And it'll be the most subtle, unassuming envelope too.

Man I've been giving the ASPCA $20 a month for years and not a single address label...
- Try Heifer International
- Well you see there's your problem, you were supposed to be donating to the ASCPA
- What's an address label? (I'm not american)

In the US you just shoot the people that try to put ads in your mailbox. Not a lawyer tho so idk. shrug

LPT: probably shouldn't do this
- LPT: If you aren’t caught it isn’t a crime
- Thanks for the warning, i almost shot the mailman.
- ILPT: probably should do this
This post was written by a dog with a gun.

In France you just put a sticker or something on your box saying "no ads" and that's it, no more ads posted. It really is quite a bunch of paper every week, too!

Obviously the Internet should remain as public and free as it is/as possible but you just made me want to sell it to France
Same in Australia. Doesn't stop the pious "holier than thou" shits from illegally filling my letterbox with crap advertising their church

In Germany, you can just put a little sign on your letterbox that tells the post person to not give you any free newspapers or mail.

Only ads I've gotten in years where the ones directly addressed to me, and that's like every few months from one of two slightly old fashioned firms, and tends to include a voucher, so that's something.

It's literally illegal for a post worker to not give you junk mail in the US.
Same in France, and some cities are even experimenting the opposite: ads are opt-in, and you need to put a "I want ads" sign to get them instead.
- Fucking America is horseshit, why wasn't I born over there
Ich hab das nicht dran weil ich die freien Zeitungen benutze, um den Biomüll einzupacken 💀
Same in Estonia, I check my mailbox maybe 2-3 times per year, and that is just because I have nothing else to do while waiting for the lift to come. Also, now I want a cheesecake.
- Yeah, cheesecake would be nice. Anyways, the problem here in Germany is that letters are still used for most things that are in any way official, we still don't have that whole e-government thing you got over there.
- In eastern ruzzia, they already knew the mail was coming and there was a big time payment due. They knew this for months 🤣 and that brings the pleasure. Oh by the way, if you guys like Moscow, you gotta a few months before it gets a much different look and a new name 😁. It's okay 🆗, they know.
Canada too. My wife was a letter carrier for a few years, she would make a note of non-admail boxes if someone put a notification on the box or sent in a form to opt-out, and put a red sticker on their sort slot at the depot. Then when she delivered it would only be addressed mail that went to that box.
I'd love that. My current routine is to just toss the ads and whatnot in the recycling bin on my way in. I look at it just long enough to determine whether it's important, I don't even look at what their deals are.
- I don't know know if you're in the US, but the junk mail senders here have been making their ads look like official mail.
  I had one the other day that said IMPORTANT stamped across an otherwise nondescript, but official looking enevelope. So opened it just in case. It was an ad for some douchbag company stating that it wanted to buy our house for cash.
  I always worry that one day I'm gonna toss a piece of mail that I actually needed because of this bullshit.
Sadly too many asshats ignore the stickers. I could now sue the shitty "free" ~~newspaper~~ ad delivery device, but that's somehow more work and money than I'm willing to invest.
Same here in Czech Republic. Except some idiot neighbours of mine put up labels they took from magazines that have ads on them.

A tip if you're in the USA, look at the top right of envelope. If it says "presorted standard" it's garbage.

In Germany it's "Dialogpost" or "Postwurf Spezial"
- Der junkenmailer

Only works on first and second class mail, and just be unopened. I've been doing this for years and I get maybe 1 credit card offer a month. It's now at the point where most of my mail is actually stuff I want/need and only get mail like twice a week.
You have to write it in red and diagonally as everyone knows.
I wonder if the online services that intend on reducing your email spam would also reduce paper spam.
They work by formally asking all the personal data sharing companies to remove your data

I wish they would get rid of all mail except for person to person written letter, checks made out to me, and packages I've ordered. Everything else is garbage.

Checks are also incredibly outdated in most countries.
- I'm in my mid thirties in Germany and literally never got or sent a single check.
- Sure, but you wouldn't turn one away if someone legitimately sent you free money.

Come to think of it, that's pretty much email, too.

75% automated notifications or stuff that isn't quite spam but you don't care about

23% spam

2% stuff that you better not miss

Just finished my jury duty and it was a wild ride

Other jurors shocked me with how antaganostic they were to the plaintiff for asking for compensation and punishment for a nursing home's negligence. We ended up awarding money for clear negligence- specifically for injuries (physical and financial) and pain, but it was a struggle to find agreement from them for clear facts that neither side disputed (and verbally acknowledged this nondispute). When it came time to answer if the doctor was negligent in not consulting a wound physician, they didnt agree because the nursing home policy said "do it if wound doesnt improve in 2-4 weeks". Wound got worse over the 5-6 weeks they waited and by the time they did, she was so bad from not participating in therapy (due to being laid on the wound constantly and the ensuing pain) that she had had to be put on hospice and died from a lack of dialysis.

