the pelican test works because nobody can fake it, you see the result in one second. every new model drop now gets judged on a bicycle bird before any benchmark lol. simon accidentally made the most honest eval out there.
The pelican test works because it's too silly to train for. An SVG pelican on a bicycle forces real spatial reasoning with no memorized answer to copy. The day it shows up in a launch blog post, it's been gamed and Simon needs a new animal.
a keynote slide pricing models at half a cent a pelican is peak 2026. somebody's going to start a pelican-per-dollar index and it'll be more honest than every leaderboard
Love that a silly test became a global benchmark. It's easy to grasp, hard to game, and you can see progress at a glance. Most serious benchmarks miss at least one of those.
simon's pelican is basically a routing chart now lol. in 4 months a 17gb laptop model started delivering what only flagships did. default everyday tasks to local/budget, escalate to flagship only when cheap fails
