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Rolando ,

Ask for the gun and the bullets.

Before I’m sent back, shoot the time travel master (nerd!) in the head. Shoot their attendants, too (nerds! nerds!).

Grab all the other options, and load them in the time travel car. VERY IMPORTANT: the Moog will be playing the Knight Rider Theme until further notice.

Time travel back to the Vatican, Apostolic Palace. Driving the motorcycle up to The Pope, I do a jump that involves me turning upside-down OVER the Pope, during which I look down, shove the LSD down the Pope’s throat, and then do an Akira-slide right in front of him.

In fluent Latin, I explain to the Pope that I am a messenger from God who has been sent to deliver a Mighty Revelation. For the next several hours I use all the other options I brought back to astound and amuse The Pope during the LSD trip. During this phase of the experience, the Moog will be playing selections from Pink Floyd, focusing on music from Dark Side and before. The key message of The Revelation is that I am an agent of God to be protected and revered.

After the Pope comes down, I scope out the Vatican’s Cardinals. (The Moog will be playing Guile’s Theme during this phase.) The spices are covertly swapped for hashish and opiates, which I use along with the Warheads candy to bring mini-Revelations to those Cardinals who seem friendly. Those Cardinals who seem hostile to me, are fed bits of the Uranium. I am declared a Cardinal. When the time is right, The Pope is also fed bits of Uranium.

After the Pope dies, a conclave is convened in the Sistine Chapel to select the next Pope. The Moog will be playing Objection from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001) during this phase. As a Cardinal, I attend, and will use the motorcycle to pop wheelies and do donuts until I am elected.

When I first appear on the Papal balcony, to be revered for the rest of my life as an infallible being whose words must be obeyed without hesitation, the Moog will be playing the instrumental version of We are Number One from Lazy Town, and I will be doing an appropriate dance.

RHSJack ,

I would read this comic book.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I had the same idea for the items.

Pick gun and the bullets.
But instead my plan was to shoot myself.

Socsa ,

My plan was to take the dab pens and the moog, assuming it could be used as a backup battery to the pens. And then just plan to hang myself when confronted with the inevitability of sobriety.

Rolando ,

Hey y’all no need for that! Meet up with me in the year 1214, and Pope Rolando will set you up as Archbishops somewhere. We can even go on convenience store runs in my time machine!

Everyone taking this challenge is invited. All your sins will be forgiven!

alyth ,

This is the best comment I have seen on Lemmy. You are a genius.

tooclose104 ,
@tooclose104@lemmy.ca avatar

What about the other items? Bottle rockets off the papalcony for sure. Dab pen for office duties after I think.

The laser pen would also be a mind blower during the high times.

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

That moog isn’t a fucking iTunes playlist, it’s a musical instrument that needs a real person to play it so your entire plan is completely shot.

Rolando ,
  1. The moog is “magic - works without amp or outlet” so it is magic. (Given.)
  2. Therefore the moog is AI, since magic and AI are indistinguishable. (Lemma: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -Clarke. The exact workings of contemporary “AI” neural networks are insufficiently understood, therefore indistinguishable from magic.)
  3. Because the moog is AI, I can talk to it like ChatGPT, I just have the wrong keyboard.
  4. Use the keyboard like this: first key is “A”, second key is “B”, etc. Type out some sentences until the AI figures out the pattern. I have plenty of time to do so, since I have a time machine.
  5. Use the keyboard to chat with the moog to tell it what I want it to play.

Problem?

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

yes there’s a problem, its only magic is that is works without an amp or outlet. none of the other things you’ve listed are implied or remotely plausible.

Rolando ,

I was using a specialized form of argumentation which I thought befitting this community. Here are the details: knowyourmeme.com/…/troll-science-troll-physics

Was this the right decision? Perchance.

randomdeadguy ,

Absolute madman 👏

Drivebyhaiku ,

Just hope your time machine doesn’t deposit you off during the Western Catholic Schism or else you’ll have to repeat this multiple times with multiple popes.

Rolando ,

Or maybe this is how the Western Schism is avoided in the first place. The Lord works in mysterious ways…

Xttweaponttx ,

What a fucking ride. I had all the tracks on background play in pipepipe. Incredible.

