> To take the obvious example of using exactly what Popper was trying to oppose. the current Chinese communist party's claim that capitalism will eventually transition into socialism once a certain level of development is achieved, it is a prediction, it will be falsifiable later. Clearly it is still not science.

I think this is the point on this issue, right? It can't count as falsifiable later, or still not science, unless they describe what they mean by "socialism" specifically enough in advance - which I think is a pretty nebulous constraint? Not sure about it. Definitely, there's a lot of (reasonable IMO) theoretical controversy about what 'welfare capitalism' has to do with proper socialist ideas, even though it's usually given the label 'socialist'.

I've also been wondering things like what working scientists do, and what this thing is that we call science generally - non research related stuff like teaching, or using science to do better engineering, and what the connection is between the two.

Is there still a place for any variation of falsifiability?

Bonus cheeky request: do you have any recommendations on modern philosophy of science?