Thanks to all the folks who've made guest videos this January! I'm back next week. At least, I hope I am. I left this comment back in December when this video was uploaded and scheduled. So, uh, I hope I'm back next week.
When I was living at a student house at uni, I found an old Tesco receipt under my bed for 2 tomatoes, 1 celery stick and 16 cans of Strongbow Dark Fruits. That tells me a lot about how our predecessors ate.
I seen people buying old vhs tapes not for the content, but for the adverts in the breaks. So they can document them. Weird what people value 30-40 years down the road.
There are some efforts to preserve old computer games for future study too. Not sure if Tom has covered that, but it feels right in his wheel house! It has interesting issues with copyright as copying the programs to new media is definitely a violation of those laws
The content is easily available online alrdy. Either for purchase or in a subscription service. Probably available both as a download or for streaming. This is NOT the case with those adverts. They probably have the original in a basement of a company that went bankrupt 20 years ago or were destroyed alrdy. Nobody thought about digitalizing them.
It's not only the adverts but also the actual TV shows, many of which have been brodcast live or at best stored on tape at the studio. Tape that has been overwritten or lost by now. Hollywood movies are archived in the best quality available. TV shows often arent.
Actually, I really don't mind if archaeologists from the future going through all my junk mail. If they are really that interested in indexing and categorising all the junk and spam I received over the years, I just say: Meh, let them knock themselves out. The only thing I'm slightly worried about is that they might also discover my bookmarks as well as my browser history. That could be a wee bit embarrassing.
@@jeffwillsea6757 but also, stop littering. I don't want to see any more videos of turtles having plastic straws pulled out of their nostrils or dead birds that have been caught in a plastic bag. Not to mention all the plastic we are likely consuming because of microparticles that have come from litter. It's not hard to thow our rubbish in the bin or take it home with us. We all need to do our bit. Stay safe out there.
@@idontwanttopickone Ok can we at least declare the beach a future archeology site so we can litter, sorry deposit clues for future generations as we lived?
Future archeologists: "Based on correspondence we've found, human society in the 21st century seems to have revolved around extended warranties for their vehicles."
let me correct you there, no archeologist would put it like that. it would probably be more like; "human society in the 21st century seems to have revolved around prayer charms and offerings to please their four-wheeled gods."
As someone who studied Archaeology in Uni and on one of my training excavations excavated a soviet era midden in Georgia (country) we found some things that we just as good a find as things like a roman arrow head that we found.
I've been here years ago. It's also called "Dead Horse Beach" because that's what used to wash up after being dumped at sea. The urban archaeology there is truly amazing and the waves sound like wind chimes from all the glass bits constantly rolling around. Also an important area for horseshoe crabs!
"So once again, Jones, what was briefly yours is now mine. What a fitting end to your life's pursuits. You're about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find. Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something." Raiders of the lost ark
I identified with that, my terrace house in Melbourne is built on a 16 x 100 foot block of land. But no one aged under 60 understands what that means, so I just say it's 5 x 30 1/3 metres.
I've noticed that a lot of people do that with unit conversions. It's ok to spitball a guess in Imperial, usually to a nice round number, but you'd better get that metric conversion of that guess right to at least six significant digits.
If it were Alpha and Beta particles, I would say a sufficiently thick raincoat would do the trick. But this stuff is Gamma, and you need a ton of lead to block that stuff. Also, if Radon gas is involved, a gas mask.
I would have thought it was a word from the Native australians, as the middens here are piles of cockle shells made by the aboriginals ... but now I know its an old english word used by archeologists to mean muckheap.
You make a good point, except for the fact that many hundreds of tones of waste from the period are currently in landfill. We don't really have to try and preserve this particular rubbish when so much of it can be found by digging up old landfills.
That's assuming we don't dig up and mine the old landfills for recyclable materials. I imagine it'll become a common thing very soon, with robotics and AI doing the dirty work.
I love seeing other people I watch on Tom's channel when he's on break. Vanessa is such a good creator and I've used many of her videos to help cement what I'm studying in my psychology/therapy courses at uni.
Real talk? As a thirty-something years old, I started teaching Computer Science at a local high school in 2019. As soon as I had to talk about the different types of internet connections (as in: Wi-Fi, dial-up, etc.) I searched all over the house to find if I had any AOL CD to show in the classroom. Zero discs found. I remember getting AOL demo discs in the 2000's inside magazines, music albums, cereal boxes, and even in supermarket bread loafs; but NOW that I want one, I have to BUY it from eBay.
I've probably gotten Xrays that gave me more radiation than an afternoon at that beach would. Radon gas in above ambient quantities exists in almost every basement in America. It's not a big deal unless its really high and you live there, and neither sounds true about this beach.
I love how it took me following a TH-camr from England for several years, who allowed another TH-camr from the abroads whilst off, to teach me about a beach a 10 minute drive from where my mom lives and where I grew up!
Awesome video, love the strange surreality of this actually being a thing that exits^^ Also, as an European the idea of what counts as "Ancient" and "very old" in America is always a bit amusing ;-) (Referring to 1:39)
This is a real bummer to me. I’ve been there and it’s extremely cool, there’s stuff strewn across the beach and digging in the sand you find even more, this video really doesn’t do it justice. People also make little art pieces all around. I know this spot as Dead Horse Bay because as well as the garbage dump that spilled into the bay there was also a slaughter house that deposed of refuse into it. While I pick up trash at my home beach, I truly hope this beach doesn’t get cleaned up, it’s amazing.
