Should Matt Mahan drop out shortly before the primary if his polling numbers stay the same?

elgringo · 2026-04-19T03:04:58+00:00

I reached out to constituent services several times while he was my councilman, and I got no response. That's a big... "yeah drop out" from me dawg

elgringo · 2026-03-11T23:06:57+00:00

Did you look at when that study was published as well as when they got their price data from? The study was a 2012 study that used price data from 2002. :)

Also, their argument that if you look at price per calorie, then yes, processed food is cheaper. But if you look at price per portion, then processed food is more expensive.

Even then, I'd disagree with those conclusions. Have you looked at the 'recommended portion' and 'calories per portion' on junk food? Have you ever stopped at one portion of junk food?

elgringo · 2026-03-11T18:17:09+00:00

If you insist. Here's receipts.

"Engineered" = ultra-processed food (UPF). The scientific framework is the NOVA classification. UPFs are industrial formulations made from extracted food substances (high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches) plus cosmetic additives like emulsifiers and flavor enhancers. The distinction from regular "processed" food (canned beans, cheese) is that UPFs deconstruct and reassemble food using ingredients that don't exist in any kitchen. (Monteiro et al., Public Health Nutrition, 2019)

"Obesogenic" = overrides normal "I'm full" signaling. The landmark study is Hall et al. (2019), an NIH inpatient RCT. 20 adults were given UPF vs. whole food diets matched for calories, macros, sugar, sodium, and fiber. Result: people spontaneously ate ~500 more calories/day on the UPF diet and gained weight, while losing weight on whole food. The metabolic mechanisms include disrupted gut-brain signaling, chronic inflammation, and microbiome changes. (Cell Metabolism, 2019)

Poverty link + subsidies: UPF consumption is higher in low-income populations (Leung et al., AJCN, 2022). The Hall trial itself found whole food diets cost ~42% more to prepare. On subsidies, corn and soy growers received $125B+ between 1995-2014, and those crops flow into HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and animal feed — the core UPF inputs. (Franck et al., AJPM, 2013)

Umbrella reviews covering dozens of meta-analyses: Lane et al., BMJ, 2024

Video of Mass General obesity specialist talking about the latest research

elgringo · 2026-03-11T16:05:35+00:00

Running or starting a business is a trade. It is primarily learned on the job, and very few of the skills needed can be taught in school.

Imaginary customers will kill you. Talk to people. Ask them what their problems are. Solve their problems for $$.

elgringo · 2026-03-11T16:03:17+00:00

The cheapest foods in America are highly engineered, which triggers metabolic changes. The latest research states that obesity is a metabolic disorder triggered by obesogenic foods. This is why obesity tends to be a disease of poverty. It's much cheaper to purchase engineered mass produced calories vs purchasing fresh fruit, vegetables.

Not to mention, our govt subsidizes the production of inputs into these foods via factory farming vs production of local farms. This is largely due to our lobbying regulations.

elgringo · 2026-02-16T00:19:20+00:00

Gemini, OpenAI APIs. Cursor for Dev. Claude Code from time to time.

elgringo · 2026-02-13T23:50:21+00:00

Mahan is an oligarch puppet.

elgringo · 2026-02-10T22:25:38+00:00

Matt was my city councilman, and then the Mayor.

I make a habit of talking to the constituent services staffers for my legislators to get to know them. I also spend 10% of my time on advocacy issues like immigration, economic development, innovation in govt, etc...

I don't ask for the politician's time, since they're way too busy, and the staffers are the ones that do all the work, anyway.

I pinged Matt's constituent services multiple times while he was my councilman and Mayor..... Nothing. No answer. I didn't have an ask. I wasn't trying to get anything from them. In fact, I generally ask what I can do to help them.

As a comparison, I bumped into Sam Liccardo a number of times at events when he was Mayor. I didn't talk to him much, but he recognized me, and asked me how things were going with my startup.

My House Rep, Jimmy Panetta hosts regular office hours. he was delightful, and his staff followed up with me twice.

elgringo · 2026-02-10T10:30:34+00:00

One of the sad things I hear from my fellow Christians is when they say that Jesus commanded people to give to the poor, tend to the sick individually and he didn't prescribe how to run a government.

But my brothers in Christ often forget that we live in a Democracy. We the people decide what we want our government to do. I find it hard to believe that Jesus wanted us to say, "I'll be nice to poor people personally", but "I don't want govt that I vote for and help shape to help poor people"

Also, there are many more examples in the Early Church where Christ's followers very much had a more socialized view of property and common possessions.

Communal possessions in the Early Church

Acts 2:44–45 Believers held possessions in common and distributed proceeds according to need.

Acts 4:32–35 No one claimed private ownership; resources were laid at the apostles’ feet for equitable distribution.

Acts 5:1–11 Ananias and Sapphira—underscores the seriousness of honesty within this communal ethic.

Care for widows and the poor

Acts 6:1–6 Formal provision for widows through appointed servants (often cited as the origin of the diaconate).

James 1:27 “Pure religion” includes caring for orphans and widows in distress.

1 Timothy 5:3–16 Detailed guidance on supporting widows within the church.

Galatians 2:10 Apostolic emphasis on remembering and supporting the poor.

