sourkrause94

[sourkrause94]

I realized today I don’t think I’ve heard any of my colleagues talk about their hobbies unless they were still work-related hobbies.

I simply cannot be like that. I don’t want work to consume me. Here’s hoping I can make time for me and my hobbies.

[sourkrause94]

Looks like we can’t isolate, ignore, ibuprofen our way out of this one boys

[sourkrause94]

I guess I’m back here to scream into a void full of people who aren’t the ones I know irl for the most part.

‘Tis the damn season friends

[sourkrause94]

Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.

[sourkrause94]

So Gregor Mendel (yes, the guy with the pea plants) wrote down that he wanted to be given a thorough autopsy after he died. The year he died was 1884. Autopsies were increasingly common at the time, but Mendel was an Augustinian friar and the arguments preventing donating your body to science for teaching autopsies, research, etc. were theological. The “ethical” source of teaching cadavers for doctors to autopsy was (in many places) the bodies of executed criminals, as a sort of post-mortem punishment.  Mendel became a monk specifically because he couldn’t afford to study otherwise, even after one of his sisters donated her dowry to the cause. He did too well as a monk to continue his work as long as he wanted: he got promoted to Abbott and the last sixteen years of his life were spent doing administrative work, and his experiments weren’t properly replicated, or examined as a viable alternative to then current theories on inheritance, until 1990. But he chose to donate his body to science (which he loved) and be of material benefit to the field of medicine, which he didn’t practice but two of his nephews did.  There’s just something beautiful about a guy who lived through the era where having your body dissected was the height of dishonor, in an institution that had advocated against the practice, deciding that anything that helps humanity as a whole was worth doing. There’s something just as beautiful about the fact that he was exhumed for genetic sequencing on his 200th birthday - usually we don’t just dig people up and grab their genes as a surprise party, because in addition to it being a lot of work we can’t assume they would have appreciated it, but Mendel? He would have been jazzed. 

[sourkrause94]

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.

[sourkrause94]

Shrek (2001) // Glass Onion (2022)

[sourkrause94]

Merry Christmas! From the family who definitely gets their dogs matching pjs 😉 #DogsOfInstagram #MatchingPJs #ChristmasPJs #MerryChristmas https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmm_ImGMH0y/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sourkrause94]

So glad I got to see Beetlejuice before it leaves Broadway! Seeing musicals with my parents has always been so fun, since they started taking me when I was little. Getting to go to Broadway with them again was incredible. Anyway, cheers, to being strange and unusual! #Beetlejuice #BeetlejuiceMusical #TheWholeBeingDeadThing @beetlejuicebway (at Times Square, New York City) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmR7EK3vVNu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sourkrause94]

My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

[sourkrause94]

No, but there have been studies about how cat purring is at the right frequency to help with things like osteoporosis

all energy healing is a scam except for when a kitty lays on your chest and purrs and purrs and sends restorative rays of magic into your bones and nerves. fellas that one’s real.

[sourkrause94]

Me and Squee, we’re going places 😎 What places those are, I have no idea, but we’re definitely going to them. 📸Amanda Rose #DiscDog #DogSports #CanineAthletes #TossAndFetch #Fetch #BorderColliesOfInstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl47f6lsPcA/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sourkrause94]

Never thought I’d see one of my friends and their dogs like this in the wild.

[sourkrause94]

why did God give me these battles (getting dressed and leaving the house)

[sourkrause94]

[sourkrause94]

If you’re in the Purdue area, an EPICS team has put together a new PPE made from housing wrap that can be used to sew isolation gowns and scrub caps. They are looking for people to help cut materials daily and then home sewers to pick up packs of 10 to sew the PPE outfits at home. I just picked up a packet today and have set up shop in the apartment to put this PPE together. They are aiming to make 1000 sets, so if 100 people volunteer to each make a set, we’ll reach that goal quickly! If you’re in the Lafayette area and have a sewing machine, e-mail jgoetz@purdue.edu to arrange picking up a set. If you can sew, but don’t have access to a machine, let me know and I may be able to lend you a machine from my department, I have to check with my adviser. If you can’t sew, but are handy with a pair of scissors, consider volunteering to cut material for shift. We can do this together. Bonus puppy for added comfort. . . . . . #sewunited @singersewingcompany #sewing #ppe #covidcrafts #staysafe #stayhome (at West Lafayette, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_VAzx1ltmY/?igshid=1oug2xtzgqtkp

[sourkrause94]

Crafting during quarantine means making a bow tie for James so he can be the fancy pup he has always wanted to be. . . . . #Pups #Puppy #Labradoodle #bowtie #fancy #fancydog #dog (at West Lafayette, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Sa5J0Fzkx/?igshid=15r58efiu15h9