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Government shutdown: my small loss

So the shutdown isn’t doing much to me. No missing checks, no cancer therapies withheld. Not even a thousand dollar vacation ruined.

No, my problem is much smaller. I have the Astronomy Picture of the Day as my home page. That way when I start up my browser the first thing I see is galaxies of light or maps of the whole universe or our planet shining with auroras. When the news comes along in due course with its not-new examples of people making problems, my mind has a bit of a harbor, a memory that it’s not like that everywhere.

Well, NASA is part of the government. It’s shut down. Its servers are down. My home page is now a blank white nothing:

.

I know it’s a very minor thing. And yet I feel like I’ve lost a friend, a very good friend who took me to new worlds and showed me wonders unknown.

I am surprised at how sad it makes me.