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Australian Police Get McLaren and Aston Martin Supercars
An anonymous reader writes: Australia's New South Wales police department has added a pair of new cars to their fleet that are going to be very hard to outrun, a McLaren 650S and an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante. The vehicles aren't going to be used on the job, but as a promotional tool to help raise money for the families of fallen police. "These sponsorship arrangements are designed to promote community engagement with NSW Police. This agreement is designed to promote tomorrow's Police Legacy Wall to Wall ride and celebrate 100 years of Women in Policing," a police spokesperson said in a statement.
XKCD put up a toon about how "I could care less" is "correct". However, if fails on several levels. Communication is meant to convey information and if that information IS NOT to be filtered through the understanding of another, then if you "could[n't] care less", what was the point of saying anything?
Secondly, "I couldn't care less" is a shortening of "I couldn't care less if I tried". Which if you drop the "n't" off, becomes "I could care less if I tried". Which then indicates you don't care much and don't feel motivated to try to care less than you do. This is then entirely redundant, since if you cared to make a stand on it, you could and would try and find yourself able in theory to care even less about it.
Third, if your defence is one of "language changes by common usage" and that your interlocutor is somehow "wrong" because they are merely attempting superiority by demonstrating a deeper knowledge of language, then YOU are wrong by the same metric in "demonstrating" you know how language forms.
Fourthly, if your defence is one of "language changes by common usage", then this means that the attempt NOT to change the common usage, by correcting misuse of current understanding *is a completely acceptable method of driving the evolution of language*. Evolution DOES NOT DEMAND change. A language isn't failed until it changes. A kick back against the kick back is no more valid (and indeed less valid because language changes institute confusion in communication, the antithesis of language's purpose) than the kick back you complain of. Hence the fight to "defend" the misapplication of "I couldn't care less" by lazy people is by its own supporting reasoning faulty.
Yes, this IS off topic. I couldn't care less. Literally.