It is absolutely wild how modern Star Trek handles pacing nowadays, and frankly, a lot of us are getting frustrated with it. In the recent seasons of Strange New Worlds, the storytelling feels completely all over the place. Don't get me wrong, when SNW started, we all praised the return to episodic TV. But now? We get puppet episodes, musical numbers, and absolute "what the F" filler gimmicks that take up valuable real estate in a tiny 10-episode season. Yet, when Trek actually hits us with a genuinely massive, epic space opera premise, they rush through it and wrap up mind-bending cosmic lore in a single 45-minute block.

Case in point: I realized immediately, that the Strange New Worlds Season 4 premiere, "Valles Marineris," heavily borrowed its entire premise from Edmond Hamilton's classic Captain Future lore. But instead of just skimming the surface, Trek should have gone completely all-in and adapted his original Lost World of Time arc into a proper, heavy-hitting season-long event.

If you look at the 1978 Captain Future anime adaptation of that story (released as Die Zeitmaschine in Germany), the plot is pure, unadulterated classic sci-fi. The crew receives a 100-million-year-old distress signal from a planet that is long gone. They build a time machine, travel into the deep prehistoric past, and discover that ancient Mars is on the brink of war with a planet called Katain. Katain is destined to become our asteroid belt because Jupiter's gravity is tearing it apart...which is a total 1940s pulp logic myth anyway since the belt doesn't have nearly enough mass, but hey, it's great fiction. To save his people, a scientist hollows out their moon, transforms it into a massive generation ship, and puts the entire population into a 20-year cryo-sleep journey to find a new home world.

My inner sci-fi nerd pondered that for decades: Is Captain Future stupid? Sure, they didn’t have a Prime Directive in that 1940s pulp-universe, but it is a golden rule of sci-fi that you should never travel into the past to save a civilization that history is doomed to extinction. You don't mess with the timeline like that.

But then the story drops an absolute masterclass in classic writing and hits us with a massive bootstrap paradox: Captain Future actually had to interfere to save the future. Right after he stops the Katain military from invading Mars and helps launch their hollowed-out moon into deep space, Katain explodes. The shattering fragments create the asteroid belt, just as in the latest season episode of SNW. In the end, Captain Future wasn't breaking the rules of time travel; he was fulfilling destiny... or density... I don't know.

And that is exactly my problem with modern Trek. Actually, computer, delete that: That was always the problem with Star Trek! The Dyson Sphere episode in TNG was similarly under used. A really really riduculously premise like this...dealing with a prehistoric war between Mars and a doomed planet in our past's solar system, temporal mechanics, the ethics of intervening in a dead civilization's history, and a massive bootstrap paradox that secures the safety of the modern Alpha Quadrant, deserves to breathe. It could have been a Star Wars level of epicness (a long time ago, in a solar system right here). Instead of giving us an entire season to flesh out a legendary cosmic mystery, modern Trek burns through it in under an hour so they can get back to the next quirky gimmick episode.

I have two friends who, every single time I share a synchronicity experience, immediately respond with some variation of: "That's just selective attention. You know, like when you buy a blue car and suddenly see blue cars everywhere."

I know. I've heard it. Many times.

And they're not wrong that selective attention exists. It's real, it's documented, it's worth knowing about. But it has become a thought-terminating reflex, deployed instantly, without actually checking whether the mechanism fits the specific example being discussed.

So let me explain what selective attention actually explains. And what it doesn't.

What it explains

If you're thinking about blue cars, your brain filters for blue cars. You notice them more. They were always there, you just register them now. This explains subjective clustering of common, everyday things.

That's the scope of the argument. That's it.

What it does not explain

It does not explain the content of a film you randomly clicked on.

One afternoon I visited my bank to discuss a theoretical loan. That evening I clicked on a random Game of Thrones episode. 73 episodes to choose from. It opened with the Iron Bank of Braavos, one of the rarest themes in the entire series. A medieval fantasy show. An actual functioning bank as the opening scene of the exact episode I randomly selected on the exact day I visited my real bank.

My selective attention did not determine which episode was suggested. My selective attention did not write that episode. The film existed before I clicked on it.

Selective attention explains what you notice. It does not explain what independently exists in the outside world.

The trailer

I spent a morning packaging three helmets into cardboard boxes for an eBay sale. A few hours later I came across the brand new Predator trailer, released to the world literally two hours earlier. In it, a boy cuts open a cardboard box and removes a helmet.