@@JeskidoYT Collectors would buy well preserved bottles from over 100 years ago. I would. But best would be to actually document it since you can learn quite a bit about everyday life in Brooklyn back then.
@@symbungee Collecting them costs money. Setting up an auction costs money. Sure, it sounds really logical after watching one of these videos, but if you find out your city spend $15,000 to auction off the remains of a construction site you'd be pissed off that they are wasting money.
I grew up less than 5 miles from there, spent a good part of my childhood exploring that beach. So many bottles, but also construction waste, lots of old tile and metal fixtures, and most surprisingly lots of old bones. At one point there were rendering plants that would process the carcasses of the thousands of horses and other animals that would die across NYC every year. After processing, the bones would just be dumped in the water. Not sure if it was official or just a local name, but the area became known as Dead Horse Bay.
As an Australian 90's kid, her style of editing *really* reminds me of an old episode of Getaway, or Behind The News... And that is most definitely intended as a compliment.
I'm an Archaeologist who does a lot of work in National Forests in the Midwest and we've had a few site (old logging camps or CCC camps) that got "cleaned up" because people didn't understand the value of old cans and bottles.
This is absolutely fascinating! Love a wee bit of archaeology, and definitely think that the beach should have a selection of its artefacts preserved. _Meanwhile, in a mountain in Austria: "Get in, the Radon's fine!"_
Interesting video! Brooklyn isn't the only borough with beachfront radioactivity, either! Great Kills Park in Staten Island was discovered to have elevated levels of radiation due to contamination from Radium 226 back in 2005. Most of the park is still cordoned off today. From what I could gather, is that the radium, along with other chemical waste, was comingled with waste fill material and was (hopefully) unintentionally disposed of there.
I love finding absolute gems on youtube thankyou Tom for making so many videos I just flick my finger and press on the next on all of your stuff has something interesting!!
Bottles from the 1930s are not exactly archaeological treasures. Plenty of that and more in landfills all over the world. Meanwhile cleaning environments from our decomposing trash seems like an effort worth doing, especially from components that don't appear naturally like plastics and refined uranium...
@@anttipekkap What? The museums are full of glass from 100 years ago. We have tons of that stuff, it isn't like this is some prehistoric find. It's a dump, a disgusting beach that is radioactive. Anything worth preserving has been picked over by people over numerous decades that you could go there and dig around.
@@jeffreymason7049 The point is that future generations may find value in what we deem as trash. The reason Superman #1 is so valuable is because so many people deemed it trash and disposed of it destructively. A shard of pottery from the classical Greek era is a treasure now, but to them it was trash. There's a balance between the two extremes of hoarding everything and recycling/destroying everything, and this video is trying to make the case against recycling/destroying everything. Now, it doesn't mean that the majority of this trash shouldn't be disposed of in some fashion, but don't underestimate the value of these things either.
I'm moving to England soon, and one of the things I can't wait to do is go mudlarking. It's just fascinating to me that one can find Roman pottery on the Thames foreshore, not to mention all the clay pipes that were just trash a hundred years ago. Urban archaeology is so cool!
Two tidbits. This isn't the only radioactive beach/park in New York City. There's another cleanup/investigation area that's ongoing at Great Kills Park in Staten Island. Dead Horse Bay was named after horse rendering plant, where dead horse were butchered to make glue and fertilizers. They used to toss the remains out to sea. This business dried up as car became more common. Jamaica Bay is one of my favorite place because it's such a unique piece of New York history.
Highly interesting. I think that preserving such artifacts is very important. Whenever I find such pieces, I keep them, as to me, they're like the key to a different time.
There's an island near me, St Mary's Island, that used to be a Royal Navy nuclear submarine fuel dump, or something along those lines. Within the past couple decades though they've cleaned it up and turned it into a (slightly radioactive) housing estate. There's still a lot of historical junk around us though. Clay Pipes from the Napoleonic wars wash up on the rocky beaches all the time. We used to collect them when I was a kid.
"Above ambient" means nothing... Living at higher altitudes, taking a plane trip, etc... will put you at far beyond ambient at sea level but no one talks about those being dangers.
If you lived at the altitudes planes fly at it would actually be a radiation hazard. But of course pilots and other people who work on planes aren't up there 24/7 so it's not as bad for them.
Ambient is a very low level of radiation and "above ambient" isn't at all a big deal unless you're living there. What a non-issue that they're making into one.
In scotland my gran used to tell me "yer a midden" when I came in the house all dirty from playing outside. In Scotland it means a mess. (As well as an old word for a cesspit.)
Speaking as a philatelist, the collecting, preserving and studying of stamps, envelopes and the letters inside them offers a fascinating, and often very clear, glimpse back into social history. Some philatelists are now looking into collecting so-called 'junk mail' for that very reason.
imagine future archeologists finding one of those landfills underneath the grass at a park and they're trying to figure out why on earth someone kept so many strange items in one place
This also raises the interesting question of how valuable potential artifacts are in the age of mass digital record keeping, because in the future, archeologists might only need to look at old youtube videos to find much more information.
Digital record keeping is very impermanent. You have to intentionally preserve it or it could be gone as soon as the servers running the websites close or the websites themselves shutdown.
