
Tesla's relative asks Elon Musk for a donation to finish the Tesla Museum - TeMPOraL
Tried to submit it as a link, but it went dead immediately. Seems to me that HN has an auto-ban on The Oatmeal. I can guess the reasons, but I honestly believe this story is good. So, without further ado:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theoatmeal.com&#x2F;comics&#x2F;tesla_model_s2<p>TL;DR: The closest living relative and the last person to meet Nicola Tesla, along with the author of The Oatmeal, ask Elon Musk to donate $8M to finish the Nicola Tesla Museum.
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dang
It's not a good HN story, for the obvious reason that there's nothing of
intellectual substance here. Someone is asking somebody famous for money for a
museum. It may be a worthy cause but, in the absence of some other relevant
factor (and I don't see any), it's clearly out of the scope of this site.

It also ought to be rather obvious why theoatmeal.com is banned, and the same
reason ought to have prevented you from circumventing the ban.

~~~
inquisiw
May I ask what the obvious reasons for theoatmeal.com being banned are? I've
never seen the site before today, so I wouldn't know.

~~~
dang
The internet genres that go for clever but shallow wit and/or maximum
emotional rev-up don't work well here. They evoke pleasures like surprise,
recognition, and indignation (also a pleasure of a kind), but they do so by
activating reflexes that operate much faster than the intellectual curiosity
that HN tries to nurture. Curiosity needs material which is more reflective
and longer-lasting. As PG wrote somewhere, the thought processes are quieter
and slower. Snap reactions thwart them. Worse, they tend to keep going and
often end up dominating discussion.

It's not that those internet genres suck—they're delightfully clever. But
their influence takes HN away from its core. Such high-frequency, low-
amplitude stuff drowns out everything else if allowed to, so we don't have the
luxury of allowing everything equally. For HN to thrive, we have to clear a
space for more substantive material. That's hard to do, but one fairly easy
win is to rule out sites that play the other game. In our more fragile
ecosystem, they count as invasive species.

theoatmeal.com and others have passionate fans who will disagree. But the fact
that one likes something is separate from where it belongs. I like ice cream,
but not on meat and vegetables.

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arrayjumper
The Oatmeal probably should have tried to first contact Tesla Motors or Elon
Musk privately. There was no need to resort to a public plea.

Its a lose lose for Mr. Musk now. If he pays up then he'll be open to future
requests. If he doesn't he'll be the billionaire dick who won't pay up for a
good cause.

~~~
ericcope
He could just ignore it, this usually reduces the Streisand effect. Let the
next big problem take the scene.

~~~
tommu
He could give a private donation.

Anyhow, I know they need money now. Any publicity is...

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jpatokal
It's worth reading "part 1", his (glowing) review of a Model S, as well:

[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s)

~~~
martythemaniak
I wonder how much Tesla would have had to spend for an ad like that (ad,
audience, good-will, etc). Less than $8 million, but probably a pretty hefty
sum.

~~~
vnchr
Yeah, oatmeal put a lot of effort into that. Intent was likely to get in the
good graces of Tesla with the intent of following up with this ask. Unlikely
that it was done just out of sheer fandom. Still I can see how the guy could
care sincerely about the cause and do what he thought was reasonable to
support it.

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debt
The whole guilt-trip angle Oatmeal took on this one is really unfortunate;
that's a very undiplomatic way to extract money from someone.

~~~
lectrick
As a person who is hypersensitive to guilt-tripping (I blame my mother and
past relationships), this also set off my radar

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cscurmudgeon
Dear Oatmeal,

I see that your website uses CakePHP.

Can you please publicly contribute a tidy sum to all the open source software
that you use?

Will you also contribute to underfunded research in universities which has
made the Web/Internet possible which supports you?

~~~
outside1234
You are right, but that said, the Oatmeal didn't name themselves TheCakePHP
either.

~~~
Alterlife
So you're saying he should pay 8 million to an oatmeal museum?

edit: Judging by the downvotes, clearly I didn't make my point as well as I
hoped.

What I'm trying to say is this:

The name doesn't matter. You can't ask someone to donate 8 million to a cause
because they're using a name that's now synonymous with a technology. If I
sell trousers, that doesn't entitle the Jacob Trowser memorial fund a donation
from me.

8 million dollar donation to build a Tesla museum? Why pay some shmuck that
amount of money? Elon Musk is building his own god damn monument to Tesla.
It's called Tesla Motors.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Exactly. Why donate millions to a museum when there are starving scientists
(like Tesla)?

(And yes, I know the Africa vs NASA argument.)

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lotsofmangos
Hey is worth a shot, I hope it works. Is probably worth tapping Edison
International as well, on the offchance that someone in the office is having a
fit of gratuitous irony.

