Today in things belonging in a museum:

Capitalism, right? I mean, look at this nonsense. Or I can just sum it up: Stan, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is going up for auction. Auction. 

"Ok kids, unless one of you has eight million dollars
we're going have to wrap this up. Learning ain't free."

-Some docent

"It belongs in a museum!"

-A guy who steals 

priceless cultural 

artifacts for a living

The fossil, regarded as the most complete Tyrannosaurus ever, was discovered by an amateur fossil hunter also called Stan, back in 1987. And in the decades since his excavation in 1992, Stan (again, the fossil, not the guy), has been in at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota. There he's been the subject of research and the basis for casts for Tyrannosaurus exhibits around the world. But come October there's a very real chance that he could end up in some rich jerk's basement next to Klimt's Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer II and that Nintendo Play Station prototype.

At the moment, Stan is on display at Christie's Auction House in New York where fans of natural history among the rabble can press their noses up to the window and take one last look at him before he's crated up and sent off to some venture capitalist's tax haven house or YouTube influencer's mansion or to whomever else can come up with the estimated six to eight million dollars he's expected to go for. 

Ok, here's the plan: you distract Mark Zuckerbeg, and I'll go through his sofa cushions.

"Basically if it doesn't further enrich
wealthy people, or kill poor people, 
we're not interested in funding it."

-Republicans

And this rankles me. Rankles! Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I'd never heard of this specific dinosaur fossil until yesterday and I'm not like a paleontologist or anything so take my ire with an appropriate amount of salt. I have, as they say, no dog in this hunt and am outraged on a philosophical level. And it also should be noted that there's nothing preventing a museum or a university from buying Stan and putting him on display for the public. Nothing that is except our country's woeful disinterest in funding things that aren't the military and corporate tax breaks.

Look, there's a million casts of Stan, and really there's probably nothing new to be learned from the original fossil, but still. There's something gross about the idea of this specimen that has survived intact for 67 million years and has been of such incredible value to science and education for decades ending up in some rich person's private collection. 

I say private collection, but if some rando billionaire buys Stan
they might just as easily grind him up and snort him as a cure
for erectile dysfunction. That's sort of why this is so upsetting.