@Earl-of-Trumps saidAnd yet look how the patriarchy treats them.
@Suzianne said - Thank God for women.
I couldn't agree more, Suzianne.
Without them, there'd be no men! 😆
In 1979, Madison; Wisconsin, a woman sits in a basement office, writing code line by line on a computer most hospitals don't even know they need yet.
Her name is Judy Faulkner. She's started with $6,000 to $7,000 of her own money, plus contributions from friends and family totaling around $70,000. No venture capital. No Silicon Valley connections. Just a conviction that the American healthcare system is killing people because doctors can't access the information they desperately need.
She had watched it happen. Medical records stayed trapped in filing cabinets and incompatible systems when patients moved between cities and providers. Doctors made critical decisions in the dark, lacking the patient histories they needed. People died from preventable mistakes.
That systemic failure became her mission. Faulkner began building software that would let patient information follow the patient, no matter where they went. It was a radical idea in an era when most hospitals still relied on paper charts and metal drawers.
Decades later, she controls Epic Systems, the most powerful health technology company in America. Her software manages medical records for over 300 million patients worldwide. Roughly half of all U.S. hospital beds run on systems she created. Her wealth sits between $7 and $8 billion.
And almost no one knows her name.
She never took Epic public. Never accepted venture capital. Never sold out. She believed Wall Street would force her to chase quarterly profits instead of patient outcomes. So she kept control, kept her wealth locked in private shares, and kept building.
Now in her eighties, she's methodically dismantling that fortune. In 2015, she signed the Giving Pledge. Then went further, committing to give away 99 percent of her wealth. She and her husband created the Roots & Wings Foundation, named after advice she once gave her children when they asked what they needed most from her.
"You need roots and wings," she told them. Values to anchor you. Freedom to grow. Everything else is noise.
Today, that foundation distributes tens of millions annually, aiming for $100 million a year. Food security. Healthcare access. Education. Housing. She's not waiting until she's gone to make an impact. She's converting ownership into action right now, while she's still here to see it work.
In an age of billionaire spectacle, Judy Faulkner built an empire in silence, accumulated unimaginable wealth without chasing it, and is now giving it all away with the same quiet determination she used to write that first line of code in a Wisconsin basement.
Faulkner still runs Epic Systems from its headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin, where the campus has become legendary for its design. Buildings are themed after famous works of literature and fantasy, with conference rooms modeled after Hogwarts, Alice in Wonderland, and Star Trek. Employees traverse tunnels decorated like subway stations and walk through spaces that feel more like theme parks than corporate offices. It's Faulkner's way of making grueling work feel a little more human.
Unlike most tech billionaires, she lives modestly and avoids the spotlight. She doesn't own yachts, doesn't collect estates, and rarely seeks media attention. Her focus remains on Epic's mission: building software that saves lives by making sure critical information is always available when it matters most.
Faulkner majored in mathematics and computer science at a time when women made up less than 10 percent of the field. Before founding Epic, she taught herself programming languages and worked on developing systems for hospitals while teaching at the University of Wisconsin. Another fascinating detail: Epic remains one of the largest privately held software companies in the world, with thousands of employees and zero outside investors. Faulkner retains control by design, ensuring the company answers to patients, not shareholders.
