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The last public writer for the Vietnamese postal service passes away at the age of 94. In 1990, he retired but was given special permission to continue to work in the Saigon central post office as a "public writer," a position he retired from in 2020. From 2019: Every morning, he tapes a piece of paper with the words “Public Writer” in French, Vietnamese and English near his table at the Saigon Central Post Office. Ngo has written letters for hundreds of people in Vietnamese, English and French in the past 28 years. From 2007: A Day with Saigon's Last Public Letter Writer.
posted by spamandkimchi on Aug 10, 2023 - 12 comments

If Updike sums up the American tradition that celebrates the US post and the principle of union, Pynchon and Ellison draw on another tradition, just as deeply rooted, that fears and distrusts the post, seeing it as an engine of conformity, a tyrannous system that infiltrates private life and suborns citizens as its empty vehicles. from These Swift Couriers: Postal Democracy and American Literature [LARB, June 2021]
posted by chavenet on Oct 24, 2022 - 7 comments

The Brienne Collection (previously) is an astonishing trove of thousands of undelivered 17th century letters, many still sealed since the moment they left their writers' hands. A new paper in Nature explains how a high-resolution dental x-ray, combined with a painstakingly-researched knowledge of letter folding techniques, makes it possible to read these letters without ever opening them.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 2, 2021 - 20 comments

Hundreds of the iconic Post Office delivery trucks have caught on fire in recent years, thanks to a 30-year-old fleet and a manufactured budget crisis. [Vice] [more inside]
posted by Etrigan on Jul 7, 2020 - 29 comments

The Postal Service Fired Thousands of Workers for Getting Injured While Delivering and Processing Your Mail: USPS forced out 44,000 workers who got injured on the job. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the effort, part of a five year program, violated the law. But the Postal Service has fought its workers’ claims since 2007. (SLProPublica by Maryam Jameel)
posted by crazy with stars on Feb 24, 2020 - 4 comments

In 1926, a seventeenth-century trunk of letters was bequeathed to the Dutch postal museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The trunk belonged to perhaps the most active postmasters and post-mistresses of the day, Simon and Marie de Brienne, a couple at the heart of the European communication networks. The chest contains an extraordinary archive: 2600 "locked" letters sent from all over Europe to this axis of communication, none of which were ever delivered and many of which have never been opened.
posted by Lezzles on Feb 17, 2020 - 15 comments

"R2-D2 was chosen to have its likeness placed onto collection boxes because his shape is so similar to that of the mailboxes. Additionally, the little droid was selected because it 'embodies the trust and dependability for which the Postal Service is renowned' according to the USPS press release announcing the mailboxes' arrival." The associated Flickr group. via (via)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Aug 4, 2018 - 10 comments

Rjyan Kidwell (not a typo) has most commonly gone by the stage name Cex, but his sound has changed in the 20+ years he's made music, from pastoral to glitchy IDM to spoken word-ish rap (?), the dark, messy side of Cex, and even experimental/tribal looping sounds. The death of Cex was speculated and denied in 2006. Six years and ten albums later, he was again presumed dead, this time a self-imposed label. This summer, he released an album of "original stage adaptations of science fiction novels." Cex is clearly not yet dead. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Sep 14, 2017 - 12 comments

Gift Up is by a Los Angeles-based comedy troupe Local Business and is a re-imagining of Give Up—the Postal Service’s classic album—as a Christmas record: [more inside]
posted by Captain_Science on Dec 11, 2015 - 14 comments

New York City's mail chutes are lovely, ingenious and almost entirely ignored. But what happens if mail gets stuck?
posted by Ragini on Nov 7, 2015 - 36 comments

In 2000, Improbable Research sent a variety of regulation-violating items through the mail to see what would make it.
posted by Pope Guilty on Jan 8, 2014 - 52 comments

Some fans said the show “cracked [them] up.” One wrote, “I knew Ben Gibbard had to have some humor in there somewhere.” But what exactly was funny? Freedia’s act isn’t tongue-in-cheek. The implication was that Postal Service frontman Gibbard had offered a spectacle—something ridiculous. In fact he had offered a legitimate performer of another genre. What would be funny is Miley Cyrus twerking, if she didn’t look vaguely like Hitler Youth doing it.
posted by josher71 on Aug 1, 2013 - 213 comments

