
Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum - seek
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/electric-cruisebeast-creator-elon-musk-tells-the-oatmeal-hes-happy-to-help-fund-tesla-museum/
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drzaiusapelord
This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics
promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have
nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on
investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most,
if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not
original works.

Apparantly, Tesla fandom is impossible without absolutely hating Edison, which
is bizarre. That's like being unable to appreciate Mercedes without hating
Porsche. There's this terrible whitewashing of history with Tesla. His
advocates clean up his image and purposely turn the narrative away from him
toward Edison when presented with any criticisms.

I'd like this museum to show us the historical Tesla, not the fanboy generated
meme that appears in web comics. I took my wife to a Tesla presentation at a
science musueum in Milwaukee a couple years ago and it was the most shrill and
factually questionable presentation I've ever seen. It was more or less an
hour of Edison bashing with hints toward things like time travel, death rays,
and free energy. I want Tesla to get his due, but not the whitewashed
grandfatherly Tesla of meme legend, but the real very flawed guy. A bright
engineer who failed in business for valid reasons.

I guess everyone likes an underdog story, but this one is beyond reasonable.

Eugenics quote: [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1010618-the-
year-2100-will-s...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1010618-the-
year-2100-will-see-eugenics-universally-established-in-past)

~~~
cbeach
I admired Tesla's research. Now I've heard his words on eugenics, my
admiration only grows. Eugenics is not about killing people. It's about
ensuring children are born into the best possible environment for them to
succeed.

Left-wing metropolitan elites always seem to crush any debates around
eugenics, but whilst we're not allowed to talk about it, it's happening here
in 2014. Project Prevention are doing great work in sterilizing drug addicts
(voluntary sterilization in exchange for cash) to prevent children being born
into misery.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention)

We need to stop reeling off Godwin's law straw-man arguments against Eugenics
and consider why a number of national heroes (including Winston Churchill,
Walt Disney, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes,
John Harvey Kellogg) were proponents.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Eugenics is not about killing people. It's about ensuring children are born
> into the best possible environment for them to succeed.

No, its not. Eugenics is about ensuring that only people with the "best
possible" (from the point of view of its proponents, which is _always_
subjective) genetic makeup live. Killing people with undesired genetic makeup,
penalizing or preventing reproduction by those with undesired genetics, and
promoting or compelling reproduction by those with desired genetics are among
the means of eugenics.

"Ensuring children are born into the best possible environment for them to
succeed" is _not_ eugenics.

> Left-wing metropolitan elites always seem to crush any debates around
> eugenics, but whilst we're not allowed to talk about it, it's happening here
> in 2014. Project Prevention are doing great work in sterilizing drug addicts
> (voluntary sterilization in exchange for cash) to prevent children being
> born into misery.

Aside from discussion of whether that's a desirable policy, if it's really
motivated by concern for childhood environment and not about eradicating drug
addiction on the assumption that it is purely hereditary and preventing drug
addicts from reproducing will prevent drug addiction, its not eugenics at all
(as your wikipedia link correctly states, its been _compared to_ eugenics,
which is not the same thing as _being_ eugenics.)

> We need to stop reeling off Godwin's law straw-man arguments against
> Eugenics and consider why a number of our national heroes (including the
> likes of Walt Disney) were proponents.

Just because someone is a "national hero" because they did (or are national
mythology has attributed to them) something good in one domain doesn't stop
them from holding reprehensible views in other domains. "National heroes" are
not gods, and we are poorly served by treating virtue in one domain of life as
granting special consideration in unrelated domains.

~~~
spindritf
Eugenics range from encouraging some people to reproduce to genocide and
includes everything in between: selective anti-conception, sterilization, and
abortion. Reducing it to just genocide is dishonest.

And, if we're going to judge by modern standards, it's not even unpopular in
our times. The word was dropped after the atrocities carried out by Germans
but often the same people who express their horror at the idea laud and
support Planned Parenthood despite its roots and policy.

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tptacek
Why is this story not right for HN when it's hosted on a random site, but
suddenly becomes good when it's hosted on Techcrunch? If anything, my
impression is that Techcrunch degrades the quality of a story.

Dan's thoughts on the first Tesla Museum story were interesting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7741883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7741883)

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mikestew
I've wondered how well being The Oatmeal has financially treated Mr. Inman.
Even with the popularity, does he still barely pay the mortgage? Olympic-size
pool in the backyard full of $100 bills? If he's driving around in a top-shelf
Model S, I guess he's not starving.

Regardless, very cool that Musk ponied up. Makes me want to go buy a Tesla
even more now.

~~~
shankysingh
From his wikipedia page "In 2012, its annual revenue was around $500,000, 75%
from merchandising and the rest from advertising"\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal)

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jedberg
It would be cool if Tesla Motors decided to make the museum part of their
corporate function to fund the construction and ongoing operations of the
museum.

~~~
ryanburk
and investing (more) in the state might do a little help their case in new
jersey.[1]

[1] [http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/people-new-
jersey](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/people-new-jersey)

------
aashaykumar92
Super admirable that Mr. Musk is willing to help given his extremely busy
schedule. Shows that he understands the importance of the public being more
knowledgeable about the origins of what our present-day technology relies on.

------
VLM
A somewhat better URL, a primary source

[http://jalopnik.com/5935362/elon-musk-pledges-to-support-
nik...](http://jalopnik.com/5935362/elon-musk-pledges-to-support-nikola-tesla-
museum-
project?utm_campaign=socialflow_jalopnik_twitter&utm_source=jalopnik_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow)

(note Inman's "pledge drive" letter is classic Inman and amusing to read as
usual)

~~~
crb
That URL refers to Inman's first pledge drive, for $800k, to save the site.
Musk donated $2500 and Inman raised almost $1.4m.

Inman is now asking Musk directly for $8m, to build a museum. The only primary
source is this tweet -
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/466518346574626817](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/466518346574626817)
\- which simply says "I would be happy to help."