Godort ,

I’ll take the DeLorean and the castle

kemsat ,

These are all terrible options.

Agent641 ,

I choose the bottle rockets twice.

Hubi ,

That’s the most reasonable choice imo, you could probably earn a fair bit of money with those.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

I think that’s the point.

BeigeAgenda , (edited )
@BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ll exchange all that for:

  • Good knife and a sharpening stone
  • Flint for making fire
  • Compass
  • Axe
  • Several years of training in self defense and living off the land. (Or else they should send a Navy seal)

Edit: Ah it’s a shit post, I always get those wrong 😁

Rinn ,

The spices are pretty good - great, portable money source that won’t get you killed for being a witch. Everything else sucks.

auzas_1337 ,

Well ACTSHUALLY, depending on your definition of the middle ages, you wouldn’t be very likely to be killed for being a witch, since the witch hunt came into being after the Reneissance.

That said, I would also take the spices. The amount of spices in that picture would probably set me up for life. Buy a nice place somewhere in Northern Italy and live out my days learning to play the moog, amusing my medieval friends.

Hobo , (edited )

Motorcycle isn’t abad choice. You get an alternator and a battery out if the deal. You can rig up a simple water turbine to charge it easily enough. You also get a bunch of steel, rubber/plastics, some wire, tubes, and a couple of pretty good lightbulbs (possibly even an LED one depending on the headlight/taillight). Taking the magic Moog as the 2nd option seems like the best idea considering it’s magic.

kemsat ,

Sure, but they’re terrible options because of how dumb people used to be. Like, you’d probably have to keep it secret or get called a witch or something.

Something I think would be more useful would be seeds for crops, specifically resistant to plant diseases that would have been devastating back then. Like, take some potatoes that are resistant to whatever caused the Irish famine. That wouldn’t be as likely to get you burned at the stake for being in service to the devil

Drivebyhaiku ,

You might have some issues with potatoes in the medieval period. The Irish potato famine happened because potatoes radically changed the amount of calories you could grow on a set peice of land. The population spiked and crashed because of land efficiency dependancy over the course of years but that all happened well past the medieval period that was more the Industrial Revolution.

The potato was not really a thing in the medieval period. They started showing up in the Renaissance as a curiosity from the new world and took a long time to actually take off since they were very unpopular as a food… Like strangely unpopular. They actually started gaining popularity first as a decorative plant.

Mind you they are dead easy to grow so if your intention is to farm them for personal use for food security they are a solid pick. Still since they are something nobody around you would have seen before you would probably need to construct an adequate lie about how you got them.

Thief_of_Crows ,

The potato famine happened because Britain stole all of Ireland’s potato’s. There were ships full of potatoes leaving Ireland regularly. There was no actual issue with growing food, except that potatoes were too cheap for the capitalists to profit off ofby selling them back to the Irish.

Drivebyhaiku , (edited )

Well… No. It’s more complicated than that. The Irish potato famine happened because the lack of genetic diversity in the crop and a wet humid year caused a massive viral collapse ( scientific name for the blight :Phytophthora infestans) which caused the crop to turn to sludge in the ground… The fact it was so deadly though, that was capitalist bullshitery. The flashpoint though was since potatoes grow in much poorer soil than other crops the population which had seen an overall increase due to the caloric production increase saw massive hardship because the crop could not be easily replaced by sowing other alternative crops. The viral collapse of the potato crop lasted practically a decade. If it was simply the matter of one bad year the supply and storage of other food stuffs would have softened the impact and they would have recovered over the next couple of years while they sowed other crops like they were used to doing when other crops failed… but the land literally couldn’t support other crops because the soil was way too poor. It was potatoes or bust and the potatoes were damn near impossible to propagate unless you were lucky and your tiny potato patch was properly isolated… Which most people’s weren’t.

