What would you put in a time capsule?

Don't make it for a rando in 1,000 years

Make it for your great-grandkids in 100 years. Leave specific instructions in your will.

You're still dead reaching out to someone across time. But it's someone with a good chance of seeing the world not too differently from you, and who you might actually care about.

And who might actually treasure the hot wheels you spent thousands of hours playing with

It will almost certainly be found, and probably sooner than you expect. That's my guess.

Nothing digital, you can't know what tech will be available. Pictures and stories of your every day life with plenty of detail, plus what you think the future will be like, again with plenty of detail--everyone likes to laugh at how wrong we get this, and the occasional thing we get right. Handwritten would be best. The further back in the past, the fewer details we have of everyday life. Only the official records survive long term, and that is "written by the victors", so to speak. One of the most interesting things we have from the past is the complaint about a copper shipment. It's interesting because we can all relate to that.

Thyme.

A thyme time capsule if you will.

One of those cans of nuts that's really a spring-loaded snake toy thing.

a journal

The Lemmy Capsule™

• Beans
• Gurken
• Some thirsty furry memes
• Lots of kobolds
• Femcel memes
• Das Kapital and the Red book
• A guide to self-hosting

Something personal. There's probably enough "this is what humanity was like in the year nnnn" timecapsules already. Something that won't decay even under time capsule conditions.

Wgrite an incredibly cryptic note explaining that the following pages are a coded manifesto pointed towards something valuable. Fill the next 4 pages with heavily encrypted text of something really dumb and pointless.

We're still trying to figure out a ton of cryptic stuff, it'd be funny to have one just be a straight up hoax and still get taken seriously.

A collection of satirical images depicting the annoying orange.

An extremely ridiculous selfie.

Some good smut.

A good, important book that might soon find its way on a burning pile if the general state of things doesn't improve. Especially if it's something not extremely common, it might actually have some scientific/cultural value once unearthed. Texts do actually get lost/forgotten, and the ephemeral nature of digital media plays into that, too.

nudes

Get a 50+ year old shoe box

Buy a bunch of fake historic coins on the internet.

Find and print a historic news article about some sort of treasure find from around the same time as the shoe box. Bonus points if on actual newsprint.

Wrap coins in printed news article, place in box, seal box under cement.

Maybe some old tech or gadget you have laying around that isn't worth much and you're unlikely to user/sell/repurpose. Just make sure to remove any kind of battery, and wrap the device in paper, then plastic to minimize chance of corrosion damage and mess from plasticizers breaking down

A construction/utility worker in 50–100 years may get a kick out of seeing a midrange smartphone from 2010 the same way I'd be thrilled to find a cheap trypewriter or electric clothes iron from 50+ years ago. Mundane things don't tend to get intentionally preserved, so it's fun when you find one.

• Buy newspapers every day for a week so that future readers can see the evolution of news stories and the advertisements.
• Magazines in several interest areas - automobiles, women’s fashion, current events, National Geographic