I’m pretty sure I spend less than 5 minutes a week dealing with physical spam mail. I have a recycling bin right next to where the mail arrives and most days are 15 seconds of “these go into that bin unopened” and sometimes I have to open an envelope and glance at it to see if it’s something relevant to me.

Even with the best spam filtering on email, I’m well over 5 minutes a week of distraction from it.

And now imagine how easy dealing with email spam would be if the marginal fiscal cost was not 0 like physical spam. All the technology and tools available and less than 1% of the viable spam surface area

you can still do some setup and access mail by using applications like thunderbird, which have no ads.

I wonder if any post offices have digital post box services to open, digitise, email and incinerate any incoming letters.

He had difficulty writing an address on an envelope.

This skill is something we expect of 8 year old children.

> Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying eyes?

Believe the repliers: I created an account in May 2024 and I have not added a phone number. Here's a screenshot from my settings: https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv

But also, your eyes aren't lying to you: some servers require accounts to have confirmed phone number in order to join. So there is probably a lot of people who have had the experience of creating a Discord account, trying to join a server / accept an invite, and immediately seeing a "you must provide a phone number" prompt.

The explanation is pretty simple: The most fervent users of discord also have overlap with the longest users of discord, and their account age and usage patterns means that discord's risk systems have never demanded a phone number from them.

> I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS.

GP said postal services are "universally accessible". So first, it doesn't matter is it's "normal", it matters if it happens at all. And USPS does not represent postal mail universally - I have never even seen a USPS building in my life and don't expect to. Is postal mail as universally accessible to a homeless man in Laos and a 5-year-old kid in rural India? I think it's ludicrous to claim that postal mail is "universally accessible" and displays a huge Western bias.

It's lining up multiple times. When I walk in with a box, I don't know how the hell to mail it, what to fill out, what the pricing vs. delivery ETA grid is so I can decide where I want to position myself on that curve, the different forms you need to fill to be on different parts of that curve.

I usually end up screwing it up a few times in the process too. I didn't realize that the free boxes they give you are only for 2 day service (and doesn't work for 1 day or 3 day). 1 day is a different box, 3 day is bring-your-own-box.

The pens they provide don't work, you have to line up to get a pen. You have to line up to ask a question. The workers are grumpy, the people in line are grumpy, I've had the experience that sometimes nobody will let you cut anything even if it's just for a pen or a piece of tape.

Oh and they charge you if you ask for more than about X of tape. It's a tricky dance. I think X is about 20cm. If you ask for 30cm, they will refuse even the 20cm and ask you to buy 300cm, which entails getting in the 30 minute line again (so the actual cost of the tape is 0.5 * your hourly consulting rate, so if you're a software engineer paid $100/hour of stocks and $100/hour of equity, that'll be a $50 roll of tape plus $30 of stock assumimng Trump just announced more tariffs). If you ask for 15cm, they might give you 20cm for free. It's tricky. I wish there were a sign that said "free tape: <=20cm" or whatever the actual number is, in front of each employee's desk.

Which reminds me, the actual number also seems depends on the mood of the USPS employee, so you also need to carefully watch your position in line so that you try to get yourself in front of the happiest employee. If the grumpiest employee is almost done with their previous customer, you have to fake needing to fix something really quick and let someone ahead of you in the line so that they get the grumpy one and you get the happy one. Or you can try to estimate the processing time of the few people ahead of you in line by eyeballing the complexity of shipping whatever they are holding, and time your place in line to be in front of the happiest employee when it gets to you. That way you are more likely to get more free tape to seal your box.

You also need to think about how to keep them happy. That usually involves some small talk. More small talk gets you more tape. Weather is a good safe topic on the east coast, because you can commiserate the bad weather with the USPS employee, but in California the weather is always good, so it doesn't make for good small talk, and the USPS employee might be at risk of going from happy to grumpy because they'd rather be outside.

I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time.

I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world.

I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy.

I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them.

