I use several AI models at work, switching between them based on which is best at the kind of work I'm doing. In my limited testing I've found Opus 4.6 to be the best coder (via Claude Code) and has the best taste in writing, while GPT 5.2 Thinking is mildly smarter. Gemini 3.0 Pro feels like it has the capacity to be much smarter, but is very often held back by various strange errors. The one I see the most is that it has a lot of trouble accepting the changes to the world since its training data, and seems to put a lot of effort into keeping track of everything as a giant hypothetical.

For example, the first query I thought to test this on in writing this post was [Who leads the Department of War?] and it gave the reasonable answer "The Department of War is currently led by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth," followed by a short explanation. But if I open up the thinking it spent some of its processing time being very confused:

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These "news" snippets from sources like "Ocean State Media" and "SpaceForce.mil" are throwing up red flags. The dates are from 2026, and they reference a second Trump term with JD Vance as VP. That screams alternate reality or satire to me.
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Shoveling out a parking spot is a pain, and many snowy places have a culture where when you leave you put some kind of "space saver" (aka "parking chair", "dibs", etc) to reserve the space for when you come back. While you don't have a legal right to the space, there's common knowledge that if you park in someone's spot you're running a significant risk of them vandalizing your car.

Aside from depending on the implicit threat of property damage, it's a bad system: it only works if everyone uses cars with the same commuting pattern. My sister works in early childhood intervention, which is one of several professions where you're traveling to people's houses during the day. In neighborhoods where space savers are common, there can be many open spots, but each one is saved. Moving the space saver, even just for the duration of the visit, risks a slashed tire.

I recently got a Thermal Master P1 infrared camera attachment for my phone. The goal was a house project, but it's also a great toy, especially with the kids. Getting a room pitch black but still being able to 'see' with the phone was fun for a bit. The real fun, though, was in exploring to observe all these thermal properties we'd never thought about.

This post has spoilers for My Neighbor Totoro, Frozen, Bambi, and the Lion King

People at different stages of development enjoy different things in movies. Some of the best children's movies are able to make things scary or intense for the adults without being too much for little kids.

For example, in My Neighbor Totoro everyone is worried that a small child may have fallen in the lake: she's gone missing, they find a sandal floating in the pond, you see people dredging the pond looking for her, and it's very clear to adults and older kids that the worry is she has drowned. But to a little kid it's much less obvious; the actual dialog only says that they found a sandal. This gives a very intense and emotional scene, but only for people who can handle it.

Very few people have been on a plane performing a barrel roll, but we could fix this. Commercial aircraft could roll in revenue service, and if you had your window shade down you wouldn't even notice it.

While there are many ways to roll an airplane that would cause complete havoc inside the cabin, a barrel roll can be performed as a "1g" maneuver. With careful control of the aircraft, the forces can be balanced so that you only ever feel close to 1g of apparent gravity, and it always is pulling you down into your seat.

It's a holiday. The cousins are over, and the kids are having a great time. Unfortunately, that includes rampaging through the kitchen. We're trying to cook, so there's a "no cutting through the kitchen" rule. Imagine enforcement looks like:

Kid: [dashes into kitchen, pursued by cousin]
Adult: Out of the kitchen!
Kid: Sorry! [Continues their path, leaving through the other door; escapes pursuit from more rule-abiding cousin]

This doesn't work! The kid got what they wanted out of this interaction, and isn't going to change their behavior. Instead, I need to make it be not worth their while: