Impressed By Awesomeness

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

bucky feeling confused and lost about his place in steve's life post-serum and then finding out that within a month of his death steve immediately fucking dies. steve did still need him, even after everything. he feels a brief moment of vindication, of almost relief at their codependency being mutual, and then he's overwhelmed with guilt for that feeling and for 'failing steve'. he wasn't there and steve died. he blames himself for it.

Happy Pride Month you glorious people!

___

Hydra caught him

and didn’t release him

until he fell

Steve caught him

but Steve lost him

on that train

in the fall

and each time

Steve chased him

to catch him again

and again

Zemo caught him

released him

to the wolves

Steve lost him

to the ice

and the snap

Steve chased him

again and again

but once he was caught

what was left?

Steve released him

Sam

never caught him

Sam made him a home

Steve tried to bring him safety

Sam made find feel safe

Sam didn’t have to catch him

But he never released him

~~~~~~~~

Day 10 of @monthlywritingchallenges Firefly July: Catch and Release

They semi-cancelled Timothee Chalamet for simply saying he found opera and ballet boring, by the way.

How does Hollywood work these days?

Being a bit of a naive, foolish young man and (wrongfully) calling opera and ballet irrelevant?

“You must apologise immediately! No Oscar for you.”

Acknowledging you stole terrified teenage girls from their bedrooms?

Embarrassing as it is, this other man admitted to war crimes.