Check my profile for a recording of me reading this post aloud, plus safe-for-work photos.

Shallow specifics (for the sake of a swift encapsulation):

white, straight, single, childless, introverted, 6'1". I wear glasses, show male pattern balding, and have a florid face.

Looking for friendship first and foremost. I tend to view friendship as the foundation for all types of relationship, of whatever kind, in which I care to invest myself.

I don't have high hopes for making a genuine connection via the internet, but I'm a stereotypically atomized citizen of the 21st century, so this is certainly the most readily available avenue for meeting people. I'm also introverted and not naturally gregarious, which makes meeting people even harder.

Do not message me if you are 'bored' or looking for a 'distraction.'

Do not message me if you are inclined to hide behind your screen and never emerge from The Matrix, effectively encouraging people to guess about you and feeding their idealizing and wishful fantasies (a.k.a. misconceptions), rather than keeping it real. I'm not a big fan of cloaks of invisiblity or online personas. I'm making an effort here to appear as I really am, which is why I have photos on my profile and why I've attached an "audio version" to this post (so that you can see and hear as well as read me).

Following are some random tidbits about myself…

A patient thinker:

I am a patient thinker. I'm not quick, I'm not a sponge, I don't easily absorb and retain a whole lot (I'm fairly hopeless at learning new languages, for example, except maybe dead ones) but I have patience with ideas. I enjoy entertaining and playing with them, turning them over and over and viewing them from multiple angles. I'm impatient with impatient dismissals: always looking for the 'rational kernel' (a.k.a. kernel of truth) even in ideas and perspectives I reject.

Yes, it's possible at times to have 'moral clarity' on a particular issue or point [stop the genocide], but overall, I tend to be a connoisseur of nuance, ambiguity, contradiction, shades of gray.

This doesn't mean I'm an obscurantist. I appreciate clarity; I value the effort to make distinctions (drawing distinctions as a method of bringing clarity and focus to the sea of gray - a.k.a. "disambiguation"). However overall, as a general rule and ethical principle by which I privately conduct myself, I embrace 'epistemic humility': the one and only thing I know for certain is that I can ALWAYS be wrong.

A book-hoarder:

I'm not very materialistic, but I do have an unfortunate tendency to hoard books. (I guess a plurality of the books in my 'library' are literary, but hell, I'll hoard books of all types.)

A walker in the city:

I don't own a car, and I tend to walk everywhere that I can.

A bird-lover:

Walking places can be boring (I don't wear earbuds) so I keep an eye out for the urban wildlife (chiefly this means birds). Though I'm not currently a pet-owner, animals fascinate me. I'm also getting more into trees and flowers.

A writer of unpublished/able things:

I write things but I'm unpublished. Please do not ask me what I write (or write about) right off the bat; we would have to have made a connection for me to feel like discussing any of that. Just know it's a hobby of mine that I take seriously and I'd like to get some stuff published some day.

A substitute teacher (to my hilarity):

I draw income as a substitute teacher. It's a great pop-cultural archetype - "the sub." It can be interesting and surreal to find oneself embodying a cultural archetype in the flesh, as it were. :P

Some other interests (not a comprehensive list):

literary and popular culture (yes, that's broad, I know), philosopy and psychoanalysis, politics and political theory. Just because I'm interested in something doesn't mean I've acquired much knowledge about it. I could not define for you with much specificity what the "Comintern" was.

About you:

Hopefully you don't need to be right all the time. Hopefully (as they say) you "don't take yourself too seriously": you can laugh at yourself; maybe even have a laugh at the world's expense from time to time.

Hopefully you are reasonably sane. . . . Sanity seems increasingly like a rare achievement to me in our world (as the word "achievement" implies, just because you've got it now doesn't mean you can't lose it).

Other attractive qualities: intellectually open; playful; capable of compassion; aware of the limits of your self-awareness; able to admit the existence of blindspots and that your perspective is partial, not complete; tolerant of tastes and proclivities that differ from your own; able to "agree to disagree."