This explains a lot!
I had four applications going into the same competition yesterday, with a 4pm deadline. The funding agency’s website, and my internet access in general, slowed to a crawl and I barely got the last one submitted. I suspected that it might have had something to do with Michael Jackson as this was a local competition without enough last-minute applicant activity to crash the BBC and Nature Network! The global effects were probably amplified locally, as all our traffic routes through a portal on the main UBC campus and is known to bottleneck from time to time. No streaming video or radio for me at work!
