• Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I have a recurring fantasy of visiting my favorite physics professor in the 1970s and showing him a modern smartphone. He showed me how to use integrated circuits, when microprocessors were a very new thing and we were mostly just making LEDs blink.

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    A fixed gear bicycle with wide, flat-resistant tires and a belt drive. Plus a hand pump, a set of tools and a box full of inner tubes.

    That should be enough to keep it running for a lifetime, offers actual utility, and it’s understandable enough what it does so I’m hopefully not burnt at the stake, and people can build their own with what they have.

  • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’d want something that can help people and can be tested and has an immediate, dramatic effect to make it undeniable

    Maybe insulin? You could literally bring comatose people back from the brink of death in minutes

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Wouldn’t anyone needing insulin already be dead? Or is there a middle ground where a diabetic can go in and out of shock, yet survive without?

      • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        They would survive for awhile after diagnosis on a starvation diet, maybe weeks, and slipping in and out of a coma but it was a death sentence. There’s stories from the 1920’s when whole wards of kids were hit with a first dose that removed the symptoms in minutes. I can’t imagine being in that room when all that despair and anguish turned into hope and relief.

  • Maiq@lemy.lol
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    2 days ago

    Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up! You see this? This, is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That’s right, shop smart shop, S-Mart. You got that?

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Take a photo of them. Then zoom in. If that doesn’t blow their minds, take a video of them and play it back.

      Digital cameras have been commercially available as early as the late 80s, but were of course super low res and with terrible image quality even accounting for that compared to what I just carry in my pocket now.

  • kelpie_returns@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Generator. Television. PS2. Cowboy Bebop on DVD.

    Idk if it would work at all, but TANK is such a good fucking song, and I hope they enjoy at least that much before burning me for witchcraft.