exploring complicated particulars and sharing in others' passions. On the other, I viscerally abhor elitism for its own sake, as well as those milieus of expertise which deliberately ignore the multidimensional barriers to entry faced by others.

I'm still in many ways a poor kid from the projects with relatively little experience in a lot of cultural realms. I first learned how to pay at a sit down restaurant when I was 24. I could give you endless sociological analyses of '90s top 40, but anything that would have involved buying shit at some point or having friends who knew friends who knew ^n friends who had enlightened musical taste is largely out. (Torrents are great but you have to know where to start + have a computer.) Anyway, on regular rotation at this very moment: Crooked Still, The Taxpayers, The Cardigans, The Mountain Goats, Jimmy Eat World, Ike Reilly Assassination. ...Although I admit that list is more of a litmus test designed to repel people more interested in cultural capital or reinforcing narratives of intellectual elitism than sincerity.

Tell me what anarchopunk saved your life, what the fuck people are even supposed to get out of The Smiths and all that gothy shit, what you most want to dance to when you're alone, and what uncool shit filled you with the fuzzy-wuzzies. Give me something better to listen to than post-rock while I code!

Young me had a library card though, and thus I am supremely qualified to rattle on about virtually anything related to Science Fiction. At some point I will inevitably succumb to the geek juices flowing through my veins and advise you to read Samuel Delany, Ursula K Le Guin, Iain Banks, Ken Macleod, and Charlie Stross. But only because I can't list everything. Among other anecdotes, I will probably tell you that I was utterly heartbroken by Le Guin's support for Intellectual Property and feel rage at the betrayal to this day. That Asimov was a fascist, Bradbury a hack, and that the only difference between Orson Scott Card and the liberals that love to express shock at his politics is that at least he had the integrity to explore his support for the state to the logical conclusion of championing genocide. I will tell you that Battlestar Galactica is the worst, most flagrantly anti-intellectual and shockingly conservative piece of alleged "science fiction" ever produced, whose core audience was fratboys, servicemen, and DC wonks. I will geek out on all the ways A Song of Ice & Fire / Game of Thrones is an explicit critique of fascist narratives in fantasy, but a tad problematically hamfisted on patriarchy. I will tell you that The Wire would never have been possible without Babylon 5 (which I am far too nostalgic for). And I will admit to once having been the Firefly fanboi who argued a producer into changing a scene in the early edit of Serenity where there was some explicit sound in space that wasn't even handwaveable.

Oh, I was raised vegan, but am not anymore, so that's a thing. (Don't get me wrong, I support animal liberation and the proliferation of vegan culture/norms, just not deontological ethical systems. Virtually all my friends, housemates, and partners have been vegan.)

Figuring shit out. Helping people. Punching bullies. Avocados. Rain. Snuggles.

Trees.

I'm sure I could do without the fine structure constant.

At this very moment?
* Tor bridge distribution. Although the general solution will by necessity also clean up issues in game theory, left market economics, and anthropology.
* Visual presentation of associative conceptual structures to shrink various bottlenecks in social communication.

Typically my big long-standing projects have been issues in philosophy and feminism.

Alright, here goes: I had largely no form of social interaction with anyone from the time I was 18 to the time I was 24. Like months without cracking my vocal chords.

From a socially gregarious life in high school I suddenly found myself entirely surrounded by alienating upper-middle-class kids, bit down on a really neat philosophical bullet (preview: "how do you get consent to ask for consent?"), and got trapped. The way I would phrase it I discovered some problems, went off and solved those problems, and when I came back discovered six years had passed.

It is not central to my identity or where I am. I long ago fixed all the damage and rebuilt everything. I am far stronger, more aware and more agile. It just feels silly to try and constantly hide the ever-so-faint scars that riddle me as a result. Like obviously I am lacking most of the standard anecdotes of being a young adult everyone else has. And I still occasionally find myself lapsing into irritation or distance when handling realms of flirtation or expressions of sexuality; a leftover reflex from viewing those as reserved for Other People.

You're highly empathetic and passionate about freedom & figuring shit out. You know of a wormhole between Oakland and the Tillamook rainforest that's traversable in skateboard shoes.

I switch and enjoy kink, but don't particularly need it. I'm queer, but more in the sedate, shy, intellectual "yay fluidity and self-hacking" sense than the hedonistic or militant "queer as in fuck you" sense -- although I totally support and crush on folks with the latter approach. Sadly, pretty bored with / not interested in most dudes. Feel free to ignore this if you think we're wildly compatible, though.

I am sick to death with Interesting People, with their interesting hobbies and interesting anecdotes. Fuck that. What I care about are people who Give A Damn. You went to Thailand and trained as an acrobat with the clone of Steve Jobs? Boring as shit. Tell me about something you care about, that's driven you to do things most people would consider insanely contrary your self-interest.

Let's run around late at night talking about the ethics of time travel.

=======FOR YOUR EDIFICATION SOME OKC STATS=======
People I've written for one reason or another between profile creation on September 1st and April 1st: 39

People I've written that I was at least broadly interested in as possible romantic or sexual partners: 31

People I've written whose profiles I was immediately REALLY REALLY into: 4

Number of last group who wrote me back: 0 (lesson: either I'm not particularly attractive, hopelessly haughty sounding, or gushing in any way about someone's apparent awesomeness is an immediate turn off)

Dates I've gone on: 4

Dates scheduled but flaked on me: 4

Dates/meetups that turned into friendships: 2

Dates that were actually pretty good but both of us seemed wary of baggage and never wrote each other again: 1

Dates that were totally atrocious: 1

People I had a mutually amazing/inspiring/reassuring conversation with online but were in the middle of a life breakdown and had to flee home to Canada: 1

Separate conversation friend from Canada: 1

Boys who have written me (not counting "sup/hello" chats from folks with incredibly low compatibility ratings that were immediately deleted): 26

Boys within my age range and *somewhat compatible*: 4

Girls who have written me: 4

Girls within my age range and somewhat compatible: 2

Explicitly otherly gendered folks who've written me: 3

Within my age range and somewhat compatible: 2

Most common reasons for ultimately declining to write people: Couldn't think of something original or non-trivial conversation-catching from the limited material on their profile. They seem adorable and geeky but without any drive or wider concern with the world. They used the racist term "gypsy" on their profile or went on and on about spirituality or Foucault to the point where it seemed likely they carry hostilities to physics. They emphasize just how important physical and social activities are in their life and I get intimidated and ashamed as while I love hiking and parties at least as much as the next person, I'm sadly in front of a laptop 10+ hours a day.
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