I created this account in about five seconds due to my prescient assumption Hexbear is a meaningless, forgettable website. It would be just quark with one R, but that name is taken. I, consequently, have a subtle piratey aesthetic. That is to say: I suck at coming up with a username. This one has to do with physics and not the dairy product.

Physics and astronomy were my main interests growing up, and I was inspired by the scientists who furthered human knowledge and who saw the real laws underlying nature. I went to school for physics because I wanted to join that great cause, the noble pursuit of academia. I became disillusioned with it while contemplating grad school and instead took on work first as an engineer, later as a software developer. I did not want to spend my life competing to obtain limited academic positions, to win grant funds for my research, or to make a name for myself as a Great Scientist.

Discovering Marx after college did two things for me. First, it scratched the same itch as physics, the desire to use science to see past everyday appearances in order to know how things actually work. Second, it broadened my outlook. Of course it changed my views on economics, that's given. But also Marx's humanism, his historical-materialist outlook on ourselves and our world, changed how I think about analytical things like science, but also how I regard expressive activities like arts and crafts, music, poetry, literature, etc. Leftists in general, including everyone on Hexbear, seem more in touch with their humanity, because of their rejection of an indifferent political worldview that denies history. So thanks, it's been good here, glad to meet each one of you.