I just had my honeymoon (originally scheduled for Jun 2020). My wife and I are in our early thirties. It’s my wife’s first time in japan while it’s my fourth. I’ve benefitted immensely from stalking Tokyo travel reddit and would like to return the favour. I’ll provide some of my tips and observations to the end (skip to the end if the itinerary doesn’t interest you), some of which I think haven’t been mentioned before.
Thank God pretty much everything went to plan, and my wife thoroughly enjoyed the trip. We spent 12 days in Japan, most of it in Tokyo and 2 nights in Kawaguchiko. Many people were surprised to know that we’d be spending most of our trip in Tokyo, but I thought it was just fine because Tokyo had a lot to offer. My wife and I aren’t big on visiting shrines or ticking tourist hotspots off a checklist. We don’t shop much, but we did a lot of it simply because it’s Japan and we bought lots of quality-of-life items (not fashion) for ourselves and others. Given how much my wife really enjoyed the trip, I think others with similar interests could find something helpful too.
Pre-trip planning

• Other than the hotel & flights, I booked the highway express bus to Kawaguchiko one week prior.
• Decided on the airport limousine bus to bring us from the airport to the city a few days prior.
• Studio Ghibli tickets booked one month in advance. International tickets were quickly sold out, so we used a free VPN to get onto the Japanese site which had more tickets & timings available. Simply Google translate the entire page.
• Booked a cooking class on cookly months prior.
• Did Visit Japan QR two days prior. It takes some time so do it earlier rather than later.
• Added all places of interests in a Google list, and all food places in another Google list. I tried the custom Google maps at first but didn’t feel the UI was easy to navigate.
• Planned itinerary based on location proximity, and also highlighted parts that were interchangeable in case we wanted to switch it up (which we did).

Planning during the trip

• The Google maps foods list was always just for consideration: if we had time or were craving something. We didn't hard-code food places into our daily plans. But when food was the primary activity (e.g. visiting Tsukiji market), we'd determine to visit particular food stalls. Otherwise, just needed to do a cursory Google review check on whether a random food place is worth eating it. As a principle, we didn't want to spend time unnecessarily queuing for food.
• I'd plan the next day's itinerary the night before, considering fatigue, interest, and proximity. I would create a brand new Google maps list for the next day, including potential food places.

Day 0 (Wed) - Arrival at Shinjuku Airport- Arrived in Haneda late, about 11. Clearance was quick but baggage took 30mins. I had no choice but to cancel my airport limousine and take the metro to our hotel in Shinjuku.- I tried Apple wallet’s Suica at first. It worked seamlessly but felt that a physical metro card was just faster so I eventually switched over.- Reached after midnight, so do let your hotel know in advance if you anticipate arriving at odd hours.
Day 1 (Thurs) - Shinjuku exploration- Originally planned to visit Tsukiji on day 1, but given that we arrive late the previous night, agreed with my wife to change the plan and spend the first day doing the Shinjuku itinerary.

• Walked to a popular Tsukumen place at 11. Queued for 20mins and it was an interesting experience as there were lines of people standing right behind watching you eat. Wife said it was her best Tsukumen ever!
• Sekaido for art & stationary supplies: My wife does art so it was a haven for her. We spent a few hours there!
• Tokyu Hands Shinjuku: but two floors were under renovation.
• Omoide Yokocho: A quick walkthrough. Many tourists.

Day 2 (Fri) - Kappabashi St., Fabric Town, Akihabara

• Kappabashi Dougu Street: looked at kitchen supplies and to find a nice knife! (Do research on what knife you need beforehand).
• Fabric Town: My wife just passed a seamstress exam so she eagerly anticipated visiting fabric town, we spent a few hours in Tomato.
• Akihabara (Animate, Bic Camera, Gyukatsu Don): It was drizzling the entire day so it was not the most comfortable lugging that many bags around a wet Akihabara in the evening. Wife wasn’t interested but I wanted to let her experience this unique culture. Had dinner at a popular gyukatsu don (beef cutlet that you’d have to cook yourself). It was fantastic and I had never eaten it. But it was a long one hour wait.

