Say that you suddenly wake up in the year 1875. You end up talking to someone and you want to convince them that you’re from the future. How do you do that?

  • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I’d be in my own house, although it may look a little different. The guy that lives there would, presumably, be very confused. So I’d show him pictures of it on my phone and he would probably be even more confused and probably burn me alive as a witch.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Hmm. I would need to first be vaccinated vs. yellow fever, because apparently that hit so hard right then it left only a few hundred people. My own house is from 1940, though it’s in the city now it was not developed yet. Holy fuck, it’s also Reconstruction right after the civil war.

    I don’t think I would even try. Would be enough of a struggle finding a way to survive. And if we have learned one thing from science fiction, it’s don’t mess with the timeline.

  • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Simple, I tell them I’m from the time when the Higgs boson was finally detected in a particle accelerator experiment that was done in a giant machine located underground in a country on the other side of the ocean.

  • Sixty@sh.itjust.works
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    25 days ago

    If I wake up in 1875 right where I am and a birch tree hasn’t appeared through my chest, then I’m a half hour hike away from Fort Saskatchewan. A North West Mounted Police outpost+jail and they’ll speak English I can understand in 1875.

    In 1879 they’ll hang a whiskey addicted Cree man who killed and ate his six children, his wife, mother, and brother. Swift Runner or Ka-Ki-Si-Kutchin. Got kicked out of the fort (I think he worked there? So he might be around already), and then his own tribe kicked his dysfunctional ass out too before he did this.

    From Canada Day I wandered through a few times the new replica Fort the city built and read the history placards. So I’d also know a few of policeman names, some trivia about them, and how some of them would die. Mostly by fighting natives. Most of them were cunts frankly. Yes yes very surprising to nobody.

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Find where to submit a patent, and patent the Telephone as Bell creates that in 1876, and patent the internal gas combustion engine for cars.
    Mostly need the engine because I’d probably fail to be able to explain properly how to get a phone working properly, I understand the concepts, but proving enough for a patent to hold up, not sure.

    Congratulations, now I’ve become an enemy of the world because I’d have to use all the money I made from the engines to invest quickly in converting to renewable non gasoline based combustion engines to save the world from myself

    • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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      25 days ago

      You know both telephone and internal combustion engine well enough to do that?

      I’d fail without Wikipedia to check the facts.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        A gas powered engine, for sure. That’s why I said the telephone might not end up holding up. Spark, fuel/oxygen varies by carburetor. Contained in a cylinder. Head pushed up, attach to opposite side, and get your sparks in sync. Carburators don’t need electronics so I wouldn’t try for fuel injectors at that time. All you need is a working concept and evidence it can work for a patent really. Then anyone who comes about wanting to use the concept, say Mercedes in Europe or Ford after in the U.S. and you take your payouts. Don’t need to continue making the products. Invest the earnings into battery research. Paying researchers and giving them the information that we can beat lead acid with nickle cadmium and eventually lithium ion should get us pushed into a company patenting the future of battery tech for that time. Throw in sodium ion based for shits and we’ve got the future of all batteries for 100 years paying a fragment of production.

        *Note by in sync you should be able to instigate the spark just using the downward stroke of the opposite head. So the time could never be off, just have to ensure your spark stays connected to the aforementioned lead acid batteries that we are looking to phase out

        • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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          24 days ago

          strikes me as easier to make a working prototype of a phone. at least if simple speakers and mics already exist. did they?

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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            24 days ago

            The microphone was part of Alexander Graham Bells invention I believe. I assume speaker was included as well, otherwise what would it be used for, the radio wasn’t around yet

            • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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              24 days ago

              I was thinking maybe gramophone or earlier precursors. But looking at those things they’re mechanically coupled not electrically, so not really the same thing.

        • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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          24 days ago

          That probably could get done, I forget that patents don’t need a huge amount and you’ve got a much better knowledge of the intricacies of it than I do.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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            24 days ago

            I can give you a 18 min tutorial and you’ll know how they work as well. It isn’t super"knowledge" I’m a doof like all others. DM me and I have no problem discussing how those mechanics work. I started college in Aerospace engineering. Left with a degree in Math/physics and spent most of my career in IT. I promise the aptitude to learn and the wanting to learn aren’t on the same plane. Most of computer science proves such

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk
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    25 days ago

    I’d stand on street corners telling everyone who passed by that one day people would be putting pineapple on pizzas.

  • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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    24 days ago

    I guess just showing my tattoo would do the trick, or the phone in my pocket?

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    25 days ago

    I won’t. My best hope is to find an engineering firm and convince them to hire me as a calculator. I won’t have any credentials, but it was common for people without a formal education to perform the basic calculations under the direction of a licensed engineer.

  • Ludrol@szmer.info
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    25 days ago

    I would speak Polish and it would be enough proof with the right story to convince someone. I would be then immidietely killed for danger to the Russification and Germanisation efforts.

    (Poland didn’t exist in 1875)

    • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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      25 days ago

      Wouldn’t they just identify you as a subversive from 1875, instead of a liberated person from the future?

    • GusTheBard@midwest.social
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      25 days ago

      Hey, Ludrol. “A bip a shap a slip a tap a eyshioni” [I am from the year 4877 and I speak Bippy, a language of the Bipp Republic of Darkness a country that won’t exist for another thousand years.

      • Ludrol@szmer.info
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        25 days ago

        It won’t work for Bipp Republic of Darkness in 2025 but for Poland in 1875 it would. Recently the January Uprising of 1863 has failed. The people will want to believe that Poland will exist in the future and that their sacrifice wasn’t/was* in vain. Due to emotional baggage of occupation it will work as people want hope and believe that they will win. I am not calling to logic but to emotions.

        Poland is a country with thousand years of history.


        *Depends if I will tak to Pozytywista or Romantyk

        • GusTheBard@midwest.social
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          25 days ago

          I guess I don’t know enough European history. Which means that when I say “that makes a lot of sense. You have convinced me” it means very very little and you should not feel like you have won any debate.

          Just kidding. The Bipp Republic supports your methods.

  • pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz
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    25 days ago

    I probably wouldn’t for a while. I’d try my best to blend in and work my way into a position of power using all my knowledge. With the rise in education and general knowledge shared today, just knowing so much might even be a giveaway…so I’d have to be careful. Then id try to make the world a better place. But in the end it would probably be worse off via some unintended consequences.

    Or create an electric turbine and motor with some copper and magnets, then show it to some guy in a bar and say I’m from the future.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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      25 days ago

      Or create an electric turbine and motor with some copper and magnets, then show it to some guy in a bar and say I’m from the future.

      IIRC they already had electric motors pretty early after the car was invented. I don’t think the idea is radical enough to prove that you’re from the future.