Was I primed to notice helmets? Maybe. But I didn't write the Predator trailer. I didn't put a helmet in a cardboard box in a Hollywood production because I had helmets on my mind. That trailer existed independently of my perception.

Emu meat, and why this one is personal

One evening I watched a scene in Jean Claude Van Johnson set on an emu farm. The next day, in a YouTube review of the completely unrelated film Escape from Tomorrow, a character ate emu meat on screen.

Not emus in general. Not an emu farm. Emu meat, consumed on screen, two days in a row, in completely unrelated content.

I have consumed media obsessively for decades. I can recall exactly two instances of emu meat appearing in any content I have ever watched. They were on consecutive days.

Here's what makes this one different from all the others.

The word emu carried a very specific and deeply personal meaning in my life, unrelated to the animal itself. It had been part of my identity for decades, connected to people and chapters of my life that I don't need to elaborate on here. It was not a word I encountered neutrally.

So when people say "selective attention, like blue cars" I want to ask: does selective attention now account for words that carry decades of personal history suddenly appearing in two unrelated productions on consecutive days? Is that the claim?

The Hawaiian greeting

On April 29th, 2018, I watched Father Figures. Two characters performed the Honi, the traditional Hawaiian greeting where foreheads and noses are pressed together while both people inhale simultaneously. The sharing of ha, the divine breath. The next day I watched The Polka King. The same gesture appeared.

Father Figures is a comedy about a man searching for his biological father. The Polka King is a tragicomedy about a Polish immigrant running a Ponzi scheme. No shared theme, no shared director, no shared genre, no shared cast. Nothing connecting them whatsoever.

The Honi is not a common gesture in mainstream cinema. It's not a wave. It's not a hug. It's a very specific, ancient cultural practice that most Western audiences wouldn't even recognize. I have watched thousands of hours of content over decades.

It appeared on two consecutive days. In two completely unrelated films.

The Maltese

I was reading a work email from a social care institution. A colleague was looking for their lost Maltese, a specific, relatively rare dog breed. Minutes later, completely independently, someone on Reddit mentioned a Maltese in an unrelated thread.

Not "someone mentioned a dog." A Maltese. In a private work email and a random public Reddit comment, minutes apart, with absolutely nothing connecting the two contexts.

The Sanskrit mantra

On my way home I was listening to the Matrix soundtrack. A very specific Sanskrit mantra came on, Asato Ma Sat Gamaya. Part of the ancient Pavamana Mantra from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Not background music. A prayer:

Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.

That evening I started watching the Battlestar Galactica pilot. The same mantra appeared in it.

Now consider what Battlestar Galactica is actually about at its core. What is real and what is illusion? What survives death? What is the difference between a human soul and a manufactured one?

It wasn't just the same rare piece of music appearing twice in one evening in completely unrelated productions. It was the same profound philosophical question, embedded in the mantra's meaning, reflected in the themes of both works. On the same evening. By accident.

My friends would say: blue cars.

The dream and the car

One morning I woke up from a vivid dream. I had been a demon hunter, marked on my forehead with a symbol in the shape of deer antlers. I opened the blinds. In the parking lot outside, where it had never stood before in years of living there, was a red car with a deer antler design printed on it.

I did not notice a red car and then dream about antlers. I dreamed about antlers and then opened the blinds.

La Vie en Rose

One afternoon at a local lake an old man was playing La Vie en Rose on a harmonica. The song whose title translates literally as "life seen through rose-tinted glasses." A moment that already felt like a scene from a film.

The next day, watching Rush Hour 3, set in Paris, La Vie en Rose played in a scene. The Arc de Triomphe appeared in the same film. Both elements. One day later.

Some coincidences don't just repeat. They arrive already wrapped in meaning.

The number

In 2001 I ended a relationship. Not just any relationship. My first one. The most formative of my life. My ex's license plate contained a specific three-digit number. Nothing culturally significant about it. Not 666, not 777. Just three digits that became personally meaningful through loss.

Around 2010, still processing that chapter of my life, I wrote a novel. In it I wake up in an alternative universe where I never ended that relationship. We are married. And I own a specific car model that in real life I had always associated with the life I imagined we could have had together. That car is extremely rare. In sixteen years of daily life I could count on one hand the times I saw one on the road.

Over the years I occasionally noticed that three-digit number on license plates. Fine, that's selective attention. I'll give my friends that one.