@ArchaeoHistories
Amalie Emmy Noether
(23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935)
A German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's first and second theorems, which are fundamental in mathematical physics.[4] Noether was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics.[5][6][7] As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.[8]
Noether was born to a Jewish family in the Franconian town of Erlangen; her father was the mathematician Max Noether. She originally planned to teach French and English after passing the required examinations, but instead studied mathematics at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, where her father lectured. After completing her doctorate in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for seven years.[9] At the time, women were largely excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was approved in 1919, allowing her to obtain the rank of Privatdozent.[9]
Noether remained a leading member of the Göttingen mathematics department until 1933; her students were sometimes called the "Noether Boys". In 1924, Dutch mathematician B. L. van der Waerden joined her circle and soon became the leading expositor of Noether's ideas; her work was the foundation for the second volume of his influential 1931 textbook, Moderne Algebra. By the time of her plenary address at the 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, her algebraic acumen was recognized around the world. The following year, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the United States to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. There, she taught graduate and post-doctoral women including Marie Johanna Weiss and Olga Taussky-Todd. At the same time, she lectured and performed research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.[9]
Noether's mathematical work has been divided into three "epochs".[10] In the first (1908–1919), she made contributions to the theories of algebraic invariants and number fields. Her work on differential invariants in the calculus of variations, Noether's theorem, has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics".[11] In the second epoch (1920–1926), she began work that "changed the face of [abstract] algebra".[12] In her classic 1921 paper Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen (Theory of Ideals in Ring Domains), Noether developed the theory of ideals in commutative rings into a tool with wide-ranging applications. She made elegant use of the ascending chain condition, and objects satisfying it are named Noetherian in her honor. In the third epoch (1927–1935), she published works on noncommutative algebras and hypercomplex numbers and united the representation theory of groups with the theory of modules and ideals. In addition to her own publications, Noether was generous with her ideas and is credited with several lines of research published by other mathematicians, even in fields far removed from her main work, such as algebraic topology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
The three women featured in the movie "Hidden Figures" are Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who played crucial roles as mathematicians at NASA during the Space Race.
Overview of Their Contributions
Katherine Johnson: A brilliant mathematician, Katherine Johnson was instrumental in calculating the trajectories for space missions, including the historic flight of John Glenn. Her work was vital in ensuring the success of NASA's early space explorations.
Dorothy Vaughan: As a mathematician and computer programmer, Dorothy Vaughan was a leader in the West Area Computing section at NASA. She was one of the first African American women to supervise a group of staff and played a key role in transitioning the team to computer programming, particularly with the introduction of the IBM computers.
Mary Jackson: An engineer, Mary Jackson became NASA's first Black female engineer. She worked on various projects and was an advocate for women in engineering, breaking barriers in a male-dominated field.
These three women not only contributed significantly to NASA's success but also paved the way for future generations of women and people of color in STEM fields. Their stories highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion in science and technology.
a soldier
a warrior
In 1871, a 41-year-old woman stood before a military tribunal in Versailles and demanded her own execution. "I belong entirely to the Social Revolution," she declared. "I do not want to be defended. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance. I demand death!" She had just fought on the barricades of the Paris Commune—rifle in hand, commanding troops, nursing the wounded. The court refused her demand. They sentenced her to exile instead. They believed silence would follow.
They were spectacularly wrong.
This was Louise Michel.
Born in 1830 in rural France, the illegitimate daughter of a servant and a nobleman who never acknowledged her. She grew up poor but became a teacher, opening schools for poor children and teaching radical ideas about equality and freedom .
In March 1871, when the Paris Commune rose up—a revolutionary government run by workers—Louise grabbed a rifle and went to the barricades. She fought street by street, organized medical care, and refused to accept defeat even as government troops closed in. Thousands were executed during "Bloody Week." Louise expected the same.
Captured and tried, she turned the courtroom into her platform. She told the judges: if she had been present when generals ordered troops to fire on civilians, she would have shot the generals herself .
They sent her to New Caledonia—a remote prison colony halfway around the world. For nine years, she endured exile.
But she transformed punishment into purpose. She opened schools—first for prisoners' children, then for Indigenous Kanak children. When the Kanak rose up against colonial rule in 1878, Louise stood with them .
She returned to France in 1880 to massive crowds. "The Red Virgin" resumed revolutionary work, speaking across France about workers' rights and women's liberation. Police followed her everywhere. She was arrested repeatedly. She never stopped.
On January 9, 1888, while giving a speech, a young royalist stabbed her in the head. Blood poured down her face. The crowd seized her attacker—and would have killed him. Louise stopped them. Even bleeding from a head wound, she said: "Do not hurt him. He is as much a victim of society as I am." She refused to press charges.
She died on January 9, 1905—exactly seventeen years after being stabbed—while on a speaking tour. Over 100,000 people attended her funeral. Workers, students, activists all came to honor her .
