Post Aw0CDPlr7QxbxfOpX6 by elysegrasso@historians.social
(DIR) More posts by elysegrasso@historians.social
(DIR) Post #AvzOUKgGImuHOBelu4 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T11:44:12Z
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20 years of online shopping and a whole industry excited to collect data and autofill and address checking functions STILL mess up apartments. The system is set up to work well with houses, but there is no consensus on if "apartment/suite" should be a separate field or not... and it's also still often rendered wrong, and makes bad suggestions such as "correcting"123ABC to 123AbcGranted when I worked in database design this was my "thing" so I'm hypercritical ... but still.
(DIR) Post #AvzOjeKTWzx8filmq0 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T11:47:01Z
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I get personally offended because I suspect that it's some kind of American suburban centric mentality that makes apartments an afterthought. The correct answer is that "apartment suite" should be a separate field NOT tacked on to the street address, but in most renderings it should be on the same line with a comma. And you need to deftly separate this information if the user tries to enter it in the address line.ANYWAY.
(DIR) Post #AvzOrNCD7GxHqnaRxQ by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T11:48:24Z
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Every now and then I STILL encounter a system that just can't handle the existence of apartments. There is no way to enter the information because they use an address checker that strips it away... but don't have their own field to store the data.
(DIR) Post #AvzP6lEg1FmIki4tFY by KatS@chaosfem.tw
2025-07-10T11:51:08Z
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@futurebird You'd love the Spanish approach, then.It's not quite universal, but I'm often presented with multiple fields, including floor and door - because it's common to have multiple apartments with their own doors on a given floor of a building.By contrast, a freestanding house tends to confuse them. "Yes, but which door? What do you mean they're not numbered?"
(DIR) Post #AvzPaAHXycGipWRQJs by funkula@goblin.camp
2025-07-10T11:56:27Z
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@futurebird I mean, how many people in New York live in multi-unit dwellings, like a hundred?
(DIR) Post #AvzPdctu1u6YSS24oa by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T11:57:08Z
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@funkula Yeah that's very typical. There are like 100 units in our building but next door it's about 300.
(DIR) Post #AvzPtkzTiekOBKKeLA by funkula@goblin.camp
2025-07-10T11:59:59Z
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@futurebird oh wow so there's 400 of you. Still a drop in the bucket compared to the 12 million mcmansions on half-acre lots that comprise the rest of the city's housing stock
(DIR) Post #AvzPvMiExINPSp2IM4 by epicdemiologist@wandering.shop
2025-07-10T12:00:17Z
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@futurebird This includes the USPS automated kiosks for weighing packages and printing mailing labels.
(DIR) Post #AvzQCb0x2Dvkk80JnM by wanwizard@mastodon.scot
2025-07-10T12:03:25Z
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@futurebird What pisses me off a lot is sites that use some third-party address database, and doesn't allow for any overrides. According to these databases, I live in a City in a neighbouring county, some 15 miles away, and according to abother, the village I live in is part of the address (and they use the same incorrect City).
(DIR) Post #AvzQcruYppk4g2XiUq by RogerBW@discordian.social
2025-07-10T12:08:09Z
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@futurebird What it comes down to: if you want to deliver to anyone except your friends, especially if you're shipping internationally, the only thing that works within the country level is a freeform multi-line text field.
(DIR) Post #AvzQl1hGKvlFLKDF1E by hakona@im.alstadheim.no
2025-07-10T12:09:30Z
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@futurebirdMy house had no number, no street-name until 10 years ago. The *area* has a name, after the main farm in the area. Getting an ambulance was a challenge. Forget about Amazon. Best approach was using numbers from municipal property-register.
(DIR) Post #AvzQnW8Y8F5mKYACvo by jwcph@helvede.net
2025-07-10T12:10:06Z
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@futurebird No, it's a super-poignant object lesson for every single person who thinks automating things is easy, or even just moderately difficult. The frayed edges of our perception tend to show themselves when you ask a computer to do anything real-world-relevant & they always, ALWAYS turn out to be much wider & more frayed than people think they are - because making it work with this perception is what our minds have evolved for.
