anonkitty2

anonkitty2 t1_j0avur5 wrote

Oh. There wasn't much publicity for Tesla, to my knowledge, before Musk came. Musk really is like Harold Hill. Hill successfully created a market for brass bands but would include as a critical part non-working music lessons, and then jump ship just before it could be proven they didn't work. When Tesla reached public awareness, expectations for electric cars were so low that Teslas still met them. (I have a relation who still believes electric cars can't go farther than 40 miles a charge, like the ones GM leased and lost in the early 2000s.)

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anonkitty2 t1_j05v3s8 wrote

Without Tesla, the electric car might still be all but nonexistent; the oil companies could have stifled them indefinitely. Without SpaceX, America would not currently have a space program that includes manned missions it launches. His products are still flawed, but Musk and cos. got them off the drawing boards and helped show there was a market for them.

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anonkitty2 t1_iz1m055 wrote

America already bans direct cigarette advertising on television, and had since the 1970s. A decade or two ago, they decided that naming events after known cigarette brands and having inescapable cigarette billboards should also be banned. We lost the Winston Cup then, though I presume the event has another name. Cigarette sponsors would lock out a critical niche of World Cup viewers.

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anonkitty2 t1_ixtyp2j wrote

No. There are such things as short films. There's an Oscar category for them, so some get released. In the 1940s, they were guaranteed to be included in the theatrical mix. They were the way to get news until television national news was invented. And many of the older theatrical cartoons were really short.

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