The first thing I’d do with a Time Machine is transport a breeding pair of Penguins back to before the Jurassic Period, make sure they got settled in okay and began their own little colony.
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The second thing I’d do is travel to Darwin’s time, just to watch him scratch his noggin.
The third thing I’d do would be to return to my own time to see how David Attenborough’s “Life On Earth” TV programmes fared.
What are/were/will be your plans?
I don’t have a whole itinerary worked out but I’d definitely make time for a stop around October 1945 to give Fred Trump a few hard kicks to the balls.
We so need those reaction emojis.
Had a feeling that would be one of the first plans.
Basically, my entire time machine plan involves going back to see concerts in the past that I was not around for (or that I missed when I was concert-going age for whatever reason)… I’ll have to think of a list…
i would only go “back” to fish with my grandaddy again.
that man taught me so much.
he was a good man. i can only try to be what he taught me, sitting on a boat, lines in the water, and nothing but time ahead of us.
Right?! Like the 18-over Peter Murphy show at First Avenue with NIN opening. I was 17.
Or the several times Foo Fighters played at The Palace of Auburn Hills because a) I fucking hated that place for anything other than hockey games and b) it may as well be on the other side of the universe for as huge a PITA as it is to get to from Washtenaw County. 94 to 275 to 696 (aka - the worst commute in Metro Detroit) then Orchard Lake Rd to Square Lake Rd to Squirrel Lake Rd to some other Lake Rd to 75. The only solace is passing the Big Beaver exit in Troy because heh, Big Beaver.
After that…I don’t know. A lot of bad actors over the last 60 or so years have brought us to this point.
The fish are so crunchy back then though…most had thick bony scales as seen in sharks or gars, with the thin cycloid/ctenoid scales you see in most modern fish only showing up in the later Jurassic itself. I hope your penguins are able to cope.
If we can go that far back, I would definitely want to see what so many of these fossil animals looked like in full living color.
Also take a sound recorder please.
This scenario always turns into a horror story in my head.
Bronze age, work out the reasons for the collapse, take lots of photos, some low key doc footage of daily life, and do some heavy photocopying/scanning at libraries.
Alexandria, library visit, more photocopying. Do a Nile cruise to Abidous, Luxor and further.
Greece, visit Euclid, Archimedes, more photocopies, couple of selfies, and if I’m feeling really naughty, some chats about limits and complex numbers.
Pompeii, get some “before” photos and go to some parties.
Wow… so much to do…
Alfred the Great, drop by and do more photocopying…
The trick would be to avoid wars… I’d carry some Maple Leaf gold coins to grease palms and send the archeologists round the bend.
My list is endless…
Oh… oh… 
… plant a few around 200 BCE near Rome, just to make sure.
Wasn’t the universe in black and white then?
*Stolen from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.
Maybe go to Sarajevo in 1914 and hand Arch Duke Ferdinand’s driver a decent map
I would strangle baby Donald Trump in his fucking crib, but I would only try to keep Billy Joel’s parents from hooking up. I’m acting for the good of humanity, but I’m not a monster.
Visit Leonardo da Vinci and casually mention that the larger a flying creature is, the larger the wing-to-body ratio and the more it depends on riding air currents instead of beating its wings.
I wish I had a machine that could stop the time. So I could get more sleeping time every morning…
Travel to the Ukraine on the morning of 25 January 1985 to convince the minister of production that we have met our quotas for the month and that we don’t need the extra power from the Chernobyl plant that day after all.
So many “corrections” to address: Gavrilo Princip (who triggered WWI); Hitler; Stalin; Pearl Harbor; 9/11; Lee Harvey Oswald; Donald Trump; founders of Democracy-averse Right-Wing organizations; Rupert Murdoch; and Musk… just for starters.
You got there before me! Ooooooo! I’ll use my time travel machine to get there before you, then.
EXTRA: Archduke Ferdinand killed in crossfire during conflict between rival time travelers. Austria-Hungary responds by declaring war on timepieces, invades Switzerland.
Whoever’s got the time machine right now, could I get you load up on digital cameras and memory cards, and an extended trip to the Library of Alexandria?