I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980 but ... yeah it's just the reality of the world, I don't normally need pens to do anything, and am used to pens being provided in the rare occasions I need to sign a receipt or something, and usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.

The Deutsche Post '#PORTO' method does not apply to international shipments, unfortunately. However, you can still purchase barcode labels online for printing, and conventional stamps are simply values in Euro cents so can be used for both domestic and international deliveries.

In addition, the 14-day limit no longer applies. Deutsche Post were challenged in court, and the digital stamps must now last for as long as conventional stamps do:

https://nrwe.justiz.nrw.de/olgs/koeln/j2023/3_U_148_22_Urtei...

That German app is not available in the App Store in my country (and I presume in any country other than Germany), so I would also be forced to go to eBay for stamps

I just priced a stamp to send to New Zealand using that USPS website and it came to over USD$20 so that's not a realistic option. To be fair I had to take some guesses with weight (what the fuck is an ounce and how many letters fit into one?) and dimensions (they don't have units on that website, so I guess my letter is 6x3 whatevers).

that honestly seems more complicated and likely to fail than just buying the correct stamps on ebay.

You use an International Reply Coupon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon

That's the International Reply Coupon mentioned in the article, but it's not supported by all countries.

I think I've sent far more international letters and parcels than domestic. Christmas cards for elderly relatives in the country I was born in, and postcards when I travelled abroad.

Some obscure things I sold on eBay were mostly sent abroad.

I send $3 U.S. with QSL (ham radio) cards. It seems like everybody is able to convert that to local currency to cover postage.

-

And you could also put a dollars bill in the envelope?

I went for 10 years not using a pen at home. That streak would be even longer, except for about a year I took up journalling as a hobby.

I'm not sure exactly what you think people must be handwriting:

- Notes? I use Obsidian for work notes, Google Keep for stuff like shopping lists

- Signatures? Delivery receipt signatures are done with a finger on a touch screen, stuff like employment contracts and finance paperwork have basically all moved to e-signatures. I genuinely think the last thing I signed with a pen might have been my mortgage, and that one I had to go to solicitor's office anyway as it had to be officially witnessed.

- Paper forms? Print, sign and scan was occasionally requested until a few years ago, but I did it in the office because I also didn't own a printer at that time. Even "important government forms" are done online now.

I think the last the last time I used a writing implement was actually about two months ago, and it was a sharpie that I had to go to the corner shop to buy. I needed to take a verification picture of myself holding the date for an online pharmacy.

I do have an iPad with an Apple Pencil, but even that I use quite rarely - though I at least know where it is. If I'm annotating a PDF, that would be my tool of choice.

Aside from that, I'm not sure that my daily life is really that unrecognisable from anyone else's. Just that instead of writing stuff on paper, I either type it or tap it on my phone. For maths, I'm just quite quick at TeX input.

Most of the time I have to send parcels now, I use those drop off lockers where you just put it in the right cubbyhole and - I guess - they label it when they pick it up. Otherwise, most couriers will do label on pickup, or the return label is included with the delivery in the first place. Very occasionally there's no other option but to find some way of printing it myself.

I did have a small inkjet printer at one point, but the ink kept drying up, so in the end it was costing me £10 and a trip to Tesco every time I needed to print something. Thought about getting a laser, but it's quite a lot of space to waste on something I use so rarely. I might get one of those little thermal printers that are small enough to keep in a drawer.

Russia. It's still a thing most likely.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_postal_codes...

You file tax returns by post? What country? Do they charge you extra to submit by post?

That's crazy to me - tax returns for our micro-business and personal tax has been online since at least 2005.

>As someone born in 2003, I did this just last week when filing my tax returns.

Why didn't you efile like a normal person? The only time you need to do it the hard way is if you are under 16 and filing for the first time.

Most people do it digitally or have an accountant do it, this isn't the norm.

Physical thank you cards are pretty dead. I don't even keep track of mailing addresses for a number of my friends (and a couple siblings, come to think of it) - how would I send them a physical card?

