rowanfalls asked:
Why did you guys choose the charity that you did? Of all the causes out there, what stood out to you about Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone?
There is a lot of injustice in the world. There is injustice in every direction! It is easy to find yourself frozen in the face of the a dizzying array of injustices.
But for me, there is no expression of structural injustice as profound as mortality caused by poverty.
Like, the 1.5 MILLION people who will die this year of tuberculosis will not REALLY die of infection by the bacterium m. tuberculosis. Whether you get tuberculosis is not REALLY determined by whether you are exposed to the bacterium that “causes” TB. Whether you get sick and die of tuberculosis is determined by whether you are impoverished, whether you live in a community with a fragile healthcare system, and whether you can access healthcare. This is why most people in rich countries don’t even know that TB is the second-leading cause of infectious disease death on Earth–behind only Covid.
Maternal mortality is another glaring expression of this injustice: 700 people in Sierra Leone will die giving birth for every one who dies in Germany. This is not the result of some natural or inevitable process. It is the direct result of human-built systems that have impoverished the Sierra Leonean government and people for centuries.
When we began this project in 2019, one in seventeen Sierra Leonean women died in childbirth. ONE IN SEVENTEEN. There is nothing inevitable about the statistic. (Indeed, it is now closer to 1 in 25–which is still hundreds of times higher than it needs to be.)
There is nothing inevitable about this injustice! It was caused by human-built systems and can be addressed by human-built systems. And the great thing about fighting maternal mortality is that it has all kinds of virtuous side effects–the blood bank at Koidu Government Hospital will serve those who are dying from blood loss after child birth, but it will also serve the entire community. Clean water and electricity at community health centers make for safer conditions in which to give birth, but also safer conditions in which to be treated for other healthcare issues. And of course we know that when parents survive childbirth, kids are more likely to be educated, and less likely to be malnourished.
Sierra Leone in particular has a government that, while deeply impoverished and chronically underfunded, is working to build a stronger healthcare system, and Partners in Health has deep relations with the government so that it’s not working parallel to the public healthcare system but deeply embedded within it. And because SL is the epicenter of the global maternal mortality crisis, by making change there, we show the global health community that NOWHERE ON EARTH should the lifetime risk of maternal death be above 1%, let alone 5 or 7 percent.
So those are some of the reasons why we are focused with PIH on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, and why Hank and I have committed the majority of our wealth to addressing the injustice of inequitable access to healthcare. If you want to join the thousands of folks who’ve joined us by donating monthly to support this cause, or learn more, here’s the place.
oktaviaholmes asked:
Hello, this is my first ask. Why do you only sell coffee to the USA and Canada?
randomshitwithwinter asked:
is the tucker carlson thing a bit? i can never tell what and what is not a bit. it cokes with the autism
I genuinely and deeply dislike Tucker Carlson.
There is a famous and beautiful prayer by St. Augustine, which goes like this: “Lord, make me chaste. But not yet.”
When I think of Tucker Carlson, I think of this prayer. I know that I am called to love all people, that every human life is equally beautiful and important and worthy of care and attention and kind-heartedness. I know that to be a truly good person, I must not just love my family and Meryl Streep and Mohamed Salah and so on, but also that I must love Tucker Carlson.
Of course, I do not have to love the horrific things that Tucker Carlson SAYS, and I do not have to love Tucker Carlson’s hugely harmful BODY OF WORK, and I do not have to love Tucker Carlson’s perversion of all that is good and holy in the name of suckling at the teat of power, and I do not have to love the smarmy way that Tucker Carlson dehumanizes the marginalized to make the rich and powerful feel that their wealth and power is just. But I am called to find a way to love the essential and inalienable humanity of Tucker Carlson nonetheless.
And to that calling I can only say, “Lord, liberate me from my dislike of Tucker Carlson. But not yet.”
chronologicalimplosion asked:
I think a lot, now, about the video you made where you talked about how easy it is to ruin someone's day and how the social internet hides the vast number of people choosing to not do that in favor of the small number who do. I think a lot about a lot of things you've said, regarding hope and language and earnestness and sometimes even giraffe sex. I've been thinking lately about a list of "people I can listen to who make me a better version of myself" or "people who make me think thoughts that make me like myself more", and you and Hank are at the top of it. Have been my whole adult life. I'm selfishly glad you're back on tumblr, for whatever precious time it lasts. I'm trying to be more earnest this year. I hope you're having a good day.
So many people are so nice!
Almost everyone is nice almost all of the time!
But then I pay so much more attention to people when they are NOT nice!
I get mad at them and tell them, “You are being not very nice and kind of a jerk, Tucker Carlson!”
Which does not make me feel better and does not make the world better but I still find it so hard to resist doing!
And I have also observed that people pay attention to ME when I am not nice!
This is such a problem!
I do not know how to solve it!
Since I left tumblr I have become like Upton Sinclair with the exclamation points!
That is a very niche joke!
Thank you for your kind ask!
morphimus asked:
I think it's incredibly brave of you to return to tumblr. Glad to have you back, unpaid coffee intern! I hope things work out better this time, and the tumblypoos can simmer down (with a nice cup of coffee perhaps?)
I wonder if people on tumblr in 2023 know that the word “tumblypoos” was a joke making fun of tumblr people who nicknamed their followers, or whether it is believed to have been like an actual sincere thing that I actually sincerely said.
There’s no ethical consumption, but why not have your coffee taste better and strengthen healthcare systems in the world’s most impoverished communities?
Hi. Hello. Putting ~that~ copypasta in my ask box makes me sad. If that’s your intention, okay! But to me it feels like a joke about my sexuality, or else about other people’s sexuality, and it just bums me out. I try to play it off as a joke a lot because I do not know what else to do about it, and because I know the social Internet is essentially in the business of devouring all which is earnest, but yeah.
I don’t totally understand why it makes me sad, and the parts of it I do understand I am not really interested in sharing. But I think a lot of people maybe don’t know that it makes me sad, and are not trying to make me feel bad, so this is a post to let those people know.
Hi. As of today, we are a full-service coffee company, providing both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee to fine coffee consumers everywhere. Our decaf is incredibly delicious, just like our other roasts, and literally no one paid me to say that.