Day 3 (Sat) - Cooking class in Shinjuku, Shibuya

• Private cooking class in Shinjuku: Our host was great! We were invited into his cosy house and he taught us how to make Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, and a Japanese salad. My wife absolutely loved the experience of getting to know a local and understanding his life story, Japanese culture, and some of his horror stories of guests. We got more food recs from him to understand where the locals really ate at.
• Shibuya 109: Paid $5 for a drink to have a bird’s eye view of the Shibuya crossing. It was Saturday so the people crossing was at its full force. Even if you think this is touristy, it’s amazing to see that many people like little ants crossing a street. There are several nice locations here to take some artsy shots.
• Ishibashi Music Shibuya: absolutely loved the vibe in this music store. Back home, I’ve been thinking about getting a particular keyboard but never got a chance to try it. I was able to play this particular one undisturbed and feel totally comfortable. Bought a few Japan exclusive guitar picks as gifts.
• Shibuya Tokyu Hands: This was amazing. I thought Shinjuku Tokyu Hands was the flagship store. So I only stumbled into this because I urgently needed to pee and someone said Tokyu hands had toilets. We were confused as its name was rebranded to simple Hands with a new logo. IF you only have time to visit one Tokyu Hands, visit the Shibuya one. Each floor had 2 sub-floors so that’s a ton of floors! Lots of quality-of-life improvements one could get from this store. My wife got a buckwheat pillow.
• Shibuya Loft: After Sekaido, I didn’t think there was much to look at. But Loft was very different. Similar to Tokyu hands but seems more modern and fashionable. Worth visiting together with Tokyu hands! It also had packaged food available! It was late and my wife and I concluded that we didn’t have to to explore all the floors and that we’d return to Shibuya again.

Day 4 (Sun) - Komazawa Church, Harajuku, Shibuya

• Church in Komazawa: not a tourist activity, but we linked up with some partners from our home church and attended service at a little church held in a nursery. It was an amazing and encouraging experience.
• Harajuku: Way too crowded. I had anticipated this as it was a Sunday, but thought to just try. Takeshita street was so packed my wife feared there would be a trample risk (it wasn’t that bad). We did queue 20mins for pretty tasty crepe. After checking out all the recommended streets (e.g. cat street, uru-harajuku), my wife simply felt that she couldn’t stand the Harajuku crowd and the vibes. So we decided to go back to Shibuya again!
• Shibuya JINS: I didn’t mention this but previously in Shinjuku and Shibuya, I had been checking out recommended optical shops in the vicinity. I had something in particular in mind. Japanese-made glasses are highly-rated, but I couldn’t find something at the right price-point. At JINS, I found a design I liked. Though not made in Japan, it cost me less than 5000 yen. Took them 1 hour to make it. For some reason I loved the vibes at Shibuya, and I earmarked it to return again later.

Day 5 (Mon) - Tsukiji Market, Ginza Muji/Uniqlo, Tokyo station

• Tsukiji market: wanted to arrive before 8 and was 30m late. But the crowds weren’t that bad either. Everything we tried was lovely. Potato/corn fishcakes, strawberry mochi, tamago, wagyu beef, uni inarisushi, unagi. But the star was Masa burger, which we waited till 11am to try. By then, the tourist buses had come and the streets were packed. But Masa burger was in a corner and we were their first customers. We tried fried codfish burger + homemade ginger ale. Both were was so well done and the burger was packed with such fresh and interesting salads! It was so good we had it twice.
• Ginza Uniqlo/Muji: we wanted to take a look at some of Uniqlo’s exclusive items. Apparently they do have exclusive t-shirts for each region (e.g. Harajuku, Shibuya, Ginza). They tend to be collaborations with well-known food places in the area. However, they were always white in colour and not made-in-japan-quality. Muji was a disappointment, not a lot more than the usual.
• Tokyo Station Ghibli & Tenugui: Went to Tokyo station to check out the Ghibli store and to look for a particular traditional tenugui (Japanese towels) store as my wife were hunting these down to give as gifts.
• Shinjuku Ichiran & Mister Donut: We returned to Shinjuku for Ichiran ramen, specifically at 5+pm. No crowds at all. Yummy! We then saw a Mister Donut, and recalled news in our home country that when it first opened, people queued 5 hours for it. We thought to try it to see what the fuss was all about. Cash only, but the donuts were wonderfully textured and not too sweet. My wife doesn’t like sweet stuff, but mister donut really hit the sweet spot (no pun intended).

