What about the fact that runtime startup alone auto-disqualifies python for all short-lived process use-cases?

While Python’s start-up time is a lot slower than a corresponding compiled program, in most cases it’s not slow enough to matter even if the process itself is short-lived:

$ hyperfine 'python3 -c "pass"'
Benchmark 1: python3 -c "pass" (412 runs)
                mean     ±       σ          min     …     max
  Wall Time      7.1 ms  ±     0.2 ms       6.7 ms  …     8.4 ms
  Memory         9.4 MiB ±     0.1 MiB      9.1 MiB …     9.5 MiB

If you are running a small program so often that this kind of start-up time matters, then the loop should probably already be implemented in the program itself. In line with the article’s thesis