#i haven't posted these many incorrects so frequently in years

[quaranmine]

Missing 411 guy?

David Paulides, the guy who is the creator of "Missing 411" which is basically a conspiracy about suspicious clusters of people going missing in National Parks in the United States. He is also the bane of my existence for the past year as someone who is researching a story about someone who goes missing in a National Forest.

To start with, if you've ever been even on the fringes of "irl spooky stuff" videos on YouTube, you might have encountered this. There are a lot of youtubers and podcasters who cover this guy's content without understanding What and Who they are giving platform to. Sometimes, people don't even mention him but will relate the cases that he covers in his books or use the same conspiracy points as him. I would not be suprised if you watched a Buzzfeed Unsolved/Watcher video (which are fine btw) and then got recommended something related to Missing 411 in the sidebar since it's a similar genre. It's super popular to the point where its outgrown its creator. I can't stress enough that many of you have probably encountered this content, at least in passing, without knowing what it was.

So to recap, Missing 411 documents cases of real-life people who have disappeared or been found dead in national parks, national forests, etc and claims that these cases are unusual and mysterious. It frequently talks about missing person "clusters" and things like that. There is often an overt, if not outrightly stated, implication that something supernatural, crpytid, or UFO/alien related was involved. For starters, David Paulides has written a ton of books trying to prove the existence of bigfoot. Now, I have no issues with people believing in bigfoot, or cryptids, or aliens, but I do have an issue with people co-opting real life tragedies and twisting information to push this as conspiracy. I simply do not think it is helpful or respectful to talk about missing and dead people (and children!) like this. Also, with the high prices of his books ($100-200) he just reeks of grifter to me.

To me, Missing 411 "criteria" is a stretch at best. You will see cases "mysteriously" connected because both of these people wore red when they went missing. Both these people's bodies were found near water (as if many National Park do not have water features.) Both these people's bodies were found near granite rocks (like, the most common rock type in mountains lol.) All these cases involve the weather turning bad! (um, yeah, that's a big reason why people get in trouble?) He frequently claims that bodies being undressed is highly unusual, without ever acknowledging paradoxical undressing. Or he claims laughably weak connections between people like "these two women who went missing in different years are connected because they both had three letter names that started with A." I haven't personally listened to this talk but there is a data scientist mentioned in his Wikipedia page who examined the case data and found nothing out of the ordinary in them. If you don't want to watch a video (I don't either right now) then he also wrote this article. From a different person, this article from a podcast is also good.

David Paulides does not present Missing 411 cases with accuracy. He has been known to cherry-pick data and purposefully omit data to make them seem more unusual. Many cases he covers are either already solved, or have extensive information available. He does not retract information or admit when he is wrong. Even if he does present a particular case accurately, he has such a bad track record with reliable research that he cannot be trusted as a source. There used to be someone on reddit who would deconstruct cases he covered. In this post they found several instances of cases of Paulides missing sources and coming to incorrect conclusions.

Note there's a few differences in the sources I just linked. The data scientist and podcast skeptic both said they found the data to be accurate, while the redditors have found evidence to the contrary. The data scientist also says he found Paulides' presentation of information respectful, but I personally find all of this highly disrespectful. But despite these differences I think we can all agree....the claims of Missing 411 are pretty ridiculous.

Also, let's talk about David Paulides himself. Before becoming a writer, he was a cop in California. He was a cop who was fired for corruption (well that's hard to do), because he was caught soliciting donations for a fake charity he set up. That's straight from his Wikipedia page. He continues to use his past as a "dectective" to attempt to make his claims sound more reliable. There was also a redditor who pulled up some other career highlights from when he was a cop in the 80s, by looking at court transcripts and news articles. His job used to be entrap gay men by pretending to be gay, getting them to invite him home with them, and then arresting then. He and his unit were also accused of police brutality many times in the 80s, with Paulides testifying in defense of his unit. And he has not changed btw, he's a Qanon stolen election covid denier type of nut right now on his YouTube channel (according to reddit. I am not watching this man's videos.) So yeah, I think his character speaks for itself.

