Google's gotten worse, but some people are still asking it questions in natural language and have absolutely no idea how quotes work.

This towel is warmer and bitier than usual.

There are whole-ass companies selling laptops with Linux preinstalled now. They work. Even with Bluetooth.

Unironically, they hate us for our freedoms.

We have the freedom to read and say what we want, and they can't stand to hear their beliefs challenged.

We have the freedom to have sex and not get sick or pregnant, and they can't stand their purity religion being disobeyed.

We have the freedom to be who we are, and they can't stand to see their simplistic notions of sex and gender disproven.

We have the freedom to not be religious, and they can't stand to see irreligious people living happy lives.

We have the freedom to ignore them, and they can't stand not being the center of attention.

Huh. In the UK, they just put them on waiting lists until they die.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67087906

So, is it a actually called a helicoter?

No. Language isn't always logical, and that's one way in which it isn't.

And it doesn't stop at high school. A Bachelor's in a specific field is only partly about the facts and concepts, and the rest is about how to research and evaluate sources in that field. Does someone with a Bachelor's in Computer Science know how to implement Shellsort right off the bat from memory? Not unless they did it in a whiteboard interview, and fuck those things. No, they know how to look it up and implement it in a specific language, and can probably figure out its big-O complexity.

Knowing what a good source looks like is a skill, and must be learned.

It's a generation gap thing: If you're online, are you representing your employer and, therefore, must be on your best behavior, or are you only representing yourself, and everyone else ought to recognize that? NASA feels it's the former.

I don't want to share an instance with the nutballs on the tankie instance or the nutballs on the fascist instance.

The media is interested in a horse race. Horse races sell ads. Therefore, they need to make Biden seem unpopular with mainstream Democrats (so there's somehow Controversy over whether an incumbent President should run) and they do that by painting him as being purely a Not-Trump. Because the alternative is that Biden runs in 2024 without any drama and defeats Trump like he did in 2020, and foregone conclusions don't sell advertising space, even if they're good for the country.

Plus, of course, you have grifters like the people pulling RFK Jr's strings and Cornel West and whoever else, who need to seem relevant in order to get "low-information voters" (idiots) to donate to their campaigns which are Definitely Not book tours in disguise.

Literally Mansplaining.

/s

You can only go as high on that scale as your opponent did. For example, you can't refute the central point of an insult or an attempt at shaming without missing the point that it is simply meant to make you angry or meant to make others completely disregard you. Similarly, if the "argument" is incoherent babbling, you don't refute it so much as point out that it's nonsensical.

Here's a good article about debate and meta-debate.