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Tesla's relative asks Elon Musk for a donation to finish the Tesla Museum

91 points by TeMPOraL ↗ HN
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:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s2

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.

39 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 98.1 ms ] thread
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.
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...

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!
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...

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

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.
shiven
WTF is with that low-contrast red on red text? Couldn't read beyond the first few sentences. Is there a legible version of this somewhere? I'd love to actually read it.
makaveli8
What a strange way to threaten someone into donating millions of dollars to your cause.
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.
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."
lfuller
This is akin to the common "I'm not racist, but" or "no offense, but".
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.

ultimatedelman
The Oatmeal has a HUGE fanbase. This isn't some fly-by-night comic. Many people will read this page.
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.

hosh
> 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 issue is that people in general need to be more thoughtful in general rather than spouting off knee-jerk opinions. That statement that "nobody is going to see it that way" sounds like an appeasement to the mob.

I mean, that same mob were the ones who were shouting very loudly about electric cars getting set on fire.

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
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.

shiven
Hell, I'd donate money to see an oatmeal museum!
cscurmudgeon
Exactly. Why donate millions to a museum when there are starving scientists (like Tesla)?

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

knodi
but but we must remember the dead. i for one would love to see a museum for Elu'tha.
Zelphyr
Jesus Jet-Skiing Christ. All he did was ask. Politely I might add.
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.

hosh
I think this is a great story. It brings up some interesting (as in, ambiguous) moral and ethical dilemmas, with a secondary challenge to the myth that technology is "value free" (that is, "technology is neither good or evil").

Perhaps, when you stated "there's nothing of intellectual substance here", you meant, "I failed to see anything of intellectual substance here."

dang
Yes, that's implied. However, it's my job to make those calls for this site.
hosh
Fair enough. If your role is to enforce policy, it makes sense. When I examined this further, I find the reaction of the HN community more interesting than the article itself.

I've been making a dive into Ken Wilber's arguments about modernity, and the differentiation and disassociation of the various value spheres (science, art, and morals). The issues that this news item brings up a lot of interesting and real-world issues to test Wilber's arguments against.

The vast majority of the news items here focuses on the science sphere, or rather, the technology. Science is values-free. Is technology also values-free? I used to think it is values free. If you make a piece of tech, the tech itself is no good or bad, the people who use them are good or bad. But is it really? I remember reading Kevin Kelly's blog post on that, "What technology wants". It disturbed me at that time because it was a change in some deeply-held world view. I also thought about it some more. Unlike scientific discoveries, technology is inherently in the social domain. There are technologies for which we don't have clear scientific theories on, and yet people use them. Technology is tightly coupled to people, and you cannot disassociate the science behind the technology and the uses and moral/ethical implications of that technology.

Ken Wilber's argument is that, while differentiation of the value spheres leads to what he calls the dignity of modernity, the disassociation of the value spheres leads to what he calls the disaster of modernity. And I think technology is a great place to examine how the various value spheres comes together. It would be irresponsible of the HN community not to consider these together.

One of the values at play here in this article is, are these Tesla memorial folks making a fair request from the Elon Musk, or are they opportunists? There are many other articles and stories similar to this, so is this interesting? The issues involved are in the moral sphere. There are no ambiguous uses of technology. Should the community even concern itself with this at all?

If this is uninteresting or irrelevant to the the HN community, is that a form of differentiation or is that a form of disassociation? Further, looking at the people commenting on this, people on HN are inclined to think that the Oatmeal plea is somehow violating dignity, that there is already a proper differentiation without disassociation. On the other hand, my reading of the Oatmeal plea is that, despite explicit statements saying they are not trying to force Elon Musk into doing anything, it's essentially saying that there is a disassociation, and therefore, part of the disaster of modernity.

So while this story may not fit in with HN policy, or with the community values, the story and the reactions to it brings up a lot of interesting things for me.

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.

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.