Even older relatives - we sent a physical gift a bit ago, but the response/thanks was by text. It just doesn't make sense to send a letter, have it take a week, never know whether it got lost, etc.

The only people I know of that do this are over 60.

No. In person, text, or phone call.

That's very uncommon. All my bills are set to autopay on my credit card. Who manually pays bills? You don't need to click the buttons every month.

Sure. But why are they mailing letters? I remember being 18 myself (a looong time ago), and having a helpful adult shocked that nobody had ever taught me how to write a check. I think I've written a total of 8 in my whole life now?

The iPhone is not yet 18.

Could have 3D printed a pen holder for the 3D printer and then used the 3D printer as a plotter to write the address on a sticker or the envelope itself.

Right?

I do? Where?

> house

I can't afford a house ($2M+ where I live), so I don't have one of those mailboxes. My apartment complex doesn't have a visible USPS pickup anywhere that I know of.

If you meant those inverted U shaped things that look like they are from WW2 (maybe WW1?), I forgot about those, but somehow I never know how frequently they are checked ... there is no indicator about when they were last opened and I wonder whether the mailman might just forget about a couple of them in odd parts of town, which is why I always feel more "secure" dropping it at a USPS.

I was once walking down the street when I saw a presumably-GenZ person who thought they were a trash can and casually dumped trash in it so there's also that concern, if everyone is using them as trash cans now ...

You physically go to the bank.

The electricity company has their own employees to deliver paper monthly statements to all their customers, they can attach other communications if needed.

My bank has a connection to the electricity company, and can look up in realtime what my open balance is, which you can view and pay in the banking app. You can also pay it in cash at various offices (e.g. Western Union) around the city.

You can also just give the electricity company permission to automatically take it out of your account every month (ppl don't trust the electricity company to get the amount correct, so folks don't usually do this. I do this for the water bill though).

(this is my experience living in Ecuador for 10 years, I'm from the Netherlands, most of this is weird to me :)

There are multiple ways to receive letters. Having a mailman delivering it directly to your house is usually the rich area's way to handle it. The lower version of this is to let people check with the post office themselves. If it's fancy, you have at least your personal postbox there, or you will have to ask office-workers which then depends on their working time. And outside of this, there are other ways to use other locations and people, not directly affiliated with the postal service for delivering letters. Pubs and other shops are often such locations, or in really poor areas the village chief will receive them, and then handle distribution.

But it should be noted, except the physical objects, those letters can be also replaced with other means of communication. Just calling people via phone is common, or nowadays sending an email will also do the job. In my country we have a working and reliable postal system, but companies are still replacing letters with digital communication as far as laws allow it. Payments are also running automatically, so the bills are more informative and for taxes.

> - how do you get a new bank card, when the current one expires?

The bank sends it through mail but they warn you that if it doesn't arrive within 2 weeks you should go in person to the bank to retrieve it. Depending on where you live there's a 50/50 chance that it never arrives through mail so you just wait 2 weeks and go to the bank.

> - how are you informed about a change like a price increase for electricity?

Email. Or the news channel for elderly people (if the increase is too big). If the increase is small that's a fact of life, everyone just expects it to increase a bit every 2 or 3 months.

> - how do you pay for electricity? (Knowing how much to pay, when etc) What about an elderly person?

Website or bank app. There are physical places that take cash payments and do the online process for you, elderly people generally use those.

To answer your questions: receiving letters is easy, companies know how to do it. Sending letters is not common for the public.

I'm from a similar country and would never have thought about using snail mail for anything you've mentioned.

For bank cards you go to their branch and get a new one from a person who works there, or by interacting with a terminal which prints your name on a blank card and spits it out. Some banks deliver them to your home address by courier service and hand them over in person, and they're not "elite" or special by any means.

Utilities are paid through online/mobile banking, there are many alternatives and it takes maybe 10 seconds. Even my 70-something year old relatives use them. Some even older ones rely on help from others, or to go physical bank branches and pay there (which wastes a lot of time of everyone waiting in line to be serviced — I don't personally know anyone who does that, but have seen it a couple of times).