On July 1, 1963, The US Post Office introduced the five-digit ZIP Code with a series of PSAs broadcast on national TV. The Atlantic looks at a new report [PDF] that details the history of the now $9.5 billion a year product and its current state of affairs.
posted by Potomac Avenue on Apr 25, 2013 - 63 comments

Post & Prejudice: [guardian.co.uk] "The Royal Mail is joining in the celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice with the release of a series of stamps featuring all six of Jane Austen's novels. Royal Mail commissioned the artwork by Angela Barrett." [Slideshow]
posted by Fizz on Feb 24, 2013 - 13 comments

A Month of Letters is a challenge with two parts: mail something (anything!) every day the post runs in February and respond to every letter you get.
posted by naturalog on Feb 1, 2012 - 23 comments

In a draft document obtained by the Washington Post (print version), the United States Post Office proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, losing an additional 100,000 through regular attrition, withdrawing from employee health plans, and most dramatically "asking Congress to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements," all by 2015. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus on Aug 11, 2011 - 76 comments

Christian metalcore band Confide uses a Postal Service cover as a clever tactic to promote their god-awful music. [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani on Jul 13, 2009 - 147 comments

SpyBox A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system. (via) Separately, the pinhole parcel project sent pinhole cameras through the regular postal service, and along the way they recorded their journey on the photographic negative, “creating highly unpredictable, abstract imagery.”
posted by desjardins on Mar 18, 2009 - 10 comments

Van Halen's Eruption on Violin | Elton John's Rocket Man on Banjo | Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody for solo classical guitar | Foggy Mountain Breakdown arranged for electric slap bass | Toto's Africa for Acoustic Guitar | The Postal Service's Such Great Heights for Voice
posted by jonson on May 21, 2007 - 51 comments

Florida's Barefoot Mailmen traveled 68-mile routes between Palm Beach and Miami in the late 1800s. Walking 40 miles (barefoot) and rowing 28 miles over the course of three days each way, these letter carriers brought efficiency to a postal route that previously required that "a letter from Palm Beach to Miami begin its trip at the lighthouse community of Jupiter, 22 miles north, then by an Indian River steamboat to the rail head at Titusville. By train it continued to New York's port and from there by steamer to Havana. From Cuba, a trading schooner took the letter to Miami. It took a voyage of 3,000 miles and a period of six weeks to two months for a letter to arrive in Miami." Ed Hamilton, who disappeared in the course of duty (and whose mysterious death may have been engineered by moving his rowboat out of reach in alligator-infested waters), is honored with a bronze statue in Hillsboro Beach.
posted by occhiblu on Mar 14, 2007 - 6 comments

Such Great Heights performed by Ben Folds with a piano and unusual percussions.
Probably everyone already knows the original and the Iron&Wine's cover, but have you ever listened the live cover by the Dresden Dolls (mp3 link)?
posted by darkripper on Nov 10, 2006 - 84 comments

Tristan da Cunha has just been assigned its first postcode by the Royal Mail. This makes it easier for the inhabitants of these remote chunks of rock to receive mail. Easier, but still not easy - to get there, packages must first make their way to Cape Town and then travel 2,800 miles by fishing boat.
posted by kcds on Aug 7, 2005 - 16 comments

The US Postal Service has issued a series of postage stamps honoring great American scientists including: Josiah Willard Gibbs, thermodynamicist best known for the Gibbs Phase Rule; Barbara McClintock, geneticist who showed genes could transpose within chromosomes; John von Neumann, mathematician who made significant contributions in game theory and computer science; and Richard Feynman, infamous physicist best remembered for his work on quantum electrodynamics, the Manhattan Project, Feynman Diagrams, and his testimony at the Space Shuttle Challenger hearings.
posted by chicken nuglet on May 27, 2005 - 15 comments

USPS advice on the Anthrax treat. You've read through the hype. Now read about what you really must know.
posted by betobeto on Oct 16, 2001 - 9 comments