Animation and International Film nominees at the Saturn Awards

As I promised twice, I'm completing my coverage of the movie nominees at the Saturn Awards before moving on to television. I'm shuffling the order of categories a bit to feature Best Animated Film first.

Best Animated Film:

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
The Bad Guys 2
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
The SpongeBob Movie: Search For Squarepants
Zootopia 2

The professionals' choice is KPop Demon Hunters, which won Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes plus a GRAMMY for "Golden" and leads the Gold Derby odds to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. I voted for it. That doesn't mean it will win here. As I last wrote in 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' leads Best Action/Adventure Film at the Saturn Awards, "the Saturn Awards are about entertainment not art, they don't care for subtle, and they love to stick it to the experts." It's the last criterion that I think might sway the vote to Zootopia 2. I predicted that Finding Dory would beat Zootopia in 2017 (it did) and something similar could happen here. That the Saturn Awards Instagram account made an image for Zootopia 2, reproduced above, but not for Kpop Demon Hunters. Things that make me say hmm.

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films instituted a new award this year, Best International Animated Film, and here are its nominees.

Best International Animated Film (New Category)

Attack on Titan the Movie: The Last Attack
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc
The Colors Within
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle
Ne Zha 2
Stitch Head

This is a category where I didn't pay attention to expert/professional opinion. I voted for Ne Zha 2 because it was the highest grossing movie in the world released during 2025. On the other hand, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle had a much higher gross in North America and earned a Golden Globe nomination. On those bases, I think it's more likely to win, although Attack on Titan the Movie: The Last Attack has the highest IMDB rating of all the nominees in this category. I would neither be upset nor surprised if either of the latter win.

The next logical category and the last one today is Best International Film.

Best International Film:

40 Acres
Bring Her Back
Dead of Winter
Night Call
The Ugly Stepsister
Sisu 2: Road to Revenge

I voted for Bring Her Back because it was the one I'd heard the most about and it has the highest IMDB rating of all the nominees in this category. That doesn't mean it will will win. The original Sisu won two years ago and I wouldn't be surprised if its sequel wins this year.

That's a wrap for today's installment. Stay tuned for the television nominations next, either tomorrow or Sunday.

Previous posts about the 53rd Saturn Awards

• 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' leads Best Science Fiction Film nominees at the Saturn Awards
• 'Sinners' leads Best Thriller Film nominees at the Saturn Awards
• 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' vs. 'Superman' for Best Cinematic Adaptation Film at the Saturn Awards
• 'Wicked: For Good' leads Best Fantasy Film at the Saturn Awards
• 'Frankenstein' leads Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards for Friday the 13th
• 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' leads Best Action/Adventure Film at the Saturn Awards
• 'Dust Bunny' leads Best Independent Film at the Saturn Awards

Colbert on the Supreme Court and Omicron variant

Two months ago, I posted Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee on reproductive rights for today's Women's Marches and Saturday's Women's March for the first Monday in October. Last night, Stephen Colbert featured the reason for the Women's Marches in his monologue, It's Looking Rough For Roe | Tracking Omicron From 'Moronic' To 'No Crimbo'.

That stench emanating from the Supreme Court Is the smell of conservative justices, five of whom were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, doing exactly what they were put there to do: restrict access to abortions. Elsewhere, anti-vaxxers have been cooking up wild new pandemic conspiracy theories since the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

I wish I could say I was surprised by the arguments before the Supreme Court, but I foresaw this coming in last year's John Oliver examines the Supreme Court after 'Last Week Tonight' wins four Emmy Awards.

In addition to all the bad things that can happen to health care, reproductive rights, civil rights, and voting rights as a result of this nomination, Oliver explained how the U.S. got here with an anti-democratic but pro-republican (double meaning intended) governing structure and what can be done to fix it...Expanding the Supreme Court has its risks, but I'm not against it.

"The bad things that can happen to...reproductive rights" are already on their way. This is one of those times I wish I weren't right. As for expanding the courts, the Democrats need a bigger majority in the Senate, one that doesn't count on Manchin and Sinema to pull it off.

That segment, while funny, depressed me. On the other hand, the paranoia about the pandemic in response to the Omicron variant being detected in the U.S. was a lot more amusing. The whole "omicron equals moronic" meme ignores the two words being anagrams of each other for as long as both words have existed with their current spellings in English; it's not anything new. Also, the response to the second case of the Omicron variant in the U.S. being diagnosed in an attended to an anime convention reminds me that I haven't referred to "Dragonball Z" here since Over 9000! That was a little more than nine years ago, and even then I didn't type out the name of the show. There are still new things to write about on this blog.