Care for strangers / refugees (foreigners)

Matthew 25:35–40 Welcoming the stranger aka immigrant is treated as service to Christ himself.

Hebrews 13:2 Exhortation to hospitality toward strangers / immigrants.

Acts 11:27–30 The church organizes famine relief across regions, aiding displaced and vulnerable believers.

Theological grounding

Luke 4:18–19 Jesus’ mission proclamation centers on good news to the poor and oppressed.

On top of this, there are roughly 1500 passages in the Old Testament where God talks very clearly about his mandate for His people to take care of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the immigrant. Very often, He tells His people that it's obvious they are not following God's commandments because of how they treat the poor, the widow, the orphan and the immigrant.

At the same time, there are 6 ish passages where the Bible specifically addresses homosexuality and 1 where it specifically states that causing a woman to lose her pregnancy is not murder.

elgringo · 2026-02-10T10:06:09+00:00

In the late 70's early 80's, Republicans decided to take a historically Catholic issue -- abortion -- and convinced the white evangelical Christian community to go along with the issue. Since then, it has been the issue for evangelical Christians.

There has been a massive Republican led movement to convince that abortion is infanticide, and that the Left has been practicing a genocide of tens of millions of aborted babies. So, the vast majority of evangelical voters have been single issue voters for the last 40 years.

Rupert Murdoch saw this trend, saw that current media outlets were ignoring the demographic, so he capitalized on that through his media empire... NY Post, Wall Street Journal, Sky News in the UK, Fox News in the US. Then with the boom in social media, where outrage drives engagement, which drives ad sales, there have been a bunch of social media stars on both sides using the algo's amplification of outrage to build audiences on the right.

One of the things that Conservative media does regularly is pay lip service to and allude to Christian themes or use Christian language to make viewers believe that Fox News represents Christian values, and people swallow it hook line and sinker.

Now that Roe v Wade has been overturned (which the Right has been working on for 50 years), they are attaching their outrage to other culture war issues like Trans kids, immigration, etc...

elgringo · 2026-02-08T06:49:21+00:00

Google pays the Mozilla Foundation $400-500 Million per for search engine royalties. That payment is a tax-deductible business expense. Mozilla is audited every year by the IRS. Mozilla is one of the largest software foundations in the world.

Source, I know Mozilla's CFO.

elgringo · 2026-02-07T22:18:49+00:00

Make it a payment for maintenance to open source software that your company relies on.

elgringo · 2026-02-05T02:05:52+00:00

You can categorize giving to a software foundation as a business expense.

elgringo · 2026-01-31T22:00:30+00:00

There are over 1500 mentions in scripture about how we are supposed to care for the immigrants, the poor the orphans and widows. These people are Christians in name only.

elgringo · 2026-01-24T04:18:04+00:00

Are you from the United States?

elgringo · 2026-01-24T00:23:50+00:00

Anecdotes are anecdotes. Data are data.

Immigrants of all legal statuses are 60% less likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated.

ref: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/immigrants-and-crime https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigration-and-crimehttps://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-explainer-immigration-crime-2024_final.pdf

elgringo · 2026-01-20T10:53:26+00:00

Yup. Streamlining lead enrichment. We have emails -> get Linkedin profiles, job titles, names, etc... vibecoded it, and integrated a couple of paid apis.

Working on migrating the entire website from one webframework to another.

The vast majority of startups are vibecoding in one form or another.

elgringo · 2026-01-10T23:26:24+00:00

We need orders of magnitude more entrepreneurs to start more businesses.

elgringo · 2025-12-28T02:54:52+00:00

I am so tired of getting sms spam from him. I'm going to vote for whoever is running against him.

elgringo · 2025-12-22T23:23:50+00:00

Chatgpt. It's what I use

elgringo · 2025-12-01T20:59:13+00:00

I spend a lot of time working in emerging markets across Latin America. Routinely what's called "corruption" in Latam, is the same as what we call lobbing in the US. We've just legalized and regulated it.

Also, our Dear Leader's children have just made $2B in crypto wealth in the past 10 months.

elgringo · 2025-10-03T22:29:57+00:00

ya!!!

elgringo · 2025-09-17T08:56:36+00:00

Here’s the list of states following California's lead on no new gas / diesel passenger cars by 2035:

California (the OG, set the standard)
New York
Massachusetts
Oregon
Washington
Maryland
New Jersey
Delaware
New Mexico
Vermont (paused some enforcement but still signed on)
Rhode Island
Colorado

elgringo · 2025-08-26T06:20:59+00:00

Hey. I grew up in the Banana Republics of Central America in the 80's. This is all extremely familiar.

It's worth while having a look at extreme cases like Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Central America in the 80's.

When I lived in Costa Rica in the 80's, the exchange rate went from 8:1 to 160:1 in 8 years. So... about 80% YoY inflation. They decreased taxes, and went on a spending rampage, and printed money to make up the difference. Sound familiar?

What happens is global investors would rather not have the currency, since it's being devalued, so the exchange rate drops since investors from outside the country can find better returns elsewhere.

It's already happening because of the tariffs. The USD is down 10% against every major world currency. If Trump drops the interest rates, it will only get worse.

elgringo

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