Elon Reeve Musk, 54, President, CEO, and sole proprietor of Tesla, industrialist and technologist, founder, President, and CEO of the multi-billion-dollar pre-war robotics and software corporation, SpaceX, has died.

Generally recognized by Mr. Musk to be mankind's only hope of long-term survival, Mr. Musk's passing may well sound a death knell for the entire human race.

Lost forever is his bounty of knowledge concerning human longevity, the depth and breadth of which could, as he was apt to say, "fill several text books." He was not exaggerating. Though he did not achieve his goal of raising a child that will speak to him, let us not forget that he died at the age of 54. How many people do that? I mean, come on.

Also lost forever are Elon's singular personality, force of will, vision, and leadership ability. The probability of an equally capable figure emerging from the current human population to lead mankind to a future of equivalent quality is less than 0.000112% by objective measures too complex to detail in this obituary.

Personality and force of will: Born June 28th, 1971, Elon was taught about white genocide at an early age when his father explained to him "If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you". Though cheated of his inheritance, Elon attended the prestigious Institute in Pennsylvania and bought Twitter on his 51st birthday. Within 3 years, it was one of the least usable platforms on Earth.

Vision: By 2026, Musk was certain that white genocide would soon devastate the planet. At great personal expense, he developed technologies to ensure that his AI, Grok, knew how to make a lot of questionable porn in the hopes that crackers would get horny enough reproduce. When haters started complaing about things like "Your AI is undressing pictures of minors." Elon defeated them all. Talk about vision!

Leadership: Mr. Musk survived the scorn of woke AI porn haters, of course, and would later unite the Three companies he ruined, negotiate with Grok to stop epic roasting him, and rebuild his plans for self driving cars that are totally coming soon. While these achievements yielded no immediate benefits, they were all part of Elons's master plan to re-ignite mankind's quest for technological advancement, a plan without which the human race has nowhere to go, and nowhere to turn

/// Will revise and finish this up later. Have set the age at death to update automatically. Obit makes salient points but "pearls before swine," of course. Let's hope the ingrates never have cause to read it. Who knows how many of them are even literate!

Edit: Damn already so many replies.

The launch of Will Lehman’s campaign for president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is a political event of major significance for the entire working class. Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker, is running to organize a rebellion of the rank and file against a parasitic bureaucracy that has transformed the UAW into an instrument of management and the state.

Lehman’s platform centers on transferring power from the apparatus to workers on the shop floor through a network of rank-and-file committees, ending corporatist collaboration, opposing nationalist poison that pits workers against each other across borders, and mobilizing workers’ industrial power in defense of democratic rights and against war.

In a particularly revealing statement posted on X, Honda Wang, a member of the DSA’s National Labor Commission Steering Committee, wrote, responding to Lehman’s campaign video: “stop falling for these insane union busting weirdos … they send people to picket lines to tell workers to stop paying dues, decertify from their union, and form committees with their party instead … seems like pretty clear union-busting behavior to me.”

Ignoring all the issues Lehman raises—including fighting for wages that restore past losses, a zero-layoff policy, company-paid healthcare, and the 30-hour week with no loss of pay; uniting workers across borders against nationalist chauvinism; and mobilizing workers’ industrial power to defend democratic rights and oppose war—Wang fixates on the question of dues. This is telling, because it goes to what is, for the union apparatus, the heart of the matter: the income of the bureaucracy.

With the installation of Shawn Fain in 2023, in an election characterized by systematic voter suppression, the DSA and its periphery were brought directly into the top echelons of the UAW apparatus. The DSA and Labor Notes both backed Fain and denounced Will Lehman’s campaign, opposing his call for rank-and-file committees and the transfer of power to the shop floor while promoting the fraud that Fain would be a “reformer”—a lie that has been comprehensively exposed over the past three years.

They have been, and remain, well compensated for their services as advisers and functionaries of the bureaucracy. Fain’s chief of staff, Chris Brooks—a DSA member and former Labor Notes writer—took home $211,968 in 2024, while his assistant, Jonah Furman, also a Labor Notes alum, made $175,318.

Wang’s charge of “union busting” is the standard reflex of a privileged apparatus confronted with a rank-and-file challenge. For Wang and the forces he represents, the union is the apparatus. Workers are merely objects to be managed. That is why he equates the independent organization of workers to assert democratic control—over negotiations, strikes, communications and even over how their dues are collected and used—with “union busting.”

This one is spicy unless you've seen the movie

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/40591627

SOON I will have a PIGEON ARMY

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/technology/p/1086069/google-criticizes-europe-s-plan-to-adopt-free-software

Google has criticized the European Union’s intentions to achieve digital sovereignty through open-source software. The company warned that Brussels’ policies aimed at reducing dependence on American tech companies could harm competitiveness. According to Google, the idea of replacing current tools with open-source programs would not contribute to economic growth.

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, warned of a competitive paradox that Europe is facing. According to the Financial Times, he said that creating regulatory barriers would be harmful in a context of rapid technological advancement. His remarks came just days after the European Commission concluded a public consultation assessing the transition to open-source software.

Google’s chief legal officer clarified that he is not opposed to digital sovereignty, but recommended making use of the “best technologies in the world.” Walker suggested that American companies could collaborate with European firms to implement measures ensuring data protection. Local management or servers located in Europe to store information are among the options.

The EU is preparing a technological sovereignty package aimed at eliminating dependence on third-party software, such as Google’s. After reviewing proposals, it concluded that reliance on external suppliers for critical infrastructure entails economic risks and creates vulnerabilities. The strategy focuses not only on regulation but also on adopting open-source software to achieve digital sovereignty.

According to Google, this change would represent a problem for users. Walker argues that the market moves faster than legislation and warns that regulatory friction will only leave European consumers and businesses behind in what he calls “the most competitive technological transition we have ever seen.” As it did with the DMA and other laws, Google is playing on fear. Kent Walker suggested that this initiative would stifle innovation and deny people access to the “best digital tools.”

The promotion of open-source software aims to break dependence on foreign suppliers, especially during a period of instability caused by the Trump administration. The European Union has highlighted the risks of continuing under this system and proposes that public institutions should have full control over their own technology.

According to a study on the impact of open-source software, the European Commission found that it contributes between €65 billion and €95 billion annually to the European Union’s GDP. The executive body estimates that a 10% increase in contributions to open-source software would generate an additional €100 billion in growth for the bloc’s economy.

Exclusive: Expert analysis of images from one hospital suggests severe trauma to the face, chest and genitals was caused by metal birdshot and high-calibre bullets

Across the planes of Anahita’s* face, white dots shine like a constellation. Some gleam from inside the sockets of her eyes, others are scattered over the young woman’s chin, forehead, cheekbones. A few float over the dark expanse of her brain.

Each dot represents a metal sphere, about 2-5mm in size, fired from the barrel of a shotgun and revealed by the X-ray camera for a CT scan. Shot from a distance, the projectiles, known as “birdshot”, spray widely, losing some of their momentum. At close range, they can crack bone, blast through the soft tissue of the face, and easily pierce the eyeball’s delicate globe. Anahita, who is in her early 20s, has lost at least one eye, possibly both.

The image of Anahita’s head is one of more than 75 sets of medical images – primarily X-rays and CT scans – shared with the Guardian from one hospital in a major city in Iran, taken over the course of a single evening during the regime’s January crackdown on protesters. The plain, grayscale images tell their own story of the deadly violence inflicted on protesters and onlookers by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).