The beach is referred to as Glass Bottle Beach, but the water next to it is known as Dead Horse Bay. The reason being that before cars, when horse-drawn carriages were the main mode of transport, dead and dying horses had to be disposed of somewhere. In Brooklyn, they were usually taken there to be disposed of and their hooves were rendered into glue. It's not uncommon to find large horse bones on the beach alongside all of the old glass bottles and leather shoes.
It sounds like they used the "[Radiation] above ambient levels" as an excuse to get the beach cleaned up. I doubt the radiation levels are high enough to pose any tangible risk. I would bet they just want the trash gone.
This place is where me and my family keeps a little kayak we have. I heard about the radioactive materials but did not know the full story. I was very surprised to see it in a Tom Scott video
I feel clickbaited. After waiting to hear how, why, and to what extent the beach is radioactive, I get a few seconds about that followed by, "...this isn't about radiation as much as it's about urban archeology."
I love discovering new creators each year and it's always interesting and diverse subjects ! As a kid I was obsessed with archeology and use to write down the exact date and place on everything I used so that if anyone found it in the future it'd be easier for them 😂. The case of this beach is further proof that all kind of scientists have to be consulted before making these decisions, hopefully they'll find a compromise.
Unless you snorted those deck markers, you are safe. Or rather: If you went there by car, the toxic fumes from traffic probably cointained more radioactivity, and definitely more cancerous material than that beach. The levels have gone above "ambient", for the New York area, which is still far from any dangerous levels even if you are exposed 24/7. (Because that is what ambient levels mean.) But they decided, just to be safe, and probably because they want to clean up the beach.
If we intentionally preserve "trash" then all we tell our future generations is what we thought was relevant. Which is telling but not like seeing every aspect of human life in a 100 year old dump
True. But: In the last few decades our society has shifted towards eradicating traces. Buildings are no longer built on top of the ruins of older buildings, instead the place is excavated to dig a foundation. Trash is no longer just dumped, it is shredded, separated and stored in a way that loses a lot of information. This is of course not ubiquitous. But there is a trend. We tend to wipe out a lot of the traces that archeologists rely on in finding out about past civilizations. Look at this beach: one or two hundred years ago, the beach wouldn't have been cleaned up, and after sufficient time, and layers of sand, the artifacts would have been there to dig up. For our society, this is of course a good thing, as it often is a sign of environmental awareness and sustainability. But future Archeologists may end up relying on time capsules that we intentionally leave for them, as we eradicate more and more of the unintentional debris.
@@thomasblazek4104 Don't worry, there are plenty of human records in the soils, seas and air, from quarries, to organophosphates and methane gas, plenty of plastics in all varieties and plenty of landfills all around the world... Just take out your trash. Bottles from 1930s are not archaeological relics.
It may not be *every* thing, but it really is a lot. Nothing on that beach has been selectively curated for preservation, but rather it has remained in the same state it was left in back in the 1920s. Many of those "artifacts", as crazy as it sounds, let us know that this time period really did happen, and that these people really did exist. The Ancient Egyptians also selectively chose what to and not preserve (e.g. mummifying royalty and priests), which may not give us the full story, but it lets us know that this civilization did exist and gives us glimpses into their lives. The fact of the matter is that humans have been selectively "preserving" things since human history began, and when we do find an entirely preserved city or town, it certainly wasn't intentional.
A bottle from 1929? Here in central Europe, millions of shards from bronze and iron age lie around in the crop fields. When the postal office in Rasumofskygasse in Vienna was rebuilt in 2014, they found settlements starting from around 5000 BC, but archaeologists were only given a few months for an ermergency dig before it was all destroyed by the construction machines.
I think it's important to record and store bits of history for people to remember but especially in natural areas like beaches we have more of a responisibility to correct these past mistakes.
Just because you don't understand, it doesn't mean the real objects aren't worth preserving to other people. We all have our own idea of what is good and important after all...
There’s something similar in Edinburgh. Old WW2 military equipment with radioactive paint was dumped on a beach near Fife. It’s not fenced off or anything but the massive radiation sign and the warnings about no digging generally keep people away.
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
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Thanks to all the folks who've made guest videos this January! I'm back next week. At least, I hope I am. I left this comment back in December when this video was uploaded and scheduled. So, uh, I hope I'm back next week.
Hey
3 weeks?
Second
3 weeks ago how?!1?1!1?1!!11
How did you write this 3 weeks ago?
When I was living at a student house at uni, I found an old Tesco receipt under my bed for 2 tomatoes, 1 celery stick and 16 cans of Strongbow Dark Fruits. That tells me a lot about how our predecessors ate.
@@danc101 wow it worked
It was your receipt, wasn't it?
@@nitehawk86 Well it is now.
England I'm guessing?
One celery stick. Just one.
"trash plus time equals artifact"
*pulls ten year old candy wrapper out from behind fridge*
Almost there!
Spelt “artefact”
Ahh yes, these people worshipped diabetes.
@@frollard
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧🔥
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🔥🔥
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🔥🔥🔥
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🔥🔥🔥🔥
🟪🟪🟪🟪🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎
Under a disused radiator, I found a coupon that expired in 1993. Waiting to hear back from Antiques Roadshow.
I seen people buying old vhs tapes not for the content, but for the adverts in the breaks. So they can document them. Weird what people value 30-40 years down the road.
