captainperl

One of the most interesting geology articles I've ever read.

> in the US, it’s basically impossible to involuntarily lose citizenship

Over the past 20 years, several laws have been passed that erode proof of citizenship:

- id documents with an expiry date are not usable after that date (expired passports used to be accepted for domestic non-travel uses)

- the Evite database decides whether you can work at many companies

- parish records are sometimes deemed unacceptable as proof of birth, disallowing the reissue of other documents like passports

- some people have duplicate SSNs

- in the past year, a small number of people in both the USA and Canada have been told their original and valid citizenship documents were not valid by Immigration, with the burden of proof on the citizens.

The money is there - $250 million per year for social workers alone in SF and increasing ...

The will to build a single unit of housing for homeless people isn't though.

> I'm now locked out unless I upload a driver's license or passport id to prove my identity.

No, If you wait long enough (12-24 months of inactivity) they'll email you a magic "open sesame" link that bypasses the login screen. No account password or session cookie needed.

There's several interesting things about this:

1) You could modify the "open sesame" link to login as anybody else who is inactive.

2) Your profile will be slightly broken, as they do numerous software updates weekly apparently without migrating inactive account data reliably.

How do I know this? My gf handles 100% of our social media presence, so I just have a FB account for occasional software testing. HTH! :)

> Isnt the point of the certification to be the expert? I'm just a math guy that can read.

Enrolled Agents (EA) are very good on average as tax accountants. Not perfect, but if talk to them mid-reporting period and they'll have heard of new rules.

Beyond that, what you need to know about "professionals":

1) The job of a CPA is to collect their fees.

2) The job of a lawyer is to collect their fees.

3) "Professionals" rank larger entities ahead of individuals in fees and advancement.

> Because as I understand it, the US was largely aloof until Germany started pursuing atomic weapons ...

No. The USA public was isolationist until the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Germany stupidly declared war after Pearl Harbor in sympathy with Japan.

The key things to understand about WW2 are:

1) Germany and Japan declared war on a country they couldn't invade because of geography.

In other words, the USA did not have enough deterrence at the time to prevent WW2. [paraphrasing Victor David Hanson]

The B-29 was the ultimate weapon in WW2, not the atomic bomb (which was dropped from a B-29.) So much so that Russia spent vast resources after WW2 copying it down to the last rivet.

2) The USA was already the "arsenal of democracy" a year before Pearl Harbor. Historians regard Pearl Harbor as more of a trap than a victory for the Japanese, which would have required both sinking all of America's carriers plus a successful land invasion of Oahu to end well.

3) All sides thought that bombing the enemy's cities would break their will to fight. As any chess player knows, people will fight to the bitter end with very few exceptions.

BigCGI looks interesting. I signed up for your newsletter.

I'm ambivalent about WW1 since the US didn't do much fighting (too late into the war), and it was mostly trench warfare that wiped out European royalty, not necessarily a bad thing IMO.

But the inter-war years and WW2 are a fascinating epic.

The WW2 European conflict resulted from Germany losing WW1, but not being occupied. The WW2 Pacific conflict resulted from the USA embargoing Japan after they "colonized" Manchuria.

Yeah, I've been following the laundromat saga. If he can't develop a property like that one, then nobody can in SF.

TLDR;

11,000 words of gossip about GE CEO promotions with no insight into the actual business problems.

Makes the authors look like incompetent wannabe "journalists."