Well, damn.
I told my kid tonight, I read Something Big Is Happening and I didn't drink the Kool-Aid but I also didn't ignore it. Fair to say that it shook me enough to pay attention.
So, tonight I tried some prompts with #Qwen3.5, and it exceeded my expectations, and nearly all of my previous interactions with LLMs. Enough that I'm going to have to keep paying attention.
Damn.