I wonder if people will stumble across VHS copies of the Star Wars Holiday Special on this beach
aWh that brings me joy i hope they upload them online bc it’s like a really cool time capsule
There are some efforts to preserve old computer games for future study too. Not sure if Tom has covered that, but it feels right in his wheel house! It has interesting issues with copyright as copying the programs to new media is definitely a violation of those laws
The content is easily available online alrdy. Either for purchase or in a subscription service. Probably available both as a download or for streaming. This is NOT the case with those adverts. They probably have the original in a basement of a company that went bankrupt 20 years ago or were destroyed alrdy. Nobody thought about digitalizing them.
It's not only the adverts but also the actual TV shows, many of which have been brodcast live or at best stored on tape at the studio. Tape that has been overwritten or lost by now. Hollywood movies are archived in the best quality available. TV shows often arent.
Future person looking at our junk mail: "Banking must have been terrible back then. Look at all these Princes who can't transfer money!"
That was exactly what was going through my mind as well when I heard the junk mail comment!!
Actually, I really don't mind if archaeologists from the future going through all my junk mail.
If they are really that interested in indexing and categorising all the junk and spam I received over the years, I just say: Meh, let them knock themselves out.
The only thing I'm slightly worried about is that they might also discover my bookmarks as well as my browser history. That could be a wee bit embarrassing.
this made me laugh thanks
“And all the money in the world wasn’t able to save them from being poorly endowed or horny, single milfs.”
+NOJ or "people were really horny 200 years ago"
moral of the story: if someone calls you "trash", just give it some time...
Way ahead of you. I get called an artifact all the time.
@@BartonChittenden Per automotive terminology, I am now a classic. I doubt I will make it to antique.
"Big mistake. Huge."
iM aN aRTifAct
@@hqppyfeet7513 A visual one.
When archaeologists 500 years from now dig into our dumps, they'll know when they get to 2020-2021 because there will be a layer of surgical masks.
The archaeologists: Wow back then humans used to be real smart, they were all doctors!
Underrated
the covid boundary in geological time
@George Corbul maybe the most of the cloth masks would but medical ones are extremely durable
Their like fire, water and tear proof
@@yourfriendlyneighbourhoodo436 my parents check masks by burning them
they’ve somehow never actually gotten mask ashes
"I'm not littering, I'm creating history"
Don't remove that, that's HISTORY!!
-Policeman- Right ....
@@jeffwillsea6757 but also, stop littering.
I don't want to see any more videos of turtles having plastic straws pulled out of their nostrils or dead birds that have been caught in a plastic bag. Not to mention all the plastic we are likely consuming because of microparticles that have come from litter.
It's not hard to thow our rubbish in the bin or take it home with us. We all need to do our bit.
Stay safe out there.
@@idontwanttopickone Ok can we at least declare the beach a future archeology site so we can litter, sorry deposit clues for future generations as we lived?
"I am leaving an artifact for future midden hunters."
@@idontwanttopickone so tell the turtles to quit snorting straws >.>
"A midden" is what my mum called my teenage bedroom
Well, that makes sense.... Trash plus time, right?
Did you pick up on the snark at the time?
Sounds like a way for a teenager to avoid cleaning their room.
"No, mom, my room isn't a mess, it's a _midden,_ okay?"
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 sounds like a sesquipedalian excuse one can use as an advantage
@@mjzudba801 a six-footed excuse? What?
Don't let this make you forget that the Boat is called, "big daddy".
Edit: I learned how to edit 😔
I wonder if it carries a dinghy named Little Sister. 🤔
@@Okusar 😳
Boat
Had this exact same boat. Grady white overnighter, great boat but the old johnson on the back... not so much.
Bad name for ship
SSawsomshiplol
Future archeologists: "Based on correspondence we've found, human society in the 21st century seems to have revolved around extended warranties for their vehicles."
let me correct you there, no archeologist would put it like that. it would probably be more like; "human society in the 21st century seems to have revolved around prayer charms and offerings to please their four-wheeled gods."
"Based on ancient advertising, 99% of male humanity must have suffered from erectile dysfunction."
Also that our diet consisted of kebabs, Pizza’s and burgers from sometimes questionable delivery establishments.
That survivorship bias tho
What if they find a voicemail machine loaded with warranty scam recordings.
As someone who studied Archaeology in Uni and on one of my training excavations excavated a soviet era midden in Georgia (country) we found some things that we just as good a find as things like a roman arrow head that we found.
I've been here years ago. It's also called "Dead Horse Beach" because that's what used to wash up after being dumped at sea. The urban archaeology there is truly amazing and the waves sound like wind chimes from all the glass bits constantly rolling around. Also an important area for horseshoe crabs!
"The beach where your sandals must meet or exceed the requirements set out in OSHA Standard 1910.136"
You must work in HR or some other department that deals with these kinds of things a lot.
"So once again, Jones, what was briefly yours is now mine. What a fitting end to your life's pursuits. You're about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find. Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something."
Raiders of the lost ark
"about 30.33m away" - the sort facts we like to heare on this channel.
Especially as it seems much more like 100 m...
@@olli1886 Wide angle lenses and perspectives are always interesting
I identified with that, my terrace house in Melbourne is built on a 16 x 100 foot block of land. But no one aged under 60 understands what that means, so I just say it's 5 x 30 1/3 metres.
