I will miss the postal service.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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I already miss the snow.
I already miss people fulfilled by their jobs.
And public expressions of happiness in general.
If we could just capture that happiness and turn it into some unit of work there could be profit in it, just think! Oh what amazing things would follow if we did that for every human moment everywhere all the time.
We are collectively destroying everything that made us great as a country. The postal service was literally the envy of the world - name another country's service that will deliver a letter to anywhere else in the country for less than a dollar. Consistently, regardless of remote location.
Immigrants contribute to every level from the service industry to research and development.
Our rule of law, although not perfect, for the most part was attempted to lean towards justice.
We were a stabilizing economic and military force for the world.
USAID helped save millions of lives.
This administration setting fire to it all under the guide of "Making America Great" despite the fact that all their changes will in fact make it fucking shit, dismantling the very things that should make us proud to be American.
MFW I'm wearing the same glasses as a mailman from 100 years ago.
Yer a postman, Harry.
~~Yoko~~ John liked “Yer a postman, Harry.”
They look good then and now!
Neither spine nor knee after a few years of that load.
Possible without toes too, considering those are leather-soled boots, maybe with hobnails. Not exactly the warmest footwear.
Layers of socks, warm and comfy
TIL there was life before cardboard
And plastic
Sure but your packages don't come in plastic shipping containers
Packaging of the products themselves usually have plastic
Modern men's fashion peaked in the 1920s. I've been watching Boardwalk Empire lately and everyone is dressed so sharp.
I say modern fashion because we use be allowed to wear all kinds of cool stuff like poofy sleeves, cod pieces, capes, and tights.
That was probably a warm wool uniform, too. They don't make em like that anymore.
This is definitely snow, methinks.
What about "glom of nit" though?
Is this colorized history or something? How do we even know this is a real photo?
I dont know of theres a guarenteed way to know if its a 'real photo' but it checks some boxes for one. I'm not a photography nerd just making some assumptions. If you zoom into the picture you'll see actual photograph grain which is visually distinct from typical digital photo lossy artefacting which implies this is a scan of a real picture.
They did have color photography back then but it wasn't true rgb color, the color film crystals were only capable of like green and blues so not great and tended to be washed out. His blue uniform and brown handbag look suspicously vibrant. I think this is likely digitally recolored.
Your telling me someone was lugging around a hugeass pinhole camera, in the snow, in Chicago, to take a random picture of a mailman? And the snow only falls on his hat and left shoulder, but not the boxes?
I can't tell what's AI or real anymore. I'm only 33. Obviously the poorly done or sloppy pictures I can tell. But sometimes.....I just don't know anymore.
I'm no photo-ologist, but this one is probably especially challenging because a 96 year old photo naturally is lower quality, which could hide imperfections more easily.
I'm also no AI-ologist - I often miss even the obvious ones - but it didn't occur to me that this might be fake until I read your comment. It does seem that the postman is unusually happy.
edit: Add two missing letters that completely reversed my point.
It could be AI colorized which is what I am hoping I cought on to lol
That does seem pretty feasible. In fact, the first thing I did before responding was check when color photography became popular; at a glance there wasn't an answer about commonality in the wiki page, but color photos were apparently invented most of a century beforehand, so really I'm not sure either way.
I hope this entirely unproductive comment helps. For the time being, I'm just going to assume it's real and that this guy took pride in his trade.
I take pride in what I do, so I can see some people relate job=pride. But yea I'm in the same boat as you.