(DIR) Post #AvzR1bZKjUEpEQPQNk by paulc@mstdn.social
2025-07-10T12:12:38Z
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@futurebird I see no standardization on how to deal with Apt or Suite. I live in a house but my office has a suite. Does it get its own line or combined with the street address.We have a database of all doctors in the metro DC area. We have our own methodology for suite number, but what we get from doctor offices varies widely. No one agrees on how to handle it.
(DIR) Post #AvzRHIjwVPrdT5r8VM by paulc@mstdn.social
2025-07-10T12:15:28Z
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@futurebird Some business and academic addresses are the worst. You might need 2-5 lines just for business/division/building name or the university/department/office name. And then you get to the street address. And then there are those places that don't give a street number, just the intersection or the building name.
(DIR) Post #AvzRV8vHnmkL4jlJJ2 by paulc@mstdn.social
2025-07-10T12:17:59Z
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@futurebird I haven't had this problem in the past 2 years, but the occasional site that does not offer DC as a state. Or insist that the state is “Washington DC”. Nope, Washington is the city, DC is the state. I remember once contacting support and they said to just enter Washington as the state.Now you have me on a roll. How about asking for zip code first so city and state can be automated. I realize that sometimes the city will be wrong but allow the person to fix it.
(DIR) Post #AvzSBPpvJAoDh6PXKi by GoblinQuester@dice.camp
2025-07-10T12:25:36Z
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@futurebird I usually pop a fuse these days when "state" is a mandatory field, I usually put in exceedingly strange things in that field (like the mandatory '); drop table ADDRESS "joke").
(DIR) Post #AvzSU22vz2u3PdNDpQ by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-07-10T12:28:56Z
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@futurebird My favourite example of this was about ten years ago when one of our local taxi companies launched an app. The app didn't want you to send taxis to made-up locations, so it required a valid address. The address-entry thing turned the on-screen keyboard into numbers-only mode. Our number, at the time, was 24d. You couldn't enter this, but if you entered just 24 then it would complain that it wasn't a real address (there was no 24, just 24a-f).
(DIR) Post #AvzSUrmlcOrtsYD2qe by fehlfarbe@dresden.network
2025-07-10T12:29:00Z
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@futurebird the funny thing is if you live in an area where the zip code starts with a zero and the database stores it as an integer 🤡 I don't know if this is a problem in the US but it was a very common problem here in some parts of Germany. It got better over the years but some web shops still have this problem.To understand your apartment problem: I assume you don't just have your name on the door bell but an apartment number like "Apt. 123AB"?
(DIR) Post #AvzSa9zBNTgvm2Xajo by DaNanner@mastodon.coffee
2025-07-10T12:30:05Z
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@futurebird most forms have that “address 2nd line” field for apartments, townhomes condos, ADUs , etc…
(DIR) Post #AvzSkyLgz3ncrsE1qK by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T12:32:04Z
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@fehlfarbe In theory the doormen would figure it out by name, but I hate to give them more work like that! There are 100s of people in the building. They need the apartment number.
(DIR) Post #AvzSzmzTUp55z5tlIm by martin_piper@mastodon.social
2025-07-10T12:34:39Z
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@futurebird in Singapore I sometimes encounter the opposite problem. The vast majority of people live in tower blocks so some areas systems demand a unit number and floor number. They get confused when it's an independent house.
(DIR) Post #AvzTV2ip3bHpkf0pPM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T12:40:23Z
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@jgordon Calendars don't have standardization because Google, Microsoft, Apple and others are trying to lock people in to their system by making it NOT making it easy to share such information. So you end up saying "we use google calendar" and doing sales work for them. This practice should attract more shame and derision than it does. It is very ugly and makes everyone's life worse. Why can't I add a google calendar event to an apple calendar? It's not because it is "too hard"
(DIR) Post #AvzTn7PQMwqfV7YfJ2 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T12:43:40Z
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@jgordon I'm not a member of your sales team. It's not my job to get people to use Microsoft teams or Google calendar. By not making your system cross compatible you are expecting me to work for free for you to get more people to use your product. I find it demeaning.