I've noticed that a lot of people do that with unit conversions. It's ok to spitball a guess in Imperial, usually to a nice round number, but you'd better get that metric conversion of that guess right to at least six significant digits.
Let's also remember that 100 ft are 30.48m... so 30.33 just seems like way too many significant digits...
This takes “one mans trash is another mans treasure” to the next level.
Trash + Time = An Artifact
Imagine what future archaeologists will think about how we lived!
”Africa must have been the tech capital of the world”
"Everybody got their brides by mail order. And you only had to make a small deposit to receive some random dead prince's entire inheritance."
Wow so if i save a plastic spoon from takeout itll be worth something?
I am imagining it, and am now cleaning up my room.
Seeing whatever is trash in the bad places of europe from experience... Probably won't think we'll of us
"We have suncream, but for this beach you might want something a bit... stronger."
So used to seeing "sunscreen" that I read your comment as "sunscream" and it took me a minute. Not mad about it, TBH.
@@brookeg5979 It would be a very different world if you had to wear earplugs for your summer holiday.
If it were Alpha and Beta particles, I would say a sufficiently thick raincoat would do the trick. But this stuff is Gamma, and you need a ton of lead to block that stuff. Also, if Radon gas is involved, a gas mask.
@@brookeg5979 I did not notice it wasn't sunscream until after I read your comment. Between this and bench/beach confusion. I think I need to rest.
Please cover your skin with *lead* before getting in.
That boat is called Big Daddy. Someone, somewhere in New York or near it, decided that they want to "ride Big Daddy" around.
In favor of obliviously missing the point: Maybe it belongs to Big Daddy. 🤷♀️
It might be a reference to the game bioshock, a game about an underwater city.
But probably not.
We're giving future archaeologists some riveting content here.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
no please
I can imagine a person from 2000 years ago wondering why we keep their old pots and tools in glass boxes at a museum.
Hey Tom Scott, Micheal here.
that would be the biggest crossover ever.
Nobody can track down The Sause
"Midden" is still a commonly used in scotland... mostly by mothers walking in to their Child's bedroom and upset about the mess.
I would have thought it was a word from the Native australians, as the middens here are piles of cockle shells made by the aboriginals ... but now I know its an old english word used by archeologists to mean muckheap.
You make a good point, except for the fact that many hundreds of tones of waste from the period are currently in landfill. We don't really have to try and preserve this particular rubbish when so much of it can be found by digging up old landfills.
This is so true. Landfills are much better, concentrated and preserved under a coat of soil.
@@57thorns Yes, I have century old bottles that were pulled out of a landfill, and aside from needing new seals, they are perfectly functional.
That's assuming we don't dig up and mine the old landfills for recyclable materials. I imagine it'll become a common thing very soon, with robotics and AI doing the dirty work.
@@jmonsted I have a feeling this work will be done by humans, as cheap labour.
@@jmonsted Well, then they can just store 3D scans of everything they recycle for archeologists to catalogue.
"We're around 30.33 meters away from the beach"
100ft are actually 30.48 meters :D
I love seeing other people I watch on Tom's channel when he's on break. Vanessa is such a good creator and I've used many of her videos to help cement what I'm studying in my psychology/therapy courses at uni.
They would and probably will find millions of AOL free trial CDs
"We think it may have been a coaster, or a religious artifact used by the cult of AOL."
Along with a couple hundred-thousand Dell Optiplexes
I remember when it was AOL Trial floppy discs and everyone would just erase them and reuse the free floppy disc.
Real talk? As a thirty-something years old, I started teaching Computer Science at a local high school in 2019. As soon as I had to talk about the different types of internet connections (as in: Wi-Fi, dial-up, etc.) I searched all over the house to find if I had any AOL CD to show in the classroom. Zero discs found. I remember getting AOL demo discs in the 2000's inside magazines, music albums, cereal boxes, and even in supermarket bread loafs; but NOW that I want one, I have to BUY it from eBay.
I still have a whole load of those. They make handy coasters.
Thanks for hosting all these great channels this month. Learned a lot!
So that's where the rat king I saw on the subway came from
Everything is bigger in the big apple
@@MrJimheeren yep even the knob heads
No that was me sorry
We miss you Scott but these guest videos have been astounding. Thanks to all the creators for the wonderful informative content!
"This isn't about radiation as much as it is about urban archeology"
I think that's a contentious point right there...
I've probably gotten Xrays that gave me more radiation than an afternoon at that beach would.
Radon gas in above ambient quantities exists in almost every basement in America. It's not a big deal unless its really high and you live there, and neither sounds true about this beach.
@@marionette5968 wait for real? I just got really anxious about the afternoon i spent there hahahahahaha
The national park service determined that some people were enjoying themselves and that needed to be stopped.
@@wilfredruffian5002 lmao
People are far more concerned about radiation than they are about other things which pose similar levels of risk.
I love how it took me following a TH-camr from England for several years, who allowed another TH-camr from the abroads whilst off, to teach me about a beach a 10 minute drive from where my mom lives and where I grew up!
"We're on a boat"
*Boat is called BIG DADDY*
...
"We're on big daddy!"
They're riding big daddy
Oh yes daddy
Perfect name for a boat 😉
Unfortunately not Big Daddy N0tail
Big daddy...