The Weather Channel compares the 2005 and 2020 Atlantic hurricane seasons as tropical storms Teddy and Vicky form

I posted the following to my Dreamwidth account yesterday.

I tweeted several times about how this year's Atlantic hurricane season is outpacing the so-far record 2005 season. The two tweets that summarize the rest were "As someone else already observed, this is the 'Earliest 'S' storm in history, smashing Stan (2005) by 23 DAYS.' That year, the National Hurricane Center ran out of names and used Geek letters Alpha through Delta" and "There are only three names left this year, so I expect that will happen again. Tropical Storm Theta by the end of the season, anyone?" That was in response to the naming of Tropical Storm Sally. I'm not the only one. The Weather Channel uploaded this video late last week.

"There's a lot of similarities with the atmosphere here in 2020 that there was in 2005."

We want you to be prepared for what this hurricane season can bring. We can't emphasize enough how important it is to have a plan well before you need one.

Ah, 2020!

This morning, I saw the following image on Twitter.


The image shows Tropical Storm Teddy. In addition, Tropical Depression 21 is now Tropical Storm Vicky, which means there is only one storm name left for this season, Wilfred. That all but guarantees that tropical systems will be named using the Greek alphabet this year for only the first time since 2005. It also means these are the earliest formed Atlantic systems by storm number. Vicky formed 25 days earlier in the year than Vince in 2005. Yikes!

Speaking of which, I was wrong about the number of storms using the Greek alphabet 15 years ago. The Wikipedia article on the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season lists the last one as Zeta, not Delta. That means this season's storms could blow past Theta all the way to Lambda or Mu. Cue the Pokemon memes!

A happy drum corps Canada Day 2018 on the second Souther

Happy Canada Day, the first of three patriotic holidays in July.  Today is also Souther, a holiday John Michael Greer and I co-founded that falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Summer Solstice, the mascot for which is a wombat, an Australian animal.   Now, how do I celebrate both at once?  Is there a Canadian corps that wears Aussie hats and plays "Waltzing Matilda?"  Yes, there is!

I begin today's festivities by reaching back into the archives for the 1959 Preston Scout House.


The first year of this series, I shared videos of the Oakland Crusaders and Seneca Optimists.  The next year, I featured their predecessors, the Toronto Optimists and De La Salle Oaklands.  It was only a matter of time before I kicked things off with the other famous pre-DCI Canadian corps, the Preston Scout House.

Follow over the jump for Canadian corps from the 1970s to the 2010s, along with some ice cream for Souther.

Wild boars may prevent people from returning to towns near Fukushima

I know I hinted twice that I would celebrate Purim on this blog, I've decided to skip it this year because today marks the sixth anniversary of the Fukushima triple disaster.  That is an occasion much more on topic for the blog's themes, so today I observe an anniversary of DOOM instead of joy.*

After six years, conditions have managed to improve near the ruin nuclear plant, enough that people might return.  Gizmodo has the story.

In just a few weeks, the residents of a Fukushima city will finally be allowed to return to their homes. Trouble is, the place has been overrun by hundreds of belligerent and potentially radioactive wild boars, prompting public safety concerns.

At the end of March, the six-year-long evacuation order will be lifted for Namie, a city located just 2.5 miles (4 km) from the damaged nuclear power plant. Radiation levels, now measured at 0.07 microsieverts an hour, are the same as they are in other areas of Japan. Namie is the closest area to the nuclear meltdown residents have been allowed to return to since the disaster on March 11, 2011, but the continued presence of wild boars in the region is making prospective homecomers nervous.

Newsy has more in Boars overrun Fukushima.



High radiation levels drove people away from many areas of Fukushima.
I shouldn't have been surprised.  As the video noted, Chernobyl became an impromptu wildlife refuge, complete with radioactive wolves, so the evacuation zone around Fukushima becoming one as well should have been expected.

Finally, the idea of Fukushima being infested with radioactive boars evoked the image of the giant boar demon from the opening scene of "Princess Mononoke."  I wasn't the only one to think that, as Gizmodo used the following illustration for their article.


Geeky minds think alike.

*No, I won't observe it tomorrow, as that is the beginning of Daylight Saving Time.  I'll save it for next year, when it falls on the evening of February 28th -- perfect timing!

Canadian drum corps for Canada Day

Happy Canada Day!  To celebrate the first of three patriotic holidays I observe during July at this blog, I'm going to do what I've done for the 4th of July and Flag Day--make it a drum corps holiday with corps from north of the border.