(DIR) Post #AvzU41WlURQKBN3KFM by engravecavedave@mastodon.social
2025-07-10T12:46:37Z
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@futurebird @jgordon yeah, but aren't .ics at least standard files? I'm only bringing this up because I guess it still allows for migrating your data to other calendars, I think ... something I have a hard time doing with notes apps. I don't think there's a standardised file for those
(DIR) Post #AvzUEBl4J7CSoAae0W by engravecavedave@mastodon.social
2025-07-10T12:46:14Z
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@futurebird @jgordon yeah, but aren't .ics at least standard files? I'm only bringing this up because I guess it still allows for migrating your data to other calendars, I think ... something I have a hard time doing with notes apps. I don't think there's a standardised file for those
(DIR) Post #AvzUED1Pbprqj9FD7Y by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T12:48:33Z
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@engravecavedave @jgordon It's not like people haven't tried to fix this. .ics is very basic and really we should have a more robust and modern protocol... but more important no one should pay much attention to which system they use because they all work so well together you just forget about it. Instead you must use the preferred system of your coworkers and friends. What if it wasn't like that?
(DIR) Post #AvzUcZULjKELMAOdrk by TobyBartels@mathstodon.xyz
2025-07-10T12:52:56Z
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@futurebirdFor addresses that accept U.S. mail (which is most of them in the USA), the USPS has a standard form for addresses and even a free pre-GenAI tool for standardizing them (nominally intended to look up the zip+4): https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm (although to make it easier, it standardizes on all caps).
(DIR) Post #AvzUwTSvpgJkT7Dvyi by lffontenelle@mastodon.social
2025-07-10T12:56:30Z
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@futurebird Here in Brazil it's de facto standardized to offer an optional "complement" field which is mostly used for apartments but can be "the house in the back" etc. Never noticed how autocorrect works on this fields, so it mustn't be doing a particularly bad job
(DIR) Post #AvzV88mmXsn1o34UnQ by JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange
2025-07-10T12:58:38Z
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@futurebird But clearly only "the poors" live in apartments/condos, and who cares about them.Stares at all the luxury condos taking over my city that *start at $1MM*
(DIR) Post #AvzVAcWSxJF6c2cdkG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T12:59:08Z
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@JessTheUnstill Yeah that's why I don't get why they still mess this up so often.
(DIR) Post #AvzW9MUZAhPkYihIdU by paulc@mstdn.social
2025-07-10T13:10:05Z
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@futurebird @jgordon In Fantastical I can move events from one calendar platform to another. I'm not sure what happens if it is an event that I was invited to.I think the bigger problem is that when invited to an event via Google Calendar it is always easier to accept the invitation, assuming that you are using a Gmail account, than if you use a different calendar/email system.
(DIR) Post #AvzXGlwL3TOfSvmjpY by lolcat@digipres.club
2025-07-10T13:22:35Z
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@futurebird Plu ca change...One of my first programming tasks was in 1985 - coding mailing list sw for a non-profit. Asking for zip/postal code first, then populating unique fields automatically, plus structured+validated fields per the USPS - it wasn't rocket science, but 99.99% of systems still got it wrong.Add in the failure of every single system to adequately deal with multiple recipients at the same address, and it was already clear computers were shaping up to be a bad idea.
(DIR) Post #AvzYwWl5zNmOUx05vk by Bishopjoey@writing.exchange
2025-07-10T13:41:20Z
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@futurebird What's lost on the people creating shopping web pages is that form configuration is an implementation of database design. But the bridge between the two is rickety, especially when the folks designing the form don't have the rudiments of database or web design in their souls.And @funkula 's point of how many people in NY(or NYC anyway) live in multi-unit buildings? As a percentage, the difference between that value and 100 is a rounding error.
(DIR) Post #AvzaX9VxTO654nwqoK by tony@toot.hoyle.me.uk
2025-07-10T13:59:10Z
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@futurebird I used to have an address like that.11 Foo Court, Foo Road.Foo court is a building on a street with no number.. so websites that assumed all buildings had numbers failed. 11 Foo Court is *not* 11 Foo road, which another bunch of websites got wrong.Some sites just refused point blank to accept the address was real.
