MetaFilter posts tagged with mail

Dear Catherine, Hello, how are you?

creeky — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:37:05 -0800

"In April 2009, we sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall." Now, Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton (previously on MeFi) intend to send a letter to everyone on the planet.

World's Smallest Postal Service

cashman — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:29:31 -0800

Lea Redmond is Postmaster of 'The World's Smallest Postal Service'. In CA she sets up her tiny shop and sends miniature versions of transcribed letters, complete with little wax seals.

Shoot It-Real postcard from your iPhone

ColdChef — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:37:05 -0800

Shoot It! Create and mail a real [paper!] postcard from anywhere and to anyone around the world.

(I'm her husband)

not_on_display — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:45:50 -0800

John J Marley (Gloria's husband) is Northern Ireland's answer to Lazlo Toth -- writing actual posted mail from his home at Comfydown Cottage, Carryduff, Belfast, to correspond with a variety of corporations and heads-of-state. Whether it's asking Irwin's Bakery to employ his wife Gloria (he's her husband), asking Virgin Atlantic if Gloria could take one of their 747's for a spin, or petitioning Kellogg's for adult-themed cereals, he always (well, almost always) receives an appreciative reply to his polite yet bizarre correspondence. [via cjorgensen; previously]

The Future of Snail Mail

Secret Life of Gravy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:41:41 -0800

Shrinking the United States Postal Service: What happens to Netflix? The second largest employer in the United States, the USPS ran up a $2.8 billion budget deficit last year, even after such cost-cutting moves such as quietly removing foreign mail from registered mail status. The Chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission believes cutting service to 5 days a week could save $1.9 billion, with Tuesday-- the lightest day-- being the most likely choice. Change is nothing new to the USPS, but up until now it has been a history of expansion: In article one of the US Constitution, congress was given the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads." 1775. Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General. 1831. The Post Office had more post masters than soldiers. 1863. Delivery expands beyond post office to post office. City dwellers may now receive mail at their homes. 1869. Railway Mail Service is inaugurated and by 1930 mail is carried by more than 10,000 trains. 1896. Rural Free Delivery becomes an official service, uniting the entire country. 1912. Parcel Post is authorized, allowing for delivery of packages of more than 4 pounds. 1971. President Nixon signs the bill making the the Post Office Department into the Postal Service, which among other things removes the Post Master General from the line of Presidential Succession, and turns the USPS into an independent agency like the CIA and NASA.

Galactic Mail

jontyjago — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:16:47 -0800

Galactic Mail In the future, UPS & FedEx will race and fight in space. via

Direct Postage

divabat — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:29:15 -0800

What happens if you post a letter using coins instead of stamps?

Mailbox Art: 20 Cool and Creative Postboxes

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:01:57 -0800

Mailbox Art: 20 Cool and Creative Postboxes

Zip code with a capital C O D E.

nthdegx — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:27:50 -0800

Return to sender: Artist puts Royal Mail to the test - "To put them to the test, Harriet Russell concealed the addresses of 130 letters to herself in a series of increasingly complex puzzles and ciphers. Among the disguises she employed were dot-to-dot drawings, anagrams and cartoons. The answer, it seems, was very far indeed. Amazingly, only 10 failed to complete their journey back to her." Be sure to click the "more pictures" link to the right for more samples. Via one.point.zero.

Spam, what is it good for? Apparently something.

jourman2 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:55:20 -0800

Spammers helping with the New Orleans recovery efforts. New Orleans has found a novel use for the massive database used by Valassis Communications' RedPlum direct-mail operation. Normally used to send promotional circulars to virtually every household in the U.S., it's now being used to track the speed of recovery in the Crescent City.

Postcrossing

Baud — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:00:45 -0800

you've got new postcrossed mail You have heard of geocaching. You have heard of Bookcrossing. Here comes Postcrossing. The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you'll receive at least one back, from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world. The goal of postcrossing is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, for the price of the stamp you put on the postcards you need to send if you wish to get one from someone you never met. You can have up to 5 postcards traveling at any single time. Every time one of the postcards you sent is registered, you can request another address. I bought my first postcrossed postcard in Brussels' touristy district today and will mail it somewhere in Finland tomorrow.

