(no subject)

https://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/top-intelligence-chiefs-contradict-trump-on-isis-threat-iran-nuclear-deal-1433838659562

the spy chiefs flatly contradicted President Trump on Russia, North Korea, ISIS and Iran in their annual report to the Senate on worldwide threats.

To summarize: North Korea is not going to denuclearize; Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement; ISIS has not been defeated; Russia is a continuing threat; no security crisis at the southern border. Everything that the bullshitter-in-chief is saying about foreign affairs is ... well, bullshit. Basically, everybody who has a clue understands that Trump is a fraud. Most of what he does is a distraction from the country's real problems.

TIL: data scientists vs data engineers

It turns out, the former are supposed to generate hypotheses and run experiments, while the latter to engineer access to the body of data and its proper maintenance. Who would've thunk!

Quote of the Day: Top of the credit cycle

Early on in the top, some parts of the credit system suffer, but others remain robust, so it isn’t clear that the economy is weakening. So while the central bank is still raising interest rates and tightening credit, the seeds of the recession are being sown. The fastest rate of tightening typically comes about five months prior to the top of the stock market. The economy is then operating at a high rate, with demand pressing up against the capacity to produce. Unemployment is normally at cyclical lows and inflation rates are rising. The increase in short-term interest rates makes holding cash more attractive, and it raises the interest rate used to discount the future cash flows of assets, weakening riskier asset prices and slowing lending. It also makes items bought on credit de facto more expensive, slowing demand. Short rates typically peak just a few months before the top in the stock market.

In the early stages of a bubble bursting, when stock prices fall and earnings have not yet declined, people mistakenly judge the decline to be a buying opportunity and find stocks cheap in relation to both past earnings and expected earnings, failing to account for the amount of decline in earnings that is likely to result from what’s to come.

- Ray Dalio, Principles For Navigating Big Debt Crisis.

Engineering the Plane of Immanence

Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment, who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain;

- Psalms 104:2.

It seems to me that from a Deleuzian perspective, engineering is much closer to art than to science because engineers build the background of the future against which differentials can be detected. Similarly, taichi is art, not science or philosophy.