Fill The Wedding Hall With Guests Y'all

It is written about an early socialist philosopher that He said the following:

Matthew 22:1-10 And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.” ’ But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them [a]spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.

Why do I bring this up? Because Marco Rubio backs the Amazon warehouse unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama as a way to own Amazon for having woke PR departments. His reason to back this is not my reason to back this, to put it mildly. He doesn't like the idea of unions in principle, doesn't have anything against billionaires in principle, but is so triggered by culture war bullshit that he's gotta own the libs by organizing Bessemer.

The Quantum Mechanics of Kennedy and Khrushchev

There is a peculiar notion among some people in the hard sciences that they practice the purest, surest forms of knowledge. Biology is just applied chemistry, chemistry is just applied physics, and physics is just applied mathematics, and mathematics is axiomatically true (probably). All of these fields' laws and theories can be tested empirically with quantifiable data, or with basic logical analysis as in mathematics. A historian like me, on the other hand, only has sketchy qualitative data with which to work, no way to ethically repeat experiments in the field, and constant interference from politics seeking to assert historical narratives favorable to themselves. (And the less said about literature majors, the better.)

But this notion coyly pays tribute to the truth of the matter when it mentions how each field just applies knowledge from another. Every field does this, at least if it prospers in scientific discovery. Sometimes a new set of eyes is needed to see what's in front of them. Sometimes a bit of knowledge locked away in the advanced section of one field can help drive fundamental discoveries in another. History owes a lot to other fields. Radiocarbon dating, for one, has made mute stones sing like canaries at long last; so thank you, nuclear physics and chemistry. Linguistics has given us a lot of evidence for human migration throughout history, as has DNA sequencing. The hard scientist chauvinist might rebut, well, these are all hard sciences or soft sciences giving to history. What has history ever given to us?

My answer would be: understanding the nature of existence itself. Thank you, Khrushchev and Kennedy.

That time I was stuck in a desert for a week

The car battery may be a humble, uncomplicated piece of technology; a long-known bit of acid and base bolted together, but it demands our respect. Everyone talks a big game until they turn those keys to the sound of inadequate electric whimpering under the hood; then we are all equally powerless before our Maker. Some people have been stuck in grocery parking lots, others at the mall, others on vacation.

I was stuck at home for a week last year, but "home" is a desert, with little help. Make the jump and I'll elaborate on the story.