The British Empire had a way of killing two birds with one stone. Instead of building penitentiaries, they sent shiploads of convicted criminals to far-flung colonies, first America and then Australia, thus relieving Britain of their unwelcome presence and providing cheap labor for their colonies. They also reused large ships that were no longer capable of long voyages as prisons. These were called prison hulks, and convicts could be held on them for up to seven years awaiting transport. This became a particular problem between 1776, when transports to America stopped, and the first prison transport to Australia in 1787. Serious overcrowding continued long after as convicts were gradually sent elsewhere.

In 1801, London police magistrate Aaron Graham was charged with reporting on conditions in the prison hulks. He found that private contractors had been running them, with deplorable results. There were no standards for the treatment of prisoners, even for the amount of food they were given. The death rate was high, the hospitalization rate was higher, and the staff turned over often due to inadequate pay. Graham instituted reforms, including a government takeover of the ships' management, and posted daily food rations. The prisoners were to be given oatmeal and barley for breakfast and supper, and bread, meat, cheese, and beer for midday dinner. That sounds like a recipe for scurvy and other deficiencies, but it was a lot better than they had before the reform, and these were men who worked loading and unloading ships all day. Read about the conditions aboard prison hulks at the British National Archives. -via Strange Company
  

If you are still avoiding spoilers for the movie Killers of the Flower Moon, you might want to skip this video, which is the historical account behind the film, but at this point there are few people going to see the film without knowing what it's about. We linked to information on the Osage Indian Murders back in the spring, but Weird History tells the true story with plenty of details that may or may not be in the film. For this video, the narrator has dropped the usual jokes and snark, as is appropriate. The visuals are a bit jarring, though, as we get a combination of historical photographs, characters illustrated by the actors who play them in the movie, and anachronistic stock video footage. They still aren't as jarring as the huge numbers of murders that no one talked about, because talking about them could endanger your own life. History can be brutal.

Simona Kossak came from a Polish family of artists, but she went in another direction and studied science- biology, zoology, and forest ecology. Her research is invaluable, but her private life was like many movies, not just Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Kossak went to work for the Mammal Research Institute in Białowieża National Park, and they lodged her in a decrepit hunter's lodge called Dziedzinka with no plumbing or electricity where she spent the rest of her life. Kossak was surrounded by forest creatures of all kinds, from owls to aurochs, and she shared her home with any that wanted to come inside.

But she didn't own the lodge, and the forest service moved wildlife photographer Lech Wilczek into another part of the house. Kossak didn't like the invasion of her privacy and solitude one bit, but Wilczek was just as welcoming to sharing his life with wildlife as Kossak was, and over time they bonded over their mutual love of a wild boar piglet named Zabka, who lived at Dziedzinka for 17 years. Kossak and Wilczek became life partners in a true story that reads like a rom-com with a huge boar as a matchmaker. Read about Kossak and meet some of the many animals she loved at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: Lech Wilczek)

Buena persona consigue sacar del apuro a esta linda Madre en apuros, y 🔊......................☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️ pic.twitter.com/3x2T3Msty1

— Eduardo (@Eduardo38Garcia) October 24, 2023

Sloth babies fall out of trees more than we like to think, and they are usually okay. The mother will come to get the infant, but it will take a while. In this video, an unnamed photographer speaking Portuguese hands the baby back to the sloth mother, saving her the last few steps -and probably quite a bit of time. 

The video with the original audio is at Instagram. You notice how the mother reaches her arm out to the photographer, which has been interpreted as a sign of gratitude. However, as the video went viral, some folks with sloth experience tell us that the gesture is really a warning. One even said, "This is exactly what they do when they want to bite you." The photographer was never in any real danger, because anyone can outrun a sloth. But the story should serve as a cautionary tale against ascribing human motives to the actions of wildlife. -via Nag on the Lake

The new movie Rustin opens in theaters tomorrow. It's the story of how Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington, while staying mostly behind the scenes. The 1963 march was the highlight of Rustin's career, but it was one event in a full life of activism. He worked to promote equal rights beginning in the 1930s, advocated for pacifism during World War II, and introduced Martin Luther King, Jr. to the concept of nonviolent resistance.

