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[Itnetlolor]

The separation in time is so vast (age of cosmos vs age of civs) that the most probable contact would be ancient ruins. Probably so old and bizarre that nobody would realize for years that there was anything even there.

Also, this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann

According to ancient texts, "Many eldritch abominations just couldn't seem to die off, and have been locked away in a vault never to be exposed in large population centers again by any means. For the love of our God(s), don't try to translate ANY of the content within, you have been warned. Societies have collapsed under the influence of these things. The fact you found it in such a hellish environment should be hint enough how dangerous these things are, and that it's not as much a time capsule, rather than has been an attempt to destroy it, and has somehow failed. We apologize for our mistakes as a sentient race with the contents within."

Contents within the vault:
-The complete Jersey Shore Collection and anything with any of the members involved
-All of MTV after it jumped the shark and TRL was no longer cool (after it's first season)
-The complete "I Love the ___'s" series (Don't use this for historical reference.), and anything from VH1 past Year 2000, when they stopped caring about music
-The complete Seltzer & Friedberg collection
-All "Reality TV" ever created, including the originator "The Real World" Season 1
-Toddlers & Tiaras, Dance Moms, and anything similar in nature as a "Documentary" to avoid the "Reality TV" radar
-The secret recipe of the McRib sandwich
-The Twilight Saga, 50 Shades of Grey, and any other "romance novel" ever created
-The entire Scientology "Religious" Doctrines (AKA- The 'Cult of Sirius' documents (SEE: XCOM Apocalypse))
-Text message archive of anytime post-20th century (Madness ensues after stupid people got hold of fast messaging.)
-Facebook and Myspace, and the recipes for social media

...The list goes on.

One last thing, it reads: "In honor of a show that was good to watch, 'Futurama', please refer to the contents of this package, and the era they come from, as "The Time Capsule of 'The Stupid Ages'". Thank you."

[Adequate Swimmer]

If They saw some of that crap, whoever They happened to be, They'd quarantine the planet on grounds of mass insanity.

Alternatively they'd just club anyone who can't answer 10 simple questions.

[Loud Whispers]

For the love of our God(s), don't try to translate ANY of the content within, you have been warned.

1. Meh on the deities, the all-atheist aliens alliteration alliance won't care for it
2. The fact that they would understand the message means they already have the capabilities for translations, which means they are already lost...

[Karnewarrior]

Why wouldn't the Aliens have their own versions of Jersey Shore and some Alien Guidos? Why are they immune to stupid?

I need to go make a gif of an Alien Guido now.

[Solifuge]

One of the main reasons i would want to be cryogenically frozen would be to see how our fellow earthlings evolve. At the very least, i want to be around once we pull off talking to dolphins. Now that could be a world changer.

You do know that they already have and are continuing to do that, right?

In his bid to “speak dolphin” Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, based in Miami, Florida, designed an experiment in which he recorded dolphin echolocation sounds as they reflected off a range of eight submersed objects, including a plastic cube, a toy duck and a flowerpot. He discovered that the reflected sounds actually contain sound pictures and when replayed to the dolphin in the form of a game, the dolphin was able to identify the objects with 86% accuracy, providing evidence that dolphins understand echolocation sounds as pictures. Kassewitz then drove to a different facility and replayed the sound pictures to a dolphin that had not previously experienced them. The second dolphin identified the objects with a similar high success rate, confirming that dolphins possess a sono-pictorial form of communication. It has been suspected by some researchers that dolphins employ a sono-visual sense to ‘photograph’ (in sound) a predator approaching their family pod, in order to beam the picture to other members of their pod, alerting them of danger. In this scenario it is assumed that the picture of the predator will be perceived in the mind’s eye of the other dolphins.

Dolphins have the ability to echolocate, possessing the necessary organs to take sonic snapshots from their environment. They can also send these snapshots of terrain, other animals, or specific objects, to one another. This capability has evolved into a sono-pictoral language that uses "spoken images" instead of words to identify landmarks, predators, prey, and more. It's different from the language of syllables and meaning that we use, but with the help of some equipment, we've already been able to use rudimentary Picture-Nouns to identify objects to dolphins, which they identify to us in return... and the language appears to be pretty universal to dolphins, since it relies on an innate sense of theirs. Though it's difficult to check, you could imagine that they may use certain symbols to mean more abstract ideas as well; "Shark" could more broadly mean "A Threat", etc.

Spoiler: If you're curious, this is what a Cymatoglyph, or a representation of a dolphin picture-word, looks like: (click to show/hide)

It's first contact of a sort, if you exclude that humans and dolphins have been in physical contact for a very long time.

[Scoops Novel]

I know that we're working on it. I want to see what will happen when we get good at it .

[Karnewarrior]

Alien Guidos exist.

[Solifuge]

Best not cryogenically freeze yourself, and instead pitch in to make it happen then.

As much as it'd be fun to just see things done, progress doesn't happen unless there are people making it happen. With only a handful of people studying this stuff, progress has been slow. That's why I study what I do.

[Kogan Loloklam]

When we can warn dolphins about the cove and they change their migrationary behavior, then we have proven dolphins sentient.

Or if they attack us.

You all look to the aliens for agression, but if all the dolphins of the world suddenly were as intellegent as humans and out to kill us, do you have any idea how bad things would get for us? We have nothing that can compare to a dolphin at sea, a lot of our fuel comes from there. All that they need to do is figure out IEDs, and trade globally stops. Not enough jet fuel on earth to carry the quantity of sneakers Americans alone consume from china. Very little of our freight travels by air.

I welcome our Cetacean overlords, and hope they choose me for hoops rather than cheap, poisonous meat. You hear that dolphins! Don't kill me! Crap. They don't think in phonosemantic terms.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Except we probably have more ships than there are dolphins.

[Kogan Loloklam]

A ship fully submersed in water is usually called "sunk". We don't actually have many of them that can operate down there, and we actually have no targeted weapon that can reliably hit a fast moving dolphin approaching from 10' below the surface. Concussion grenades might be of some benefit, but it's all a wash as soon as someone explains a substance like thermite to the dolphins. Once they can mix something that damages metal underwater, how do you propose to prevent dolphins from wiping out our naval industry? They can carry objects that float along the bottom of the sea, and release it below a ship, and suddenly a ship is sinking. Like a aircraft hugging the land to avoid radar detection, except the "land" is further than open sky.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Dolphin Crime Squad.

[Karnewarrior]

If they just jumped to human intelligence though we'd have a huge opportunity to stop the war or kill them outright before they'd find out about bombs and the like.

Also, Dolphins, I think really are intelligent, but they don't seem to have a religion, which means they probably aren't as smart as Neanderthals, who did. They're somewhere between monkeys and Neanderthals then.

I say we breed some dolphins for intelligence. We've had the knowhow to influence evolution for mellenia, and we've had the tech to reach dolphins for decades. Why can't we just BREED another sentient life into being?

[Hanslanda]

I'm pretty sure humans would win a war against dolphins. We... Pretty adept at killing entire species.

And I approve the breeding of another sentient race into being.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Worst-case scenario we can just keep on lowering the pH of the ocean until the dolphins can't live in it anymore.

This will, of course, result in the extinction of most life on Earth, but the Human-Dolphin War of 2025 will end in our favor.