What brief message would you send yourself 5 years ago?

[redpoint5]

I mean, that's a worse post than those that link a video without comment, because there's no video.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'd get to work introducing the technology and concepts that exist today, to advance where we'd be at today.

I'd also foil the 9/11 attack, though it still seems difficult to figure out how I would go about doing that. My memory on other things is fuzzy, so I may be able to stop other things like the Vegas shooting, but my timing might be wrong.

At some point the government would become convinced you are either a. actually from the future and an asset that cannot be left to their own devices, or b. implicated in everything predicted to happen. I'm curious how that would play out.

I have long wished that I could take the best technologies behind iPads and Android and design an iPad with the most popular apps--and USB-C--ten years early--and all of the technology necessary to produce it.

It might cost a million dollars per tablet, but if you can get celebrities and CEOs to start buying them, economies of scale should make them widespread much earlier.

I would also want to at least publish the information necessary to lead to the most important medical and technological advances since then--and, if I go back far enough, release a "Phantom Menace" parody before it comes out, with Jar Jar, Anakin's dialogue, and other aggravating parts, but not the good ones, so either George Lucas finds unique ways to ruin the franchise or I sue saying "I had thirty-seven hits on my blog, which I posted six months before your movie came out! Obviously you stole my ideas!"

As for 9/11: https://i.imgur.com/3GF5Xsi.mp4

SWAT the terrorists before they leave their hotel room.

The Las Vegas shooter?

SWAT him, too.

My ideas about 9/11 have evolved over time, but I always thought I would find an... unhoused human... and offer $1,000 to call 911 and claim one of the future terrorists was murdering someone--and then have the carbon-based-lifeform between homes take a bus to Florida.

I completely forgot about that episode of SG1. I just watched it here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kman0

When you mention time travel and Stargate I thought of the "Groundhog's Day" episode, but I need to track down the one they mention, when MacGyver sires John Crichton.

[redpoint5]

I couldn't swat the terrorists because I don't know a single first or last name of any of them. How'd I go about figuring that out back when the internet sucked? Back then I would type in walmart.com and it wasn't a valid URL, and I'd think to myself that they are profoundly dumb for not at least securing the rights to that domain.

I'd need a private investigator to supply the information I needed, and that would take money. That means I'd need to take the $2k I had saved up working in high school and make some very aggressive bets.

Keeping Star Wars from decomposing is a worthy cause. Just to pile on, I don't know why George thought it necessary to add in stupid CGI. A great movie needs passable special effects, but that's not what makes it great. There's tons of stunning and horrible movies. GL was a sellout from the get-go, but that doesn't take away from the passion he poured into his original great ideas. What a shame Disney has brought onto the franchise by turning Luke into a Soyboy (or whatever that green testosterone suppressing milk was). Everything they touch now is crap. A few morons pretend to like their content, as if suffering through woke church is sufficient penance for the long-dead misdeeds of folks that aren't related to you.

Regarding medicine, I have at least a dozen "ideas" that aren't even ideas. They are just leveraging normal tools that every industry utilizes that isn't captured by a regulatory body that has an incentive to maintain the power structure by not adopting old proven tools. These tools are things like analytics, sending information utilizing a technology more advanced than a fax machine, machine learning, transparent pricing structure, tiers of service... basically every aspect of medicine seems like it was invented by my grandpa, or great grandpa. It's unsurprising that non-evidence-based medicine like homeopathy has a strong foothold when so-called evidence-based medicine is run by elitist troglodytes.

[Xist]

Google before you time travel and then print the list of names and for all that is tolerable, give yourself stock picks, lottery numbers, sports scores, or something!

Patent Sildenafil in 1979. The formula is C22H30N6O4S.

It is commonly known as Viagra.

I am sure that you could find someone to help bring it to market.

Can you travel through time once or multiple times?

If you can travel multiple times you can back track their motel, but it would take a while.

Or, shortly before their flight boards, have an outside person call in and say Mohammed Atta has a bomb.

I honestly don't have any idea what the chances are that would be enough, but if it doesn't, hopefully you can go back further and try something else.

[freebeard]

I honestly don't have any idea what the chances are that would be enough, but if it doesn't, hopefully you can go back further and try something else.

AKA infinite regress:

primrose path
noun

1. A way of life of worldly ease or pleasure.
2. A course of action that seems easy and appropriate but can actually end in calamity.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

[redpoint5]

Yeah, I was just thinking that even if I were successful at stopping 9/11, some sort of jetliner as a weapon attack would occur. It wasn't just those involved individuals that brought about the attack, but the conditions that presented the opportunity.

Kinda like how we'd still have the relativity theories even if Einstein died before developing them. The time was right for those discoveries.

It's also the basis for my understanding that government subsidies are mostly a stupid waste of time and money. You can't simply throw money at something and expect great results. The right time has to occur for something to exist, and that's largely unaffected by money. Where would EVs be if they didn't receive billions in subsidies? About where they are today.