Because they didnt find the violation of her rights (violations were agreed to) to be reckless or willful (such as by understaffing or poor care), we could not award additional damages to punish the nursing home

I take solace in the fact that it gave the family closure for a 6 year lawsuit

That second part is surprising to me. "Facility policy" and/or signed paperwork don't allow a provider to be negligent to someone under their care.
Hell, it wouldn't even protect individual nurses' licenses. Any licensed individual who provides care is responsible for following the law, even if "policy" contradicts it.
- Thats what I was trying to argue but the other jurors were more concerned with not having to come back on Monday and a "that's what it says" with no critical thinking. Esp when the plaintiff expert witnesses (an excellent nurse who has a practice investigating nursing homes for compliance with the federal regulations and an excellent doctor who worked for CMS writing the very regulations) outlined what care the law requires

I was taught as a child to open plain envelopes first. Checks, credit cards, and other important stuff are put in boring envelopes.

I worked for a CC company and when we mailed checks to customers we told them "This check will come in a plain white envelope." And the amount of people who thank me for letting them know because they might have thrown it away.

Who the hell just throws mail away without knowing what it is first? And if it's not clear from the outside, then without opening it first?

@ThePicardManeuver Here in the UK, sure we get Spam mail but there's red labels and stuff for really important mail from the government and things and most of the time it's just telling you to pay for a TV licence that you wouldn't use as you don't pay for live TV and just watch YouTube.

If there was a way to highlight official government mail, spam mailers would use it to fool people into thinking it's something important. I get tons of spam that looks like something official.
- We have specially coloured envelopes for government mail in the Netherlands, I've never gotten any spam trying to imitate them (and we do accept spam mail, we could also put a sticker on the mailbox to reject it, but my partner likes them).
- Sounds like it would be really easy to put those people in jail for federal offense, yeah? Also if we can print unique, hard-to-duplicate cash, we could do the same for envelope accents, right?
- @SemiHemiDemigod They have a few things such as a return address to a government building on the envelope along with the envelope actually being a certain type that I haven't seen with any other mail.
Similar in Germany. The "we are done playing, ignore this and go to jail" mail will be sent in a special yellow envelope most of the time.

As someone who rents so much of my mail is from past residents which I have told them do not live here, or local ads (literally several magazines per month) which I can't opt out of cause it's EDDM, that I straight up just stopped collecting it. Any small packages that would have gone in the box go on top of the cluster and any letters I received are stuffed into the box and I pick them out if I happen to notice I'm missing something.

Anyone that really needs my attention would call me or email me shrug

My mailbox is near where I leave my garbage, so I only check it once a week. I immediately throw anything that's clearly an ad directly into the garbage and never look at it.
When I was renting I had a stamp "Return to sender. Addressee not known at this address"
- I do similar. Cross the name out with a Sharpie and write "MOVED".
  After owning the place for two years now I just throw it out.
- I did that for a couple years, and now I still get junk from the previous owner. I've been here 10 years...
  Then again, now I get invitations to retirement stuff, so I guess that's cool (I'm nowhere near retirement, but the previous owner was about that age).
Same here. Like 90% of my mail is for previous residents. One guy apparently never updated his address so he keeps getting sent checks and I just throw them away. I've been living here for 9 months 🤷‍♂️
I check my mail like once every few weeks. I checked it a few days ago and most of it wasn't for me. Three out of the 5 things that were for me were from TicketMaster, Rite-Aid, and Choice Healthcare and they were all "Sorry, we've been hacked and your personal info was probably leaked."

Since we're talking about mail:

What do I do with my old bills/insurance statements/etc? I have executive dysfunction and I just can't find a simple method that works for me. It all ends up in a pile and every few months I pitch the whole thing and promise myself to do better next time. Perhaps there's an app, website, or program I should just digitize them into?

I was in the same boat and wound up buying a scanner and installing Paperless. Scanner sends the files to my network drop box, Paperless picks them up from the drop box and digitizes them. I finally got rid of like an entire garbage bag of old pay stubs and stuff that I had been hoarding.
I have a filing cabinet with one drawer for hanging folders. Everything gets sorted and put in there. When a folder gets too fluffy I will pull it out and shred old stuff.
I could probably get rid of a lot but this method does come in handy occasionally. Most recently were my 2023 taxes which I filed in July (I had an extension). I yanked the 2023 file and immediately had 90% of my donations and medical expenses.
If you need it, put it in a folder and store it somewhere safe. But you really don't need 99% of it.
I have a safe with some cash and two folders:
important, official documents - birth certificate, passport, etc
potentially important financial stuff - tax returns, mortgage papers, etc
I definitely need the first, I will probably never need the second.

For me it's 99 spam things and one Manila folder. It's always the VA noticing I exist again and deciding I haven't been fucked with enough recently.

Ya all can expect me to be internationally wanted on tv for not reading my mail. A dangerous suspect was seen on the border of Mexico with a bag full of unread mail. It is advised to not approach that person and inform post office immediately.

I let it overflow out my mailbox for years
my neighbor thought I was a squatter
No regrets

Kind of feel about that about software updates.

I used to have a personal project site that ran Drupal. I don't know how things are now, but back then, every module could be updated automatically, except for the Drupal Core itself which had to be updated manually.

The one time I went "oh shit, a core update - nah, I can leave it after the weekend", the site got hosed by malware.

(It's a Jekyll site now. Drupal was a bit of overkill for it anyways.)

So you're saying good advertisements should be a single sheet of typewritten thin cheap paper in a brown envelope?

(to be fair, some "advertisers" already do that, to the point of impersonating the courts!)

https://www.paperkarma.com/3-steps-stop-junk-mail/