(DIR) Post #AvzamPvAkuMYIx1LRw by ideogram@social.coop
2025-07-10T14:01:55Z
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@futurebirdNor an open standard, so that anyone can create a calendar that fits with it, not just billionaire proprietary systems. #fuckmicrosoft #fuckapple@jgordon
(DIR) Post #Avzb0qWedZXms5QtzU by SRLevine@neuromatch.social
2025-07-10T14:04:34Z
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@futurebird They also often struggle with non-standard street numbers, which can be a problem if you live someplace with lots of houses that were converted into apartments.I've lived places that were things like 112 ½ were common (my first post college apartment was a converted house that was 112, 112 ½, and 114 all as one tiny building). Where I currently live we have a lot of lots that were subdivided but not given new street numbers, so you get things like 2402, 2402A, 2402A ½ all as the same plot. A isn't an apartment number! It's technically a separate building, and if your street number field only wants digits where do you even enter that (happily not my problem, I ended up with an apartment with no number and have to hope my landlord gives me my mail...).
(DIR) Post #AvzbKJ1AvaXejyzIzw by CatDragon@mastodon.world
2025-07-10T14:08:01Z
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@futurebird For the longest time we were forced to have a PO Box because being on a dirt road in the country, the systems did not recognize us as a real address . We’d try to fill in and get red boxed. I just about lost my mind trying to get prescriptions by mail. Wouldn’t accept the house address. Would not ship to a post office box.I mean, I know there are scammers but honestly, there should be an option for putting in your address anyway it’s written.
(DIR) Post #Avzbj0HPjUDzrhMOMi by jernej__s@infosec.exchange
2025-07-10T14:12:32Z
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@futurebird Address checkers are the worst, since they insist on including things like county or region, neither of which are part of our addresses, and they often reformat the street into something that's not used here (we use "Streetname 123", not "Streetname street 123", nor "123 Streetname", which some address checkers insist on).
(DIR) Post #Avzdh9W8cIkLqNUaDA by cainmark@mstdn.social
2025-07-10T14:34:35Z
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@futurebird @jgordon I complained about this in 1999, that with websites, calendar sharing with differing levels of privacy should be a universal standard. I was literally laughed at.
(DIR) Post #AvzfyZ6mvGGG2p490C by stevenaleach@sigmoid.social
2025-07-10T15:00:08Z
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@futurebird @jgordon Meanwhile, my landlord is 75, has a flip phone, and now lives in a world where wall hanging calendars of the sort that used to be in any store and show up uninvited in the mail no longer exist. And so he draws his calendar on paper with a pen and then tapes it to the wall month after month.
(DIR) Post #AvziK8Crp8cYtAJvxg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T15:26:29Z
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@jgordon "For a while Apple would assign any calendar invite to a users default iCloud calendar regardless of the email address."This almost caused me to miss a vet appointment once. Who on earth uses icloud addresses? (some people must, but jeeez. )
(DIR) Post #Avzjo7E889FoUZlyCm by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T15:43:07Z
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@funkula Having a single house address in NYC means one of few things things:1. You live in deep Brooklyn, Queens, SI or maybe the Bronx. These are working class and middle class neighborhoods and the opposite of mansions.2. You are one of like 37 people who have one of the few intact brownstones, and probably gave your house a damn name for some reason "The Glopper House" it's as expensive as a mansion but not as big. You brag about your 4' by 8' backyard.3. You are the Mayor.
(DIR) Post #AvzjtqF8BlzPYTyHYG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T15:44:10Z
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@funkula Given that I brag about our roof garden all the time I can't be too hard on the people who brag about those tiny dark little yards where you can't even grown corn. (rooftop garden>tiny yard)
(DIR) Post #AvznGkOAQ94LvBoNpA by SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz
2025-07-10T16:21:50Z
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@futurebird This was written in 2013. Nothing has changed since then. https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/
(DIR) Post #AvzqlFIyL5cqM9cGo4 by bob_zim@infosec.exchange
2025-07-10T17:01:01Z
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@futurebird A surprising number of address verification systems don’t support a field long enough for my street address. They change it from “9876 Town Sq. Dr. Apt. 1234” (my actual street name is longer, but similar) to “9876 Town Square Drive, Apartment 123”, and the 4 no longer fits in the field. Can’t type it in manually, and the verification system won’t let me abbreviate any of the words to make room.