Anyway, I'm tired of hearing about this guy and seeing 411 related content pop up around YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, etc. Pay attention if you watch things related to "creepy and unexplained real life disappearnaces." I do not think he is a good person, I do not think he can be trusted, and I do not think that his work actually benefits the families of the missing persons in question. These are real people. He turns them into spectacles to push ~unusual~ circumstances and paranormal activity.

[ahaura]

it's been a while buuuut. ancient language posting time !

so one of the things i do in my free time for fun is making charts full of words and one of my favorite sites to use this for is wiktionary and would you look at that

first things first -> i've been transcribing h.w. bailey's dictionary of saka vocabulary because you can't copy and paste so many atypical english characters from a pdf and keep the original form (i've tried) so i've been typing out each lemma out individually with the goal of uploading bailey's vocabulary onto wiktionary -> the existing list of lemmas on wiktionary last i checked is like 10 words max (with some additional references in the lemma index of scythian and i think maybe tocharian b) and the word above is not listed on the lemma index which isn't that unusual but what caught my eye is the characters used for the transliteration of the lemma -> as far as i know the khotanese script has not been adapted for web use. there has been a proposal for saka characters in unicode (?) and the most recent entry into the project i can find is from 2015, a pdf with an overview of the language and citing examples of the proposed script in use, as screenshotted below

as far as i can tell the script used for khotanese on wiktionary does not match the proposed script in the document, which doesn't necessarily mean that it couldn't be khotanese because the pdf is almost 10 years old and it's entirely possible someone may have implemented a different project or made some sort of breakthrough or progress on the translation/assessment of khotanese since h.w. bailey's time but when i googled the characters and haven't been able to find a proper source from the script but i'm fairly certain it isn't khotanese -> individually pasting the characters pointed me to kharosthi, an ancient indo-iranian script that was used from 4th century BCE to 3rd century CE. the saka language (of which khotan is one of 2 dialects, the other being tumshuq but as far as i've read has considerably less documentation than khotan) was spoken from 100 BC to 1,000 AD. on kharosthi's wikipedia pages, the languages it was used for were gandhari prakrit, pali, saka, and sanskrit (khotanese has much in common and i think some loanwords from buddhist sanskrit which is referenced frequently as well as tibetan throughout bailey's translations of khotanese lemmas). so the kharosthi script may have been used for saka translations (both khotanese and tumshuqese? only one? unclear) -> so while the kharosthi script is not technically an incorrect use for depicting a khotanese word, it is not the khotanese script on record. i think. idk im not a scholar im just a guy googling things for fun -> additional considerations is that, according to the page, some of its parent systems are egyptian hieroglyphs, the phoenician alphabet, and the armaic alphabet. some of its sister systems are the syriac alphabet, pahlavi scripts, and sogdian alphabet. sogdian in particular is of interest because it's listed among the cognates of bailey's translated lemmas - alongside languages such as ossetian, which is considered a relative and possibly descendant of scythian (the khotanese people were closely related to the scythains).

once again i have no formal or academic knowledge i could be dead wrong about any and all of this i just look this shit up for fun but hey the more you know i guess <3

[justletmeplayminecraft]

GenerikB's Vault Hunters Copy

This is written by somebody that was watching Vault Hunters at the launch of S1 & saw this take place. I've been watching less frequently lately, and this mostly took place mid 2021, so this may not be wholly accurate. If there's anything that needs amending or adding (sources, quotes, clips, incorrect or additional info) please send an ask or DM me.

DISCLAIMER: Iskall does not want drama about this. There is a reason he has not made a public statement and never named Generik in streams. Respect that and use this as a summary without bringing it up to creators. I'm compiling this now with the situation being referenced after Generik's most recent 'teasing', so it can be used as a resource for those who haven't heard and are confused when it's brought up.

This post will break down what occurred with Iskall's pack, Vault Hunters, and GenerikB's copy Vault Busters. For a summary of what happened with S8 of Hermitcraft, I recommend this Reddit post. This is a different situation that predates it.

During VH S1, GenerikB was a frequent viewer of Vault Hunters. He sometimes raided Iskall and stuck around to chat afterwards, and Iskall had nothing but positive things to say about him.

Messages from myself. Dated 6th March 2021

Generik raided Iskall, and Iskall, troll he is was like 'make sure to spam his chat why no hermitcraft'

I did not see Generik's response because it got deleted by nightbot for caps

Iskall saying Generik is actually his preferred person to watch modded Minecraft though

Also Generik sticking around to chat as well I love seeing that

Generik had an interest in the pack, had seen streams of it, and was even one of the people I thought may join VH for S2.

