CarbonIceDragon

I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn't even realize that socialism and communism aren't complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.

Basically, I think you're doing this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png

In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.

As I understand it, "real communism" is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.

Not sure why nobody would expect an italian inquisition of food, they literally have a unit in one of their law enforcement agencies trained to do things like find fake extra-virgin olive oil. Ive seen people jokingly call it "the italian food police" even. If anybody was going to run a food inquisition, itd be the italians

Admittedly not, no. I was making the assumption, possibly a naive one, that a computer should be capable of understanding the physics behind bullet trajectories well enough to shoot accurately even if the target is mobile.

I didn't really think human operated, I was imagining something pretty much exactly like phalanx, but with a much smaller caliber and turret size owing to the small size of drones. Like a phalanx type software controller mounted to a small turret with a small caliber machinegun or automatic shotgun type weapon.

If you can target them with a laser though, why would a gun be much different? I know there's dramatically more travel time, but bullets are still extremely fast, and even if one shot misses, something like a machinegun with a computerized control system seems like it ought to hit the thing before too long? Maybe the risk of missed shots causing harm might be too high for populated areas?

Is it just me, or does that discussion of the various ways to counter drones, kinda miss the obvious of just shooting them with a conventional gun?

Stargate is the best "star-" franchise imho.

The moon's day length is so long that it wouldn't make any sense for any crewed mission to use it, they're going to need their own lights on an arbitrary 24 hour cycle anyway, so there's no reason not to have every future crewed mission there use the same one

This reminds me of something I sometimes wonder about lotr: does the ring make you more evil, or does it just make you more like Sauron? If you're already even more evil than Sauron and you put on the ring, does it slowly turn you ever so slightly more good, to align with Sauron better?

The aliens would have to be stupid to list a planet as solved for tens of millions of years after killing off the dominant life forms, because, well, a new one will just evolve in short order, exactly as has happened on earth, and they ought to know this.