I think of it more like a pincushion. A needle will go right into it with very little resistance. One’s hand or fingertip — not so much.

Right. And no one confuses a pincushion for empty space. They just also don't confuse it with adamantium.

You can sit on a pincushion filled very densely with needles equally well as a solid wooden chair. Yet the needles clearly have more space between them than a solid block of wood. Your personal inability to penetrate or see into that space doesn’t mean the space isn’t there. Indeed, how do you know if there’s a microscopic crack? You look at photons reflecting and amplify them into your optical range. How do we know whether or not there’s space in the atom range? We use an electron microscope. It’s still a microscope - a tool to objectively pierce the physical realm in ways that you can’t with your own sense.

None of that, even to the extent it's true, makes a lick of difference to my point. You definitely don't need to lecture me about how scientific instruments supply info my biological senses can't. I know how subatomic particles work. I'm trying to make a point about obfuscatory terminology.