Meanwhile, any question I ask that has a simple answer is ignored. Why was it commonly believed that China was a civilian dictatorship in 1988, more than a few years after Mao and Dengs time? Why is the one-party state of China not considered a dictatorship when one-party states are?

This entire conversation has been moving goalposts, and every time I defined the goalposts clearly enough to not be moved, you simply ran in another direction. I may not have gotten a university degree, but you've still done an amazingly poor job of defending your thesis.

I will give you points on the checks and balances applied after Mao reducing the risks of harm from the dictatorship of China, but the definition of a dictatorship doesn't rely on the benevolence of the leadership, merely the lack of power of the people to change it, which was not negated by dividing the powers of government between different levels.

My first link has the following quote:

Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian,[1] and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, personalist dictatorships, or absolute monarchies. (emphasis mine)

China has been a one-party state for the last 75 years, so the only question is whether or not it was also a dictatorship.

My second link has an infographic labeling China as a civilian dictatorship in 1988, which is prior to Xi putting himself in absolute authority, so how does it have nothing to do with the era prior to Xi taking absolute authority?

As for the handy little link you provided, that only talks about Xi, and we're agreed that he is a dictator running a dictatorship, so, while it's interesting, I'm not sure of the relevance unless your proposal is the the only thing that qualifies as a dictatorship is if it's run by a single individual. In which case, it seems there are a number of people in your purported field who disagree with that stance.

Do you mean like the summary in Wikipedia? Or how about the Democracy-Dictatorship Index? It seems a lot of people in political circles have been calling China a civilian dictatorship for at least 36 years, just based on the cute little pictures.

Feel free to read a definition that's more than one sentence long if you want an explanation for something as nuanced as political systems.

You're right, words do have meaning. Just because there is a transition from one dictator to another without bloodshed or death doesn't mean it isn't a dictatorship. Just because the dictator of the week is chosen by a committee doesn't mean it isn't a dictatorship. One-party systems are commonly accepted to be dictatorships because of the lack of ability by the people to choose their leader, rather it is chosen by the party (usually the party elites).

In this case, China is coming into its own as a regional hegemon, assuming their relatively new status as an outright dictatorship doesn't fuck that up.

China has been an outright dictatorship for a while now, it's just the lifetime leader that was recent.

The first company with reusable, commercial rocket stages, who will likely have the most space launches of any organization ever, has already done more launches than any other organization per year, and has brought the cost to orbit down by at least one order of magnitude, and you claim hype? I get the hate for Elon, but I think your feelings might be blinding you to easily verifiable facts. Just like the fact that in order to get anything passed, the US space program has to engage in some of the most inefficient manufacturing practices imaginable, which leads to the inflated costs I referred to in my previous comment. Again, easily verifiable facts. After all, whose shoulder did NASA tap on to resolve the problem of some stranded astronauts?

We lose thousands of tons of mass every year in the form of gases and gain a lesser amount in material from asteroids over the same period. The mass gain appears to have been quite dramatic, back when the earth was formed. Chaos would have reigned for a significant period after that, then we would likely have had a constantly diminishing amount of asteroid impacts. When exactly the earth went from a net annual gain of mass to a net loss is hard to say, but if you were to ask if the mass of the earth-moon system maintained an annual net zero mass change at any point, the answer would probably be "We don't know for sure."

Scientists say "We don't know for sure" when they definitively can't say the odds are zero. "Will flinging satellites out of the solar system change the orbit of the earth, causing it to plunge into the sun." "We don't know for sure." "Will setting off a nuclear bomb ignite the entire atmosphere?" "We don't know for sure." "Will running the Large Hadron Collider create strange matter that will annihilate the entire universe?" "We don't know for sure." The first question was asked by you, the other two were asked by senior officials at some point in the last 100 years. Even before they were asked, scientists were fairly certain that wouldn't be the result, but there was some small chance that it could, and scientists generally don't say "No" unless there is absolutely no chance something will happen.

Estimates for Starliner are currently at about $2.5 billion, with multiple test flights. Costs for the first launch of SLS was close to $5 billion. NASA is not where you go to see how little something could cost.

Which is the point. Voting third party won't fix the system, certainly not at the presidential level. So work with what you have now, and work towards something better in the areas where it's actually possible.

A reasonably safe, fairly effective pipe bomb is easy to make with the some basic theory and high school chemistry knowledge. A moderately safe, highly effective pipe bomb requires only slightly more knowledge and a deeper understanding of high school chemistry. This stuff was easy enough that people were using it over half a thousand years ago to good effect. If you can't figure it out now with a couple weeks effort and the breadth of knowledge at our disposal, that's on you.

Doing something that demonstrably doesn't work isn't how you get what you want. If you want an option besides Democrats and Republicans, voting for someone else where those two options have a lock on winning does nothing besides vent some spleen.

I'm not saying doing nothing is the solution, or even voting for the two main parties is the solution, but doing something that has been shown to be completely ineffective is not the solution.

Massive changes have been happening in the battery field for decades, they just aren't fast. Our rechargeable batteries are smaller, more energy-dense, longer-lasting, and cheaper than they were 40 years ago. They aren't magical, last forever, infinite power, instant recharge batteries, though, that's correct.

And absolutely HUGE pockets!

Remember, if it wasn't for Larry Ellison, LibreOffice wouldn't exist. I remember reading about those shenanigans while they were happening and desperately hoping a fork would appear soon. I wasn't disappointed.

I like how the face of every screw in that last picture is different. That's something, I guess.

Well, that's terrible, sure, but do you know how much they spend in American arms purchases?!

There's no evidence that what feels good to you actually reduces the odds of the perpetrator committing crimes again or reduces the rate of those crimes in society in general, and good evidence that what doesn't feel good to you does those things. So you will have to decide if you would rather feel good about how the person who did something wrong was punished or have less crime in your society.

Okay, you're sort if correct. He alluded to it. He mentioned the Russian Empire attacking various neighbors and taking over their territory using excuses of ethnicity and then referred to it as returning and reinforcing, not conquering. He then said it fell to their lot to return and reinforce, as well. Here's a link that discusses it. Given the date and the discussion, I'm sure you can find other sources for it. That was just the first that appeared on my search.

This isn't entirely incorrect, but this is pretty much what happened 10 years ago. And here we are. You can argue appeasement or suggest this is a one-time thing, but it's already the second time. Also, Putin has said he wants to rebuild the Soviet empire, so suggesting he will stop here on his own goes against his own statements.