• @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        And the smart move would be to spread it around anyways, no telling what a sizeable investment in - for instance - Apple might have had early on, maybe it would change history so that it didn’t turn out successful

        Better to do some bitcoin, some of each major stock you can recall, and funds for industries you know will take off

  • @TheBananaKing
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    172 years ago

    1: Ten seconds from now, I have shit to do.

    2: A week ago. “I bet you a billion dollars that sub implodes…”

    • MadMaurice
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      72 years ago

      So you’d basically be gone for 4 hours? Not that I would recommend it but do you have a bathroom at your company?

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      Think big, how about 28 hours so you’re off work for the weekend instead of just the day?

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      It said era, so I assume “modern” could just as well land you in 2006 Iraq, if it’s even allowed.

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        I mean, it’s also time travel, not location travel, so I’d be most likely to end up in space and die almost instantly.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          Depends what reference frame you’re using. If you’re following an inertial frame backwards through time you’re most likely to end up deep inside the Earth, actually, because that would put you in a sort of orbit.

            • @[email protected]
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              It’s not. The good news is it’s sucking you in like a high pressure opening doesn’t, and at least your end isn’t falling, so that’s probably not how the magic works.

              The other trope-based possibility is it leaves you roughly where you geographically are in your new era. That’s limiting as hell if you’re somewhere with a short history like I am, which I guess is another argument to go recent.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky
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    132 years ago

    1990s A.D. so I can enjoy the great music whilst also being able to see the birth of Linux.

  • @ShakeThatYam
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    I always think it would be cool to visit some historical moment. Then I remember I’m not white and that I would not be having a very good time.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      You’ve just got to pick carefully. Race (as in skin colour as the determining factor for group identity) was invented in the 17th century, so before that you’re just a foreigner like the rest of us would be. After that, yes, avoiding Europe and European-inspired places is recommended.

    • @rbhfd
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      It really depends on the time and place.

      If I, as a white person, would want to witness 2500 BC Egypt, while they are building the pyramids, I would definitely stand out as well. Can’t make any statements on what they would do, but it wouldn’t be something they’d scuff about.

      Edit: I didn’t mean to disparage the idea that white people created very bad places for PoC the last few centuries!

    • @emptyother
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      22 years ago

      I am ashamed to say it, but I would sit and wait for 10 years, then go beat up a certain kid.

      4+ more years back in time and I might adopt myself, and raise myself in a way that didnt turn me into the guy who would beat up the kid mentioned above.

  • @[email protected]
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    92 years ago

    It’s crazy that every point in history has its own blend of “suckitude” that don’t want to deal with.

  • _haha_oh_wow_
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    1 hour into the future so I can eat lunch early and avoid the dangers of going to some new reality I don’t have the skills or resources to deal with.

    • @perviouslyiner
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      32 years ago

      1 week into the past so that you can put a bet on some event that you actually still remember, and avoid the dangers of the distant eras

  • Jim
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    82 years ago

    California in the 1960’s. Being a hippy during Woodstock sounds like the ultimate experience I missed out on just because I didn’t exist at the time

    • @Adulated_Aspersion
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      12 years ago

      Wouldn’t you want to be in NY though? Much easier for a hippy to get to Woodstock if you are in the state?

  • @[email protected]
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    72 years ago

    My highschool days. Wouldn’t change a thing either, except I wouldn’t start smoking cigarettes.

    • @Confuzzeled
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      42 years ago

      But you aren’t turning into your younger self, surely it’s back to the future rules.

      • @[email protected]
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        I believe in the multi-verse approach to backwards time travel. Solves the grandfather paradox. When you go back in time you branch to a new timeline. So if you went back to your high school days, you would be in a world where a version of you exists as a youngster and version of you exists in parallel as the guy who travelled back in time. You’d be two different people and you could talk to your younger self without creating a paradox. When travelling forward in time you stay on the same timeline. Quantum mechanics theorizes that’s what happens.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Oh that’s easy, my younger self just gets an ass whoopin’. I can take him, he’s a big coward.

  • @[email protected]
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    72 years ago

    I think I’d go paleolithic. Pre-agricultural, on the move finding food, being in nature. It’d be dicey obviously but like whatever, if you die you die. I feel like the physical activity, adrenaline, living in community, being in nature… Would just be nice. I feel like I probably wouldn’t be depressed anymore eventually. Like who would have the time?

