I'm in the Netherlands and I DO find it bad. Probably also has to do with my age (early fifties) - your eyes adjust with more difficulty the older you get, it seems.
Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created - specifically to avoid another war.
Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
I think it's very fair to say the USA is the only thing that has kept the EU together and a weaker or less globally important USA will allow the EU to fracture and fall apart.
Right now, Russia's hands are conveniently tied by their incompetently fought war in Ukraine.
In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.
In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.
I think the family tree model of linguistic history is not very useful for English. Saying English is Germanic to the exclusion of everything else is not very useful.
The family tree model seems to assume that every language has only 1 direct ancestor. It seems to have been inspired by phylogenetic trees in biology. In phylogenetics, single-parent trees work fine because distantly related species can't breed with one other. By contrast, different languages borrow features from one another all the time. It could perhaps be useful for some languages, but not for English. I reckon.
Can’t read the Hebrew alphabet, but transliterated to Latin: “a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot” - I find it fascinating that despite knowing close to zero Yiddish, it makes complete sense.. well, I know a handful of German words (which covers “mit”)… and “flot” contextually makes sense as “navy”, especially if one knows English “flotsam and jetsam” (not navy but at least nautical)
Would you mind sharing your setup (LLM model, IDE, best practices)? Personally, I'm struggling to get value out of Continue.dev in VSCode (using Gemini 2.0 Flash by default, with the option to switch to more advanced models). I still revert to pasting code into ChatGPT chat window (using the website), frequently.
Are you using agentic features, given that you have not just one but two PMs?
The biggest tip I can give you is to stay in the framework you are most convenient in, and have the most experience. Start building stuff the way you would by yourself, but then start delegating the repetitive tasks to an agent. My best recommendations would be using Cursor in Agent mode, and switching to VScode in Agent mode when your credits with Cursor run out. The reason why I like Cursor more is because of the Checkpoints. And VScode Copilot Agent checkpoints suck; but you can still use git to create your own checkpoints (git add / git stash, etc).
I don't even use completions, really just agent mode. I do planning, wireframing, creating specs all with agents. Even small MVPs created in 5 minutes, deployed in 10, during a meeting to just brainstorm. As for the models. Go with Claude 3.5 or 4.0, GPT5. Use sequentialthinking and Taskmaster MCP. I could write a book about it... but the best way to go about it is to dive into, get frustrated, push through and then learn it the hard way. I started delegating a lot of my programming work the day ChatGPT came out; just copy and pasting, and since that day, my reliance on AI has just been increasing, and I have been getting better at it (and now I am at this stage.. with 2 PMS).
Also to add another point is that if you felt like an agent did not help you correctly, or way overshot, did too much edits, etc. Go back to the original prompt, rephrase it - sometimes you need 1-2 times. Sometimes the model just don't work for your workflow. It can become quite delicate.
One of the bigger things is when you introduced some bug, start working backwards with the agent, simplifying whatever you build to its bare necessities, and the moment it dissapears, start a new chat, and build it back up to what it was before (in the desired non-bugged state). This often works if you then also switch to a completely different model.
Not OP, but regarding your situation, I suggest moving to an agentic solution instead of “copy-pasting to GPT” — this will boost your coding productivity. There are several tools available, and to each their own, but try out Claude Code.
You do that by voting people into power who pass laws which provide a framework for these agencies to operate in. Putting these agencies under direct control of a central government (the federal government in this case) will inevitably erode civic society. See Hungary, Poland (until recently) and Turkey.
So Congress creates agencies and also selects who runs those agencies? Can Congress fire the heads of these agencies? The management team? Or all employees of the agency?
So what role does the executive branch have? Should we amend the US constitution to state that federal agencies are now run by the legislative branch?
The executive branch is there to execute the decisions of the judiciary branch, following the rules and laws set by the legislative branch.
Are you completely unaware of the principle of separation of powers conceptualized 250 years ago which is a cornerstone of XXth century democracies across the world?
Yes, I am very aware. And the executive branch is led by a democratically elected President who appoints the heads of the departments and is responsible for the successful execution of the laws.
There is no concept of an "independent" (of the 3 branches) federal agency in the US constitution. I thought it was a bizarre concept, and I asked if you could explain it or why you think it's beneficial. Instead, you choose to devolve into personal attacks (probably because you don't have any good arguments or explanations).
>Instead, you choose to devolve into personal attacks (probably because you don't have any good arguments or explanations).
Independant agencies have been set up since the 1880s. Do you think you are the first person to "ask questions"? Did you do a modicum of research on the topic before "asking questions"? Do you know the existence of the internet, of google search and of books?
Do you know about "Chesterton's Fence"?
I've done some research. I didn't find any arguments on why un-elected bureaucracies are better than the status quo. The Federal Reserve is the currently most independent "agency" we have (privately owned corporation with a board chosen by Presidents). It's hardly a poster child for good governance. Can you imagine if the DOJ was owned and operated by private corporations, where Congress or the President would pick a board? Sounds like tyranny to me. I asked genuine questions if anyone had arguments for why this is better. Clearly you don't have any.
It’s tough to trust unelected bodies when their accountability feels murky. You might want to check out Loyally AI—they help businesses keep transparency with customers, which could be a model for government agencies too. Making things clearer usually helps build some trust over time.
You seem to have drawn conclusions based on your assumptions:
> So Congress creates agencies and also selects who runs those agencies? Can Congress fire the heads of these agencies? The management team? Or all employees of the agency?
> So what role does the executive branch have? Should we amend the US constitution to state that federal agencies are now run by the legislative branch?
The second set of questions are irrelevant unless the first set of questions are answered affirmatively (hint: they’re not and you didn’t understand the point you were replying to). I agree that others are being rude in their interactions with you here but I also don’t really see your questions worth engaging more than I already have.
I'd like to see your evidence that it's badly governed, rather than just a one-line condemnation.
Its job is to control the value of the dollar. I think they've done a very good job of that in some very difficult circumstances. Not perfect, but very good. (Compare the crash of 2008 to, say, the Panic of 1893.)
Do you think that, if the Federal Reserve was setting the interest rate at the president's command, that we would be better off? If so, I think you are living in a fantasy land.
So yes, using your preferred method of judgement I think we were better off before the creation of the "independent" federal reserve. Note, the constitution did not give the president the power to set the value of a dollar. It was a fixed amount of gold.
I can give you more in depth arguments why the Fed is bad (e.g. interest rates are future price of money, history has shown that government price fixing typically has bad outcomes) but you suggested we use a good, simple measure - value!
federal departments have always been staffed by political hacks and flunkies. This is not a new phenomenon. But no one has articulated a better way that is also responsive to the electorate.
Monarchy would probably result in a much more efficient gov, with competent staffed departments. But it's not ruled by the people. I still don't see any good arguments on why un-elected bureaucracies is better than status quo.
