The USPS issued special edition stamps that celebrate the exploration of Pluto by the U.S. (the write-up takes pride in the fact that, “The United States, through NASA, has been the first nation to explore each of the planets”). Pluto, of course, is no longer considered a planet, a fact that devastated many and spawned myriad memes. These stamps aren’t meant to dwell on semantics, but rather celebrates the historic nature of this kind of space exploration and how important it is to our knowledge of our relationship with objects outside of Earth.

This kind of joy in scientific furtherance is so important right now. Our scientific community is under attack and it’s important to find different ways to support popular science – the more we can mainstream this, the more people will rebel when it is taken from them.