Albert Mellinger

business owner, programmer, free enterprise, anti-social-ist, ABC non-transporter, cholesterol debate.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Dutch men are the tallest people on earth, and the moment you say so, someone tells you it is genetics. Tall Dutch parents, tall Dutch children, a gene pool selected for height. Case closed.

It is a fair objection. It also happens to be measurable, and somebody measured it.

Researchers ran the numbers on whether natural selection could account for the Dutch becoming giants. Taller Dutch men do have slightly more children, so there is a real evolutionary nudge in play. They modelled it out across six generations and found the effect added up to roughly three millimetres. Three.

Over that same century and a half, the Dutch gained around twenty centimetres. Two hundred millimetres of height, of which selection can claim about three.

The other 197 came from somewhere else, and it is no mystery. In the 1860s the Dutch were among the shortest people in Europe, well below average, shorter than the Americans who then towered over them. Then they built the most dairy-soaked food culture on the continent. Cheese at breakfast. Milk at every meal. Butter on everything. Close to a kilogram of dairy per person per day, held there for generations.

Same genes at the start. The selection did almost nothing on the timescale that mattered. What changed is that an entire nation started drinking the exact liquid a calf uses to double its size, drinking it by the bucket, and never stopping.

Genetics loads the gun. It is milk that pulls the trigger, and the Dutch pulled it harder than anyone alive.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@GolfTravelerJoe Forecast = 103.
And it's going to be hot too!

[Laurent Delorme @scion_x_]

Ça fait un moment que je me pose des questions sur le bilan (provisoire) de Milei en Argentine. On lit tout et son contraire. Alors j'ai arrêté de lire les commentaires et j'ai regardé les chiffres bruts.

L'Argentine, c'est l'expérience grandeur nature que les économistes attendaient depuis 50 ans. Même pays. Même peuple. Même culture. On change UNE variable : la méthode économique.

Avant : des décennies de gestion étatiste et péroniste, "redistributive". Le résultat concret ? 211% d'inflation, 42% de pauvreté, un État en déficit permanent qui finance son train de vie en faisant tourner la planche à billets.

Puis arrive Milei. Méthode inverse, brutale, assumée : on coupe, on déréglemente, on arrête d'imprimer.

Deux ans plus tard (photo à son arrivée (fin 2023) vs aujourd'hui) :

Inflation annuelle : 211% → 31%
Inflation mensuelle : 25% → ~2%
Déficit public : −5% du PIB → +1,8% (excédent)
Croissance : −1,6% → +4,4%
Pauvreté : 42% → 28%

Sans débat. Jugez par vous-mêmes.

Et le point essentiel : ces gains ne vont pas "aux riches" ou "aux marchés". Ils vont d'abord aux plus pauvres.

L'inflation est l'impôt le plus injuste qui existe — elle frappe ceux qui n'ont aucun actif pour se protéger. La diviser par 7, c'est rendre du pouvoir d'achat à ceux d'en bas. Et 14 points de pauvreté en moins, ce sont des millions de gens, pas une ligne Excel.

Pendant un siècle, on a expliqué aux Argentins que l'État les protégerait en dépensant toujours plus. Résultat : un des pays les plus riches du monde en 1910, ruiné. On vient d'inverser la méthode. Regardez le résultat.

À un moment, il faut accepter ce que les faits racontent : sur le terrain économique, la méthode libérale a livré en deux ans ce que des décennies de socialisme avaient promis sans jamais tenir. Et ça profite d'abord aux plus modestes.

On peut détester le style de Milei — la tronçonneuse, l'outrance, les sorties improbables, il n'a rien d'un homme d'État classique. Mais on ne juge pas une politique économique au style de celui qui la mène. On la juge à ce qu'elle fait à la vie des gens.

Et les chiffres ont parlé.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@TheMasters I like the tone.

Keep the EGO at bay. Have Fun.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

re "Milania" movie
Melania is FMOTUS
First Model of the US

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

DE-FUND CONGRESS!

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

The ego's goal is net worth.

Net worth eventually ends up either as spending or giving away. Both are contrary to the goal.

Therefore the goal is insane.

[stepfanie tyler @stepfanie]

This girl really is the queen of retards

Mega-hypocrite Billie Eilish denounces capitalism while participating in it at the highest level. Multi-million-dollar real estate, global tours, branded merch, fragrances, collectibles. She proudly condemns the system that enables her voice, wealth, and reach

She opposes billionaires while benefiting from the same capital accumulation logic, just at a slightly lower tier. Her moral claim isn’t “capitalism has flaws” it's “this shouldn’t even exist.” Yet her lifestyle is evidence of its existence working exactly as designed

On immigration, her rhetoric gets even more unserious. Yesterday at the Grammys she proclaimed "No one is illegal on stolen land.” A slogan that dissolves the concept of borders entirely, all while relying on the stability, security, and infrastructure borders provide. It’s easy to argue for open systems when you live behind gates, travel with security, and never experience the tradeoffs firsthand

