chaosCruiser

OK, so a basic radio antenna that emits the same kinds of signals a radar would? Why isn’t every army already doing this? Sounds so obvious. Imagine if these things could start attracting missiles that cost millions to fire.

Why on earth do you want to make these things social instead of private? If things are social like that, it just makes me cautious of my clicks online.

Oh, I can’t like that video, what would my friends think of me? Oh, I can’t install this app, because of stupid reasons. If I want to install all the wrong apps and like all the wrong videos, peer pressure shouldn’t stand in my way. What’s wrong with Meta.

And this plan will take only five years. As a matter of fact, we should call it a five-year plan.

So, did you start selling meth?

That could work too. Superstitions and religions were in at the time, so I think there’s plenty to exploit.

You could call coal the Devil’s rock, and spread rumors about it being cursed and haunted. You cal talk about the smoke causing vice, moral decay and sin. Oil could be seen as the blood of the Earth, tears from ancient curses, bad omens etc. Only rebellious sorcerers and heretics would dare to tamper with the natural order of things by burning oil. As the un-godly un-natural smoke poisons the air, it poisons the soul etc. God gave you the sun and wind, so using them is the only righteous choice… You get the idea. The 1800s was a magical period of time.

I have a plan B too, but it’s not so gentle.

The goal is to become the number one energy producer and stomp out all opposition and competition before it has a chance to grow. There are no laws against cartels and monopolies, so you exploit the hell out of it. You file extremely broad patents to prevent fossil fuels and combustion based motors from ever becoming a thing. You play super dirty, no mercy, no remorse. It’s going to be basically like the East-India Company, but with renewable energy.

You lobby governments to adopt renewable energy and electrical devices you provide. You influence the public opinion on fossil fuels by spreading information about climate change, pollution and negative health effects. If the global energy company becomes big enough, you should make your own private army and conquer all the places where large oil deposits exist, and establish massive natural reserve parks in those areas. Lobby the governments to make other similar areas legally protected from all industrial development for the next 1000 years.

You would become the supervillain billionaire of the 1800s, but you put the whole world on a renewable trajectory.

I would go to the year 1800, and bring with me a bunch of books on science and engineering. Basically all the building blocks you need to build wind farms and solar power. I would visit all the universities I can and drop these books in library shelves. Some climate change literature could be nice too.

Back to the basics: Start carrying a yellow pages book with you so that you can find addresses of various businesses. If you need restaurant descriptions, you need one of those tourist guide books too.

So, a name and shame kind of site?

Well, I still choose to see a silver lining in al this. If consumers begin to favor products with that label, it might encourage plastic manufacturers to increase the percentage of recycled feed. If that happens, recycling plants will face increased demand, which warrants increased production. It could be a good start.

The thing is, the plastic industry clearly doesn’t want that ratio to increase. If they get their way, that ratio will remain very low, and plastic recycling will be little more than elaborate green washing.

Yeah, that’s a real problem. All the really interesting special communities get like 1 post a week at most.

Skip the “all” feed. It’s not interesting to me either, even though I’m familiar with distros and such. I just read the “subscribed” where I’ll find stuff I care about.

Nah. What’s done is done. Hard lessons, but those are the ones I remember.

But let’s imagine I could send a message to an alternate timeline version of past me. I have some ideas.

Don’t hang out with the people on this list. Learn about mental illnesses such as narcissism, bipolar disorder, paranoia, depression, and psychosis. Read a bit about conspiratorial thinking too.

Equipped with this info, you no longer need that list of names. You can notice when it is the time to leave a particular crowd. Now that you didn’t learn things the hard way, you avoided some hardship and trouble.