in the words of a wise man, "not a joke"—I truly thought we were in a recession, but the updated definitions and Wikipedia article lock proved me wrong!

Recession is one of those words like Abortion where everybody has their own definition.

The US officially [1] goes by what NBER says and NBER doesn't call recessions/etc until several quarters after it starts. So any talk right now is speculation and you may speculate correctly but you might not.

[1]: https://www.bea.gov/help/glossary/recession

I didn't realize the definition of "abortion" was up for debate, I thought merely the parameters defining when it should or shouldn't be allowed were.