Do you really believe a 400 year gap between labs means the whole method is shaky though? Labs mess up, samples get contaminated, charcoal from a hearth can come from old wood that was already centuries old when it got burned, so that spread might have nothing to do with the curves at all. Calibration is just math that turns a raw number into a calendar range and the curves are built from thousands of tree ring and coral samples that overlap and cross check each other, so its not like some guy in Flagstaff is just eyeballing it. Every method has error bars, that doesnt mean its broken, and a date with a 200 year range is still way better than guessing from pottery styles. Recalibration usually nudges dates by decades, not centuries, unless you were using a curve from the 1970s. The real problem isnt the science, its dig reports that drop a single year like "1200 BCE" and skip the range, which is on the writers, not on carbon dating.

I see it the opposite way actually, because that empty night is exactly when your brain finally gets to breathe. Turning it into chores is just a habit we've all picked up, like we forgot how to sit still without feeling guilty. Cancel the dinner more often and I bet you'd remember how good a boring Tuesday night can feel.