Why don't we have nuclear fusion after billions spent researching it? The time isn't right for it yet.

That's why my time travel focus would mostly involve introducing technology earlier to advance it more rapidly. Terrible events might not be able to be changed much. A shooter who is stopped may just carry out the plan another day. The extra time planning might make it even more devastating.

Finally, the fact that we don't have infinitely advanced technology informs me that we never unlock time travel.

[freebeard]

https://kk.org › thetechnium › steam-engine-ti
Steam-Engine-Time - The Technium
When it is steam-engine-time, steam engines will occur everywhere. But not before. Because all the precursor and supporting ideas and inventions need to be present. The Romans had the idea of steam engines, but not of strong iron to contain the pressure, nor valves to regulate it, nor the cheap fuel to power it.

My perspective on 9/11 is that infortitudinous as it was, the site was cleared for a profound anti-terrorist statement in the form of the solid masonry cylindrical tower that would tolerate impact better than the Empire State building taking a B-25. The plan would have given New York a hotel to rival the Sagrada Familia.

Buildings That Never Were: Gaudi's Hotel Attraction for NYC

What they built is an antipyramid. What do they have against pyrmaids, anyway?

[redpoint5]

In hindsight (for me), the US reaction to terrorism has kept delivering wins to terrorists to this day. How many trillions have been spent fighting terrorism; a problem in which the likelihood of any one of us being killed in acts of terrorism is somewhere around the likelihood of getting shot by Alec Baldwin. So, we'll continue to strip-search passengers before flights, confiscate their belongings, and never figure out how to handle the volume of passengers through security checkpoints in a reasonable amount of time... just to give the illusion that we're all safe from Alec terrorists.

The pit they memorialized in Manhattan is a colossal waste of space and money. Too bad angry mobs destroying monuments focused attention on things like deer statues instead of filling in the pit.

I mean no disrespect to the victims of the tragedy, and there should be something to memorialize the day, and a response to terrorism was warranted. Starting a war in an unrelated country, making sure passengers don't have toothpaste and deodorant, and creating an enormous functionally useless pit in prime real estate aren't the proper actions.

[Xist]

I just want to amend that instead of not buying a Subaru way back when I would move the Focus I bought from Dad into the driveway until someone came home.

1. The neighbor wouldn't go through my windshield, injuring him and totaling both vehicles.
2. I wouldn't buy a Subaru which cost me something like $10,000 with dealership fees, the useless service plan, excessive repairs and gas consumption.
3. I wouldn't lend it to my then-girlfriend, wouldn't take it back, and she wouldn't buy a Can-Am with a credit card leading to her death.

She made poor decisions and very well may have died another way.

I did far too much to try to help her and she continued making poor decisions and died.

If I saved the Focus I never would have had a car I didn't feel I could park at home, she wouldn't have driven to see me, and she wouldn't have felt pressed to buy a vehicle immediately.

The thing is, not loaning her a car and putting her on my insurance would have been healthier for both of us.

Speaking of trying to keep self-absorbed people alive: Dad.

He had been having medical problems and Mom said that he called his doctor and tried to get help.

He took over-the-counter medications, which did little to no good.

He went to some meeting, which I believe was in Cibecue.

I had clients there for a bit.

I pity anyone living there.

It is an hour from Show Low, but closer to Mesa.

My sister used her inheritance to take her family on vacation.

I used mine to pay off debt.

While they partied, I studied the blade.

Wait, no, I watched her dogs.

I would have had her mother-in-law cover the dogs, meet Dad when he was leaving Cibecue, and convinced him to go straight to a hospital in Mesa.

Instead he went home, felt worse, called an ambulance, and no doctor looked at him. In the morning the surgeon came in, the staff said "You need to look at this man's chart!" the doctor said "We need to perform surgery immediately!" they told Mom that Dad was out of surgery and stable, and right then we lost him.

I sure hope the hospital in Mesa would have actually kept him alive, but if not, I mastered time and space.

I did the impossible and failed.

He would be gone, but I wouldn't wish that I could have done something.

The thing is, he had tried to persuade me to move in in 2014 and wanted to teach me to do what he did for a living.

However, he wasn't making a living doing it.

He could have made great money working for white people, but he insisted on working for Native Americans, and always said "I have a job, but they can't pay me!"

That is unemployment with extra steps.

Maybe I could have had a better career, I just don't know if it would have been as rewarding.

I love kids!

However, being constantly underemployed makes the job satisfaction when I do have work bittersweet.

The other complication is that Dad was a difficult man.

We worried about Mom's health before we lost Dad, but it is possible that the long-term stress from dealing with Dad would have been harder on Mom than losing Dad.

It is possible that I could save Dad and lose Mom.

[Xist]

People say that everytime the U.S. declares war on ideas the ideas win.

What are we supposed to do, declare war on counterterrorism?!