Louise Michel demanded death in 1871. They refused and sent her into exile instead. So she turned exile into education. Education into solidarity. Solidarity into revolution. She never bent. Never compromised. Never stopped. She died poor. But she died free.
The History Chapter
@thehistorychapter_ig
She had a PhD in psychology from Columbia.
The network handed her a stack of books on prizefighting.
It was 1955. Joyce Brothers was twenty-seven, newly married to a medical resident, and mother to a newborn. They lived in a freezing walk-up apartment on $50 a month. Rent was $75. They ate crackers for dinner and skipped meals to keep the heat on. She washed her hair with dish soap.
Universities wouldn’t hire her because she was a woman. Clinics wouldn’t hire her because she was a mother. Her profession had locked her out.
One night, desperate for money, she applied to a new CBS quiz show that was giving away huge sums. The producers liked her looks but rejected psychology. They offered her one category: boxing.
They assumed a petite blonde housewife would be gone in a week.
Joyce didn’t argue. She walked to the library in the freezing rain, checked out heavy volumes on boxing history, and carried them home.
For four weeks she barely slept. While her baby cried beside her, she memorized weights, reaches, referees, ring records, and obscure fights from the 1890s.
On live television, inside the isolation booth, she answered every question flawlessly. The sponsors panicked and made the questions harder. She still didn’t miss.
She won $64,000.
Then she used her sudden fame to get what she had wanted all along: her own television show.
By 1958, Dr. Joyce Brothers was on air talking about postpartum depression, anxiety, and marriage — subjects no one else would touch. When the network tried to cancel her for discussing menopause, she read viewer letters on camera. They backed down.
She had beaten the game they built for her to lose.
Dr. Joyce Brothers: the woman who memorized boxing to break into television — and then used it to help millions of women think about their own minds.
We are a tiny minority contributing to the world and improving lives. Always.
@rookie54 saidWhat an amazing woman.
She had a PhD in psychology from Columbia.
The network handed her a stack of books on prizefighting.
It was 1955. Joyce Brothers was twenty-seven, newly married to a medical resident, and mother to a newborn. They lived in a freezing walk-up apartment on $50 a month. Rent was $75. They ate crackers for dinner and skipped meals to keep the heat on. She washed her hair with ...[text shortened]... ut their own minds.
We are a tiny minority contributing to the world and improving lives. Always.
Her name is Dr. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, and she has spent decades researching how the brain actually encodes and retrieves information.
A Harvard neuroscience professor who teaches at Harvard Summer School said something that completely changed how I think about memory.
She wasn't talking to journalists. She was answering a student question about why smart people still forget everything they study.
Here's what she said: "The ultimate litmus test of learning is using the information in a new context, not just remembering it for a test."
That one sentence exposes why most people's study habits are completely broken.
Here's the actual system she teaches Harvard students to retain what they learn.
The first thing she kills immediately is the myth that you have one learning style. The idea that you're a "visual learner" or an "auditory learner" is not supported by modern neuroscience. Your brain wants to learn through as many senses as possible at once, because each sense creates a separate neural pathway to the same knowledge. More pathways means faster and stronger recall.
The second technique is spaced repetition, but she explains the mechanism in a way most people never hear. Every time you retrieve a memory, you physically thicken the myelin sheath around that neural connection, which makes the electrical signal travel faster. You aren't just reviewing information you are literally rewiring your brain to access it more quickly.
The third technique floored me. She tells students to teach what they just learned to someone else within 24 hours, because teaching forces you to find the gaps in your own understanding before the exam does it for you.
The fourth is what she calls "feed-forward" instead of feedback. When you get something wrong, don't treat it as a failure. Ask only one question: what would I do differently next time? That reframe keeps the brain in a learning state instead of a defensive one.
But the most underrated insight she shared was this: the single biggest factor in long-term retention is whether you can make the material personally meaningful to your own life. Your brain prioritizes storing things that feel relevant and discards things that feel abstract.
