Tag: Thanks Post Office!
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Repeated pattern
The latest Post Office podcast tells how the postal investigators solved an allergy testing fraud. Fits nicely into my current situation, trying to fix a bad allergic response! The case began when an alert postman in Hyde Park noticed fishy activities in a commercial mailbox service there. He saw their employees opening lots of letters…
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Should have kept it
Interesting trivium in the latest Post Office podcast. When Morse made his first official trial, What hath God wrought, he was working for the Post Office. Makes sense. The PO was meant to supervise national communications infrastructure. It already supervised national roads, some navigable rivers, and some coastal waterways. Many Euro countries continued the setup,…
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Good!
The agency that runs PBS and NPR is closing down. GOOD. PBS and NPR lost their public purpose 50 years ago. PBS switched from education to entertainment. NPR switched from unbiased to pure DNC. Government is supposed to serve ALL the people, not just the members of one party or one elite class. Education was…
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Tag reminded me…
I decided to add a Thanks Post Office tag since I’ve been defending the PO from Elon and Trump lately. When I used the WordPress editor to apply the tag to all items about the PO, I found about 30 posts over the three years I’ve been in WP. I looked in the old Blogspot…
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Happy 250th, Post Office!
The Post Office deserves a special celebration this year, with Demon Elon and Demon Trump conspiring to destroy it. Elon’s Destruction Of Government Excellence is explicitly defunding all the GOOD and USEFUL parts of government while expanding the BAD and EVIL parts. Admittedly there are a couple of mixed cases. Department of Education originally served…
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NSA from the start
More from the latest History Today. Courier services have always been around. Governments have used groups of runners or horsemen to carry official or commercial documents. The modern post office began in Italy in the 1500s, when the Tassis family organized a series of offices around Europe, serving the various duchies and kingdoms of Italy…
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Returning to analog the wrong way
Seen on the post office reddit. Package-claiming scams are universal online. Now somebody is bringing the package trick back to analog! The card looks just like a post office notice of failed delivery, but it wants you to call a non-toll-free number instead of a local post office number. It’s good to see that carriers…
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Storefrontizing
I doubt this is a specific policy, but it’s still an interesting development. Via Enid Buzz, the county district attorney is moving into the old Anthonys department store on the downtown square. Anthonys was the only department store where I enjoyed shopping. I still use a kitchen knife bought there in 1974. Anthonys was ruthlessly…
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Why so slow?
The post office podcast features a big catch by the postal inspectors. Last year they finally convicted Patrice Runner and his associates for one of the biggest frauds in history. He operated for 20 years, 1994 to 2014, and took in $175 million from 1 million victims. The swindle was low price and high volume.…
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Who’s the welfare bum?
Following on earlier item about Elon’s “efficiency” crusade, where I showed that Social Security, which Elon wants to destroy for “inefficiency”, is infinitely more efficient than Elon. Elon also complains, along with all Repooflicans in all decades, that federal agencies shouldn’t get any money from taxes. Rich fuckheads shouldn’t be nominally required to pay taxes,…
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Stretching the point
Stretching the point a bit, the Post Office belongs in the same category as Bell. It’s a government regulated monopoly, selling services for a profit but firmly required to serve public purposes. So it does. The public purpose works at the supplier end as well as the customer end. The PO buys its trucks from…
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Implausible but true
Those old 1950s films about the Post Office mentioned that mail carriers were still using horses in some places. Seemed unlikely to me, but horses were common on urban routes, both milk and mail, until 1950. One of the new PO podcasts describes an even more improbable kind of mail service, which is still fully…
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Post office podcast
The Postal Service has a long series of podcasts. They’ve been producing these half-hour programs for 4 years; I just now heard about it. Great listening for an analog fan and an FDR fan. The post office is one of the best parts of the mainly fucked federal government, true to the FDR spirit. It…
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Breaking from the cult
New Scientist mag continues to break away from current fashions required for tenure and grants. In this article they point out a deal-breaking problem with AI crap when used for medical purposes. Computers have been visually reading text for a LONG time. For instance, the Post Office was routinely using OCR in the 1970s. So…
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Foy man
An item in the Post Office section of Reddit: = = = = = START QUOTE: The LLV is actually pretty fun. It’s one of my favorite parts of this job. It’s pretty interesting driving a vehicle that’s older than me – especially in 2025. I was born in ’91 and the ones I use…
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