And then there’s the hilarious aesthetic contradiction in the video below where she’s praising Ireland as a place “where everyone looks like me” all while condemning nationalism and identity boundaries in America. Cultural homogeneity is only “cool” when it’s framed as heritage, not when others want to preserve it

Someone should let this poor, confused girl know that Ireland wasn’t some prelapsarian fairy land. It was settled, conquered, re-settled, and culturally overwritten multiple times. Mesolithic peoples, Neolithic farmers, Bronze Age migrations, then Gaels. By her own logic, Ireland is also “stolen land”

If all land is stolen, the slogan is meaningless
If only America’s is, the argument is dishonest

These idiotic luxury beliefs cost nothing to hold and are insulated from consequence by wealth and fame

Pretending this worldview is coherent or ethical is indefensible

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

Movie/real life review:

"One Battle After Another"

Synopsis: socialist revolutionaries attempting to protect illegal aliens from socialist countries.
The irony:
1. They are FLEEING socialism.
2. They aren't revolutionaries or they would stay and fight.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@Rothmus @ThomasSowell

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@drjasonfung To a generic doctor, association is causation. They would ban firemen because they are associated with fires.

Now, their association argument is gone.

(Dr. Fung is obviously not generic.)

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@SteveStuWill Here's another likely culprit: COMMON SENSE.

People who don't exercise are obviously lower on the scale. They don't pay attention to the reams of data extolling the benefits of exercising. Or other things like work rules or speed limits.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

All the analysts forever writing about OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Google are missing the real story that already happened.

80% of startups pitching Andreessen Horowitz are running on Chinese open-source models. Not OpenAI. Not Anthropic. Chinese models like DeepSeek that cost 214x less per token.

The math here breaks everything. DeepSeek trained its model for $5 million. OpenAI spent $500 million per six-month training cycle for GPT-5. That gap translates directly to API pricing where startups pay $0.14 per million tokens versus $30 for GPT-4.

For a startup burning through 100 million tokens monthly, that’s $1,400 versus $300,000. The difference between 18 months of runway and 3 months.

This tells you the real constraint in AI was never capability. Chinese models are matching GPT-4 on coding benchmarks while costing 2% as much. The constraint was always burn rate, and China solved it first by optimizing for efficiency instead of chasing AGI.

The second-order effect gets interesting. When your infrastructure costs drop 98%, you can actually afford to fine-tune models for your specific use case. American startups paying OpenAI’s API rates are stuck with generic models. Chinese open-source users are building specialized variants.

Silicon Valley thought the moat was model quality. Turns out the moat was cost structure, and they built it backwards. When a16z partner Anjney Midha says “it’s really China’s game right now” in open-source, he’s not talking about benchmarks. He’s talking about who controls the default foundation layer.

Now look at where this goes. American AI labs are optimizing for AGI and superintelligence. Raising billions to chase the theoretical ceiling. China optimized for distribution and adoption. Making AI cheap enough to become infrastructure.

All 16 top-ranked open-source models are Chinese. DeepSeek, Qwen, Yi. The models actually being deployed at scale. While OpenAI charges premium rates for exclusive access, Chinese labs are flooding the zone with free alternatives that work.

The third-order cascade is what changes everything. Every startup that survives the next funding winter will have optimized around Chinese open-source as default infrastructure. Not as a China strategy. As a survival strategy.

That 80% number at a16z only goes one direction. When you’re a seed-stage founder choosing between 18 months of runway or 3 months, economics beats nationalism every time.

America is still competing to build the best model. China already won the race to build the one everyone uses.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

My wife says if you see someone driving badly, they are probably driving a Honda.

An MD would say that driving a Honda (high cholesterol) causes people to drive badly (MACE)....so high cholesterol [HC] causes MACE.

But it could be that X causes HC and X causes MACE, where X is unknown (inflamation?).

As we speak, doctors are banding together to prevent people from buying Hondas, thus reducing bad driving.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@XSepiam87976 @EconguyRosie I love gold as an uncorrelated hedge to stocks since it holds its value over time.

I have 5%...

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@NeoMatrixS @VladTheInflator Exactly.
Interest rates back to normal means the customer can only afford a smaller home.
They are building homes that match demand.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@AlpacaAurelius Lets imagine a 2x2 with inflammation (IN) and Cholesterol (C)
People with IN and high C are dead before the study starts.
People with IN and low C might be in the study but unhealthy.
So given you don't have IN, this study is ok.

Survivorship Bias!

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

@jeremykauffman IANAD but wouldn't an MD would get sued for not following the guidelines?
So they will follow the guidelines.
So only the guideline creators have to understand statistics.

[Albert Mellinger @bertmelli]

If you ran this chart for different quartiles of APO-B (for example) I assume that the higher the quartile, the lower the line. So APO-B would be associated with plaque progression.

How would you show it is there to fight the underlying “cause” (e.g. inflammation, aging) as opposed to being the body’s cure?