(DIR) Post #Aw0CDPlr7QxbxfOpX6 by elysegrasso@historians.social
2025-07-10T21:01:23Z
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@futurebird Except... the address format you just proposed is not the one that the US Postal Service mandates. When I recently spent a few years temporarily living in a condo, the USPS insisted that the correct format for my address was ### Street Name Unit ####all on one line, no comma.They delivered mail that used other formats. Mostly. I think? I had the impression that they were grumpy about it, and can't really know whether some items went astray. I think USPS acceptance is needed.
(DIR) Post #Aw0CypcynkkzlVrFs8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T21:09:59Z
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@elysegrasso How do they know if "123 First Concourse 6" is"123 First, Concourse 6" or "123 First, Concourse 6" ?(I'm certain your are correct, I just see problems in merging fields without a popular separator character. Never-mind that some street names have commas in them which are stripped out too because of some limited character set I suspect. )
(DIR) Post #Aw0DsyfqM4Og2QyC7U by elysegrasso@historians.social
2025-07-10T21:20:07Z
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@futurebird Both of your options in your example look identical to me.At the moment I'm in a house which is on unincorporated land, so it uses the name of the city where the post office that delivers here is located. (also coincidentally the county name)My business address is in a town that shares a zip code with a neighboring town. This used to be a problem for distribution of sales tax receipts (which relied on zip codes), but I assume they have improved things in recent years.
(DIR) Post #Aw0EBIGGGgvQ03jnxg by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T21:23:28Z
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@elysegrasso I forgot to move the comma.
(DIR) Post #Aw0Ed5THPm7CRO51xw by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T21:28:29Z
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@elysegrasso I used to do mass mailings and would get back any bad addresses. Never got one back over a comma or a comment about that, though they did say they liked it better when everything was in all caps. Our director didn't like this, so we compromised by doing the names with capitalization, the rest of the address in all caps. Our post guy liked me since I wrote a program to put on the zip-5
(DIR) Post #Aw0LeoMyfVujevtxGS by beadsland@hcommons.social
2025-07-10T13:56:29Z
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@RogerBW @futurebird And yet that may just replace machine-encoded biases with human-habit biases:https://hcommons.social/@beadsland/114829262094497808To be clear, in Usia, building numbers appear at the beginning of the line, where unit numbers appear at the end. In Germany, building number appears at the end of the line.So now you, as a German shipper, prepare a routing label for a Usian address that ends with a unit number. You're given a freeform multi-line text field, but the courier wants specific fields. What ends up in the building number field depends on how cognizant you are of the difference between German and Usian addressing practices.
(DIR) Post #Aw0LepJTA2haaLGfR2 by RogerBW@discordian.social
2025-07-10T13:59:56Z
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@beadsland @futurebird Personally I think the most sensible order is large to small, as used basically nowhere. Small to large, as used in many places, is not terrible Anything beyond that (including the German "Street Housenumber, Town") is as wilfully perverse as M-D-Y dates.
(DIR) Post #Aw0LeqJ9Si2ffe7vZw by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T22:47:10Z
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@RogerBW @beadslandIf anyone asked me how addresses should be written it go a little like this:Earth, USA, Some City, 123451234 Some Street, Apartment SixFloor Five, Department of ThingsPerson NameBut... noooooo
(DIR) Post #Aw0LrZ4Yr0BHysMusS by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-07-10T22:49:32Z
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@RogerBW @beadsland Yes you have to write "Earth" every time. It's for perspective.
(DIR) Post #Aw0M0EpxSUAbpNfqoC by beadsland@hcommons.social
2025-07-10T22:51:05Z
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@futurebird @RogerBW Local Group, Milky Way, Sol SystemEarth...