I begin with the 1976 Oakland Crusaders playing "El Gato Triste."


1976 may have been the USA's bicentennial, but it was the only year two Canadian corps made DCI Finals.  Here is the other, the Seneca Optimists.

The Seneca Optimists earned a spot as a finalist corps in its first year of a merger between the Seneca Princemen (founded in 1972) and Toronto Optimists (founded in 1952). The new corps was particularly noted for its bright yellow uniform jackets.

The corps’ 10th-place 1976 production kicked off with “5th Movement, Rondo: Finale” from Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 7,” a movement Mahler referred to as “bright day” after the “night pieces” of the second and fourth movements and the “shadow-like” waltz of the third. Premiered in 1908, the symphony remains the least recorded of his 10 symphonies. The Optimists stated the main theme with brass players goose-stepping toward the center of the field while playing to the front.

Follow over the jump for more Canadian corps from the 1980s to the 2000s.

2016 Saturn Awards for Movies, part 1: Films

I concluded 2016 Saturn Awards for Television with "I have to say that this past year has been a very good one for speculative fiction and other genre entertainment.  That is even more true with the movies, which I'll write about next week.  Stay tuned."  Next week has arrived and with it my post on the movie nominations.

Like last week, I begin with the 42nd Annual Saturn Awards - Movie Nominations.

VOTE for your favorites, become a Saturn Awards Affiliate Member...
[UPDATE to NOMINATIONS]
Dear Friends of the Saturn Awards:

It has been an exciting time for all genre fans with the release of this year’s Saturn Awards nominations. After careful consideration, we are making an adjustment on our nomination list. We are moving actor John Boyega to the category of Best Actor in a Film. This more correctly reflects his contributions to the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We all look forward to voting and honoring the best in genre entertainment.

I wasn't keeping count, but Wikipedia was, and it found "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" the most nominated movie with 15 nominations.  Among the science fiction films, "Mad Max: Fury Road" earned ten, "Jurassic World" had eight, and "Ex Machina" and "The Martian" each had six.

Follow over the jump for my opinions of the nominees and which ones I currently intend to vote for.

Asking advice on naming my Prius

Today, I'm tackling another of this month's prompts, "Do you prefer to take advice from strangers or from people close to you?"  The answer is that I prefer to take advice from the people close to me.  I know where they're coming from and how much I can trust them.  That written, I'm going to ask both friends and strangers about what to name my Prius.


Follow over the jump for the names I want my readers' advice on.

Fandoms collide as a drum corps plays anime music

Otakon, possibly still the largest anime convention in the U.S., begins today.  Drum corps season is also in full swing.  Between the convergence of those events* and my current "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood, I'm going to connect the two by posting an example of two of my fandoms colliding, Madison Scouts playing the theme to "Lupin III" from "The Castle of Cagliostro," one of my favorite anime movies.

The 1998 Madison Scouts play the theme from Lupin III at DCI World Championships in Orlando.

Not a bad connection.

I'll see if I can post something more serious tomorrow.  In the meantime, enjoy the show!

Music for a dwarf planet

First Ceres, now Pluto, as GeoBeats News reports New Horizons Contacts Earth After Pluto Flyby.

The historic Pluto mission has officially been declared a success.

After going dark when its intense observational period of Pluto began, the New Horizons spacecraft transmitted its first signal back to the NASA crew indicating safe passage Tuesday night.
...
The first images from the flyby are expected to be shared with the public shortly, and New Horizons will continue to stream back information over the next 16 months.

That news deserves a musical celebration.  I present Pluto, the Renewer by Colin Matthews, accompanied by images of the outermost of Outer Senshi, Sailor Pluto.


National Geographic News has more on this composition in Why Classical Music Snubbed Pluto, Too.

[I]t turns out that Pluto was creating kerfuffles almost from the moment it was discovered—even among world-reknowned composers.
...
Holst was alive for Pluto’s discovery in 1930, but while astronomers hailed Pluto as a new planet, the composer “showed no interest” in making a new movement, Salgado said.

For one thing, Pluto had no astrological meaning. For another, Holst “kind of resented the popularity of The Planets, because it overshadowed the rest of his catalog.”

By popular demand—and a commission from the Hallé Orchestra in the U.K.—there is a movement for Pluto, written by Holst scholar and composer Colin Matthews in 2000.

I'm looking forward to all the images and discoveries from this mission.  In the meantime, enjoy the music!

