I re-watched Netflix's Dark in less than two days, during the holiday four-day weekend I had, then I started 12 Monkeys. Both affect me so deeply I struggle with the words to justify just how much I love them. (It still boggles my mind that a show as good as 12 Monkeys debuted on the SyFy Channel…actually, I take that back because I just remembered that that’s the channel Resident Alien debuted on a few years ago and I love that show too).

I have seen Dark multiple times and 12 Monkeys will be my second re-watch. There are so many similarities between the two but the latter is just so underrated it's almost criminal. I feel Dark is more bleak and emotional than 12 Monkeys  and it hits hard with its themes of generational trauma, eternal recurrence and the futility that pervades it.

Eternal Recurrence has fascinated (and terrified) me since I was rather young. I didn't know it was called that at the time, but I remember randomly thinking one day that maybe we just kept living the same exact life over and over and over again.

But looking back at that memory now, I realize it probably wasn't eternal recurrence that had popped into my mind then. With eternal recurrence, you wouldn't be aware of having previously lived the very same exact life. Everything (down to every last thought you have) would eternally recur so you would never actually know you were living the same life repeatedly.

(Speaking of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence I found myself talking with a customer about him today and it reminded me how much I can have a good day at work and how much I can love my job when I’m with a really nice or engaging customer. We talked for a while and it was just one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. I really really really need to remember how much I used to love my job and how much I still can).

Though I am reluctant to use AI for this part (Grok and Gemini each offered horribly wrong facts about the family trees on Dark) I do find this very helpful:

• Exact Repetition: For the recurrence to be eternal and exact, every single atom, event, and thought must repeat in precisely the same order. The first time you experienced a moment, you did not remember a previous life; therefore, in the recurring life, you would also not have that memory.
• No Mechanism for Memory Transfer: The concept, most notably explored by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is generally presented as a cosmological hypothesis where the universe and all events within it repeat infinitely. It does not involve a soul or consciousness that exists outside of the physical reality of the life cycle, which would be necessary to carry memories from one cycle to the next. Your consciousness is part of the recurring pattern itself.
• The Philosophical Purpose: Nietzsche used the idea as a thought experiment, a "greatest weight" to assess one's affirmation of life. The lack of memory is crucial to this test. If you knew everything was a repeat, you might act differently, which would break the "exact same life" rule. The point is to ask if you would live your current life—with all its joys and sorrows, exactly as it is—over and over again, unknowingly. 

I was helping someone at work today as they needed computer assistance. I was leaning in to show them how to format something when they asked me why I still wear a mask. They hadn't even finished the question before they started coughing so bad it worried me, for both them and me.

"This, this, is why I still wear a mask," I wanted to say, but, thankfully, didn't. I've been sneezed and coughed on and had someone hand me something wet and identifiable. I generally like working with the public but you can run into all kinds of things on a daily basis and as time has moved on I still have a probably more than abnormal fear of germs.

Even so, I don't apologize for wearing a mask.

Before 2020 I used to get colds a lot and that area of my life has seemingly improved since then. I used to catch germs very easily, especially during the winter and when I was most around children (my favorite type of customer, no matter how many germs they might carry)

I found this article recently and feel it says a lot of what I wish more people understood:

https://misfitmentalhealth.substack.com/p/why-are-people-wearing-masks-in-2025

 

Every article in the Sunday, November 9th issue of The New York Times Magazine pulled me in, especially the cover story on Frankenstein. 

I'm pretty sure this will hit a paywall, but just in case not...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/magazine/frankenstein-guillermo-del-toro-shelley.html

There is so much within the article, but I find this of particular merit (not sure why Frankenstein is in quotes instead of italics, but still...) :

“Frankenstein” is a book about the mystery of creation — but what accounts for its own, this strange and desolate work of the imagination? Mary herself addressed this question in the introduction to the 1831 edition; how did she, a teenage girl who never had a day of formal schooling, “dilate upon so very hideous an idea”? And what accounts for its longevity? Byron and Percy Shelley feel like relics, but Mary’s work is still read, recast, passionately debated. Reportedly the most assigned college text in the United States, “Frankenstein” has been hailed as revolutionary and reactionary, feminist and drearily misogynist. It is interpreted as thinly veiled autobiography, a warning against scientific hubris, a critique of the French Revolution. It has been described as a book about fathers and sons but also might be read as the keenest expression of a daughter’s longing for her mother.

The creature appears in at least 400 films, and this season brings another, “Frankenstein,” from Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-winning director of “The Shape of Water.” It is the movie he has been trying to make his entire career. “My Everest,” he calls it. “Every movie I’ve done is the training wheels for this one.”

I'm trying to find the right words to describe the way straight men will look so dismissively (or worse!) at women they find unattractive.

As a woman who is less than pretty I have this seen firsthand and it has cut to the bone, but while I own my un-attractiveness (totally) I also feel that men who think and act this way don't value women for their whole selves and that it is on them, not women, to change.

Here are some of the looks I'm talking about:

A flick of contempt: that quick, involuntary eye-sweep that lands on “not worth my time.”

The dead-eyed scan: registers your presence but refuses to see you.

Dismissive inventory: men take stock of your face and body like a bored customs agent stamping “reject.”

The micro-sneer: a split-second curl of the lip that says ugh, next.

Value subtraction: the way their gaze subtracts personhood the instant attractiveness is ruled out.

The invisible-woman glare: a stare that slides right through you, erasing any humanity that isn’t ornamental.

I used to feel like a non-entity the moment I failed the attractiveness test, but I'm just too tired for that anymore. And as a queer person I find that though women can also be very shallow and dismissive of, it somehow doesn't carry the same weight or hurt or societal impact/value. The male gaze has a history and a context that is completely different and far worse and you don't have to be a straight woman to be affected by it.

I've been in my workplace for over 30 years so I've seen a lot, mostly good, but some bad. I have a lot of happy memories, particularly from the 90s and early 00s.

But, just like in middle school (though then was much, much worse), people have felt the need (compulsion?) to say hurtful things you should never say to another person.

One time a friendly man came up to the desk where I worked and said, "Is _ here? She and I talked on the phone a few minutes ago about a book I'm looking for." When I said I was the person he spoke with, his smile dropped and he said, "That's impossible! You sounded so pretty on the phone."

I agree with the critics that it is absolutely dreadful, but I still can't seem to stop watching All's Fair on Hulu. It's eye-gouging a la Oedipus Rex awful and yet I can't wait to see the next episode. What on on Earth is wrong with me?

The cast is full of amazingly talented women (in other projects, that is) yet that only makes everything seem all the worse. Judith Light has a guest appearance in two of the episodes so far and I will always watch anything she is in because she never disappoints me.

Is this what is called hate-watching?

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

hate-watching

/ˈhātˌwäCHiNG/

noun

noun: hate-watching; noun: hatewatching

1. the activity of watching a television program for the sake of the enjoyment derived from mocking or criticizing it.

   "it was the year that hate-watching became our national pastime"
2. 
   

Time magazine has an interesting article about All's Fair, which can be read here:

https://time.com/7331129/alls-fair-review/