~~~
mbreese
While we are going for irony, he should probably hit up JP Morgan Chase too,
since JP Morgan helped to bankroll the original Wardenclyffe Tower.

I think targeting _just_ Musk is a bad idea. But, there should be a set of
corporations that could band together to raise the 8M total (Tesla motors
might be part of that).

~~~
lotsofmangos
From a completely cynical marketing perspective, it would probably make solid
financial sense for Telsa Motors to go all in and bankroll the thing as an
ongoing concern.

~~~
shiven
And get an exclusive car ordering system setup right in the museum foyer!

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captainbenises
Wow that's uncool. Hey, I saw you spent $1 million on a toy, so you have to
donate $8 million to my cause.

~~~
fishtoaster
Really? He explicitly says "This is not a demand or an accusation or a plea.
It's a polite request from a huge fan." It seems like he's asking as politely
as possible. It's not "you should give us this," but "hey, you know what would
be cool? giving us this."

~~~
DSMan195276
The issue is that nobody is going to see it that way without actually reading
the page, and let's face it, not an amazing amount of people are _actually_
going to read the page. The majority will just see titles like this one, which
mention nothing about a polite request and instead make it sound like a plea
from a Tesla relative to fund this idea. Now if he doesn't fund it the media
may pick it up and make him look bad, even though that's not the intent of The
Oatmeal's post here. Noting that, I don't see why they didn't just ask in
private instead of something public like this.

Also worth noting, the last thing I read was that Elon Musk had to borrow
money to get through the month since he sunk all of his money into his
companies and he didn't have enough on hand to spend, so I'm not exactly
hopeful that he'd be able to do this. Obviously he could sell some stock or
similar to get the money, but I doubt he'd really want to do that.

~~~
scoggs
I have to agree with you. The fact that he is going through Musk's finances,
measuring how much money he can make by Tesla's stock bumping up a point, and
stating that the publicity of this Oatmeal article will be measured (in hopes
that it has a positive impact) all seem, to me, like a back handed plea.

He's also stating that the name / technology has entered the public domain so
he knows that Musk is doing nothing wrong by using it and naming his company
with the family name. I've got to give him credit for a creative approach to
raise the money but it really feels ugly and backhanded. If it gets funded --
great! I just don't know how I'd feel in Musk's shoes considering it opens him
up to future things he should donate to because he is using somebody else's
work / tech to piggy back his way to where he is now: success.

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jrells
Musk may have already agreed to the donation. Asking privately is easy, but
the public plea from the Oatmeal is huge publicity for both of them. I don't
know if they're coordinating, but I would want to if I was them.

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makaveli8
What a strange way to threaten someone into donating millions of dollars to
your cause.

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chris_mahan
I'm sure there are many other things to do with $8 million at Tesla now than
build a museum. In 5-10 years, though, if the company makes it that far, there
will be plenty of money for that. just be patient.

~~~
bksenior
It would be great if he made the donation as a portion of stock. I think it
would fit the "Tesla, the unsung hero" narrative perfectly.

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chrissyb
Is this satire? As 8 million is a weird figure that seems likely plucked from
a hat. I'm more interested in what that figure is going to build than anything
else.

 _" The laboratory sits among 15 acres of asbestos laden...."_

I'm unsure what the regs are for asbestos removal in the US but here in
Australia this is a far from trivial exercise and expensive. As in insanely
expensive.

Refurbishment of old buildings is often more expensive than building a new one
especially when the fabric and history of the building is so important.
Architects will often carefully contemplate how to integrate new works within
these building as period restoration can destroy the heritage of a building
look tawdry and downright kitsch.

It also seems like a huge site at least from the survey depicted in the
article. My view is that the 8 million would be lucky to pay for the
landscaping and asbestos removal, and the fees or the planning consultants
required.

This still leaves the building of a new museum, refurbishment and alterations
to existing buildings not to mention the actual exhibits that are going to
draw the customers in to customers in - who is going to pay to keep the museum
open?

My modest approximation is somewhere closer to 30 million minimum.

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funkyy
I wonder how much Oatmeal will donate out of those $8Mil. Or is it only Musk
that have to donate?

This sounds to me like: "You dont have to donate. Its your choice. But if you
wont - we will make sure the world will know!"

They should just go to him directly - if he would turn them down - cool, after
all they dont mind if he says no...

