If you choose a time in the future, other nodes could reject you. If you choose a time obscenely short (say, 1 second after the last block), presumably the dif

If you choose a time in the future, other nodes could reject you. If you choose a time obscenely short (say, 1 second after the last block), presumably the difficulty is an average of many created blocks, and it would take a lot of malicious actors to make this valid. Plus, if Block A is found at 10:00, and I find Block B at 10:10 but say it was 10:01... and then Block C is found at 10:20, the average of these three is ~10 minutes still.