Fluff

A Leap of a Day

One woman made college free for hundreds of students. Mitch McConnell is retiring a century late. Stardew Valley gets a patch soon. Your allergies may one day be history.

Endeavorance

Feb 29, 2024 — 4 min read

It's a Leap Day

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ALSO: MERCH STOREEEEEEE

I now have a merch store! Wanna support my work while also wearing clothing? Head to https://shop.endeavorance.camp and check back often as I'll be adding more stuff over time!

If you'd like to request something specific for the store, send suggestions to: neverending@fea.st

A Moral Billionaire…

…is one who immediately gives it to others.

Dr. Ruth L. Gottesman made a donation. A one billion dollar donation to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC. What's it for? To cover tuition for students at the college. Like, forever.

Gottesman is a former professor at the university, now a member of their board. When her husband passed away, he left his billion dollar investment portfolio to her, and instructed her to do with it what she sees fit.

What she saw fit to do was to immediately gift it to hundreds of students, with thousands more to come, changing countless lives for the foreseeable future. The university will be tuition-free for perpetuity.

Ruth L. Gottesman is a real one.

Mitch McConnell Is Retiring

Only about a century late, Mitch McConnell, the US Republican Senate Leader, has announced he will be stepping down from his position this November.

I cannot overstate just how significant of a political figure this man is, and not for good reasons. He's at the heart of virtually every repugnant decision made in this country since… well basically my entire life.

He's the reason the Supreme Court is stacked the way it is, and overturned Roe v. Wade. He's to blame for the astonishing number of hyper-conservative judges placed around the country. He has spent his political career warping politics in the US to his will, impeding progress, preventing any notion of reasonable discourse, and just being an all around "fuck you, got mine" kind of guy.

So yay he's retiring, but also he's earned it. Per my view, he's done more damage than virtually any other politician in office right now. Record-setting levels of being a piece of shit.

I'll keep you posted for when he dies so we can have a group grave-shiting party.

Stardew Valley 1.6 Is Out In a Month

Concerned Ape, the creator of the ubiquitous farming life-sim game Stardew Valley, has announced a release date for the long-awaited version 1.6 patch: March 19th.

Basically forever ago, he announced that 1.6 was coming, and noted that it would be pretty light on content, and instead focus on making community developed mods better supported. Then we heard nothing for a while, then he was like "oh btw I lied, there's gonna be a ton of new content in this patch."

New dialogue, new character portraits for winter cozy times, seemingly some new endgame content, new areas, items, characters, and even native 8-person multiplayer support, which was previously only possible with mods.

It's wild how far this game has come and how the entire games industry has been attempting to re-capture that lightning in a bottle for nearly a decade. This announcement came out on Stardew Valley's 8th anniversary.

If you need me, I'll be searching for the Mayor's trunks.

Allergies May Be a Thing of the Past

(Okay it's not actually THAT significant, but this is pretty significant. More medical science. Yay!)

Researchers published a paper that reviews a study in which patients with severe allergic reactions to foods were given Omalizumab (lol?)—a drug originally approved to treat asthma—as an ongoing treatment. After 16 weeks of treatment, patients on the drug had significantly less severe reactions upon consuming their allergen compared to those on the placebo.

This could be huge for generally finding ways to treat or neutralize allergic reactions in the future, but still, any reduction in allergic reaction severity is a good thing. Taking a routine pill which can reduce the risk of you literally dying because you accidentally ingested a peanut seems like a pretty dang good thing.

Once again, thanks, medical science folks. Keep at it.

(Also this is not medical advice, don't try to self-medicate with this drug due to this one paper)