I’ll stop combining them when Tor can punch through the censorship in this country

What nonsense. If I want my origin to tor to start with a VPN then I will and I’ll be more anonymous because of it.

I still don’t have an understanding whether this meaningfully downgrades Tor’s security. Because if there was no extra harm, it would be helpful when bridges are blocked frequently, but some VPN services (or just your own VPS setup) have a better obfuscation.

What? The link you posted didn’t even say that. Just to avoid if your not an advance user. They literally have a page explaining benefits…