They don't even realise we have more than one TV broadcaster, don't try and throw multiple nationalities into the fact mix too!

Yeah, I think Pop Vinyls are just the cynical end result of the mainstream commodification* of "geek culture".

It might be because the big prestige quiz shows on the BBC, University Challenge and Mastermind (and Only Connect), don't give cash prizes, just trophies and acclaim.
But there's loads of daytime, evening and Saturday night ones that dole out cash, it's just usually budgeted at £1000 per episode, with the amount…

Huh. You're right. I could have sworn the whole + and - thing was for CDs, but yeah it was blank DVDs.

There's no rule that BBC shows aren't allowed to give prizes.

Ultimate Fury was black before Ultimates in Millar's Ultimate X-Men, drawn by… I want to say Tom Derenick? Didn't look particularly like Jackson, but he wasn't a photo-realist artist. So probably a bit of both.

Except Millarworld isn't itself a publisher. It's an imprint (if that, it's a logo and a small editorial set-up) that works with Image, Icon (which is part of Marvel), Top Cow and others. So will Netflix continue those arrangements and just slap a Netflix logo on there (and will those companies be ok with that?) Or…

Say what you will about Millar's comics and his hucksterism, but he is properly left wing (unfortunately on the pro-Brexit end of it) and he does do a lot of charity work in his local area and has done for years. The main character's name in Kick Ass came from a charity auction, where the proceeds went towards a local…

Wow. On a British game show you're lucky to get more than £1,000.

It's not about big bucks? Don't they give away $25 grand in the prize round?

I just want to add that recordable CDs were even more complicated than just the R and RW distinction, with two different encoding types: + and - and not all burners could do both. And the indicator was unhelpfully buried within CD-RW or CD+R, with the minuses hiding out as hyphens. Confusing times.

For me it was either The World Is Not Enough or Stargate SG-1 volume 2 (which was, for reasons not worth going into, the first four episodes of season 2). My parents got those with our first DVD player.
I remember being really impressed by all the special features and menus and stuff, but a little confused by scene…

So a team lost out on a championship because a fan touched a ball that was technically still in play, despite being (practically) in the stands? Well that's just not cricket, is it?

I think you mean three inches of delicious icing doesn't need a cupcake dragging it down.

I didn't realise they'd actually changed the recipe. I thought it was just a rebranding to try and boost the (presumably terrible) sales of Coke Zero. They're pretty determined to make it work, to the point that they're frequently giving away free bottles if you buy regular Coke, which is pretty sad. They've…

McCain is quite like Trump. He's managed to fabricate this identity of being a maverick on the basis of being nothing of the sort (like the Donald is the greatest business who ever lived for spending his family money putting his name on things).

He's in that documentary about the Atari games being dug in the desert and the faint idea (hope?) I had that Ready Player One was a bit of a knowing swipe at the insular intolerance of "geek culture" dissipated as it became clear that he really is that much of an asshole.

Absolutely. The book paints cultural gate-keeping as a noble and valuable act. Kline/Wade's attitude to people less knowledgeable than him but trying to fit in is toxic - they're pathetic posers and must be mocked, not welcomed or encouraged, because screw those guys, they're not dedicated and special like Kline. It's…

That line about Madeline's boyfriend wanting to graduate and get on the Simpsons before it ended always stuck with me. I guess he managed to do that and is now one of the show's million-odd executive producers.

I liked Dreamland. It wasn't amazing, but it was still a hell of lot better than Vice. I would like the show to go back to its original premise though.