You should learn a little yourself before teaching lies.

Wikipedia says tipping for service goes back to the 1500s, and was imported into America from Europe in the 1850s, before slavery was abolished.

"The main reason USSR engineers were not innovating was lack of incentives"

ie, the same kind of central economy as China has. Both countries have incentives, but they are only as "markety" as the central planners want.

"The US nearly bankrupted itself trying to win the cold war. Lucky USSR folded first. This time the US may not be so lucky."

The US never came close to bankruptcy before the USSR dissolved. US governments have and continue making lots of stupid decisions, but bankruptcy during the Cold War was never one of them. And luck had nothing to do with the USSR folding first. It was inevitable. As unfree as the US market economy is, it is freer than the USSR and China by every measurement. China would have to ditch the CCP and dump Xi in jail to have any hope of bankrupting the US.

Let me get this straight: you claim Xi is not a dictator because he won an election by legal means?

Hitler was also elected, and the 1933 Enabling Decree was legal too. Are you claiming Hitler was not a dictator simply because he won an election?

Stalin and all Soviet dictators came to power by legal elections. Are you claiming they were not dictators?

"they just could not do much with the tools and components they had"

Yes, because they depended on a planned economy to provide the tools. China is little different. Why do you think their real estate market is falling apart? Because the central government told them to build ghost cities and high speed rail to them. Why are they pushing the Nine Dash Line and upsetting every single country in the area? Because Xi's ego demands it for his legacy.

Eugenics and McCarthyism were just as bad as wokism is now. Eugenics has never really disappeared. But they were brought under control as voters changed regimes. China doesn't have that option any more than Nazi German or the USSR did.

You're out of date. Used to be freer than most communist states, but Xi went for that third term, the real estate binge is crashing, Hong Kong is no longer free, and he's making noises about Taiwan and the Nine Dash Line to distract the public from domestic problems. It's not nearly as free as it used to be, and the real estate bust and navy buildup are soaking up a lot of money.

Someone published a book a few years back about the difference between territorial nations and naval nations, although I forget his exact terms. Point is that territorial nations need armies to defend borders, such as Germany, eastern European countries, Russia. Armies are very hierarchical, very much top-down command structure, because that's what you need to coordinate armies. Naval nations don't need to defend borders nearly as much, so they develop merchant trading networks and navies to defend them. Navies even now, with satellite communications, are more independent than armies, and they and merchant traders foster independence.

There are hybrids, and two that come to mind are France and China. Both absolutely need armies, although the EU has made France's need less. But China absolutely has a lot of borders to defend from Russia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, India, Vietnam, and while it does depend on trade, that is not the existential threat of land invasion.

Every war France was in with England, the army came first. The navy never got enough money to practice and drill, and lost more battles than they won. China had that explorer who got as far as Africa, but then land threats distracted them and the ocean-going fleets were disbanded and forbidden.

China's army-navy problem is the same now. If they do get involved in any kind of naval dustup, it will embolden their territorial neighbors, and the navy will be cut back. Attacking Taiwan, for instance, takes a navy to do the invasion, but then needs an army to sustain it and maintain the occupation, and that will draw down army resources elsewhere. Trying to build up islands in the South China Sea has pissed off everyone in the area and they have lost a lot of good will which will take decades to restore; if they get bogged down anywhere else, they will lose their tenuous grip on the Nine Dash Line.

Xi isn't stupid, but dictators surround themselves with Yes men, and Xi has too. His instincts are to crack down, just as with the Uighurs, with Hong Kong, with the Nine Dash Line, with Taiwan. He won't have the patience to tolerate any domestic problems.

Comparing the tech available now with the 1940s-70s is silly.

And saying that political oppression can be separated from doing scientific research shows you know little of history or research or innovation. Look up Lysenkoism. Look up Winnie the Pooh in China. Look up the Stasi. Look up the history of electronics research in East Germany and the USSR.

Oppressive regimes breed snitches, who are incredibly eager to make up lies about colleagues and neighbors to reduce the competition. You have led a sheltered life if you have never experienced that kind of atmosphere.

Ideological dictators are immune to reason, logic, facts, and everything else which one can argue with. Greedy dictators are at least open to alternatives.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." -- C.S. Lewis

Yes, because they have to; an embargo is a one-shot weapon which can never be undone. It also makes all countries, not just the embargoed one, more distrustful of trade relations.

No, because China is a dictatorship, and an ideological one at that, the least open to the free thought and innovation and cooperation that brings innovation. It's not that the USSR and Nazi Germany were incapable of innovation, but their engineers and scientists would have innovated more without having to look over their shoulders and wondering who was today's snitch.

I wondered about that too. Seems unlikely a lab would be that sloppy, but it also seems unlikely astronauts would be sloppy choosing and handling samples.

Another answer is that the Chinese water beads are very localized from some comet that hit nearby, and few other locations have such water beads.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out over the next few years. I wonder if there's any way to detect these water beads from orbiting satellites.

The Apollo missions brought back a lot more mass, IIRC. Why did this water not show up in them?

A possible answer is that the Apollo samples were hand-picked by humans. Maybe they only selected rocks, not dirt and dust. Maybe such small pieces fell off during selection and inspection. Maybe the Chinese samples were picked up as scooped material.

Part of me is laughing my ass off, Apple getting a bit of karma after their crazy design patent battles with Samsung over rounded corners on smart phones.

Live by the patent, die by the patent, or something. Better to innovate than copy, whether the copying is "legal" or not.

Their selection is terrible compared to what it used to be. I'll sometimes see a reference to an old movie, especially film noir from the 1950s, check Netflix, it says I watched it 15 years ago and is now unavailable.

It's also the only way to get the bonus features -- commentary by the cast and crew, deleted scenes, and sometimes the "making of" features are interesting, like when there is lots of CGI or spectacular stunts.

I'd drop my DVD subscription in a heartbeat if ...

* You could stream bonus features.
* You could stream old movies.
* They'd make their streaming site useful.

I've found the best way to clear my mind before sleep is read something completely unrelated to anything else that requires no subsequent thinking. Sometimes owner's manuals for some new simple gadget. But the best by far is the short stories in Peck's series of Bad Boy stories. He wrote them for his Newspaper in the 1880s to increase circulation. They are 3-4 pages, a 5 or 10 minute read, with delightful illustrations. The Bad Boy is a teenager always getting into trouble, like putting signs in the grocer's produce -- "Cabbage the cat has slept in, 5 cents". The bad boy's father is a drunk, his mother is a saint, the grocer is a cheat, the preacher is a hypocrite. The bad boy lines his father's had with limburger cheese. He wraps a card deck in his father's pocket handkerchief and soaks it with rum so his church speech goes haywire. My favorite is when he learns the grocer has rigged a darning needle beneath a hole in the counter where the bad boy sits, with a string to pull and stab the bad boy. The bad boy puts a piece of wood in his pocket and sits down. While the grocer is leaning down to see what is wrong, the bad boy gives up his seat to the preacher who has just strolled in, the preacher gets stabbed, and the bad boy leaves as they are rolling around the floor.

They are not politically correct by any means, but they were in a family newspaper in the 1880s.

There are probably thousands of similar books. Find any collection of 5 minute reads, none with cliffhanger ends. Nothing does better at separating daytime thinking from nighttime nothing.

I remember discovering you could muck with the add tables to use any base less than 10. I don't remember now how the multiplication tables were organized and whether they could also be changed to different bases.

We did have 1311, but I don't remember address 00796 particularly.

A friend and I had a contest to see who could get the most instructions on one punched card. I won with, I think, 120, overlapping data and instructions. It typed THIMK over and over on the console typewriter. One sense switch changed the speed, another halted it. It was THIMK because the M was the halt instruction.