Other crops like cereal grains (including some of the less popular ones like millet and corn) were bought up in bulk and imported by the British back to England but they basically diverted everything they could from Ireland early and once they had sustained cereal grain supply from the colonies they never distributed anything back to Ireland despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The British were bastards who actively and “passively” contributed to the famine deaths via tremendous greed… But the potato crop failure was real and there were more than a few extra steps in the plot that was more about grain than moving potatoes around… Because the potatoes were basically just rotted slime.

wesker ,
@wesker@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Almost all of these will get you drowned for witchcraft

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Nah. Medieval folks understood the idea of mechanical engineering and complex music instruments, take the spices and the keyboard and instead some dude will just stab you for them.

ininewcrow ,
@ininewcrow@lemmy.ca avatar

At least you can shoot the head Inquisitor before they decide to take you away.

No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston ,

Not if you can burn them with the 5W laser first

daltotron ,

I thought witchcraft trials were a much later period kind of thing, no? Like a pilgrim-era, maybe even post-renaissance kind of thing.

frickineh ,

I mean, is it permanent or do I have a plan for getting back to now? If it’s permanent, the gun and bullets because fuuuuck that. I’m not living in medieval times as a woman. Even if pretty much all of history wasn’t a horror show for women, I have like, zero useful skills and I’m pretty sure I’d only understand about half of what people were saying because Old and Middle English were a total suckfest (and that’s if I didn’t end up somewhere they spoke fucking French or some shit).

If I’m just there for tourism, none of it. I’m not trying to get burned for witchcraft while I’m sightseeing.

Zoidsberg ,
@Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca avatar

The language thing is a good point. Am I in 1000CE North America? Because I can fumble my way through French, but absolutely cannot speak Siouan.

pressanykeynow ,

I’d only understand about half of what people were saying because Old and Middle English were a total suckfest

So kind of like modern England

Anyolduser ,

Spices. Twice. You can keep the rest.

For most of the middle ages lords kept their spices in a strongbox and locked it away with their gold and jewels because some of the spices were literally worth their weight in gold.

The big problem is that you couldn’t just rock up to the local lord and ask him if he wanted to buy your spices. First, he probably wouldn’t be able to afford them all. Second, depending on the time period merchant’s guilds (like the Grocers in London) controlled who could trade spices. Third, you’d raise a lot of questions not speaking the language and carrying enormous wealth - a good way to get robbed and/or locked up

That being said, if managed carefully those spices could be sold piecemeal to avoid arousing suspicion of any of the established merchants, then that money could go towards buying a house in and shop in town and establishing a permanent business. That is probably the best outcome you could ask for.

c0mbatbag3l ,
@c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

The moment I saw the spice rack I knew I could just find the most useful/valuable spices and get as much of those as possible.

Everything else runs out pretty much instantly or isn’t useful ever.

rmuk ,

Definitely the Moog. I’m not into music, but it’s an unlimited source of electricity; just open the case and find the power rails.

c0mpost ,

Good luck opening it without a screwdriver.

ashok36 ,

They had hand drills back then. Just drill out the screws.

Drivebyhaiku ,

Or just sketch what you want and have a metalworker of the period make it. They would have had the precision to manage it particularly if you sacrificed quality and worked in pewter. Pewter is so easy to cast you can pretty much diy.

The Phillips head screwdriver screws are great for not exactly needing the most precise shape for undoing them. Anything sort of in the ball park will work.

absentbird ,
@absentbird@lemm.ee avatar

Hell, just press a bit of wax into the screw head for an impression, then use lost wax casting to cast a driver.

Iceman ,

I could easily reinvent the screwdriver. What i could use the electricity for however…

AFaithfulNihilist ,
@AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a good book from a former Smithsonian curator called One Good turn that talks about the ancient history of the screwdriver and the screw.

If you went back in time far enough that the people around you didn’t know about the screwdriver and the screw, Even a rudimentary knowledge of It’s existence would possibly on its own break the timeline.

Ion ,

No thanks. I’ll just stay in my own time and keep all my stuff.

roscoe ,

Spices x 2. They’d probably be hard to unload without getting robbed, but then you could buy a nice farm.

Everything else would be useless after a short time at best and get you burned as a witch at worst.