But then:

Last week I reached out to a mutual friend who had been connected to her, processing that chapter of my life seriously for the first time. He replied the next morning. That same day, for the first time in four years at my current workplace, that exact rare car model, the one from my novel, the symbol of the life I had imagined, was parked outside. It had never been there before.

That same year I began a new fantasy film project, the first comparable project since 2001, the year I ended that relationship. On the very first shooting day, someone arrived with a trailer carrying props for the film. His license plate ended in those same three digits.

Back in March this year, at a film convention I was handed a ten-sided dice. Those three digits were facing me, side by side.

Selective attention explains why I noticed the number. It does not explain why the car from my novel appeared outside my workplace on the exact day I reconnected with that chapter of my life. 25 years after I ended it. 16 years after I wrote about it. It does not explain the license plate on the first shooting day. It does not explain the dice.

My friends would say: blue cars. I would say: these are not blue cars. They are pink unicorns.

The actual problem

Selective attention has become a thought-terminating cliché.

Someone shares a genuinely strange experience. Response: selective attention. No engagement with the specific details. No attempt to actually apply the mechanism to the concrete example. Just the label, used as a universal solvent that dissolves everything without actually touching anything.

That's not skepticism. That's dogma wearing the costume of skepticism.

Real skepticism would say: I can't explain that specific example, but I'm not yet convinced it's more than coincidence. That's an honest position.

What most people actually say is: selective attention, applied blindly, without checking whether the mechanism actually fits. A film you randomly clicked on is not a blue car. A trailer released two hours earlier is not a blue car. Emu meat on consecutive days is not a blue car. A Sanskrit mantra appearing twice in one evening, carrying the same philosophical question reflected in both works, is not a blue car.

What I'm not claiming

I'm not claiming I know what causes this. I'm not claiming it's supernatural. I'm not claiming every coincidence is meaningful.

I've kept a journal for years. Most entries are minor and probably explainable. But some have a structure that selective attention simply cannot reach, because they involve independent events in the outside world that exist completely regardless of what I notice or don't notice.

If your only tool is selective attention, you're not explaining synchronicities. You're deciding in advance that they can't exist.

That's not a scientific position. That's a philosophical one. Own it.

Or was it even intentional? Why even make it around filthy rich and old people who have to pay 1B Euro tickets? Why not do the classic "it's all secretly funded by ze government?"

Hear me out! We usually lump 2012 into the "guilty pleasure disaster porn" category, right next to The Core or Geostorm. But if you shift your perspective just a few degrees, 2012 transforms from a bloated CGI spectacle into a scathing, hilarious satire of survival, class, and "main character" entitlement.

The Billionaire Lifeboat

The central premise is objectively dark: the world’s governments spend trillions of taxpayer dollars to build massive Arks that are then sold off to the ultra-wealthy. While 99.9% of humanity is being swallowed by the Earth’s crust, the "saviors of our species" are basically a high-seas country club.

The scene where the "lower-tier" workers and families realize they’ve been left behind while the elite sip champagne in their cabins isn't just a plot point—it’s a biting commentary on the "Bunker Mentality" of the modern 1%. Emmerich inadvertently made the ultimate film about the wealth gap, where the price of entry to the future is literally a billion euros.

The Absurdity of the "Close Call"

John Cusack’s character, Jackson Curtis, possesses a superpower more potent than any Avenger: Geological Plot Armor.

The comedic timing of the destruction is flawless. Every time Jackson drives a limo or flies a rickety plane, the ground collapses exactly one inch behind his tires. He isn't just escaping a disaster; he is outrunning the literal wrath of God by the length of a bumper. When you stop viewing it as a thriller and start viewing it as a "Looney Tunes" short with a $200 million budget, the genius truly shines.

Priorities in the Apocalypse

Nothing sums up the satirical brilliance better than the airlifted animals. There is a shot of a giraffe being flown over the Himalayas in a harness. While billions of humans are drowning or falling into fissures, the global elite made sure the giraffes had a first-class ticket.

Why It Works

Most disaster movies try to make you feel the weight of the loss. 2012 scales the destruction up so high that the human brain just short-circuits. You can't process the death of six billion people, so you end up rooting for the dog (who, of course, survives) and laughing as a cruise ship gets dumped onto a mountain.

It’s a masterpiece of excess. It’s a film where the "happy ending" is a few thousand rich people and some world leaders floating on a giant boat while the entire map of the world is erased. If that isn't a dark comedy, I don't know what is.

Next time you watch it, stop looking for the science. Look for the irony. It’s a much better movie that way.