Day 6 (Tue) - Tokyo National Museum, Fabric town revisit, Akihabara revisit, Ochanomizu

• Tokyo National Museum: We had a good time learning about Japan’s early history, and discovered that so much that we know of Japan resulted from Chinese/korean influence.
• Fabric town & Akihabara revisit, Ochonomizu: We decided that this was likely the right time to go back for items we missed out on or didn’t have time to see. My wife went to fabric town while I went to Akihabara’s Yodaibashi camera, which I felt to be better and with more varied things than Bic Camera. I then went to Ochanomizu to look at more music and sport shops. We met up again at Shinjuku for another Gyukatsu Don before heading to mister donuts again.

Day 7 (Wed) - Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, Mori Museum, Ginza Wakamatsu, Shinjuku

• Shinjuku Gyoen Garden: lovely large garden grounds. We spent almost an hour just lying under a tree and watching clouds float by. Wife was doing some rough sketches of the garden. We had mister donuts from last night for breakfast.
• Mori Museum: Saw the exhibition of Heatherwick studios, which was inspiring and educational. Paid for the rooftop access to have a quick view of Tokyo from 50-ish floors up.
• Ginza Wakamatsu: Because of one of the Uniqlo-ginza-exclusive t-shirts, my wife was curious about this traditional Japanese dessert. So we gave it a check and realised it’s been around for more than a century. There was a short line (mainly Japanese elderly). The shop interior transported us back decades. It felt surreal eating a dessert that the Japanese ate centuries ago. It’s certainly doesn’t excite and overwhelm one’s taste buds immediately as modern desserts do. But there’s an old charm to it.
• Shinjuku Okadaya fabric: Returned to Shinjuku as my wife wanted to check out another of their famous fabric stores. Prices were more expensive than fabric town, but somewhat different items.

Day 8 (Thurs) - Kawaguchiko

• Bus to Kawaguchiko: Packed light to Kawaguchiko, and forwarded our remaining luggage to our post-Kawaguchiko hotel in Tamachi. The Shinjuku hotel staff were very helpful. I was merely inquiring on how luggage forwarding was done, but he picked up the phone, called my Tamachi hotel to confirm the booking, and prepared the documents for me. All I had to do was roll my luggage the next night to them and make payment. Booked a 7:45am bus to Kawaguchiko and managed to catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji when we were on our way there!
• Cycling In Kawaguchiko: We lugged our bags to our ryokan and headed out again. My wife was quite hesitant about cycling overseas and I was also worried it’d tire her out too much. I debated between cycling or simply taking the sight-seeing bus. Eventually felt that it was worth trying to cycling. We unexpectedly walked by an e-bike place and decided - why not? Neither of us had tried an e-bike before and that could reduce the effort required for my wife. So we did and boy was it fun! It took a while to get used to the e-bike but it really reduced a lot of effort up the hills! I barely perspired at all thanks to the e-assist. Kawaguchiko had pretty narrow roads so it wasn’t the easiest to cycle. But I had plenty of road-cycling experience back at home so I was not daunted. We borrowed helmets from the e-bike place but saw that we were the only tourists that wore them.
• Kubota Itchiku Art Museum: Cycled here knowing that this museum would interest my wife. It had a garden that was free entry and it was really charming! The pond had a singular vibrant-coloured Koi swimming in it. The Museum requires tickets. My wife was so enthralled by it. I was kinda sick of museums so I told her I’d wait for her outside. Wife took about 45m inside and even bought a heavy hard-cover book of Itchiku Kubota’s kimono art :/
• Momiji Corridor: was just 50m away. Still beautiful with only green leaves, but I’d imagine it would be majestic in Autumn/Spring.
• Oishi Park: Many colourful flowers! It’s a pity that it had been cloudy the entire day, and Mt Fuji was not visible. That would have made the cycle perfect. Park was crowded with tourists.

