Being from the Detroit area, I find many of the comments here naive as one can't compare Detroit to an average urban city.
To understand what Detroit is like, watch a film like "Escape from New York" or a WW2 bombing documentary.
There are areas with no police or fire forces.
Also, the soil around mfg. plants (and downwind) have metal contamination. The air quality used to be worse than anything in China today, with choking curtains of black and red soot and oxides which precipitated into the soil.
So do your homework, get your firearm certifications and spend some time there before any relocation or investment.
It is a great location if you want cheap industrial space or your own truck marshalling yard (true story) and you don't need city services like elementary schools. Check out "Detroit Steel" to see more:
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Similarly, you can see a remarkable model airplane collection by Edward Chavez at SFO now. It was sponsored over two decades by the Nut Tree restaurant owner:
What's interesting is that this is happening in aerodynamics today as students and researchers rediscover on youtube the amazing Shell Oil-sponsored "High Speed Flight" videos from the 1950's - they're like an instant Masters Degree:
Atmospheric disturbance was a major problem for the SDI (Star Wars) project.
They came up with solutions, and no doubt there are more and cheaper solutions today, given advances in materials, computing and astrophoto stacking techniques.
Note that they were able to use off-the-shelf tank infrared detectors ($50,000 each) to detect ICBM launches from space, so I suspect even more cross-pollination 35 years later. For example, fiber optics are orders of magnitude better now.
The reddit post was interesting but not helpful (actionable) for other patients.
In the USA, if you experience the symptoms of a heart attack, you just take a taxi to the emergency ward, walk up to the receptionist and say, "I think I'm having a heart attack."
You will get priority over everybody else, minimal forms, and you don't need insurance to get initial treatment.
If you can think of other reasons for the symptoms, like you went to the gym for the first time the day before and have chest muscle soreness, then you can just sit in the lobby while you sort things out. (Walking up a flight of stairs at the hospital is a good DIY stress test. Some on-call doctors actually ask what entrance you arrived at, and if there's a ramp, they know you're prolly ok if you walked in.)
To understand what Detroit is like, watch a film like "Escape from New York" or a WW2 bombing documentary.
There are areas with no police or fire forces.
Also, the soil around mfg. plants (and downwind) have metal contamination. The air quality used to be worse than anything in China today, with choking curtains of black and red soot and oxides which precipitated into the soil.
So do your homework, get your firearm certifications and spend some time there before any relocation or investment.
It is a great location if you want cheap industrial space or your own truck marshalling yard (true story) and you don't need city services like elementary schools. Check out "Detroit Steel" to see more:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6403968/