the only thing that still kind of annoys me is constantly being told what something is not, but even that statement is load-bearing (see what I did there) because it records how it ended up with this decision, because it's not that other choice that it mentions.

FWIW, I also think the constant chorus about how new models are worse than old models is a human hallucination. They're certainly not perfect but every one becomes more steerable in terms of actually completing more and more complex work.