Day 9 (Fri) - Fuji Q Highlands, Shimoyoshida Honcho St, Batting Cage
Planning for Fuji Q & Morning Jog: I didn’t plan to go to Fuji-Q highlands before the trip. Always felt it a bit of a waste to visit amusement parks overseas. That’s until I realised that Fuji Q had some of the most exciting, (I mean world-record-holding) rollercoasters in the world. Perhaps not anymore, but that intrigued me enough, because most amusement parks only had 1-2 coasters. Problem was that wife is terrified, and she said cycling on the streets of Kawaguchiko was like a coaster ride for her. So I decided I would reach at opening time, and buy time by paying for the fast passes and try their top three coasters. The night before, we felt that we had to make decisions on our itinerary as it was our last day at Kawaguchiko. If Mt Fuji wasn’t visible, go to Oshino Hakkai, if it was, we could try going to Shimoyoshida to get a nice picture.

• I took a morning jog that morning and my jaw dropped when I saw Mount Fuji towering over Kawaguchiko. I raced back to tell my wife (about 6am) and we both trekked up to a viewing spot to enjoy the view. This made it more urgent to not spend too much time at Fuji Q as we didn’t know how long Mt. Fuji would be visible for.
• Fuji-Q Highlands: Was absolutely amazing. Yes, I blew a lot of cash here buying fast passes for the three available coasters. But they were some of the craziest coasters. Took Eejanaika, Fujiyama and Takabisha. Total time it took probably a little more than 1 hour with the express passes. It was so good but so fast; I have little memory of it, except that there was a 90 degree climb to the top for Takabisha and I had a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji while climbing to the supposed world record of 79m for Fujiyama (this was 2 days before the news reported that Fujiyama got stuck in the middle of a ride and the people in the carts had to climb down :o). Had more time to take a few other rides, and enjoyed all the Naruto statues around for fun photo-taking. What I really enjoyed about the park was that it was mostly filled with Japanese tourists; in fact, there was a Japanese school having an outing there. It was nice to see excited students running about.
• Shomoyoshida Honcho St: This destination was simply to take the famous street view of Mount Fuji with Japanese shops lined in the foreground. It’s not easy to get to, and there was quite a walk. We noticed there weren’t much people around, and most shops were closed. But when we reached the destination, there were many tourists right at the particular traffic light. So much so there was a grumpy Japanese traffic police person managing the crowd. We saw the worst of tourists that day. People were disobeying traffic laws and just running in the middle of the road just to get a shot. We chanced upon a hidden udon shop and it felt like we were transported back to the 50’s! It was super old school, people sat on raised platforms, and several elderly customers were watching the tele while eating. There was only one udon option available, with free cabbage top-ups. We learnt that the shop had been around for 73 years.
• Batting Cage: I had never played baseball/softball and my home country doesn’t have a baseball culture. Yet I had seen batting cages in Japanese drama and always wanted to try. Loved it! My technique was probably pretty bad! I did well at first but as I tried faster balls, I tired out and failed to hit any haha. We ended the day eating ramen outdoors with a view of Mount Fuji.

Day 10 (Sat) - Kichijoji, Ghibli Museum, Kichijoji Jazz bar
Woke up before sunrise for a run and to attempt to catch a sunrise picture of Mount Fuji. Streets were completely empty. Even ran to the famous Kawaguchiko Lawson for a picture. Headed back for an onsen bathe (note: we never used the room's shower, and always went for an onsen bath throughout our stay in Kawaguchiko). Took a 7am bus to return to Shinjuku.

• Kichijoji: Arrived at Kichijoji at about 10. Wife really loved the vibes there. We tried the Tsukuba suisan fish cakes which were really tasty, and my wife was intrigued that a line had formed at the adjacent store named Ozasa. Apparently they sell traditional Japanese desserts and locals would go there as early as 5am to get a ticket. So we queued and managed to get three boxes worth of the snacks! Tried the Amane Taiyaki fish-shaped bean paste snacks, another traditional dessert. It was a small lovely old shop.
• Ghibli Museum: Requires a long walk through Inokashira park. Ghibli was fantastic. Many people have been saying recently that it’s over-rated, and that it doesn’t cater to foreign crowds and most things are in Japanese. We similarly struggled with that at first. But we found out that if you asked the staff, they actually had English language exhibition booklets ready for every exhibition! That was a revelation. And we managed to understand almost all the exhibitions by asking the uniformed staff (except the short film, which had minimal dialogue anyway). I mentioned this to one foreign group and they were really grateful for that. But I saw that many other foreigners that probably came earlier were just bored or simply going crazy at the Ghibli shop. My wife bought the museum book (which also has English explanations of each exhibit), and we understood Miyazaki’s vision for the museum - to make it suitable for kids and adults, with no pre-determined route, allowing for play, exploration, to help people be inspired by the artists’ process. Through that, we saw that everything in the museum was intentionally designed, all of the exhibitions, cafe, shop, and garden. Reading that helped me appreciate and enjoy the museum much more.
• Roaming Kichijoji and Some Time Jazz bar: My wife and I split up to roam kichijoji. I checked out some sports shops and saw that their prices were lower than Ochanomizu. We reconvened for dinner at Sometime Jazz bar. I’m picking up Jazz piano but had never been to a jazz bar. Booked it one day before, but was sad that our table position only allowed us to see some of the drummer and the pianist’s expression. Still, it was a very cool place and we had a wonderful time. We only sat through the first half of the performance that night. Note that there are seating charges, so that + dinner added up to quite a lot. But we rationalised that this was akin to paying for a performance. Checked into our hotel in Tamachi.

