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quote:he told the person that answered the phone that “this is Henry Kissinger and I have to call the Pope because I have to confess.” 
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Nov 27, 2019 08:07
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Plastik posted:Found this in the Funny Panels thread in BSS of all places It's amazing how much of modern society was shaped by a handful of people saying, "gently caress this. We're doing it this way now."
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Nov 27, 2019 15:18
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Plastik posted:Found this in the Funny Panels thread in BSS of all places This is a cool website that you can see how a zip code locates your position. https://benfry.com/zipdecode/
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Nov 27, 2019 17:08
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Krankenstyle posted:We got postal codes in Denmark in 1967. They're 4 digits, beginning in central Copenhagen with 1xxx (every street has its own), then 2xx0 for the major districts, and finally the rest of Denmark in sections. Before that, addresses would be written for example "Blistrup pr. Helsinge" (with per in the archaic sense of via), the latter town being the distribution center for smaller surrounding villages. England had a similar system with for example "Rowlands Gill, Nr [ie. near] Newcastle-upon-Tyne". Even in the 80's, small Post Offices would still accept mail as "name, town, state" My friend's dad got a letter that was addressed "First Name, Last Name, town, state". The thing is that there were 2 people with that name in town. One was a Junior. The postmaster opened the letter and read it to see which one it was for. Small towns are like that. I think they killed that in the 90's to my memory.
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Nov 28, 2019 13:20
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My dad sent a letter back in the 70s (Norway) that just said Name "that yellow house with the large garage and a big apple tree in the garden Area of city City The recipient called him later to tell him how amused he was that it had gotten there.
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Nov 28, 2019 17:10
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Government Handjob posted:My dad sent a letter back in the 70s (Norway) that just said There are still remote places in South America (iirc) that use addresses like that. "The house with the blue door 3km north of the shop on the road between <town> and <other town>"
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Nov 28, 2019 18:18
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Sweevo posted:There are still remote places in South America (iirc) that use addresses like that. Africa too. It seems to be pretty common even in bigger cities. BBC posted:Since properties often don't have a house number or name and street signs are rarely visible, local landmarks like bars, banks or even trees are used instead to help people find their way.
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Nov 28, 2019 18:30
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mostlygray posted:Even in the 80's, small Post Offices would still accept mail as "name, town, state" There can sometimes be too much ambiguity and people move around a lot more these days. That worked when you did have tiny towns where everybody knew everybody anyway. You can still do that in places without street addresses. Apparently in remote enough places a person's address can be "Josh Murphy, In the Woods by the Waterfall, Town, State Zip Code." Emergency services are also one of the reasons that happened; where I'm originally from they kept having problems with EMS not knowing where the gently caress to go as there were unlabeled streets (the locals knew the names and nobody out of town had much of a habit of going there) that had a few houses that might not even have numbers. Or signs. Or any indication there was even a house there if you went out far enough and enough trees were blocking the view. Eventually the state said "OK, enough is enough" and foot the bill for a particular style of numbered sign that everybody had to put somewhere obvious so 911 would know where the hell they were going. I think a few people outright refused but for the most part people went "yeah that's a good idea, actually." Now every dwelling has a number label on it.
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Nov 28, 2019 23:40
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Out here we call those signs your "911 address" because they have no connection to the mail. Usually the local emergency people will know county roads and ranch names and get dispatched that way without them even mentioning the physical address.
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Nov 29, 2019 04:40
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In rural Wisconsin where my parents live they don't have a street address, everything including mail is addressed to their fire emergency code the DNR gives out
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Nov 29, 2019 05:04
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mostlygray posted:Even in the 80's, small Post Offices would still accept mail as "name, town, state" A friend told me that back in 1970s Vienna (so not exactly a small town) his uncle met the old mailman who had been delivering mail to his house since before the war and who was like "Sir, you got a letter from court! But don't worry, I already took a look, it's nothing serious" 
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Nov 29, 2019 07:15
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Atticus_1354 posted:Out here we call those signs your "911 address" because they have no connection to the mail. Usually the local emergency people will know county roads and ranch names and get dispatched that way without them even mentioning the physical address. In Northern MN they're called Fire Numbers. They do translate to address for mail but the fire number is enough for the fire department to come find you.
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Nov 29, 2019 15:03
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Atticus_1354 posted:Out here we call those signs your "911 address" because they have no connection to the mail. Usually the local emergency people will know county roads and ranch names and get dispatched that way without them even mentioning the physical address. There are places I'm from where they don't actually deliver the mail to you. You get a post office box and have to go pick it up. While technically there were places that had street addresses some of them nobody knew or had forgotten. I mean some never had a street address in the first place; some people seriously lived on paths in the middle of nowhere. But yeah we didn't call them 911 addresses but mostly the signs got put up and often forgotten about. All EMS cares about is that the signs exist and are visible.
