391–400 of 406 posts
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I wonder how they determined it was for that pack of gobshites, and not the band[1]. Penmanship? Cheery stamp? [1] https://www.thegobshites.com/
Attitude? I’d imagine a fan would be more careful with the address. Someone who addresses a letter with “Gobshites” is likely pissed off at something.
This is a fantastic post & I love mail art and experimenting with the mail. One thing I learned in the USA is that while a card can be 3x5 (LxW) it cannot be 5x3 (i.e. oriented in "portrait") because the machines aren't set up to read it that way. However, you can add $.20 in additional postage and write "No machine" so they hand-cancel the stamp rather than using the machine. This is useful for any time you don't wa…
Nonmachinable mail can be all sorts of shapes as well. I've had a lot of fun cutting cardstock into silhouettes and irregular polygons and mailing them. When I moved, I sent postcards notifying people of my new address in the shape of my new state. US mail is quite flexible thanks to the nonmachinable surcharge.
I remember CGP Grey talked about staying with his wife's family in rural Hawaii, on his Cortex podcast. His address included something like "take a left at the big tree". The additional complication was that the USPS wouldn't deliver to the house, so they got a PO box, which is common in rural areas. But the USPS won't allow private carriers to deliver to PO boxes. So you need to use a different address depending on…
>The additional complication was that the USPS wouldn't deliver to the house, so they got a PO box, which is common in rural areas. But the USPS won't allow private carriers to deliver to PO boxes. So you need to use a different address depending on which carrier is taking the package. A lot of stores (Amazon!) won't tell you which carrier they're going to use! Two options: * Specify both the PO box and street addres…
Another reason why addresses should just be multi-line text boxes.
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Not only are their PO Box only zip codes, but there are also zip codes that are associated with various business and government entities. In those cases the USPS literally doesn't care what you put for the address bc they will hand over all the mail addressed to that zip code to the entity and let them handle it. The most famous example of this is the zip code 12345, which is actually for GE in Schenectady, NY.
The IRS also has some of these dedicated 5-digit ZIP codes. For example, 00501 is the IRS processing center in Holtsville, NY. (According to Wikipedia, this is also the lowest-number ZIP code currently in use in the US.)
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This is true. As others have pointed out, all PO Boxes can be appended to a 5 digit zip to get to the box (e.g. ZIP-BOX#) No city or state should be needed (zip covers that), nor name (not needed for mail in general, but might cause other issues). The US Postal System actually uses a full 11 digit number to identify a "Delivery Point". The "+4" after a zip code is basically a subroute within that zip code, but there…
Dang, I came to post my ultra lean address from years ago, but wish I had known this! PO 1234 NY, NY 10010
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Isn't this how IP addresses work? No 8.8.8.8 here, try over there ...
Not really. As far as I understand it the routing tables should always point you in the right direction for an IP address.
Living in Spain I really learned to appreciate a well-working postal service which is ultimately a small, but meaningful factor in quality of life. That said, the postal services are generally pretty good in Spain, but there's a big problem of addresses, and the very outdated databases that were true at one point, but someone since re-named the street two-three times already (or just made up a street name to get some…
In Germany there was a lot of discussion about fiber Internet build out and if we need it. At some point the discussion changed to "Yes, we need it as the base" and only discussion about you pays for it.
For me personally I feel more comfortable and safe with a working base (aka Goverment/Community/Society). And a lot of people working hard to have the base up and running to just let some egiost running their company and proudly saying "It's me who worked hard to build this great company and I'm the greatest man on earth". But of course he could only do that with the base.
Big old fashion corporation had sometime build up their on internal postal system. Sometimes the try to reinvent the wheel instead of just reading about the estiablished postal system and get the best out of it.
One time I worked in such a big corporation and I have written internal letters to the CEO during business trips to other locations with a big "Thank You Postal Office Operations Team" on the enevlope to increase their visibility.
Apsley House famously has (or had?) the address "Number 1, London".
My parents told me this every time we went past it when I was growing up. https://londonist.com/2016/06/why-does-apsley-house-have-the... It looks from Wikipedia that that's a popular name rather than official one. The house was given the popular nickname of Number One, London, since it was the first house passed by visitors who travelled from the countryside after the toll gates at Knightsbridge.[3] It was originall…
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The difficulty these days is the volume. Rory Stewart (an ex-MP) mentioned on his podcast recently that one of his predecessors in his seat in IIRC the 1950s got about 5 letters a week to deal with; when Rory was an MP in the 2010s he was getting over 20,000 emails a year. It's much easier to have a personal touch in correspondence at 5 a week!
That's about 55 per day, or a little over 100 per working day. Perhaps too many for a detailed personal response for each, but certainly enough to read. Categorising well for future action, response, ongoing follow-up, a part of a staff member's job.