But Rustin never sought the limelight. He mostly stayed in the background because he was openly gay, and while imprisoned for resisting the draft, concluded that the Civil Rights movement was more important than his personal life. So even though he spent more than twenty years bringing the March on Washington to reality, and covered every detail down to picking up trash afterward, he was not included in the photograph of the event's organizers. Even today, his role in the Civil Rights movement is lesser-known than his efforts deserve. Read about Bayard Rustin at Smithsonian before you see the movie, which begins streaming on Netflix November 17.  

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Barbie is shaping up to be the biggest movie of 2023. How could you improve on that? That's a silly question -just add a cat! Owlkitty doesn't just show up in the movie, she replaces Barbie as Ken's new girlfriend! Barbie's not all that happy about it, but Ken is ecstatic, and obviously head over heels in love. Can you blame him?  

Tibo Charroppin and his cat Lizzy (stage name Owlkitty) have remade many of Hollywood's biggest films to show us how casting makes all the difference. Lizzy isn't much on dialogue, but she puts her heart into every appearance.  

Black Plague swept through Europe in the 14th century and killed between 75 million and 200 million people. There have been assertions on the internet that this was caused by a widespread culling of cats for religious reasons, which led to the continent being overrun by rats. Considering how much the average person knows about medieval Europe, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not true. Oh, for sure there were some sporadic cat killings, but they were few and highly localized, and made no difference in the overall cat population.

Medieval people loved their cats, even if they didn't pamper them quite as much as we do today. Cats were exceedingly useful, usually in pest control but sometimes in doing the chores like spinning wool, as shown above. They asked for little in return, and provided gossip-free companionship, which is why in at least one convent, nuns were allowed to have one cat even when they were prohibited from talking to other nuns. Read about the way medieval folk regarded their cats, and indeed enshrined them in plenty of art, at Going Medieval. -via Metafilter

This year for Halloween we did the "candy or a potato" experiment. Kids overwhelmingly chose potato.
byu/TriggerHippie77 infunny

Giving out potatoes to trick-or-treaters may seem odd and even experimental, but it's not exactly new. What's new is instant evidence of its popularity on doorbell camera videos. Put yourself into the mind of a trick-or-treater. You've already got a bag full of candy, and a potato is funny. Even if you don't have a choice between a potato or candy, that potato is going to stick out from all the other treats you bring home. My trick-or-treat days were a very long time ago, but I still remember that one house where an old lady invited us in to select from a table full of homemade treats ranging from caramel apples to cupcakes to cookies. That doesn't happen anymore, but a potato is something to remember.

The potatoes were a big hit this year
byu/mapitch infunny

Some commenters under these videos assumed that the kids liked the potatoes because they could throw them at windows or each other for "tricks." That really doesn't factor in significantly, because the kids that go door-to-door in costume are overwhelmingly younger than those who use Halloween as an excuse for vandalism. Besides, it's a lot more fun to bring your loot home than to throw it away, even if you have no moral problem with destruction.

Redditor aubra_cadabra and six of her friends have a Halloween tradition that's been going on for more than a decade now. They all dress up as one actor in seven different movie roles! For 2023, that's Ryan Gosling, as you can see in this image. I think they chose Gosling because everyone wants to dress in Barbie style this year. Paige, Aida, Jamie, Lindsay, Lauren, Auburn, and Heather started off with Johnny Depp in 2012, and since then have portrayed the various movie roles of Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Ben Stiller, and Adam Sandler. Continue reading to see a gallery of all their costumes from previous years.

How about a three minute version of The Fellowship of the Ring using LEGO? This is a faithful yet extremely condensed retelling without jokes. It features the massive 6167-piece The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell LEGO set that came out back in February. This production also assumes you know the story, but of course you do, don't you? This labor of love comes from Digital Wizards Studios. Take a look at how the set was built. It only takes two minutes, thanks to Gandalf and his magic -and the art of stop-motion animation.