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Nov 29, 2019 15:27
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 Santa Claus is comin' to town. To gently caress you up!
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Nov 29, 2019 16:37
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Alhazred posted:Santa Claus is comin' to town. To gently caress you up! Strong Red December vibes.
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Nov 29, 2019 17:11
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Government Handjob posted:Strong Red December vibes. More like Rare Exports
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Nov 29, 2019 20:56
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Alhazred posted:
The War on Christmas is getting out of hand
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Nov 30, 2019 01:48
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ToxicSlurpee posted:There are places I'm from where they don't actually deliver the mail to you. You get a post office box and have to go pick it up. While technically there were places that had street addresses some of them nobody knew or had forgotten. I mean some never had a street address in the first place; some people seriously lived on paths in the middle of nowhere. But yeah we didn't call them 911 addresses but mostly the signs got put up and often forgotten about. All EMS cares about is that the signs exist and are visible. I lived in one of the last places in America to get 911 service. Until then, everyone living in the rural section of the county had rural routes, for example Route 4 Box 420. Rural routes were very general, covering wide swaths of land in a geographic area. All of that had to go with 911 as they needed something exact. Few of the dirt roads were named beyond County Road #whatever (names not used by anybody), but almost all got proper names for 911. On the plus, it did mean that FedEx could now serve the rural section. UPS had been fine for deliveries, but FedEx generally refused to, insisting that the box numbers were actually post office boxes.
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Nov 30, 2019 07:58
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Petit Gregory posted:The War on Christmas is getting out of hand In tsarist Russia, you don't war on Christmas. Christmas wars on you.
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Nov 30, 2019 08:57
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RC and Moon Pie posted:I lived in one of the last places in America to get 911 service. Until then, everyone living in the rural section of the county had rural routes, for example Route 4 Box 420. Rural routes were very general, covering wide swaths of land in a geographic area. All of that had to go with 911 as they needed something exact. Few of the dirt roads were named beyond County Road #whatever (names not used by anybody), but almost all got proper names for 911. Since lived is past tense where was this? Unless it was like a childhood home or something then I guess don't worry about it. I just learned recently about farm to market roads in Texas and they make total sense but are unthinkable for someone living in my part of the country
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Nov 30, 2019 13:33
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Milo and POTUS posted:Since lived is past tense where was this? Unless it was like a childhood home or something then I guess don't worry about it. I just learned recently about farm to market roads in Texas and they make total sense but are unthinkable for someone living in my part of the country Not sure when the person you're quoting is referring to, but I remember this happening in the late 80s/early 90s. Which I recognize is almost 30 years ago at this point, but it still feels like "recently" to me.
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Nov 30, 2019 13:52
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Milo and POTUS posted:Since lived is past tense where was this? Unless it was like a childhood home or something then I guess don't worry about it. I just learned recently about farm to market roads in Texas and they make total sense but are unthinkable for someone living in my part of the country I grew up around fm roads and I didn’t realize they were particularly different from other country roads in the US?
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Nov 30, 2019 15:10
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I grew up around fm roads and I didn’t realize they were particularly different from other country roads in the US? Wisconsin uses letters so the country road would be County Road BB
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Nov 30, 2019 16:58
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The real question is will the country roads take me home?
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Dec 1, 2019 00:33
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bunnyofdoom posted:The real question is will the country roads take me home? It depends if you're west virginia or a mountain mama. I personally identify as a misty taste of moonshine, makes navigating hell
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Dec 1, 2019 04:15
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Non-postal service related fact: English uses the word "window" instead of a word derived from the latin word for window, fenestra, that romance (ie. Frech "fenetre") and a lot of germanic (ie. German "Fenster") languages in Europe use. In Germanic languages, fenestra entered the languages as a term for glazed windows in the late middle ages - windows are seen in 1st century AD Roman Egypt but northern Europe is, as we all know, a cultural backwater. English is instead using the old Norse word for an open hole in the fabric of a building, vindauga, 'wind eye', which displaced the Old English eagþyrl, 'eye hole'. Fenester was the English equiavalent of the latin word, but it failed to achieve the ubiquity of the good old wind eye.
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Dec 1, 2019 10:46
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Coming off the back of that I have to say the word defenestration is my favourite murder word. Like how often were people killed by throwing them out windows that a word was needed for it?
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Dec 1, 2019 10:52
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I mean it doesn't necessarily have to be murder.
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Dec 1, 2019 11:16
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In 1948 Jan Masaryk allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of the window. This lead to the saying that "Jan Masaryk was a very tidy man. He was such a tidy man that when he jumped he shut the window after himself."
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Dec 1, 2019 11:29
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Helith posted:Coming off the back of that I have to say the word defenestration is my favourite murder word. It's all the rage in Bohemia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague
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Dec 1, 2019 12:43
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When I get murdered, I want it to be by enfenestration.
