Yes, rebase is a series of cherry-picks. Each commit picked is treated as a set of diffs that are applied with conflict resolution, then committed, then off to the next. The mental model of commits as diffs works, obviously.

> If commits were diffs, then that process doesn't make any sense. It only makes sense when you think of commits as snapshots, and cherry-pick ing as taking a commit, calculating the diff with the current commit, and then applying that diff to make a brand new commit.

Sure it does. It works for me. You can use whatever mental model of Git that you works for you.