Media diet for November 2025

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I watched 14h 58m of movies and 56h 38m of TV shows, a total of 71h 36m:

🎬 Movies

  • Signs (2002) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • This still holds up. I’m not religious in the slightest and despise notable garbage-person Mel Gibson, but this movie is done well enough that I am still touched by what his character is experiencing. Not even young Joaquin Phoenix’ wooden acting hurts the movie much. And very young Abigail Breslin is already every bit as adorable as she’d be in Little Miss Sunshine a few years later. Some special effects haven’t aged very well, but that’s hardly surprising in a movie that released closer to when I was born than to today.
  • Hook (1991) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Heading another decade further into the past, straight into my actual childhood. I ended up downgrading this from a 7 because it has some odd pacing, but it is a wonderful film. The soundtrack/theme alone brings me right back, a classic John Williams banger. Obviously Robin Williams is the highlight, but Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins are enjoying themselves as well. The cast and cameos are just wild: Phil Collins, Glenn Close, George Lucas and Carrie Fisher, just to name a few. And it doesn’t stop there, the movie also has Dodi Fayed as an Executive Producer?! You know, the one who was with Princess Diana?
  • The Village (2004) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Wanted to revisit another Shyamalan classic from the 2000s – still solid as well. I mentally mixed this up with The Others, and kinda kept waiting for Nicole Kidman to show up. The actual cast is interesting enough, though: I had no idea it was so stacked overall, and young Jesse Eisenberg was unexpected. My hazy memory of the movie also meant that I wasn’t 100% sure if I remembered the twist correctly. I did, but it has been long enough that having the exact details around it revealed worked well enough to still be entertaining.
  • South Park: Post COVID (2021)
  • South Park: Post COVID: The Return of COVID (2021)
  • South Park the Streaming Wars (2022)
  • South Park the Streaming Wars Part 2 (2022)
  • South Park: Joining the Panderverse (2023)
  • South Park (Not Suitable for Children) (2023)
    • See below for all these South park “movies”.

🎤 Standup

  • Ronny Chieng: Love to Hate It (2024) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Pretty good, but it didn’t make me laugh all that much. But I suppose not every standup special needs to be full of belly laughs, and I certainly was entertained regardless.
  • Michelle Wolf: The Well (2025) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • I laughed a lot more with this one. I always dug Michelle Wolf, she was one of the best elements of Trevor Noah’s Daily Show era. Her Correspondents’ dinner speech was legendary, and if I remember correctly I enjoyed The Break as well.

🎸 Concerts

  • South Park: The 25th Anniversary Concert (2022) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • What a disappointment. I watched this after all the seasons and specials, thinking it’d be great fun. Unfortunately this should have been be called “A Primus / Ween concert with some South Park stuff”, and I don’t particularly enjoy either of those two bands. Some of the audience interaction from Matt and Trey was also incredibly off-putting, yikes.

📺 TV Shows

  • South Park – S13 to S26 (140 episodes with 52h 10m)
    • Alright, as predicted I finished my rewatch this month. I actually ended up rewatching everything from before this year, though I briefly considered stopping a bit earlier – after S19, when quality really tanks. The average quality after S10 is definitely lower than before already, but still quite good on average. There’s a few relevant markers in the show’s history worth pointing out:
      • Up until S17 they did 14 episodes per season that were split into two 7-episode runs with a long break in-between. (The first few seasons were different, but this basic model was done for over a decade.)
      • In S17 it was changed to 10 episodes per season, but in one stretch. That season aired late 2013, and this is the first season I was watching “live” after having binged the first sixteen seasons in early 2013. (I could physically feel myself aging from typing out that sentence.)
      • S23 aired late 2019, the last season before Covid. Everything got way weird afterwards in terms of publishing. S24 had only two episodes, both of them double length – one airing late 2020, one airing early 2021. A bit later, in August 2021 they made the 900 million dollar deal for “14 movies and renewal through season 30”. The first two of these “movies” (turned out to just be specials with hour-long runtime) were then released at the end of 2021 – a COVID-focused two-parter.
      • S25, the first “regular” season after COVID, now only consisted of six episodes and aired in 2022. It was followed by another two-part special (ironically about “The Streaming Wars”, getting a bit meta considering their deal with Paramount+) the same year. This schema mostly repeated in 2023, with six episodes in S26 and two special later in the year. However:
      • In 2024 only a single new special was released, and then nothing up until S27 started airing earlier this year. It was reported to have ten episodes rather than just six. But air dates repeatedly got pushed, ultimately changing to two week breaks – a first for the show that always prided itself on how it is made within a week. And then after the fifth episode, the next one suddenly was labeled as S28E01. I hate everything about this chaos, especially since it is not leading to increased quality – there’s still good stuff in the Post-COVID era, but just as many duds as in the decade before.
    • Production and publishing oddities aside:
      • There’s still some real bangers after the S17 change to 10-episode seasons – notably the Stick of Truth / Black Friday trilogy at the end of it. But holy shit, so much of S19 was just awful. PC Principal is painfully unfunny, the other attempts to tackle “cancel culture” are mostly pathetic, and like pretty much everything else (looking at you, SNL) they fucked up handling Trump at the time. The Yelp episode and a few other bits and pieces like the charity donation shaming were still funny, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to rewatch this era again. S20 got back on track a bit, but was still off – Cartman and Heidi were great, though.
      • “Reliving” Covid through the show was weird, but the two Covid specials (the one hour ones from end of 2021, not the odd two-episode S24) were really good. Given their story-line, it would actually have been a fantastic time to end the show on a high note. None of the later specials came even close, “The Streaming Wars” ones were especially weak.
      • In general, the show seems much to obsessed with current events in this third decade of its life. I’m happy for anything with as powerful a voice to call out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes quite so literally, but an entire season is a bit much. The best South Park episodes usually focus on the kids and their shenanigans, with current events playing a role but not being the main aspect.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • November 2, 2025: Police Chases
    • November 9, 2025: Felony Murder
    • November 16, 2025: Public Media
  • The Daily Show
    • November 3, 2025 - Joe Manchin
    • November 10, 2025 - Rep. Chris Deluzio & Rep. Pat Ryan
    • November 17, 2025 - Christiane Amanpour

