>nothing is "interesting" (something you'd see in the frontiers)

Sure, but this is philosophy, not physics. Judging philosophy that is looking for new interpretations of physics by the standards of physics itself is missing the point.

>nothing is controversial

There's controversy regarding even more "basic" features of reality, like whether a chair that's disassembled and put back together is the same chair.

What it really sounds like to me is that you just don't like philosophy. Philosophy is largely about taking "common knowledge" and trying to find new ways to look at it. In other words, to create controversy and interest when there normally wouldn't be any.

So, yes, in that mode of thinking, I completely agree. There may very well be nothing interesting or controversial about any of this in the realm of physics itself, just like there isn't anything interesting or controversial about chairs within the realm of general, practical thinking. But the point of philosophy is to challenge those modes of thinking, and it very much sounds to me like the issue you have is with that process itself.

I think, to some extent, this wraps around to this point:

>most of the time it's just "A and B are both fanciful ideas journalists made up and actual professional philosophers somehow confused for real physics". It gets annoying.

I can't speak to this without knowing a specific example, but it's quite possible that in these circumstances the physicists and philosophers are simply talking past each other. They're two different fields with some things in common, and that means that physicists can sometimes disagree with a philosopher and call them wrong simply because they're talking about it in a different way. Physicists do disagree amongst themselves, so saying that someone got the physics wrong because they're an ignorant philosopher instead of a physicist is a particularly convenient way of dismissing a conflicting view that isn't available when debating with another physicist. I personally have had discussions where a non-philosopher said that one thing isn't real physics, it's just a misunderstanding by philosophers...only for me to find that the idea in question was actually a physicist's interpretation, not a philosopher's.

But ultimately, I see this attitude even when none of your points apply. Someone simply says "consciousness" or "quantum" and people will storm in saying it's BS.