> I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.

Yeah, I grew up watching that on PBS Mystery! and love it. I rewatched some of it as an adult and it holds up very well.

I also really liked David Suchet's Poirot. I still have yet to watch the last few seasons though.

I mean back in the day licensing Quake from iD was like that too. It was basically "hey, thanks for the $2 million, here's your cdr and never contact us again."

It was night and day between them and Epic back then, which I think is entirely why Unreal Engine grew to be such a juggernaut, and iD tech stagnated.

I'm glad you ask this, as it signals very clearly the need to get up and walk out of the room.

Same with your last sentence.

On the US keep in mind elections are run at the state level and below, so we don't have a single voting system, we have 50+.

My state, Oregon, for example uses a very straightforward vote by mail system. They ask if you wanna register to vote when you get/update your drivers license or state id. Your ballot just comes in the mail, you fill it out, send it back. For folks that lack a permanent address or similar, you can get provisional ballots at libraries and similar city offices. The provisional ballots make you fill out enough information to check if you're allowed to vote.

It's simple, convenient, secure, and efficient.

So why don't more states do it this way?

Unfortunately there's a long ugly history of using all sorts of dirty tricks for voter suppression in the US, in particular to keep Jim Crow going. And unfortunately variations of that continue today. I don't have the energy to dig into it fully here, I just want any international readers to be aware there's a whole lot of utterly craven bad faith when it comes to discussions around voting fraud and security in the US.

> Religion always seems like the default explanation for anything without an obvious use and it seems lazy.

This is one of the bits I remember from reading A Canticle for Leibowitz as a kid. It's about monks in a post nuclear armageddon world. At one point they find an ancient fallout shelter with a bathroom, and they interpret it as a spiritual space where a priest would sit on the "throne" and read "holy scrolls" held by the metal bar next to the throne...

I think we make that kind of mistake when doing armchair archeology or anthropology a lot.