Dilip
    <arasa@fastmail.com>                                       15 Dec 2020
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                        A failed attempt at snail mail.

    Last week, a friend in San Diego broadcasted a call for aid. He was
    looking for a USB-C <==> Lightning cable and was having trouble
    obtaining one through regular channels. I happened to have exactly one
    of those cables sitting unused on my desk, right next to another unused
    USB-C <==> USB-C cable. I offered to send mine over.

    I have always loved using postal services. I usually have a collection
    of postal stamps and envelopes at home. I pulled out a tiny envelope,
    plopped the cable inside, stuck a stamp, wrote his address and dropped
    it off at a mail box in my neighborhood.

    I returned to my desk and discovered that I had just mailed the wrong
    cable. Fortunately, I had more envelopes and stamps available. From the
    previous mailing experience, I learned that writing an address on the
    envelope is much harder once the cable is already inside. So this time,
    I decided to be smarter about it. I also decided to write in a "From"
    address on the envelope.

    I plopped the correct cable in, stuck the postal stamp and made a
    second trip to the neighborhood mailbox to send aid to my friend. The
    only thing better than sending mail to a friend is sending two mails on
    the same day. I returned to my desk contented.

    Two days later, the second envelope showed up in my mailbox. It had all
    the stamps and seals to indicate that the postal service considered
    this a successful delivery. The best explanation I can come up with is
    that the computer vision algorithm that the United States Postal
    Service uses to figure out the postal address decided that it liked the
    "From" address on the envelope and routed the mail back to me.