High quality re-creations of medieval armor

agentofselection — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:36:02 -0800

A few examples of high-quality re-creations of medieval armor. Much of this is created using historical techniques (youtube,) by men (slightly NSFW) who can only be called masters. But it ain't cheap. I've linked to the sites of only a few reenactment-grade armoring greats. There are many more, such as Ugo Serrano (warning, bad myspace page) and Chris Gilman, both of whom do work for movies. The answers to all your armoring questions available at The Armour Archive. [Note 1: The British "armour" is often used in the reenactment community to separate medieval "armour" from modern "armor" esp. in search engines.] [Note 2: Stay away from the armour archive off-topic forums if you value your faith in humanity.] This post inspired by comments to this thread which had me thinking "these people need to see some REAL armor."

"The package was not recorded or registered."

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:55:31 -0800

Oops: UK tax collection agency loses discs containing personal details of 25 million Britons in the mail.

What's the drug of the day?

miss lynnster — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:08:43 -0800

More fun from the Daily Mail. Apparently Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones has decided to post bits from his upcoming autobiography. 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Here he is with his guitars. And hey! He's having an artwork sale! (More of his art here)

Oh, bollocks! Now I have to MULTI-TASK!!!!!!

miss lynnster — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:48:42 -0800

"Tammy Wynette was quite wrong when she sang 'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman'. It's not. It's always hard to be a woman. Especially if you're a man." Hard-hitting journalism from The Daily Mail. Other Tom Mitchelson scoops: Invasion of the Russian gold diggers and Poseurs Paradise! What's it really like to work at Abercrombie & Fitch?

The Fastest Mail Across The West

amyms — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:10:08 -0800

"WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily." The Pony Express Home Station, The Pony Express Museum and The St. Joseph Museum all have interesting histories of America's short-lived, but legendary, "fastest mail service across the west." For more extensive reading, there's the National Park Service's Pony Express: Historic Resource Study. (Second link via The Presurfer)

Geo Info Postcards

divabat — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:28:01 -0800

How's the weather? Is it polluted? Do you have plenty of rainforests? Send someone a Geography Information Postcard and tell them about where you live by filling out infographics. (via)

"Swedish post horn" sounds like it should mean something

Kattullus — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:35:36 -0800

Arago: People, Postage & the Post is the online database of the National Postal Museum. It has lots and lots of lovely things. Some examples are a high quality scan of an 18th Century envelope, a sampling of comic strips featuring mail carriers, a collection of stamps on the theme of map projection and a Swedish post horn.

Kudos to UK postal system!

ObscureReferenceMan — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 10:44:26 -0800

Christmas card delivered without address, town or postcode. Great little story! via

Feel secure in your papers and effects?

EarBucket — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 09:17:14 -0800

Someone might be reading your mail.

Numbers Give Me A Geek Woody

fenriq — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:44:51 -0800

US Census Bureau Facts & Figures: Holiday Edition says that more than 20 billion letters, packages and cards will be delivered this holiday season and 12 million packages a day through to Christmas Eve. Also check out the Special Edition for comparison data from 1915, 1967 and 2006, the African-American History Month Facts & Features and more data going back to 2000.

Stamping Out Free Email

digaman — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:18:51 -0800

When you really, really want your email to arrive at its destination: now you gotta pay postage. Another brilliant, forward-looking idea for monetizing-the-Internet^TM from the wizards at AOL and Yahoo.

Mohan also declined to say how often or in what volume CBP might be opening mail.

amberglow — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:48:09 -0800

Private Mail--Not. ...Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. ...the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary. ...

Map Out Of Hell

Zinger — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 18:25:24 -0800

Fed up with navigating badly set up voice mail systems, Paul English has posted a voice mail cheat sheet to help you cut through to a real human. Which is just as well because most companies seem to set up their voice mail systems like this.

Spamagram

Mr Bluesky — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 13:29:09 -0800

Send a Spam-a-Gram to a lucky corporate whore! Tired of receiving mounds of unsolicited letters and offers in the mail? Want to fight back? Want to get rid of that old tire in your garage that the garbage man won't take? Then read on...