DIRTBAG
Tom, these alternate host videos are great. Perfect way for you to take a break, with no drop in quality or lack of content.
Awesome video, love the strange surreality of this actually being a thing that exits^^
Also, as an European the idea of what counts as "Ancient" and "very old" in America is always a bit amusing ;-) (Referring to 1:39)
As they say, Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance.
bro thats so true
@@andrasbiro3007 not trying to be that guy but it would be km not miles
@@acamelwholikescoke4641 unless you’re in the Uk
@@acamelwholikescoke4641 As they say, Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 160 kilometres is a long distance.
This is a real bummer to me. I’ve been there and it’s extremely cool, there’s stuff strewn across the beach and digging in the sand you find even more, this video really doesn’t do it justice. People also make little art pieces all around. I know this spot as Dead Horse Bay because as well as the garbage dump that spilled into the bay there was also a slaughter house that deposed of refuse into it. While I pick up trash at my home beach, I truly hope this beach doesn’t get cleaned up, it’s amazing.
They need to clean this beach up and save all the artifacts what the heck
You do it then.
Have the money??
@@JeskidoYT Collectors would buy well preserved bottles from over 100 years ago. I would. But best would be to actually document it since you can learn quite a bit about everyday life in Brooklyn back then.
@@thomasthemenace I know! Why not clean it up and auction all the finds to cover the cost of cleanup?
There are so many bottle collectors out there!
@@symbungee Collecting them costs money. Setting up an auction costs money. Sure, it sounds really logical after watching one of these videos, but if you find out your city spend $15,000 to auction off the remains of a construction site you'd be pissed off that they are wasting money.
Chernobyl be like: Hold my 1918 coke glass bottle.
Jokes are supposed to be funny 😂 this just makes no sense
The aussie news reporter accent is bringing back some memories.
Vanessa has a great presentation voice, hey!
It's so jarring to hear your own accent on TH-cam sometimes
I grew up less than 5 miles from there, spent a good part of my childhood exploring that beach. So many bottles, but also construction waste, lots of old tile and metal fixtures, and most surprisingly lots of old bones. At one point there were rendering plants that would process the carcasses of the thousands of horses and other animals that would die across NYC every year. After processing, the bones would just be dumped in the water. Not sure if it was official or just a local name, but the area became known as Dead Horse Bay.
0:52
"To get closer, you'd have to get a boat..."
"So we got a boat!"
Kolbeinsey moment
"We're on a boat!"
This is a true Tom Scott video, even if Tom Scott isn't the one presenting it.
I just sawed this boat in half
As an Australian 90's kid, her style of editing *really* reminds me of an old episode of Getaway, or Behind The News... And that is most definitely intended as a compliment.
If casey neistat vlogs there, will a second pair of sun glasses grow out of his face?
Probably grow a skateboard for a dong.
@@creatureofvenice probably right
Yes
How can you be that Creative? 😂👍🏻
@@_ao101 big brain
Her jacket is an international treasure.
I think it’s great, but I must confess to being a bit put off by the overripe bananas 🍌
Now i hope when beaches get cleaned,they get cleaned carefully and can say "this belongs in a museum" about my trash.
I'm an Archaeologist who does a lot of work in National Forests in the Midwest and we've had a few site (old logging camps or CCC camps) that got "cleaned up" because people didn't understand the value of old cans and bottles.
By far the most diverse, interesting and downright entertaining channel in my subs list.
This is absolutely fascinating! Love a wee bit of archaeology, and definitely think that the beach should have a selection of its artefacts preserved.
_Meanwhile, in a mountain in Austria: "Get in, the Radon's fine!"_
Interesting video! Brooklyn isn't the only borough with beachfront radioactivity, either! Great Kills Park in Staten Island was discovered to have elevated levels of radiation due to contamination from Radium 226 back in 2005. Most of the park is still cordoned off today. From what I could gather, is that the radium, along with other chemical waste, was comingled with waste fill material and was (hopefully) unintentionally disposed of there.
"Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures."
Need something?
Skyrim reference, thank you Belethor !!
Thank you Tom Scott for your awesome videos! I have just discovered your channel a month ago and I have enjoyed every video I’ve seen.
We should definitely clean up our beaches. Trash is trash. Get rid of it.
I love finding absolute gems on youtube thankyou Tom for making so many videos I just flick my finger and press on the next on all of your stuff has something interesting!!
"There's a radioactive beach that needs protecting. Here, I'll mark it on your map."
Thank You for hosting these great channels and letting me widen (or further enclosing 🤔🤷♂️) my internet contentbubble!
Please give me MORE!
- Hey, pick up your trash
- I think you'll find that it's urban archaeology.
The guests have been great, thanks for keeping us entertained!
No I havent tidied my room. Im preserving it for future civilisations to study
This had to be my favorite one. This is why I miss New York; you've never seen all of it! I never knew about this beach.
I just can't see a trash getting removed from nature as being a bad thing.
Bottles from the 1930s are not exactly archaeological treasures. Plenty of that and more in landfills all over the world. Meanwhile cleaning environments from our decomposing trash seems like an effort worth doing, especially from components that don't appear naturally like plastics and refined uranium...
Some of that trash might be museum type of stuff and they're just gonna throw it away
Clean the beach but preserve the stuff that's important
@@anttipekkap it's a dump though.