Day 11 (Sun) - Tokyo Sky Tree, Shinjuku, Back to Kichijoji, Shibuya
It was a crazy day where we simply hit the places we wanted to revisit regardless of proximity. Headed to Tokyo Skytree in the morning to check out another Ghibli store. If you’re not going to the Ghibli museum, this is probably the best store available. Headed to Shinjuku to try curry udon, then to Kichijoji to try satou beef balls and dangos and to make some purchasing decisions on some sports equipment. Then we ended up at Shibuya (my favourite place!) to the mega Don Quijote and Tokyu Hands to shop for gifts for others. It was a lovely end to our trip!
Day 12 (Mon) - Back home
Best trip ever, says my wife.
Tips for travellers

• Spread out your itinerary: I originally planned to front-load all the must-see tourist stuff and leave the remaining days for shopping. But in May, Ghibli Museum was closed for two weeks so we had no choice but to schedule it at the end of the trip. That was a better arrangement. It felt that each day was distinctly different, and we could remember the highlight of each day. Also, be specific about where you want to go. Don’t simply put locations like - Visit Harajuku, or visit Shibuya crossing.
• Plan your itinerary in consideration of weekend crowds: Places like Tsujiki market, Ghibli Museum, Fuji-Q Highlands and other stuff are likely going to be very crowded on weekends. If you want to shop in Harajuku or Shibuya, try to avoid weekends. I opted to put the cooking class and ‘less-exciting’ Museums on weekends.
• Unless you'll always be in a group, use your telco’s roaming or get an e-sim: My wife and I split up on several occasions, so we already knew the pocket wifi was out of the question.
• Carry more cash than you think you need: In my experience, the cash-to-card ratio was about 40:60. Considering that all metro card top-ups require cash, you'll need quite a bit of cash! Sometimes even bigger restaurants are cash only.
• Bring foldable tote bags, and use lockers where necessary: If you’re buying stuff, packing them in tote bags makes it easier to lug around. Bigger shops will charge you for bags. If you just came from one area with bags and are going to explore another, use the lockers. Most metro stations likely have lockers and they are really affordable and convenient.
• Travel light by planning to do laundry: I only brought four sets of clothing, and we did laundry every 3-4 days or so. It’s really convenient, about 200 yen per 30m wash, and another 200 yen for a 1h dry. It’s worthwhile to check if your hotel has coin laundry available.
• Buy wisely: Many people say the kind of things available at places like Don Quijote or Uniqlo are mind-blowing. Fact is, most of them are made in China or elsewhere. Almost 95% of the items we saw in Daiso were made in China. In fact, many items in Kappabashi street were made in China. You’re more likely to get value for money by buying a made in Japan item. Sometimes the shop will highlight if a product is Japan made. But other times, you have to scrutinise the fine print. Learn to look out for these three words in Kanji: 日本製. This is where the camera function of Google translate is immensely helpful. This was not available or widely publicised when I last visited Japan years back in 2016, so use this tech to your advantage and scrutinise the fine print!
• Plan your toilet trips if possible: If you know you’re headed to low-rise areas like Tsujiki, Fabric town where it’s just shop after shop, it’s going to be hard to find a toilet. Make sure you relieve yourself beforehand at the train station. But if you still need to go, try to find a multi-storey building and chances are, there’ll be toilets available there.
• Avoid queuing for food by timing right: In general, I found that most popular food places that required queuing had queues mainly consisting of foreigners. I wonder if this is because of the reddit/youtube/google maps review effect (not a lot of Japanese review on Google I think). So if you have to queue, there's a good chance you're competing with other foreigners. Simply put, almost all food places open at 11am, so be there at 11, or have early dinner at 5pm and perhaps you may avoid the queuing.
• Scrutinise Google maps to figure out the different train types: for daily travel, there are local, rapid, and express trains. Local trains stop at every station. Rapid skips a few, and express trains likely only stops at key location. They make a big difference to travel time, and to your comfort. When Google maps recommends a route, scrutinise the detail to ensure what kind of train they are recommending. It gets confusing at the station as the platforms on your left and right may end up at the same location, but one could be a local train and the other an express train.
• Learn just 2 essential phrases: I know it may feel weird to some, but just learn to say thank you in Japanese (arigato gozaimasu). The other essential word is - summimasen - excuse me/sorry. Useful for if you need to exit a crowded train, or if you need to get someone’s attention. We survived with just these two phrases. As our cooking teacher told us - it’s better to say something in Japanese than say nothing at all. For the rest, you can use Google translate app’s picture function.
• Other misc tips: as mentioned, bring trash bags. Some shops explicitly tell you not to walk around and eat their food. So the solution is to finish the snack in front of the shop, and say, “summimasen, can you help me to throw this trash?” That helped us avoid carrying trash around a lot. As a traveller, you’re gonna get a lot of carbs (a bowl of udon + a bowl of rice....?) and fried food. Try to go to the basements of shopping centres and get yourself some fruits. Also, if you exercise regularly like me, you'd be concerned about getting some exercise. I did pre-trip research on pools/gyms/parks to visit. But visited none of them. I settled with a daily morning routine of 100 squats and 100 pushups. That and walking an average of 18k steps daily helped. I actually lost some weight somehow.

