Tag: Thanks Post Office!
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IRCs not quite dead.
I thought IRCs were phased out in 2013 but apparently the PO delayed the deadline until the end of this year. This Reddit item shows a ticket for 525 one-cent coupons and 7 “Jimmy Carter” stamps at 82 cents each. (The Carter stamps are new, not related to IRCs.) Some of the USPS employees at…
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Born every minute
The post office podcast seems sparser this year, less frequent and less interesting. Today’s item is interesting but hard to translate. The hosts are interviewing a Postal Investigator who brought down an especially evil scammer with a long record of violent crimes. For some reason the Investigator speaks a rigid cop dialect where EVERY SINGLE…
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Misdelivered
Online Brits are complaining about the heat. Usually a British “sweltering intolerable heatwave” turns out to be 70. This year it sounds like they’ve got some actual warmth, up to 105. The British summer was mistakenly delivered here. Most of June was strictly normal, mid 80s. Typically the end of June gives us high 90s…
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PO management doesn’t get it, postmen get it!
Last week I compared two attitudes toward AI. The Pew poll uses paper mail as a reliable human vs bot test. The Post Office, at least in its podcasts for publicity, emphatically didn’t understand their own advantage! = = = = = START REPRINT: Pew is smart on two levels. First, using postal addresses filters…
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Should call it an earbird
Most people call an inner musical repeater an earworm. I call it my mental jukebox. It has a few old scratchy records that the drunk at the bar tiresomely plays every night, plus a much wider row of records that play spontaneously for no obvious reason. Some of these records drop onto the turntable after…
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Compete by tradition, not by innovation
People who should know better are pushing Innovative Disruption. Each city and country “must” compete to enrich Sam Altman and destroy civilization. NO. Competing to make Sam Altman richer will make you poorer and lose everything that makes you special. If you want to improve your OWN city or country, boost and expand your OWN…
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SOE and Studie
Here’s a new thought after rereading the history of Studebaker for the 100th time. Albert Erskine took over as CEO in 1918. Under his rule Studie prospered and handed most of the prosperity to shareholders. Erskine believed in paying the stock criminals first and letting the company (facilities, workers, development) have the leftovers. Some of…
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Good idea, can’t happen
Compact Mag has a good idea. Because it’s a good idea, it can’t happen. Defense contractors deal only with the government. All of their income and business comes FROM the taxpayers, but their profit goes TO the executives and Larry Fink. This is the worst of both worlds. They take from the taxpayer and give…
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Bezos vs civilization
The Post Office is in direct competition with FedEx, UPS, Amazon, etc. Now the competition has turned violent in Everett, part of the Seattle metro. National “news” garbles the story as usual. Here’s a more direct report from Everett. The postman was delivering to a set of boxes for an apartment building. Following rules, he…
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He also recognizes
Continuing the theme of State-Owned Enterprises, the latest Post Office podcast is an interview with new Postmaster General Steiner. The first part of the interview is the usual biography and corporate buzztalk about logistics and execution. The salient part starts around 20 minutes, where Steiner points out the unique qualities of a regulated monopoly or…
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Do they recognize their advantage?
Responding to the Repooflican crusade against the Post Office, I’ve been trying to point out that the PO is NOT funded by taxpayers. It’s a business like other freight carriers, depending on income from stamps and shipments. If Repooflicans were serious about opposing government overreach, they would be CHEERING for the PO instead of trying…
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Sign of sanity
Reported in an official newsletter. While most of “congress” plays its usual pointless symbol games with nonexistent “debt ceilings” and nonexistent “shutdowns,” some reps in BOTH parties are organizing to protect and improve the Post Office. They’re concerned that the previous ‘Delivering For America’ agenda is leading to more delays and more costs, not better…
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Things endure
Looking through old Billboard mags while chasing elusive info about Western Union’s public fax machines, ran across a permanent memorial to the last moment of sanity before political lunacy resumed. In Dec 1945 the treasury issued the FDR dime. Billboard, serving coin-op vendors, was concerned that the dime wouldn’t fit current machines, but the treasury…
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Start with quality.
Last week I wrote up a contest between the first coast-to-coast airmail flight and a group of Essex cars. The cars won. Hudson touted the event in a 1922 pamphlet which omits the airmail comparison entirely. By this account the project was originated by the Post Office in an attempt to widen the range of…
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Watchclock 2.0
The latest Post Office podcast discusses a massive increase in mail thefts since the Trump torture camp. When most people were relying on mail and Amazon and DoorDash, organized crime grabbed the opportunity. Mail thefts, mostly for IDs and checks, increased by a factor of 2. Armed robberies of postmen increased by a factor of…
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