    Also damn can you imagine seeing like 4000 lb armadillos and shit? Living among a bunch of now-extinct megafauna seems like it would be both thrilling and terrifying. Honestly I’d probably die by trying to Disney princess with a twelve foot tall deer or some shit.

  • @[email protected]
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    Not human prehistory. That one would suck, I’m in no way built and trained as a hunter-gatherer. Either some civilisation, pre-humans or a recent era, then.

    From the wording I’m assuming limited control of where I land, So I can’t airdrop in behind a world leader or into a vault, but I can choose a region.

    Gilded age is tempting, for classic “change history” reasons, and because I could kickstart semiconductors early and make a buck. The disadvantage is I’d be destitute on arrival, and my education, while extensive, is undocumented there, so maybe I’d die in a coal mine anyway. Perhaps I’d pick England and try to chat up Bertrand Russel, he could vouch for my knowledge after a quick conversation and might even be a good choice to explain my situation to.

    If I’m going ancient civilisation, probably Rome. I could find some sort of industry to start and even just my clothes will be valuable. The Incas would be cool to but if I’m being adventurous I want more time to prepare.

    Pre-human, maybe New Zealand. I’ll eat local forage and hunt moa until I eventually die. It’s better than starving, and I don’t have to worry so much about large predators.

    • @CalamariSafari
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      32 years ago

      Not sure about pre-human NZ, I’d be worried about the Haast’s Eagles wanting to turn me into a tasty snack.

      • @[email protected]
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        IIRC they couldn’t really lift an adult man very well. At that point, I can deal with them by carrying a pointy stick whenever I’m under open sky. Maybe some simple armour too.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      22 years ago

      Plus at least with Rome you have running sewage and democracy / a republic system somewhere in there

    • @rbhfd
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      12 years ago

      Whenever I had the flu, I just went through it. Maybe some medicine to feel less sick, but nothing to actually prevent it from killing me.

      We all have an immune system that is used to combating the flu.

      The germs you’d get in contact with from a basic lack of hygiene, that’s what will get you.

      Note that I’m a healthy 30-something person, so the flu is not much of an issue for me. I don’t want to disminish its deadlines on people with lower immune systems, but they would suffer in environments with bad hygiene even worse.

  • Lvxferre
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    52 years ago

    OK… where in the world would I pop up?

    If where I live, in Paraná: 1300 then. I’d be teaching the local Kaingang: a few farming techniques, a bunch of food-preserving techniques, writing and paper making. Ah, and gunpowder too, so they can use it against the Spaniards coming from Asunción and the Portuguese from the coast. Past that I’d… marry a local girl and try to live a happy life? Language would be a struggle though, because even if I knew 2023 Kaingang or Guarani that doesn’t automatically makes me know some older variety of the language.

    If anywhere in the world: Republican Rome, around 150 BCE. I know basic Latin so it wouldn’t be actually easier to adapt than the above. I’d probably find some craft to live from, either in a taberna selling food or blacksmithing. I actually know a few Roman recipes (thanks Apicius), I could even give them a bit of modern twist; they should already know pizza (Virgil mentions it) but a modern style pizza bianca would be new. Perhaps I should leave a note to the Julii that, if one of them conquers Gaul, he should watch out for potential killers.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      You would fuck up history by preempting pizza? What kind of pizza would we end up contemporarily?

      • Lvxferre
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        22 years ago

        I wouldn’t be preempting pizza, the Romans already prepared it*. At most I’d introduce a specific type of pizza - bread, melting cheese, oregano. Perhaps topped with figs and onions and cured ham.

        *excerpt from the Aeneid, published around 20 BCE, telling tales that were already old back then:

        Aeneas and his chiefs, with fair Iulus, under spreading boughs of one great tree made resting-place, and set the banquet on. Thin loaves of altar-bread along the sward to bear their meats were laid (such was the will of Jove), and wilding fruits rose heaping high, with Ceres’ gift below. Soon, all things else devoured, their hunger turned to taste the scanty bread, which they attacked with tooth and nail audacious, and consumed both round and square of that predestined leaven. “Look, how we eat our tables even!” cried Iulus, in a jest.