History didn't ignore her; her name is all over the histories of the discovery of the structure of DNA. She wasn't awarded the Nobel prize because Nobel prizes aren't awarded posthumously, but I agree if she had been alive, she should (and very likely would) have been added.

By the way, her work after leaving King's College, in elucidating the structure of viruses, was also groundbreaking.

The person whose work was vital in the x-ray crystallography of DNA and also deserved the prize is Raymond Gosling

Nope. The technique was invented by Gosling back when he was working for Wilkins, before Franklin arrived at King's College. And, yes, in doing that work he learned that humidity was the key.

Not to downplay Franklin's role-- she was doing the hard work of interpretation of the x-ray diffraction patterns-- but Photo 51 was taken by Gosling.

Correct: he should have received some measure of credit. And, to be fair, he did: the Nature paper (in the same issue as Watson and Crick's) was authored by Franklin and Gosling.

But Watson, Crick, and Wilkins got a Nobel prize. Gosling, who did the actual work, finished his degree, couldn't find a job in Britain, and left the field. If there's a person who was unfairly erased from the histories, it's Raymond Goslling.

Maybe not. That was the excuse for why Jocelyn Bell didn't share the Nobel prize for discovering pulsars. But in this case Gosling was the one who devised the method and protocol, and did so before Franklin arrived at King's college.

There's several good books on the details (although I advise you to skip Watson's book the Double Helix, which is sensational but glosses over the contributions of everybody else.)

Also (outside of California) wrongful imprisonment is a legal justification for the use of deadly force.

But California is intentionally destroying their former high-trust society as a pretext for totalitarianism, so ... whatever ... get out like everyone else with a brain.

Not too long ago U-Haul was offering free one-way hauls TO California because the escape rate was so lopsided.

...famously played by Slashdot user CleverNickName.

That's what happens when you cut the cybersecurity office, fire half the people doing the work, and then put the rest on furlough because cybersecurity isn't essential.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/1...
  https://www.axios.com/2025/10/...

Both are effective monopolies because of being the first and most dominant in a market. But they have a different level of evilness. Steam is a beneficial monopoly that doesn't abuse its position, while Ebay can be a pain in the ass.

Thorium 232 captures a neutron, turning into Thorium 233. Thorium 233 decays to Uranium 233 by successive beta decays.

The last thing I want out of a map is a "conversational experience,"

The conversation I want is:
ME: "Show me the map."
MAP: "Here."

Neutron capture is not usually considered fusion.

Climate change is a long term problem. We will still need energy sources in 2040.

That's one of the selling points of thorium cycles, that it's more difficult to use to make weapons grade materials. Note "more difficult" may not mean "completely impossible."

That would be highly-enriched uranium ("HEU"), not thorium

Depends on what kind of radiation. Betavoltaics convert beta radiation, but most of the nuclear power sources we talk about don't emit betas (energetic electrons). There are also alphavoltaic devices, but so far these tend to degrade due to radiation damage, so they have only limited lifetime. Actual nuclear reactors emit neutrons and fission fragments, which tend to radiation degrade anything nearby.

I'll say! Commercial devices (using tritium as the source) are in the microwatt range.

Not yet flying on space missions, but the tech is getting better. I wrote a review on this a while back: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ab...

Seebeck effect (aka thermoelectric generation) requires a hot side and a cold side. So, to generate power from this, you have to run the hot side hotter. The electronics you're trying to cool are on the hot side, and you want them to be cooler, not hotter.

ln summary, to the extend that you generate power from the heat, you aren't cooling efficiently.

That would be what is called a "bottoming cycle"-- you take the waste heat and use it. But you still have to reject the waste heat, and you have to reject it at a colder temperature than the (hot side) temperature of the bottoming cycle.

So, for example, if your system is capable of rejecting waste heat at say 350 Kelvin, you could run your electronics at 400 Kelvin. Now if you reject your waste heat at 350 Kelvin, you can use the fifty-degree temperature difference to generate power.

That's the trade off: if you want to use the waste heat, you have to run at a higher temperature, because you need the lower temperature as the cold side of your thermodynamic cycle.

Only if you can reject waste heat somewhere. Entropy can't decrease.

You can't power a laser from waste heat. That violates the second law of thermodynamics.

A quick and non-technical explanation is that photons from lasers are coherent, that is, they have zero entropy (according to Boltzmann's law). Therefore, the entropy of the waste heat can't be carried away by the laser light.

(Yes I know that this means that the premise of Sundiver doesn't work.)