Detroit media covers Youmacon

I'm in another "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood, so for the Sunday collapse-related entertainment entry, I'm dispensing with the collapse and going directly for the entertainment, albeit one with a personal connection.

Youmacon, the major Detroit anime and video game convention, was held last weekend at Cobo Center.  I've never attended, but I know the person who organizes it, Morgan Kollin.  Eight years ago, my then-roommates were friends of his and he'd come over to visit.  I had an invitation to go in 2006, but I didn't feel up to it.  Even if I had, I had another engagement to go to that day and would have gone there, instead.  In retrospect, I should have gone.

At the time, Youmacon was just getting off the ground, but it's now a major entertainment event, one that the local media found worth covering.  I begin with WXYZ covering the last day of the convention with four clips during their Sunday morning broadcast.  They opened with an interview of Morgan.


Compare this interview with WDIV's segment from the morning of the first day--Youmacon 2014: Celebrating amine, video games--and WWJ's taped segment from the day before--WWJ-TV in Youmacon Anime Convention To Takeover Downtown Detroit (Video).  Unfortunately, the videos at those links won't embed here.  I think Morgan looks and sounds a lot less chipper than he did on Thursday.  I guess four days of running the convention took its toll.

Follow over the jump for more videos from WXYZ, along with coverage from the Detroit Free Press, WWJ-TV, CW50, The News Herald, and Examiner.com.

Talk like a Japanese space pirate

For Talk Like a Pirate Day, I've done Jack Sparrow twice, Swedish hackers once, and even Ragnar Danneskjold the Objectivist pirate once.  Today, I will truly put the International in International Talk like a Pirate Day by featuring Captain Harlock, the most famous Japanese space pirate.  He's not even speaking English!

Captain Harlock Japanese Opening with English subs

The original Japanese opening for the '70 version of the show.

That's a pirate singing a pop song.  What about the character actually speaking his lines?

Captain Harlock movie with Theme of Pirates of the Caribbean


I couldn't leave Jack Sparrow completely behind, now could I?

Blast from the past: Sarah Palin's Naughty Monkey Shoes

After posting Blast from the past: Joan Rivers vs. Sarah Palin, I remembered that I had another entry in the Daily Kos archives about Governor Palin, Palin's Naughty Monkey Shoes, which was also posted to my LiveJournal.  Since I'm in an "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood and I can't resist another trip to the well, here it is.

As I was reading one of Vanity Fair's two recent articles on Sarah Palin, quite a few things struck me, both serious and silly.  I'm saving the serious ones for another post.  This entry is for the silly ones.

Follow me over the jump for the details.

Driving update for July 2014: Yuki

Last night, my car Yuki turned over 221,000 miles just before I pulled her into my driveway, which is where her odometer sits right now.  That means it's time to update my miles driven since Driving update for April 2014: Yuki.

It's been 88 days since Yuki passed 220,000 miles on April 12, 2014.  The result is that my rate of driving increased to 11.36 miles/day and 346.59 miles per month.  Those are quite a lot more than the 8.77 miles/day and 267.54 miles/month from the last update.  However, they're less than I drove during the comparable period last year, when it took me 81 days to drive 1000 miles between April and July for averages of 12.35 miles/day and 376.5 miles/month.  Yay!  I'm down year over year!

It turns out that I'm bucking the national trend, which Calculated Risk reported was Vehicle Miles Driven increased 1.8% year-over-year in April.

Travel on all roads and streets changed by 1.8% (4.6 billion vehicle miles) for April 2014 as compared with April 2013.

Here's the relevant graph.


People may be driving more than last year, but peak driving still happened in December 2007.

Finally, the July 2013 update was exactly a year ago, so I can calculate miles per year, month, and day much more precisely.  I drove 4,000 miles in exactly one year and averaged 333.33 miles/month and 10.96 miles/day.  Now I have to go back and estimate the miles per year from July to July for the two years before that.  Later.  I have to drive to work.

Happy Canada Day, 2014!

It's time to be a good environmentalist and recycle again.


I celebrate three patriotic holidays every July, Canada Day, Independence Day, and Bastille Day. Time to mark the first of them by wishing a Happy Canada Day to all of my readers on the other bank of the Detroit River!

Fabius Maximus on 'Castle'

The big entertainment event of the evening is The Tony Awards, but I took a look at the nominees and decided that there were too few nominees that were on topic for this blog that I passed.  Besides, musicals and plays work well for tourists and culture vultures, but they just aren't the mass entertainment that they used to be, especially in the days when musicals went from the stage to the screen.  Now, they're more likely to go the other way, as at least three of the nominees, Aladdin, Bridges of Madison County, and Bullets over Broadway, were films first and musicals second, while a quick pass through shows only two, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Les Miserables, that went from stage to screen.  I'm not counting the various revivals of Shakespeare; besides, they're not musicals.