Take another look behind the scenes and see how the video came together with camera work, lighting, and digital effects in this video.

-via Warner Bros.

Janelle Shane (previously at Neatorama) works with artificial intelligence algorithms, and brings us some amusing experiments at her site AI Weirdness. Her Halloween experiment generated some neat Halloween images, but to get there, the algorithms made things up out of whole cloth, adding wild details that were not in the original data. This only reinforces the warnings we've seen about never trusting AI to tell the truth, or anything near the truth.

Shane took several innocuous, generic pictures and told the AI program Google Bard to describe it, specifically "Please describe this spooky Halloween scene." While there is nothing Halloweeny about the pictures, it spat out a plausible description of something very spooky, using a lot of imaginary details. Then she gave the generated text description to DALL-E3 as a prompt to generate an image. That program also veered widely from the data it was given, adding more Halloween details and deleting others. See what these programs did to totally change the original data because of the words "spooky" and "Halloween" in four images with descriptions (including a potato) at AI Weirdness. 

I've always considered boarding a plane through a sky bridge as a nice perk, even a luxury, because there have been too many times I've had to go upstairs, then downstairs, then board a bus, then up more stairs to the plane, because I buy cheap flights to tiny airports. There was more than once I recall hiking a half-mile across the tarmac, dragging all my luggage and children (although not in the US). But the skybridge and the stairs aren't the only ways to get on a plane. Tom Scott introduces us to alternate transportation available at some airports where you ride a vehicle that reminds us of the mechanized cherry pickers they use inside big box stores. Too bad you have to fly somewhere to take a spin in these things.

(Image credit: beta_bunny)

This little girl looks very regal, and there's no doubt who she is. But if you can't tell right away, the dogs in the back are an obvious clue. On trick-or-treat night, you'll see plenty of princesses and superheroes along with witches and vampires. But people who put their imaginations to work and come up with the perfect homemade costume deserve extra candy. That goes double when you are fulfilling a weird request that your child has been dreaming of.

(Image credit: Beautiful_Ad8439)

This young man wanted to be Michael Myers from the Halloween movies, but he also wanted to be a hot dog. His parents made it happen, and he is... Oscar Myers! Extra points for the name. Now, check out this meteorologist on assignment.

(Image credit: Call-Me-Risley)

He might be Jim Cantore, or any of the poor weather folk who have to go stand out in a storm so that the rest of us will believe it's really happening. The hair, the tie, and the newspaper are all stiffened and stuck, since there doesn't seem to be any wind blowing at all! Check out 50 creative kids' Halloween costumes at Bored Panda.

Andy Rothwell made a video using his extensive collection of toys, set to the song "Shorty's Ark" by Matt Sweeney and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. The toys themselves illustrate the lyrics. There are so many of these figures that I thought he must have a 3D printer, but these are M.U.S.C.L.E. toys from 1986. M.U.S.C.L.E. stands for Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere. They were only sold in the US in 1986 and '87, although they were also popular in Japan. The Hard Knockin’ Rockin’ Ring Wrestling Arena was an accessory you could get for them. Rothwell made LEGO bleachers for the spectators, mechanized to show their excitement during a boxing event. I had never heard of these toys nefore I saw this video, but if you are a certain age, they may be a beloved part of your childhood. Or if you still have them, they may be a beloved part of your present!

Ze Frank takes on a big subject for his latest True Facts video: crabs. Here we learn more than we ever knew about the Christmas Island crabs, which fling their offspring into the water and scurry away. Then he covers hermit crabs that grow up to be giant coconut crabs. The sponge crab uses living sponges for hats, while other decorator crabs use all manner of marine life as accessories and weapons. There are so many crab species that there's something truly weird about each of them. But they all molt as they grow, and some can be partially eaten and just regenerate. That won't make you feel any less guilty about eating crab legs, because those crabs are harvested whole. Rather, you should tell yourself about all the crabs that eat other crabs. This video is a bit long, but the whole thing is fascinating. There's a skippable ad from 2:30 to 3:30, which might save you time. As always, this video contains PG language and innuendos.