Ludrol ,
@Ludrol@szmer.info avatar

acording to this guide you woudn’t be burned for witchcraft, but you would be robbed as an easy target

Skates ,

I’ll take the uranium. It doesn’t matter what I blow up with it, the butterfly effect will mean the rest of the world is changed forever. Because fuck you, you should’ve asked before sending people to the medieval era.

I_Has_A_Hat ,

How would you blow it up? Do you have the technical knowledge to actually do anything with it?

100_kg_90_de_belin ,

I would hit it really hard with a sledgehammer. It worked for Mr Burns’ father https://feddit.it/pictrs/image/1b7f88c9-fc49-4eed-a242-79910e7db99c.webm

jol ,

That’d not how it works

GladiusB ,
@GladiusB@lemmy.world avatar

Because that’s how time travel works too

Agent641 ,

Ruin all that precious pre-1945 steel.

SternburgExport ,

Easy one.

The gun and the bullets to shoot myself.

PlasmaDistortion ,

Or to used as a template/example for how to build a gun.

drathvedro ,

Do you even need the time travel part?

Passerby6497 ,

The synth and 10 jars of saffron. I’ll learn to play music like a bard and be fucking rich selling little bits of spices while I travel (and eventually be murdered as a witch).

medgremlin ,

Aha! I knew someone else would go with the saffron gambit. Especially if you get to specify that it’s really packed in there.

Drivebyhaiku ,

I would probably mix in some whole nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves with the saffron as it was generally more popular in England at the time and the variety would probably mean more of my wares purchased by at each stop to save me needing to travel further. Travel being so gods awful at the time mitigating the risks a little bit would be worth it I think.

mino ,
@mino@lemmy.ml avatar

What astonishes me most is that at least half of you are probably highly paid engineers that are debating this on company time instead of using your brainpower for actual problems.

I like it!

Also I choose spices for instant riches and laser for burning out the eyes of my enemy to solidify my identity as a magician. After that we can finally focus on growing weed and mushrooms because y’all know 5 tanks ain’t gonn last long.

dumpsterlid ,

Being unproductive is a form of radical resistance that transcends simply materially impacting your employer and their unrealistic expectations on your labor and extends into destabilizing the fundamental narratives burned into your brain by society about what makes you a valuable human and what the basic pursuit of happiness really entails.

mino ,
@mino@lemmy.ml avatar

I couldn’t agree more. However I do think the revolution would be more accessible with some punctuation now and then.

dumpsterlid ,

Tell that to Thomas Pynchon

Drivebyhaiku ,

Kinda surprised there aren’t a lot of people choosing the castle. Could probably donate that to the royal family for enough cash to get reasonably started and probably get awarded some kind of title or at least a court position with a generous salary.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

A shame it’s only to the medieval times. Had it been to 2000 years ago I’d choose the gun and the bullets. To kill Saul of Tarsus. This would prevent Christianity to exist (and Islam by extension).

iCy619 ,

Better maul Saul

kromem ,

Well, it would have still existed, just been pretty distant from what it is today.

More “everything is permissible” (1 Cor 10:23) and less “God will destroy both stomach and food” (1 Cor 6:13).

dutchkimble ,

I think the choice here is the gun or the bullets, not together. So you’d have to run him over with a bike or light a bunch of rockets in his bum.

Sorry - I see you can pick two items. So you’d have to light a bunch of rockets in his bum and then run him over with a bike.

Eyelessoozeguy ,

Trying to live in the “raised by wolves” timeline?

Zozano ,

Can I trade one fifth of the acid tab for one bullet?

If so, I’ll take the loaded gun and the 4/5 tab of acid.

It’ll be be the best 8 hours of the rest of my life.

Decoy321 ,

Monkeys paw finger curls up as you miss.

closetfurry ,

My dude missing a point blank shot. That’s some XCOM-bullshit accuracy!

voracitude ,

They didn’t miss themselves. Just the bits that would make for a quick, painless death.

Edit: shit, that belongs in /twosentencehorror.

ralakus ,

“As you pull the trigger hoping for a quick death, you feel nothing but pain as the world goes dark. The wet crimson once inside you coats your hands as you lay there for an eternity, wishing you could pull the trigger one last time”

Zozano ,

At least I’ll still be a little high lol.

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