Price increases? Local news, or you can subscribe to receive them by email. Or just check in the online banking app when it's time to make another payment, it's all there.

Am Estonian, and from your list only the first one is with physical mail, though more and more people use virtual cards / Apple Pay instead of even owning a physical card. We can also withdraw cash from an ATM using Apple Pay, no need for a card.

As for price changes regarding utilities (or really, anything) we get an e-mail from the service provider or from the landlord (who then gets an e-mail from the service provider). We also pay for utilities via an online bank transfer or automated subscription to the service provider or to the landlord via a bank transfer (who then pays via an online bank transfer or has an automated subscription).

Elderly people set up automatic subscription services in their local bank branch or by calling the bank, I have not heard of a single elderly person using mail to pay for anything.

I'm in the UK where we do have a generally very reliable postal service, but of those three, it's only the bank card that involves a physical letter for me - and even then I have no idea where my bank cards even are because I just use contactless via my phone/watch nowadays.

My electricity payment is direct debit - though I can pay manually via the app if I wish. The app has the amount on it, and they notify of service changes via the app and email. I suppose that if I ignored the electronic notifications they'd eventually send me a letter.

Even if you do get your statements by post, basically nobody here would pay for it by mail. If you really hate computers, you can pay over the phone, or set up a direct debit by phone/letter, or use a "PayPoint" - which includes most corner shops, supermarkets and post offices. It's also quite common for elderly people to just have one of their younger relatives manage it all for them.

Danish Post will soon terminate general mail delivery due to low need.

https://apnews.com/article/postnord-denmark-postal-service-m...

To our questions from Germany:

- by Post, but I can imagine this changing as payment via phone/watch/... is spreading and I can imagine banks willing to reduce cost, making physical cards an paid extra.

- on my contract via e-mail and the energy company's website. There are paper based contracts available, though.

- In Germany/Europe SEPA wire transfers work well for that and are being used for decades, even with online banking being wide spread in the 90ies. (Pre Internet via BTX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext )

All of these examples are about receiving though.

Yes, I know. It still offends my aesthetic sensibilities. ~

They did for a few years after USSR was gone, as they were still going through old supplies.

AFAIK modern Russian ones just say "Почта России", but the overall design is retained, including pre-labelled lines for various parts of address.

I wouldn't say it's that different from how the Royal Mail currently recommend one write the address:

https://help.royalmail.com/personal/s/article/How-to-address...

My father writes the address staggered; that is, each subsequent line being indented a centimetre or so relative to the previous line. Were you taught to stagger the address at your school in the 90s?

Whenever someone questions what you know, the correct answer is “why don’t you?” - I will not be trivia-shamed!

Ha, I'm trying to remember where I learned that as well. I know we covered it in drafting where we learned an 8.5x11 A paper is half a sheet of 11x17 B paper which is half a sheet of 17x22 C paper, and so on. But I thought I knew the size of A paper long before that, and that it was common knowledge, though I can't think of where or why I would have needed to know. Then again I also know that legal paper is 8.5x14 even though I have never had to use it.

Fair but if you’re going to diss, at least be aware it’s not just one country :) (I’ve never lived in the country you’re thinking of, and all the countries I’ve lived in use non-ISO216 paper sizes).

I never realized that “LETTER” in that error referred to paper size—no printer I’ve had has actually given that error, so I only ever heard about it through oblique references to Office Space and such. It makes so much more sense now…

On don’t worry, they also show PC LOAD LETTER in the US even when the correct paper size is loaded :)

Could be PC LOAD LEGAL if your document is really weird.

You missed at least one other country that uses “US” paper sizes.

They all default to ISO sizes for me.

If I format the page size, Libreoffice does offer "Letter" and "Legal". GIMP shows them as "US Letter" and "US Legal" but again they're not the default.

It wouldn't surprise me if most non-US users hadn't seen them at all, and certainly not that they don't realise the US uses a different size.