news.mit.edu
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.
![This was a chat for Young Republicans, the future of their party. And it reflects dynamics we see across American society, and especially online and on the right, of young men being drawn to a culture of male supremacy and rape enthusiasm. As I wrote then, "In the context of sex, [male supremacy] comes down to a wholesale rejection of sex as a consensual act for the enjoyment of both parties."
As I noted here at Liberal Currents last year, rape is integral to authoritarian politics. Mussolini was a rapist. Francisco Franco imposed a hardline Catholic dictatorship in Spain in which women were expected to serve the nation by serving their husbands. Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet NKVD during World War Two, leveraged his position to engage in serial rape on a prolific scale. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat observed in her book, Strongmen, "The strongman would be nothing without bodies to control." And authoritarianism offers up these bodies to its most dedicated foot soldiers, a point on which Beria serves as a good reminder.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:hafxlnw235qrcil2lpohp2ly/bafkreicap4x26innjegfavjr2fmkjm6oaivemggox3nwclltiyytcl6z5u)
