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Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of the porn site OnlyFans, has just died at age 43 of cancer. Radvinsky is famous for taking a 75% stake in the website and became a billionaire in just 3 years of ownership. He had an estimated net worth of $4.7 billion at the time of his death.

A reminder that all the money in the world cannot add a moment to your life. The money, houses, companies, and all your possessions go quickly to someone else. The only thing you carry into eternity is what you did with your life.

³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew 25:31-46

The Pragmatic Engineer shares an interview with Dave Anderson, formerly Tech Director at Amazon, shares an look at Amazon’s engineering culture.

He covers things like levels, the ‘Bar Raiser’ role, oncall, Amazon’s extreme frugality, the need for a strong relationship with your manager, and exiting with financial independence and early retirement.

1 in 5 new diagnoses of colorectal cancer now occur in people under 50, and 4 out of 5 of those are sadly not detected until it’s reached advanced stages (stage 2, 3, or 4). Colon cancer screening age has dropped to 45 due to the dramatic increase in rates – but many much younger people need to be aware of the easily identifiable symptoms.

Why? Because Kalei Martin is 28 and had been experiencing a lot of symptoms that should have been red flags for cancer. Sadly, her doctors didn’t recognize it until it had already spread. She was young, healthy, and it was chalked up to changes due to pregnancy and other health issues. But in reality – the signs were very clear.

Sadly, by the time someone did recognize the symptoms, she had stage 2 rectal cancer (T3 tumor) and, one year later, stage 4 with metastasis to her lungs (creating a 13-20% 5 year survival rate).

Her story is becoming increasingly common; and many doctors don’t even think of checking because young healthy people shouldn’t have cancer.

It’s worth listening to how what she thought was simple symptoms were actually progression of disease.

• Changes in bowel habits: Using the restroom more frequently, moving from every other day to multiple times daily (2:53).
• Rectal bleeding: Initially thought to be hemorrhoids due to recent pregnancies, but progressed to darker blood and eventually blood clots (3:50).
• Stomach cramping: Intense, sharp pain, different from menstrual cramps, that would progress to lasting 30-60 seconds (5:05).
• Pressure during intercourse: Experiencing pain and pressure, which led to a red flag for her (6:26).

She (like me) also learned you need to be a strong advocate for yourself and ensure your doctors are getting you in for tests and treatments that will give you the best chances of survival.

Sadly, her cancer had already spread and it became Stage 4 just a year later. Still, there seems to be good prognosis based on her most recent video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYYxmm7bTA

I never knew Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allileyua, defected from the Soviet Union – and then gave a interview. It’s a powerful reminder that despite many shortcomings – people under communist rule through the 20th century lived under some of the most horrific, oppressive governments in history.

This is how hacking/cracking games used to work back in the old DOS days when all of memory is available in a flat structure and you could look at and change anything. What good times!