Ask Lemmy

a baseball bat to the date that one dumbass fish crawled out of the ocean

The demo tape that made some music company to publish "Last Christmas".

I'd bring a crate of textbooks as far back as they could be understood to the people who could do the understanding. Mostly engineering textbooks but also philosophy, law, political science, math, economics, accounting, etc.

What's been the most stable written language over time?

I'd go back to February of 2016, to a town in California, at the banks of the river that my friend decided he wanted to "take a swim" in, and try to stop him. I'd bring with me copies of all the news articles reporting about how he drowned in that river and that someone found his body and called the authorities. I'd show him a copy of my text messages back and forth with his sister when she told me what happened to him. She claimed that he went swimming in the river often and that he was unaware that the current that day was really strong. I wanted to believe her, but I knew he was troubled, that he ad psychosis and PTSD, and that he didn't want to live past 40. And who the fuck swims in a river in February!? I would do my best to try and save his life.

• A fire extinguisher to the library of Alexandria.
• A small pox variolation kit to ~13thC somewhere in the Americas. Probably the PNW to preserve the linguistic diversity there, maybe the amazon river, the Tlaxcala or the groups who would go on the confederate into the Haudenosaunee.
• Vials of horse-plague to the cucteni trypillians, see if we can't blunt that Indo-European expansion somewhat. If it's virulent enough, maybe we get lucky and weaken the power of aristocrats across Eurasia for millenia to come. (Sorry horses!).
• Just for me, some magic mushrooms to shangqiu, henan ~325 BCE ish. See if I can't convince Zhuang Zhou to trip with me.

Why is it all about money?

I'd take everything I need to teach modern technology, sustainable practices, and cyberpunk aesthetics to the peak of the Mesopotamian society. I want the city of Ur bathed in neon!

Crazy answer: The moon to 1969. Imagine, Apollo 11 launches to land on the moon then suddenly a second one appears in space orbiting opposite the original.

Less crazy but still far reaching: a tazer to the theater the night of the Lincoln assassination. I wonder how different the U.S. would be if Lincoln had survived and the resonstruction period gone differently.

Somewhat more plasuable: enough documentation and evidence to convince someone high up in U.S. intelligence in 2000 that I am a time traveler then everything we have on the world trade center attack. I'm curious how different things would be if that had failed. Maybe bush only gets one term and the whole U.S. political situation shifts for the better. Maybe a less destabilized middle east avoids the worst of ISIS and with fewer syrian refugees, right wingers in Europe are less successful, Brexit fails, and Russia declines to invade Ukraine.

I take an entire renewable energy system and a team of people both to set it up and to prepare a settlement. I want to be placed in America in prehistory. We're getting in there and starting over before the capitalists ruin everything. We're going resource based babyyy

If I could transport my mind into my childhood body with a fedora, I would go back to about three when I could say weird shit without drawing too much attention.

Then it's just a matter of time to build my brand on the internet. I'll start in yahoo chat rooms, responding to anyone who types 16/F/Cali, I will call them females and tell them about my sword collection. I will claim to be a ninja.

As I grow older, my methods will become more sophisticated, cell phones will open up dating apps to my awkward and slightly offensive communication. I'll be the first to post unironic pictures of myself with a trenchcoat and swords to MySpace, thereby preventing columbine through the power of cringe.

I'll start the incel movement a decade ahead, only to be revealed as a ten year old kid, shaming everyone involved. Then I'll get a youtube channel and be the first gamer, playing and reviewing games while alluding to controversial opinions on immigrants and the gays, growing so big in an empty market and crashing so hard it'll never start again, when it comes out that I roleplay as a gay femboy on tumblr.

I will take the cringe upon myself to save the world from its sins. I will be the Edgelord and savior.

Myself and tell Scott Norwood to aim a tad left.

I probably go to the late 1400s American east coast, wherever it was that Columbus landed and bring a couple of machine guns and a few grenades and claymores alongside an electric ATV and tow cart filled with a solar power recharging station, a shit ton of medical equipment, food, and hardy seeds.

That bastard Columbus would not survive setting foot on this soil, and his failure to return from his world-changing exploration mission would delay European expansion at least for the remainder of my life likely.

I would then make the mid country journey to my home tribe and use the information and technology that I brought with me to accelerate their advancement and development so that whenever the Europeans finally made landfall, assuming I didn't break down or get killed in the process they would encounter a developed society fully prepared to fight a home team advantage war against them.

Lottery numbers for the Mega Millions drawing that happened most recently. Leave them with a note that past me would realize was the real deal to go buy the ticket.

Enough money to buy a lot of bitcoin. When I get to a point where Bitcoin is about $70,000 a coin. I would want my account to be worth about $1,000,000,000 usd.

Figure I can sell it to several companies. Then retire.

I’d try to fix major issues by time traveling but the reality is either that issue was inevitable, or the alternative was probably worse.

A steam engine back to Ancient Rome, just to see what they might have achieved with that kind of idea.

I wanna go try some silphium. Idk how far back but def before humans ate it to extinction.

*Edited - I totally misread the question last night. I'd bring a pot, potting soil, and my gardening kit so I could bring that plant home!

Take a Bic lighter back about 50000 years, I'd be a god. Either that or they'd kill me.

$1MM to 1980, invested into Apple.

I'd go back to when Leonardo da Vinci was designing that tank and bring the schematics for a Sherman or smth, then do my best to explain the advancements that would be needed to make it.

My mom.

steel toed boots to the minute before my dad nutted