@@anttipekkap What? The museums are full of glass from 100 years ago. We have tons of that stuff, it isn't like this is some prehistoric find. It's a dump, a disgusting beach that is radioactive. Anything worth preserving has been picked over by people over numerous decades that you could go there and dig around.
@@jeffreymason7049 The point is that future generations may find value in what we deem as trash. The reason Superman #1 is so valuable is because so many people deemed it trash and disposed of it destructively. A shard of pottery from the classical Greek era is a treasure now, but to them it was trash. There's a balance between the two extremes of hoarding everything and recycling/destroying everything, and this video is trying to make the case against recycling/destroying everything. Now, it doesn't mean that the majority of this trash shouldn't be disposed of in some fashion, but don't underestimate the value of these things either.
I'm moving to England soon, and one of the things I can't wait to do is go mudlarking. It's just fascinating to me that one can find Roman pottery on the Thames foreshore, not to mention all the clay pipes that were just trash a hundred years ago. Urban archaeology is so cool!
Archaeologists: "Mine mine mine mine mine."
Archaeologists on a beach: "Mine mine mine mine mine." *boom*
Funnily enough, I have a genuine "Danger: Minefield" sign in my toilet at the moment.
Hopefully it won't be missed too much...
@@RAFMnBgaming There's a story there I think I need to hear but I'm kind of terrified of finding out.
@@RAFMnBgaming is more needed where it is now
Two tidbits.
This isn't the only radioactive beach/park in New York City. There's another cleanup/investigation area that's ongoing at Great Kills Park in Staten Island.
Dead Horse Bay was named after horse rendering plant, where dead horse were butchered to make glue and fertilizers. They used to toss the remains out to sea. This business dried up as car became more common. Jamaica Bay is one of my favorite place because it's such a unique piece of New York history.
This beach is very close to where I live and I’ve never even heard of it. Wow
Highly interesting. I think that preserving such artifacts is very important. Whenever I find such pieces, I keep them, as to me, they're like the key to a different time.
"trash but time = artifact" sounds like a big roast on the valve game
There's an island near me, St Mary's Island, that used to be a Royal Navy nuclear submarine fuel dump, or something along those lines. Within the past couple decades though they've cleaned it up and turned it into a (slightly radioactive) housing estate.
There's still a lot of historical junk around us though. Clay Pipes from the Napoleonic wars wash up on the rocky beaches all the time. We used to collect them when I was a kid.
There must be a lot of music blasting on that beach
@@birdsplaybs1234 Certainly an effective way to keep people off the beach, hey-oh!
doesn't look like the east coast of England ta me 🤔
One man’s trash is literally another man’s treasure in this case. I like to think they made the beach radioactive as a coverup to preserve it
"Above ambient" means nothing... Living at higher altitudes, taking a plane trip, etc... will put you at far beyond ambient at sea level but no one talks about those being dangers.
If you lived at the altitudes planes fly at it would actually be a radiation hazard. But of course pilots and other people who work on planes aren't up there 24/7 so it's not as bad for them.
@@WildBluntHickok It'd be a low pressure hazard before a radiation one several times over. Planes fly higher than Everest.
Ambient is a very low level of radiation and "above ambient" isn't at all a big deal unless you're living there. What a non-issue that they're making into one.
Love her work, glad to see her here.
Midden is going to be my name in the future.
In scotland my gran used to tell me "yer a midden" when I came in the house all dirty from playing outside. In Scotland it means a mess. (As well as an old word for a cesspit.)
@@TheSpacecraftX that’s so sweet :)
In my head, I saw box art for the next EA Sports (American) football game. Midden NFL 2022! Now with trash + time!
Speaking as a philatelist, the collecting, preserving and studying of stamps, envelopes and the letters inside them offers a fascinating, and often very clear, glimpse back into social history. Some philatelists are now looking into collecting so-called 'junk mail' for that very reason.
Police Officer: Sir, you're gonna get a ticket for all that littering you're doing
Me: That's no way to talk to an archaeologist!
I Love that you give other people the space for this Videos
imagine future archeologists finding one of those landfills underneath the grass at a park and they're trying to figure out why on earth someone kept so many strange items in one place
Fortunately, they'll almost certainly find the remains of something complaining about landfills inside the landfills, so they'll have some clues.
@@clockworkkirlia7475 Would probably show up in things that do tend to get preserved like official land-use records etc too.
I think they will realize that it’s trash by the empty containers
Nah, they'll just call them "Ritual Offerings" and create some specious theories about religious behaviour...
This also raises the interesting question of how valuable potential artifacts are in the age of mass digital record keeping, because in the future, archeologists might only need to look at old youtube videos to find much more information.
Digital record keeping is very impermanent. You have to intentionally preserve it or it could be gone as soon as the servers running the websites close or the websites themselves shutdown.
Don't worry, you'll see places like this over time
The beach is referred to as Glass Bottle Beach, but the water next to it is known as Dead Horse Bay. The reason being that before cars, when horse-drawn carriages were the main mode of transport, dead and dying horses had to be disposed of somewhere. In Brooklyn, they were usually taken there to be disposed of and their hooves were rendered into glue. It's not uncommon to find large horse bones on the beach alongside all of the old glass bottles and leather shoes.
