mailx (how is it able to send email?!?)

I have mailx on my system, it was installed yesterday as part of the
package installation of aide.
sudo apt-get install aide
(mailx got installed as a dependency)

My question is I do not really understand how mailx is able to send me
email, and it does because I tested it:
echo "Hi" | mailx -s "A test email message" myemail@xxxxxxxxx

How does the above work? I mean, when I set up an email account with
evolution or kmail I needed to specify my mail server of my ISP, username,
password, etc. Is mailx acting as a mail server, and does an ISP simply
allow such email generated by mailx to flow through the net, etc. I guess
this might be so simple I am missing it (my brain is slow on some things,
this must be one of those concepts). So in theory if I wanted to, could I
use mailx for all my email, have friends send me email somehow and then
read that email with mailx?


.

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