I just spent five days on a rescue mission. Immediately after returning home from a business trip, my wife and I loaded up and drove to distant upstate NY to retrieve my parents to bring them back with us for medical reasons. The primary one is that my dad’s vascular surgeon decided he would be […]

A security failure in a safety app creates the opposite of safety (thx 4Chan) [editor’s note: this is an anonymous submission from an anonymous friend of the Rat. Information is provided as is with no warranty] What Happened? Last week one of the more dangerous hacks happened. Tea, an application used by women to trade […]

I quit a job recently and started a new one. It was an act of surrender and of hope. Surrender because I had reached a point where I had fought to try to take control of my destiny at a company that, like many others, did not care about my dreams or feelings. Hope because […]

Another anonymously contributed post from one of our anonymously anonymous authors. Three months ago, I said it was time to admit how bad it’s gotten. I dragged the truth out into the daylight, bruised and blinking, for anyone still willing to look it in the eyes. I named the rot. I pointed at the collapse […]

Trump has managed to do one thing for a lot of people: dispel the illusion that America is somehow special and immune to autocracy. Now we get a chance to get people to look clearly at American history and realize that…this is the way it has always been, except more subtle. Most of us grew […]

A very anonymous guest post points out that foreign leaders who once may have had leverage on Trump no longer do.

I recently acquired a “Smart Keyboard” at an apartment estate sale in New York. We were visiting a friend and she saw the sign in the doorway of a building near her co-op while we were walking to lunch, so we went in. And there was this bit of old tech sitting there, looking for […]

After 20+ years of endless war, the VA was getting better, our guest poster says. And now? That progress is getting shredded.

The following is a guest post. To submit guest posts, anonymous or otherwise, contact the editor at packetslost at falling-anvil dot com or via Signal at thepacketrat dot 26. We argue over policies, personalities, and party lines, but no one wants to say out loud that the system itself is the problem—not just the corruption, […]

Two years ago, I gave a presentation at a little gathering we like to call ThruntCon entitled “Everything you need to know about the inevitable collapse of journalism as we know it.” For reference, these are the slides I spoke to in that talk: That talk was very 2023. Two years later, the inevitable collapse […]

One of the things I have always struggled with in regard to my participation in politics is reconciling my strong feelings about what should be and what is just with my cynicism about what is possible. I cannot remember a time in my life since I first became aware of politics when I felt elected […]

We had roughly 5 inches of snow on January 6. I did my usual bird seed deployment that morning, along with an extra-generous toss of peanuts onto the porch roof outside my office. The result: a visit from some fine feathered friends, American Crows looking for an easy snack.

“Do what you love, “they say, “and you’ll never work a day in your life.”Such lies they tell.Do what you love for work, and then it becomes work, and you do it for money instead of love, and then you realize how little capitalism values what you love, and you start to hate it instead. […]

Anybody who says anything about this mess we’re in being “unprecedented” just isn’t looking at history hard enough. Exhibit A: The Presidential Election of 1876. 1876 United States presidential election – Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org This was the election where the Republicans caved on Reconstruction as part of a compromise that was forced by a Democratic (read current […]

Steps advocates need to start taking now for the post-inaugural future.‬ So, Ken White (AKA Popehat) just posted something on how the frailties of a certain crack squad of sycophants might help prevent the total disaster commencing in January. Gotta say, probable but don’t count on it. Organizations & activists working with Trumpist-targeted groups need […]

lol. Roflmao.

It should come as no surprise that a nation of cast-offs and rejects from Europe of the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries — 400 years worth of religious extremists, prisoners turned indentured servants, disowned second and third sons, treasure hunters, pirates, brigands, thieves, sons of impoverished pastors, corporate murderers–and the kidnapped and dispossessed […]

That’s it. That’s the post.

Political Action Committees are a great way to launder money, and SuperPACs even moreso. But even the smallest of PACs can have a diluting effect on the gifts from citizens hoping to support the candidate of their choice. So a few days ago I got one of those many political fundraising SMS messages anyone who […]

Goats grazing in Wyman Park Dell brings out a very specific demographic. I might be in it.

I’ve done a lot of research into fake “liquidity mining” cryptocurrency scams connected to “pig butchering” rings—enough to be super suspicious of anything having to do do with liquidity mining. Or cryptocurrency, to be honest. But this latest bit of news is…🧑‍🍳🤌 As many in the Cosmos community are now aware, it was revealed that […]

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They’re back, they’re loud, they’re all starry-bellied and adorable. Also loud. And feisty.