It sounds like they used the "[Radiation] above ambient levels" as an excuse to get the beach cleaned up. I doubt the radiation levels are high enough to pose any tangible risk. I would bet they just want the trash gone.
This place is where me and my family keeps a little kayak we have. I heard about the radioactive materials but did not know the full story. I was very surprised to see it in a Tom Scott video
Future archaeologists are going to think your kayak is garbage.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 well we took it out when the marina shut down but maybe they would have
I feel clickbaited. After waiting to hear how, why, and to what extent the beach is radioactive, I get a few seconds about that followed by, "...this isn't about radiation as much as it's about urban archeology."
I love discovering new creators each year and it's always interesting and diverse subjects !
As a kid I was obsessed with archeology and use to write down the exact date and place on everything I used so that if anyone found it in the future it'd be easier for them 😂.
The case of this beach is further proof that all kind of scientists have to be consulted before making these decisions, hopefully they'll find a compromise.
Me: went to the beach in nyc over the summer
Also me: scared
Edit: wasn’t this beach
Did you inhale?!
Thanks for the denoting the actors in this little script, I would've surely been lost if you just wrote what you were feeling and why.
No need to panic. You're more likely to get ripped apart by a sasquatch.
Unless you snorted those deck markers, you are safe. Or rather:
If you went there by car, the toxic fumes from traffic probably cointained more radioactivity, and definitely more cancerous material than that beach.
The levels have gone above "ambient", for the New York area, which is still far from any dangerous levels even if you are exposed 24/7. (Because that is what ambient levels mean.)
But they decided, just to be safe, and probably because they want to clean up the beach.
I live near Coney Island
Yay Nessie! Always great to see you get a wider audience.
"Earlier this year"? It's only 25 days in!
Love Venessa. Been watching her channel for a long time. It was nice to see her in one of your vids!
If we intentionally preserve "trash" then all we tell our future generations is what we thought was relevant. Which is telling but not like seeing every aspect of human life in a 100 year old dump
True. But: In the last few decades our society has shifted towards eradicating traces. Buildings are no longer built on top of the ruins of older buildings, instead the place is excavated to dig a foundation. Trash is no longer just dumped, it is shredded, separated and stored in a way that loses a lot of information. This is of course not ubiquitous. But there is a trend. We tend to wipe out a lot of the traces that archeologists rely on in finding out about past civilizations. Look at this beach: one or two hundred years ago, the beach wouldn't have been cleaned up, and after sufficient time, and layers of sand, the artifacts would have been there to dig up. For our society, this is of course a good thing, as it often is a sign of environmental awareness and sustainability. But future Archeologists may end up relying on time capsules that we intentionally leave for them, as we eradicate more and more of the unintentional debris.
@@thomasblazek4104 Well said 👍👍
@@thomasblazek4104 Don't worry, there are plenty of human records in the soils, seas and air, from quarries, to organophosphates and methane gas, plenty of plastics in all varieties and plenty of landfills all around the world... Just take out your trash. Bottles from 1930s are not archaeological relics.
It may not be *every* thing, but it really is a lot. Nothing on that beach has been selectively curated for preservation, but rather it has remained in the same state it was left in back in the 1920s. Many of those "artifacts", as crazy as it sounds, let us know that this time period really did happen, and that these people really did exist. The Ancient Egyptians also selectively chose what to and not preserve (e.g. mummifying royalty and priests), which may not give us the full story, but it lets us know that this civilization did exist and gives us glimpses into their lives. The fact of the matter is that humans have been selectively "preserving" things since human history began, and when we do find an entirely preserved city or town, it certainly wasn't intentional.
A bottle from 1929? Here in central Europe, millions of shards from bronze and iron age lie around in the crop fields. When the postal office in Rasumofskygasse in Vienna was rebuilt in 2014, they found settlements starting from around 5000 BC, but archaeologists were only given a few months for an ermergency dig before it was all destroyed by the construction machines.
Radioactive beach?
So chernobyl but for vacations
Wh1plash has spoken
I think it's important to record and store bits of history for people to remember but especially in natural areas like beaches we have more of a responisibility to correct these past mistakes.
"perfectly harmless"
*shows broken glass*
Best Beach Award
Ehh it's just a little broken glass. It'll toughen you up.
"The beach where your sandals must meet or exceed the requirements set out in OSHA Standard 1910.136"
@@joshuacollins385 Love that you got the OSHA number correct XD
FDA approved
Fantastic video, really enjoyed that, and some interesting thought points.
I can't imagine the utility of preserving broken coke bottles when we have video, audio, books, and some living memory from that time.
Just because you don't understand, it doesn't mean the real objects aren't worth preserving to other people. We all have our own idea of what is good and important after all...
@@groggers sure like, ancient, but sometimes trash + time is still just trash.
Cool stuff this break month. It's awesome content, you get a break, and they get exposure. I don't get why more creators don't do this
I suddenly started listening in my head Snoop’s voice saying “Welcome to the world of the Plastic Beach”
There’s something similar in Edinburgh. Old WW2 military equipment with radioactive paint was dumped on a beach near Fife. It’s not fenced off or anything but the massive radiation sign and the warnings about no digging generally keep people away.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: On Vacation + NYC =
Excellent investigative questioning! If only there were easy answers...
The boat is called big daddy.. why did they even show that in a close perspective?
cause big daddy
To mess with you
B I G D A D D Y
This guest presenting style was really cool