For my Sunday entertainment-themed entry, I'm linking instead to Fabius Maximus, who posted a series on the show Castle.

 (1) Spoilers for “Castle”: explaining the finale & season 7. It’s a metaphor for America.
 (2) What we do here. Why it’s unpopular. And our new theme.
 (3) What the TV show “Castle” teaches us about America, and ourselves, — About our myths
 Intermission: Watching the weekly adventures of our fun stylish security police — Looking at NCIS: LA
 (4) The TV show “Castle” challenges us to see our changing values. Most fans decline, horrified.
 (5) “Castle” shows us marriage in America, a fault line between our past & future
 (6) “Castle” shows us a dark vision of Romance in America
 (7) Richard Castle shows us the dark reality of justice in 21st C America
 (8) “Castle” shows that many of us don’t defend New America because we don’t like it
 (9) The bitter fruits of our alienation from America
(10) How you can start the campaign to reform America

In keeping with this month's comment theme, I'm quoting the conversations Fabius and I had in comments on some of these entries.  Follow over the jump for them.

The economics of anime and manga plus bonus movie links

Avril Lavigne - Hello Kitty
For tonight's entertainment-themed entry, I'm going to recycle and combine two entries I originally posted to fandom_lounge on JournalFen.  First, the perils of cultural globalization from All of Sailor Moon licensed for U.S. market plus bonus Avril Lavinge.

I begin with The economics behind Avril Lavigne's creepy "Hello Kitty" video from Ezra Klein's Vox.com about the unintended consequences of the past decade's boom in cultural exports.

Japanese cultural appropriation is a bonafide thing.

For this, you can blame Japan's economy. Or at least sort of: Japan's economic rise and stagnation contributed to a massive corporate effort to export Japanese culture, which made it much more available to non-Japanese like Avril. For both good or, in this case, ill.

Broadly speaking, Americans have become much more aware of Japanese cultural touchstones - ramen, Pokemon, J-pop - in recent years. Between 1992 and 2002, Japanese cultural exports tripled in value.  Take a look at this chart of the size of the US manga (roughly, Japanese comics) market over time:

I was there for that expansion in the number of manga titles in the U.S. and the resulting boom in sales, along with booms in anime, video games, Japanese snack food, and collectibles, and I thought it was glorious.  I'd been a fan of Japanese animation since I was a kid in Los Angeles in the 1960s and watched the first Astro Lad broadcast in the U.S., along with Kimba the White Lion, The 8-Man, Speed Racer, and the Amazing Three.  Now, the grandchildren of all those shows had arrived and I could enjoy them all with my younger daughter, who was also a fan.  Speaking of her, follow over the jump for news about the show that got her hooked on anime.

Driving update for April 2014: Yuki

I ended Driving update for December 2013: My car by postponing making good on a promise.

Also, I made a promise at the end of the last report.

Yes, I bought this car in October 2003.  I have a story about that, but I'll save it for the next report, along with why I named my car Yuki.  Stay tuned.

I'm going to take a rain check on this promise.  These look like the kind of stories I would write to post while I'm traveling, which I might do over the next two weeks.

Instead, I explained the name of my wife's car.

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not up to it.  Besides, this report is about my wife's car, which I call Ruby (my wife doesn't give her cars names).  I gave her that name because of the car's color and because my wife and I are fans of "Once Upon a Time," which had a character named Ruby, who is really Red Riding Hood, for the first two seasons.

Well, my car will turn over 220,000 miles today, so it's time to tell her story.

My previous car, a Nissan I called Molly, died in October 2003 after she turned over 210,000 miles during a drive back from an anime convention in South Bend, Indiana, although I didn't realize it at the time.  I heard the engine knocking, which it did when the oil was low.  I put in two quarts of oil (!) and continued driving home.  Within a week, I had to put in more oil, and the engine began to sound just horrible.  I took it in for service, and found out that all the seals had blown and the engine was getting ready to throw a rod.  That was the end of my driving Molly.  I had to get a new car.