On the 24 March 2021, the VH1 modpack was publicly released (I believe now called Vault Hunters Legacy.)

S2 of Vault Hunters was announced to start at the end of April, and GenerikB was not a member. In early May, GenerikB started Vault Busters, a copy of the original Vault Hunters pack.

Tweet posted 8th May 2021 (first mention of Vault Busters I've found)

Tweet posted 23 May 2021

Facebook post made 30 May 2021

I also found another tweet about it dated 10 May 2021, from another streamer. Vault Busters was advertised as a knock-off, broken and dangerous. Many of the tweets also seem like they could be mocking the original pack, although I can't confirm if that was the intent.

Tweet From 15 May 2021 (not linked as this is an unaffiliated fan)

@iskall85 There is a modpack called Vault Busters. I'm watching a guy named Generikb play it right now. It's literally a ripoff of your mod. Has vendors, statues, bits, gift bombs, the vault altar, research points, the whole nine yard. Just FYI.

Although modpacks are usually a compilation of mods by various creators (including Vault Hunters itself), all acknowledgement of Iskall and his development team had been removed. For those who don't know, Iskall has a paid development team behind Vault Hunters, which is part of where money earnt from his streams goes. This team created art, models, builds, UI & code that are unique to the modpack and still used in Vault Busters. Though Vault Busters had adjustments & additional mods, removing any acknowledgement of the pack it was built off is disrespectful at best and malicious at worst.

These details are less certain, as I remember seeing them but I'm unable to find my sources so I can't confirm the information (especially after a year.)

Firstly, there was a clip of another streamer playing the pack (may have been the one I linked from 10th May) that when somebody brought up the copying, said that it wasn't the same pack because they'd added more mods and made it playable. I would love to find this clip to know the exact wording, but sadly cannot.

Secondly, I recall something saying that the gems (unique items from VH. Some were themed after the content creators on the server) had been renamed to make fun of the creators they were named after. Again, I can't find a source for this, and I couldn't stand to watch enough of Vault Busters to see for myself.

Iskall publicly acknowledged this a few times in the early days of VH2. He never referenced GenerikB by name, but mentioned somebody copying the pack. When asked what he thought about Generik, he had a distinctly negative change in attitude and chat often reacted with an 'oof' as well. He'd otherwise frequently skirt the topic, or ignore people mentioning it. One of the quotes I have saved is this one, where he was discussing the release of V2. Dated 25th August 2021.

"It will not be redistributable and changeable, because we made that mistake in S1 and there was some people that stole VH and called it something else. In addition to taking the piss at the brand, saying it was janky and garbage. Pretty cringe. So we won't be making that mistake again."

Though other people may have stolen the pack, the second half of the quote lines up with how Generik advertised Vault Busters. I'm unsure if VH2 was released this way, but it's obvious Generik's actions had an impact on Iskall and his decisions surrounding the modpack moving forward.

Generik has not (to my knowledge) even acknowledged this drama. There has been no apology for his actions, especially considering he was making money from this. (Although Twitch Integration - in game effects & rewards by viewers that subscribe or donate - was removed from the public release, it is possible to add it back manually. This isn't frowned upon by itself, but combined with Generik's other actions around the pack it's more disappointing.)

A few people brought it up when Generik started teasing his scam of joining HCS8, including this conversation where Generik denies ever having drama with Iskall (and the hermits as a whole):

He refuses to acknowledge that he's done wrong in this situation, and that this situation even exists. I don't believe he still plays Vault Busters. This situation is all water under the bridge, as you can see from the dates, but I think it's important for new fans to know that this kind of behaviour is seemingly typical of Generik, and he obviously didn't learn from the S8 situation either.

TLDR: Iskall & his team created a modpack called Vault Hunters. Generik used the public release of it to create a copy named Vault Busters, advertising it as a broken knock-off and removing all credit to Iskall & his development team.

And again, do not contact any creators about this. Do not bring it up on streams. This post is intended solely as a resource for people who don't know and are interested in learning about this situation as it's hard to find information about it.