Today in reasonable angry mobs:

Bald billionaire whose immense wealth makes him think he has any business slipping the surly bonds of Earth? Sound familiar? 

No, the other bald, space born rich, Tim Nash.

"What the actual?"

-scientists

Yeah, I'd never heard of him either until he took some ancient bones into space with him, but let me just say that it is somewhat reassuring to know that America isn't the only country producing unaccountable billionaires who delight in grand, stupefyingly reckless gestures. Nash, a South African, took a ride on a Virgin Galactic spaceship back in September and brought with him some bones from two different specimens of ancient hominids: Australopithecus sebida and Homo naledi, to the widespread condemnation of scientists worldwide.

Which, I mean, scientists are almost certainly already on edge what with their decades of warnings about climate change going completely unheeded, misinformation about the pandemic, and the fact that adults, grown ass adults are allowed to go around teaching kids that dinosaurs co-existed with humans six thousand years ago and that they only died out because there wasn't room on Noah's ark. 

Above: no.

A just society would never allow
Cybertruck past the design stage.

And in the face of those things, some rich asshat risking precious fossils on some weird publicity stunt may seem somewhat less important. And it is. But it's also true that it's a symptom of a bigger issues of the toxically wealthy bringing allowed to do whatever they want. South Africa has rules about borrowing fossils, and a richy rich playing astronaut with a couple of irreplaceable examples of early humans rattling around in his pocket--yeah, his pocket--is against them. And yet, here we are. So how does something like this happen?

So...it is kind of like he showed
his rich guy ID and helped himself...

Well, according to the article, a paleontologist called Lee Berger (who was part of the team that discovered one of the fossils in the first place) lent them to Nash, and secured all the necessary permissions. So it's not like Nash just showed his rich guy ID and helped himself to the bones. But it's also true that you or I or really any of the other 7.8 billion humans on Earth, including actual research scientists who might actually have reason to study the remains can gain access to them, mush less take them on a risky trip into Earth orbit. 

Oh! And vuvuzela's, so sixth,
paleontology is a distant sixth.

Nash claimed that in taking the bones, it was his intent "to represent South Africa and all of humankind" and that's super and possibly true. I don't know about you, but when I think of South Africa what comes to mind is, in order: decades of apartheid, the brutality of colonialism, blood diamonds, and then maybe that Matt Damon movie. Ancient human paleontology is like a distant fifth. So maybe Nash was coming from a place of national pride, but mostly he just reenforced the idea that if you're rich, you can get away with anything. Goddamned anything. 

But what's to be done? I'm mean, obviously there won't be any consequences. It's not like there weren't rules in place to prevent this sort of thing, Nash just riched his way around them. I don't have any ideas myself, but I would like to point out that there are something like three thousand billionaires in the world and like I said earlier, 7.8 billion of us so if nothing else, we can take'em, right?

Yeah, I know my answer to all the world's problems can't be "angry mob,"
but when it comes to like a handful of jerks doing whatever they want
without accountability or oversight, angry mob feels pretty reasonable.