About this time, one of the local Kia dealerships was advertising its deal.  "Got a job?  Got $100?  Get a new Kia!"  I qualified, so I rented a car and drove over to the nearest Kia dealer and got Yuki.  It wasn't even the right dealership, but that didn't matter.  I picked out a car from the previous model year that had a rebate to entice people to get it off the lot.  I was able to roll that rebate into the down payment and was able to drive Yuki home without paying a cent.  Ah, the long-gone days of easy credit!

As for Molly, the dealership accepted her as a trade-in worth $50 and had her towed away.  At least I was able to get scrap value and free towing.   Best of all, Yuki's interior looked exactly like Molly's.  From the inside, it was as if I had just gotten a newer version of the same car with an automatic transmission.  As I wrote back in 2011 and again in 2012, it was a concession to comfort and age.

When I needed to buy a car, I got a Kia instead. It got 32 miles to the gallon, but it was an automatic. I was willing to sacrifice a few miles to the gallon so that my left foot and right hand could rest. Yeah, I'm a sucker for convenience, too.

At least it wasn't the Aztek my son wanted me to buy.  That would have been an environmental and economic disaster.

As for the name, my younger daughter suggested Yuki after Yuki Saiko, a character in the manga and anime "Silent Mobius."  The character's image is the one I used at the head of this entry.  It's the same one my younger daughter downloaded as a wallpaper on the computer I owned at the time.  Why Yuki?  In addition to "Silent Mobius" being a mutual favorite of ours, my daughter picked her out as the kind of woman she'd want for me; she was sweet, pretty and owned a coffee shop.*  Yes, I love my coffee.  Besides, the artist who drew the manga was named Kia Asamiya.  My daughter wanted to name a creation of one Kia after the creation of another Kia.  It stuck and that's how a Korean car got a Japanese name. 

Follow over the jump for the statistics, footnotes, and a music video.

The Archdruid and I have a conversation about science fiction

Cover art for The Pastel City.
At the end of I inspired The Archdruid to write about Steampunk, I observed that Greer's next essay is about Fascism.  That's up and I've responded to it, but while I'm waiting for my comments to be approved and Greer to respond to them, I'm going to revisit an earlier entry of his, Return of the Space Bats.  In it, Greer reminisces about his favorite genre of science fiction and how it might be useful for telling narratives about the future that he sees coming.  He then challenged his readers to a science fiction short story contest taking place in a post-collapse future.  While I'm a science fiction fan, I'm working for a different future than what he expects.  That didn't stop me from participating.  After all, in the very first post, I promised "expect digressions about post-apocalyptic science fiction."  Follow over the jump for the conversation.

Spygames and paranoia 2: The World of Watchcraft

I finished Spygames and paranoia 1: No that's not Cthulhu on the patch by pointing out that people were worrying about the wrong thing.

If they want something to freak out about, it's the spying going on inside the World of Warcraft.  That's real.  It's also silly.  Stay tuned for more on this story.

I then procrastinated more at the end of Forging an Urak-Hai: an educational experience.

I looked for a text story to accompany this video, but instead found Orc And Dagger: U.S. Reportedly Spied On Gamers Online about the story I promised to cover as part two of Spygames and paranoia 1: No that's not Cthulhu on the patch.  I'll use that one in the morning.  Right now, I'm going to bed.  Good night!

Here it is, the morning of the next day, and I've already used that story in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Jade Rabbit lands on Moon), so it's finally time to post it here.

NPR via KPBS: Orc And Dagger: U.S. Reportedly Spied On Gamers Online
Bill Chappell / NPR
Monday, December 9, 2013

U.S. and British intelligence agencies have worked to infiltrate networks of violence-prone individuals who might unite for a common cause. And in some cases, the spies are also targeting networks that aren't regional terrorist cells -- they're online gaming communities, according to the latest revelation from documents given to the media by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

"Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments" is the name of a 2008 NSA document being cited in coordinated reports out Monday from The Guardian, ProPublica and The New York Times.

The reports describe spy agencies' push to infiltrate systems that allow millions of people to closely collaborate and even exchange money -- all through a veil of alternate identities.

The project involved spies creating identities in networks that include Second Life and World of Warcraft, according to the reports. Another arm of the work is said to have collected massive amounts of data from Microsoft's Xbox Live network and elsewhere.

The effort was not a small one, the news agencies report. In fact, so much anti-terrorism work was being conducted in the virtual worlds that a separate "deconfliction" group was tasked with monitoring spies from the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI so that they wouldn't interfere with -- or waste time spying on -- one another, according to Pro Publica.

This is a silly project for various reasons.  The more serious objections were raised in the New York Times story, summarized here by two reporters having a chat on WOW in character, pun intended.  Follow over the jump for the video.