The students who remember everything aren't studying harder. They're studying in a way that the brain was actually designed to absorb.
Canada, 1929 — five women refused to accept that they were legally “less than.” And they took the entire system to court.
For decades, Canadian law used the word “persons” in a way that quietly excluded women—especially when it came to power. Women could vote by this point, they could work, they could organize… but they could not be appointed to the Senate. Why? Because “qualified persons” was interpreted to mean men.
It sounds unbelievable now—but legally, women were still standing outside the definition of full political existence.
Then came the five who would change it forever: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Henrietta Edwards, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby—later known as the Famous Five.
They asked a simple, explosive question: Are women “persons” under the law?
The case went all the way to the highest court in Canada. The answer came back: no. Women, legally, were not included.
Most people would have stopped there.
They didn’t.
They pushed the case further—to Britain’s highest court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. And in 1929, everything shifted.
The ruling declared that the Constitution was a “living tree”—capable of growth and change. And women? Women were, undeniably, persons.
With that single decision, women could finally be appointed to the Senate. But more than that, it cracked open a much larger truth: rights were not fixed—they could be fought for, redefined, expanded.
What makes this moment powerful isn’t just the victory.
It’s the fact that, in 1929—not ancient history—women had to argue, in court, that they counted as people.
And they won.
@Suzianne saidMAGA men are the biggest drama queens in modern history. They lay claim to all flavors, shapes, and sizes of victimhood, and dismiss and scorn the centuries of empirically documented persecutions of women, people of color, and other groups as being either "old news" that's no longer relevant, or else made up—like, quite literally made up, with little Mikey69 even suggesting mass delusion.
And yet, quite like you here, most gaslighters are men.
A 16-year-old Latina girl from Chicago mailed her application to MIT.
Her name is Sabrina González Pasterski.
On merit alone, she should have been impossible to ignore. At 14, she had built a working single-engine airplane in her family’s garage—documenting every step, from assembly to flight. She passed inspection and flew it herself. She came from public schools, a first-generation Cuban-American with no elite pipeline or connections.
She understood the unspoken rule: girls like her had to be exceptional just to be considered.
She was.
MIT still waitlisted her.
It hit hard. MIT had been the goal she built everything around. Being told “not yet” felt like being told “not you.” But then two MIT professors came across her airplane video. They watched a teenager design, build, and fly her own aircraft—and immediately recognized something rare.
They pushed her case forward.
MIT reconsidered.
She got in.
She didn’t forget that moment. Instead, she used it as fuel. At MIT, she didn’t just succeed—she redefined what success looked like. She became the first woman to win the prestigious Orloff Scholarship, graduated in just three years with a perfect 5.00 GPA, and became the first woman in two decades to graduate at the top of MIT Physics.
Her research moved just as fast. Her first paper was accepted within 24 hours—something almost unheard of in theoretical physics. Opportunities followed. NASA showed interest.
Jeff Bezos personally offered her a role at Blue Origin.
She declined.
She chose to pursue deeper questions instead, heading to Harvard for a PhD in physics. There, she focused on black holes, quantum gravity, and the structure of spacetime. At just 25, her work was cited by Stephen Hawking—a rare acknowledgment from one of the most respected minds in science.
But her story isn’t just about intelligence.
It’s about navigating a space where people like her are often underrepresented. She had seen the imbalance early—few girls in advanced physics, even fewer from her background. Instead of stepping back, she stepped forward.
She kept her focus narrow and intentional. No social media presence, no distractions—just her work. She maintained a simple website, sharing research rather than chasing attention. When people compared her to Einstein, she rejected it, insisting she was still learning.
After completing her PhD, again with top performance, she continued her work at leading research institutions. Today, she contributes to some of the most complex problems in physics, exploring how the universe fundamentally works.
And as she does, she quietly expands what feels possible for others.
Sabrina González Pasterski’s story isn’t just about brilliance. It’s about persistence, identity, and refusing to shrink to fit expectations. MIT hesitated.
She gave them a second chance to see clearly.
And then she went on to prove exactly who she was.
@histories_arch