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Dec 1, 2019 13:06
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Jerry Cotton posted:When I get murdered, I want it to be by enfenestration. You wants someone to throw a window trough you?
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Dec 1, 2019 14:13
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Alhazred posted:You wants someone to throw a window trough you? No that would mean the window gets gossypied.
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Dec 1, 2019 14:48
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Enfenestration could also mean to be made window-like (shot/stabbed?) Also we still use the Old Norse-derived word in Denmark: vindue
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Dec 1, 2019 15:01
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In 18th century England the post was delivered down “postal roads”, roads designated for use by mounted postboys. About every twenty miles there would be a “post” (where we get the name) with at least three fresh horses, so when the post boy approached he would sound his horn and the next horse (and post boy if needed) would be readied. He could then simply dismount his own horse and mount the fresh one and carry on. Quite a good I system, except that the roads were quite unsafe at the time (both from disrepair and crime), postboys were paid quite badly (and usually before they’d even delivered the post, so the temptation to just go and spend it in an ale house was quite strong) and the fact that the postal roads all ran to London. If you wanted to send a letter from Bristol to Manchester, a distance of approx 160 miles, it would first have to go to London (110 miles) and then up another postal road to Manchester (210 miles). That’s 320 miles to go 160 miles - twice as long. In the 18th century a guy called Ralph Allen decided this was clearly a load of bullshit and designated new postal roads which didn’t just go to London but instead crossed over multiple postal roads. So now your post could go down the Bristol > Birmingham postal road (85 miles); at this crossroads would be another “post”, but this time with a new post boy on a fresh horse ready to go up the Birmingham > Manchester postal road. The first rider would stop and hand over his post to the second rider - the post would be marked “X Birmingham” designating that it should be crossposted at the Birmingham crossroad. I don’t think this is where the modern term came from though. Anyway, it’s then only another 85 miles to Manchester, so 170 in total. Postboys would travel at approximately 3 miles per hour, although this was a 24 hour service - in daylight they might manage 5 or 6mph, at night 1 or 2. In central London, and later other cities, post was picked up and delivered every HOUR. It was possible to send your wife a letter at lunchtime saying you’d be late home and it would be in her hands before you were even due home. Even in smaller towns there were usually three pick ups and deliveries a day; business owners could order stock and send it in the 2pm post, it would be received by the wholesaler with the 9pm post who would then prepare it and despatch at dawn. Thats faster than Amazon Prime. One last fact: the bag that the postboys carried the letters in was called a “male”, which is obviously where the word mail comes from.
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Dec 1, 2019 15:05
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Krankenstyle posted:Enfenestration could also mean to be made window-like (shot/stabbed?) Could, but doesn't. That's fenestrate, i.e. to make holy. e: Not to be confused with the adjective fenestrate which means having many holes, i.e. being holy big-time stylee.
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Dec 1, 2019 15:46
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Jerry Cotton posted:No that would mean the window gets gossypied. Made into cotton?
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Dec 1, 2019 15:51
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Jerry Cotton posted:Could, but doesn't. That's fenestrate, i.e. to make holy. To make holy or to be hole-y I think I may have spoken about this before, but one of my favorite window facts is about Witch Windows. In Vermont, older homes sometimes have a window installed on the diagonal. This is apparently because people believed it would keep witches out, as it's very difficult to fly on a broom at an angle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_window Suspect Bucket has a new favorite as of 16:34 on Dec 1, 2019 |
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Dec 1, 2019 16:26
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Milo and POTUS posted:Since lived is past tense where was this? Unless it was like a childhood home or something then I guess don't worry about it. I just learned recently about farm to market roads in Texas and they make total sense but are unthinkable for someone living in my part of the country I travel a lot and there are parts of the country where there really is nothing out there. Miles and miles of highway with occasional small turn-offs leading to some distant farmhouse that you can barely see, and out west in places like Utah and Nevada you don't even have those. Or cell service! This is why we say "dirt doesn't vote" when Republicans show maps with a ton of red to "prove" that the US is actually filled with right-wingers. Those swathes of red across the country have literally no people in them. Wyoming has a lower population than just the metro area I live in, and my city isn't particularly huge.
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Dec 1, 2019 17:54
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duckmaster posted:In 18th century England the post was delivered down “postal roads”, roads designated for use by mounted postboys. About every twenty miles there would be a “post” (where we get the name) with at least three fresh horses, so when the post boy approached he would sound his horn and the next horse (and post boy if needed) would be readied. He could then simply dismount his own horse and mount the fresh one and carry on. sounds like the Pony Express system of 19th century US, made necessary by enormous distances pre-rail- kind of a wonder at a time when it took the better part of a year to travel westward with sufficient supplies across almost no infrastructure
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Dec 1, 2019 18:12
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