In this modern world, you may not need to send many letters. Maybe you mail the occasional card to a friend. Perhaps you have that one bill you have to pay with a check. But wouldn’t you like an excuse to send more mail? The US Postal Service has just the thing. The USPS has announced Dungeons & Dragons stamps for 2024. Yes, D&D stamps! It’s a way to level up any envelope. The set of 20 stamps features 10 different designs that revisit decades of Dungeons & Dragons art.

The Dungeons & Dragons stamps celebrate 50 years of the tabletop roleplaying game. It’s only become more and more popular in recent years with its fifth edition. Jumping into D&D is easier than ever (as long as you can find folks to play with) and it’s an excellent way to escape the world and stretch your imagination. We know mage’s spells aren’t actually real, but we like the notion that adding a D&D stamp to any piece of mail gives it magical armor.

Take a closer look at each stamp in the collection in the gallery.

Click To View Gallery

The stamps feature art from:

• The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons
• Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons
• Wizards and Spells: A Young Adventurer’s Guide
• Player’s Handbook
• Dungeon Master’s Guide
• D&D Basic Set
• Beasts and Behemoths: A Young Adventurer’s Guide
• Monster Manual
• D&D Starter Set

It seems very possible we’ll need a set of Dungeons & Dragons stamps to collect and a few sets to use for everything we mail in the next two years. The USPS will release the Dungeons & Dragons stamps during Gen Con, taking place in Indianapolis from August 1-4, 2024. They will be available at Lucas Oil Stadium as part of Gen Con and then the Indianapolis Main Post Office for those without Gen Con passes. Greg Breeding, the art director for the stamps, will be available for autographs at 10am on August 1 following the unveiling of the stamps at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Originally published on December 28, 2023.

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Twitter can be a terrible place, but it’s also full of fun facts. Here’s one for today: it’s impossible to exceed the 70 pound weight limit of the US Postal Service’s (USPS) small flat rate box. The amount of osmium, a super dense metal, it would take to fill the box only weighs 61.5 pounds. Osmium is twice as dense as lead and about three times as dense as iron, which is what most dumbbells are made out of. Someone did the math, which is relatively simple.

The original poster was quick to point out that osmium is the densest substance on Earth. Before Neil deGrasse Tyson could hop into his mentions, he shared that filling the box with a neutron star would put the package about 30 trillion kilograms overweight. Twitter can be a fun place sometimes.

If you remember your high school chemistry (I had to look it up), osmium is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the periodic table. Most of which don’t include density, only the symbol, atomic mass, and atomic number.

Osmium’s density is 22.6 grams per cubic centimeter. OP measured the inside dimensions of the small flat rate box and multiplied them to get the volume, 75.3 cubic inches. This is equal to 1,234.5 cubic centimeters. So all we have to do is multiply 22.6 x 1234.5. This gives us 27,899.7 grams, which is 61.5 pounds.

Because this is Twitter, people had opinions. Per the thread, we need to be even more specific. Osmium is the densest stable element on Earth. Scientists can make unstable elements in a lab, but they are radioactive and would instantly neutralize the box. And the people packing it for that matter. Other suggestions including filling the flat rate box with particles from the Large Hadron Collider, the weight of their mother’s expectations, or guilt. Definitely weighty items but again, hard to pack.

It also turns out that the osmium shipment would be worth over $350,000, which will deter anyone from casually trying it. Someone did pack a chunk of tungsten into a small flat rate box, though. It weight 48 pounds and the videos of people trying to lift it are amusing.

Osmium was discovered in 1803 and early uses included gramophone needles and pen nibs. It gets its name from the Greek osme, meaning smell. Because apparently it smells bad. Speaking of osme, on Futurama, Nibbler poops dark matter. No word on whether Planet Express has a higher weight limit for packages than the USPS.

Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth. 

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The special stamp set features ten images over twenty stamps that “celebrate the science behind NASA’s ongoing exploration of our nearest star.” Some stamps will display “common events” on the Sun. Those events, such as solar flares, sunspots, and coronal loops, are part of the collectible stamps that made their debut this summer.

NASA

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, has been recording images of the Sun and its events for over a decade. Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) was excited about this collection. “I feel that the natural world around us is as beautiful as art, and it’s inspiring to be able to share the import and excitement,” he said. 

SMD is how NASA engages the United States’ science community. They sponsor scientific research and develop and deploy satellites and probes in collaboration with NASA’s partners worldwide. The goal is to answer fundamental questions that require a view from and into space.

Also included in the collection are two images of coronal holes and one image highlighting sunspots. Others include plasmablasts, coronal loops, and different views of a solar flare. The images were taken using equipment to capture images of the Sun in multiple wavelengths. Visible, ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet light was captured. Thus, creating many stunning, out-of-this-world, vivid pictures.

This is only one series, but hopefully, we will see more of our biggest and most important star in all its vivid stamp glory.

Yolanda Machado is the West Coast News Editor for Nerdist. Her bylines have appeared in TheWrap, The Hollywood Reporter, Elle, GQ, and many more. 

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has just made public a patent application from the U.S. Postal Service that describes a “Secure Voting System” based on blockchain technology. The USPS filed the patent, which describes “a voting system that can use the security of blockchain and the mail to provide a reliable voting system,” in February of this year.

Forbes reported on the patent disclosure, which comes amidst a turbulent period for the USPS arising from conflict directed by the sitting President. The patent application, which can be found here, says that the system works by having registered voters receive computer readable code in the mail. The code, subsequently, confirms the receiver’s identity and ballot information. “The system separates voter identification and votes to ensure vote anonymity, and stores votes on a distributed ledger in a blockchain,” the patent application adds.

USPTO

While the patent clearly outlines the use of some kind of “system” based on blockchain, it does offer various “embodiments” of said system. The patent application, for example, says that one embodiment consists of verifying voters’ identity by having them apply to an online ballot system. Once a voter has provided proof of their identity, the system would create an anonymous token for them in the form of a unique identifier. The system would also send the voter a mailed ballot. To ensure there hasn’t been any tampering with the mailed ballot, election officials can compare it to the linked anonymous ballot submitted online.

Forbes notes that elections have used blockchain technology in the past. The Utah Republican election, for example, used the tech. It was also used in Arizona this year to send delegates to the Republican National Convention. Forbes notes the technology was even used for absentee ballots of overseas military in West Virginia two years ago. MIT reported security vulnerabilities with the app used in that instance, however.

Feature image: Paul De Los Reyes 

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