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1201 tracks on 26 days in November 2025:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons – Remastered 2000 (19 plays)
  2. Kordhell – Murder In My Mind (13 plays)
  3. The Osmonds – Down By The Lazy River (8 plays)
  4. NOFX – We Called It America (7 plays)
  5. Nirvana – Drain You (4 plays)
  6. Feine Sahne Fischfilet – Geschichten aus Jarmen (4 plays)
  7. Blumentopf – Intro (3 plays)
  8. Billy Talent – Devil in a Midnight Mass (3 plays)
  9. Die Ärzte – Langweilig (3 plays)
  10. A Plus D – Pour Some Hot Sugar (Mims vs. Def Leppard) (3 plays)

Both Sixteen Tons and Down By The Lazy River found their way into my library after I saw them featured on South Park – both bangers in their own way.

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Die Ärzte (48 plays)
  2. Fettes Brot (47 plays)
  3. NOFX (32 plays)
  4. Daft Punk (27 plays)
  5. Weezer (25 plays)
  6. Ramin Djawadi (19 plays)
  7. The Beatles (19 plays)
  8. Tennessee Ernie Ford (19 plays)
  9. Green Day (17 plays)
  10. Robbie Williams (17 plays)

📚 Books

  • 📘 Recursion – ⭐️ 3/5
    • Not bad, but sometimes this felt more as if the author wanted to get a cool movie or TV adaptation rather than a great book. This seemed an oddly specific observation to me, but when going through some reviews and discussions after finishing the book I saw people mention things like “I could imagine how sick xyz would look in a TV show”, so I guess there’s something to it. To me, this made for a worse reading experience – but not dramatically so. I think my main issue was the conclusion. Given such a convoluted story I was hoping for something more… well, conclusive. Still no regrets reading this, though, despite sounding pretty negative. It was exactly the kind of fast-food-reading break I wanted from my unusual non-fiction reading currently.
  • 📘 It’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self – ⭐️ 4/5

    • Well that certainly is a title… in my Calibre library it only said “It’s Not Always Depression”. 😄 I’ve been dealing with a ton of anxiety lately, so I figured it’d be a good time to finally give this a read – I don’t recall who first mentioned it to me, but over the years it was recommended a couple of times. In the introduction, this claim caught my eye:

      Modern humans experience more stress, burden, emptiness, anxiety, self-judgment, and depression than ever.

      I don’t think that is true, though I believe I understand the spirit behind the statement (and would certainly agree with that). That doesn’t make the concepts laid out in the book less helpful, of course. As usual, my main issue with books around this topic is that I simply don’t think it is reasonable for most people to properly overcome their trauma (capital T or not) without a therapist. Reading a book like this is good (and it certainly reminded me of useful things I can do on my own), but there’s a limit to how much it can help. I already understand what’s presented here to a large degree, but getting therapy is still a massive challenge in Germany. Here’s another quote, from the description of people with an “avoidant attachment style”:

      Their love life lacks depth but they often excel at work — feeling it is a safe place to pour their energy.

      Rude, no need to call me out like that!

  • 📘 Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager – ⭐️ 3/5

    • Alright, I’ll need a bit of a break from all the management books now. This one was mostly good – refreshingly blunt, with lots of relatable anecdotes and a fair amount of good, actionable advice. But it’s also very notably from 2007:

      Facebook’s letter documents its core values: focus on impact, move fast, be bold, be open, and build social value.

      lol, I say. lmao, even. In the final third of the book there is also several really weird chapters about “nerds”, where Rands mostly just describes his own eccentricities, assumes that all nerds are the same and that most managers would have no idea how to deal with that. I assume that back in 2007 this may have made sense to include in the book, but from my own perspective on today’s software engineering landscape it felt out of touch.

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 15 episodes across 3 podcasts in November 2025:

🎮 Games

I played 3 different games for a total of 55.0 hours in November 2025.

  • N++
    • Played for 32.4 hours across 21 days. Unlocked 3 new achievements this month, now at 26/33 total. I had already written my 👍 review (190 words) back on 2016-08-25.
      • After the team released a new update for the game’s tenth anniversary I got sucked back in hard. There likely isn’t a lot more achievements I will get here, because most of the remaining ones require years worth of dedicated effort. But I’m having a blast working towards more in-game completion regardless of that, it is still (🇩🇪) one of the best platformers ever released.
  • Minecraft Dungeons
    • Played for 18.6 hours across 5 days. Unlocked 21 new achievements this month, now at 40/104 total. Haven’t written a review yet.
      • Finally some damn progress towards the achievements in this game. We (playing with my brother again) actually started having (very) small doses of fun – mainly in the “Tower” game mode where you don’t spend an hour in the same boring-ass level.
  • Vampire Survivors
    • 🏆 Finished this up in 4.0 hours, unlocking all remaining 15 (of 243) achievements. I had already written my 👍 review (11 words) back on 2022-10-04.
      • I wish this game would die already. This must have been the 20th update with new achievements but nothing meaningfully new in terms of actual gameplay – it’s just a chore at this point.