They're easy enough to skip - click the little "-" icon and you'll collapse the entire sub-thread.
It's a decent heuristic because the better models generate better pelicans. That's all. Nobody sane is going to make a bet on a model based on a pelican. But it's cool, it's tradition by now, and it's a semblance of a good first impression for new models.
thank you.
"He doesn't have a tin can in your face shouting from a soapbox that makes it hard to ignore."
He metaphorically does because people upvote his pelicans to the top and the ensuing comment threads are massive/bloated. Huge amounts of the readership of this website are lurkers who don't even know how to hide these giant posts. Look at how bloated this very thread is right now!
Also, a lot of people unironically are whining about him because of sour grapes. Pay them what Simon is likely making, give them as much mindshare/attention as Simon gets, and they wouldn't be so mad.
Anti-incumbency bias and anti-elitist attitudes are good actually.
Agreed, but scrolling past or hitting - were apparently off the table for the complainers. So flagging was yet another tool in their toolbelt and I bet a powerful one at that. If simonw's pelican posts routinely went dead from flagging, he would not make them. You know that, I know that.
> The pelican test continuing to be taken seriously is a great example of that kind of echo chamber.
You can try and support that argument if you like. But I would implore you to realize that it has been had many times recently and the other side does in fact find value and do not see it that way.
> He metaphorically does because people upvote his pelicans to the top and the ensuing comment threads are massive/bloated.
Users upvote the pelicans because they find it interesting. they arent paid trolls or simonw fanatics.
> Huge amounts of the readership of this website are lurkers who don't even know how to hide these giant posts.
They can learn... it's called hackernews. For those interested, that is what the [-] link is for above the comment. Use it and move on.
But, also, as said, you're an industry (and foss!) veteran, so I find it impossible to believe that you haven't had your fair share of baseless bullshit being thrown at you, and with that, you gaining a persona that will not be hit by that, because it clearly knows that it is in fact bullshit.
Unless of course it doesn't really know that with certainty.
As said, I would _love_ to give you the benefit of the doubt, because you might just have a stressful day or whatever, but content marketing is literally your whole thing by now. It is impossible for me to do that with a clean conscience.
Your blog front page currently opens with
> Earlier this month I hosted a fireside chat session at the AI Engineer World’s Fair with Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar from Anthropic’s Claude Code team.
That is not what "some rando foss maintainer we are morally obligated to be soft with" does.
But I repeat myself.
I think very hard about the ethics of what I'm doing and how I can best use my "platform" (shudder again) in as constructive a way as possible.
I'd rather you do this than him. Chill out, please. The pelican pic is fine.
There's nothing shady here. The disclosure is front and center on his About page on his website.
He's not spamming you. It's one short link, sometimes a link to a first-impressions post. It's interesting and useful for me and the other commenters who keep upvoting his comments. Why are you so antagonistic?
All of the pelicans so far have had really weird flaws / quirks so I am always a little interested to see how well these models perform at this task, since I've seen all the past pelicans and have some anchoring.
Seeing a truly flawless pelican would tell me that the model has true visual reasoning capabilities as well as good taste.
But why is this an indication of literally anything else?
Not only does it give you a super easy-to-grok understanding of the model quality just by looking at the image, but when you compare tokens and costs (both input and output), you really get a good, simple COST x QUALITY evaluation across models.
Simon explains it well: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/kimi-k3/#what-can-we-l...
Simon, you should put up a summary table page that you update after every release.
I agree to rednb that at this point it feels like rather obvious brand building, but also, I agree with you that some value is in it.
It does not feel all that authentic though, and it's good to react allergically to lack of authenticity. Bad for a lot of business models, but good for humanity.
> It does not feel all that authentic though, and it's good to react allergically to lack of authenticity. Bad for a lot of business models, but good for humanity.
I hope SimonW keeps them coming.
I get people burning out on the pelican SVG test alongside the rest of the AI burnout, but I guess for myself I'm just choosing to keep enjoying it while I still can.
The 3.6 Flash pelican is just about the best I've seen.
Sponsored blogs and paid newsletters are after all, notoriously poor at subsisting on silence :)
The fish and the cap where always added when I asked an llm to improve it's first attempt.
This continues the trend in LLM progress of better=more stuff
Edit: I wonder if this is a function of the reasoning training, where more tokens/ stuff is rewarded.