Don't forget the "banking hard."

That doesn't make sense. Electing one person has to be "winner takes all" and the head of state pretty much has to be one person. "Pretty much" because things like bi- and triumvirates are occasionally tried but they usually end badly. That happened in the US actually, where the runner up for president used to become vice president.

The real problem in the US is that the head of state is so dominant. Their legislature is highly partisan and members are very much subservient to their party leadership, which more and more includes the president. Because of that, plus all the pomp around party elections, both the presidency and the legislature degenerate into a two-party system.

Most democratic countries have addressed the issue by making the head of state purely ceremonial, as in Westminster parliamentary systems, not very powerful (most of Europe) or powerful but at least not a part of the government (France since 1958, we'll see if they got it right this time).

The electoral college, that quaint 18th century backup method for rich Americans to rig presidential elections, is a side issue.

Americans aren't hopeless. They've just lived for a couple hundred years under some slave-owning import/export operators' amateur alpha build of Democracy (with a capital D because America) that they had to come up with in an emergency because the king took their little tax revolt more seriously than they expected.

It turns out there were some bugs but unfortunately one of the bugs affects the revision process. Some of the other bugs affects the process by which new Americans are turned into voters. And many of those bugs are actually considered features by import/export operators who at least have to be more subtle about their slave-owning.

It's not just that the pages are bad compared to what they should be. It's that most of those pages shouldn't even exist. If you don't have something new to say, you are just adding chaos to the world. I suspect 15 years ago it would have been easier to find quality recipes than it is today. Certain trustworthy publications are still great, but they typically do have something new to day.

Poor Carnot.

To be fair, a lot of the reason the US is the one top country is because they're the one top country. From the historical structure of NATO to la privilège exorbitant, the US enjoyed and enjoys a lot of, well, privilège exorbitant due to their position.

Of course, they currently seem determined to scuttle all that all by themselves.

Reliably being the only major power that didn't get destroyed in WWII then holding everyone else over a barrel while they rebuilt.

Because Hillary Clinton said so.

Not being a dick was even better. The US has tried that "kneecapping" trick on a bunch of countries, including their good friends in NATO. The French quit NATO because they saw it happening. Then the US secretary of state writes an essay in 2011 called "America's Pacific Century" stating in the very first paragraph that as the US winds down it's wars in Iraq and Afganistan it's time to move on to the Asia-Pacific region.

WTF was China supposed to do?

No, NASA will look like the child who did that, then did it again.

If the Chinese manage to set up enough bases to claim and defend all the water on the moon before anybody else can get there either a) there's not enough to be bothered about or b) they deserve it.

You said taxes. Here, let me quote it for you:

The top 10 percent of earners pay 72% of taxes.

The link you included as "evidence" clearly says "income taxes."

If you believed your argument you wouldn't have a problem with stating it accurately. Instead you're weaseling. I can't even figure out why since it's pretty clear the people with the most money pay the most taxes.

The US can't let China have a moment.

What's important is what you do when you get there. The US raced to the moon the first time then just quit. China, at least as far as they've announced, seems to be planning to go and actually do some stuff like set up a long term research base. The US was also planning to do some interesting long term stuff but has cancelled most of that in the interest of beating China.

I assume because they're charging by the minute they have to start up a VM or something to monitor it. They probably use the same process as any other "runner" except this one sshs to your machine and executes commands instead of doing it locally.

I don't see why someone who objects to this couldn't just replace it with their own system where their local machine does whatever it needs. Make a runner that pings your machine and then exits if you absolutely need to.

The Soviets used metric.

Do you mean the Johnny-come-lately Americans? I guess they were operating on Imperial time. They did bring a bunch of very useful 105 and 155 mm Howitzers though.