Observations

• Drinking culture in Japan: we saw quite a few drunk people in the streets. Some of them at the parks. I had never really seen drunkards much in my home country (it could be because I don’t stay out late). When we walked by a bar area with our cooking instructor, he told us some of the people in them had been there overnight.
• The Japanese sleep late: when we arrived, we were still on the train to our hotel at 11:50pm. But the train was still packed with salarymen in suits and many others. In fact, it seemed the later it was, the more crowded the trains.
• Foreigner influx and how they stick out: there were way more foreigners this time than the last I visited Japan. I tended to feel very uncomfortable when large groups of foreigners were around. I had to tell myself not to be hypocritical as I was a foreigner myself. But I suppose one reason is that there were many inconsiderate foreigners. Speaking loudly, making brash comments, and just not behaving like visitors. We saw a foreign couple locked in a head-to-toe embrace on a picnic mat in a park full of families. And they chose a spot right next to the footpath. Many foreigners also leave unkind Google reviews for places just because it’s not up to their expectations. I get it, we worked for our holiday and are paying customers, and there is often an innate tendency to feel entitled or complain when something isn’t up to our expectations. But I think it helps to remember that we are like visitors in someone’s home. Be self-aware, don’t speak loudly, note the traffic customs, where to stand on the escalators, how to behave etc.
• Japanese men have great hair: the Japanese men’s hairstyle feels frozen in time. I didn’t see the typical Korean-inspired center-parted hairstyles in Asian guys nowadays. And balding men were a small minority somehow. As someone whose hairline is slowly receding, I was envious to see many Japanese men have wavy long hair deep into their 60-70s! My wife commented that the women's hairstyles were more or less the same - dyed, curled etc. But the men were rocking so many styles!
• Physical shopping still matters: as the days went by, my wife and I began to covet the "made-in-Japan" label, we realised that we hadn't done such window shopping in years since online shopping became prevalent. I also recall people commenting that you could get these goods online anyway, so why bother shopping in Japan. Well, window shopping makes comparison easy, it allows you to ask for recommendations, and enables you to know the items's size, feel, and look on you (if buying fashion items). It also makes discovery of new items possible. I'm not a huge shopper or a foodie, but in Japan, it's worth it to be one. I suppose it's a blessing in disguise that our honeymoon got delayed 3 years, as we now know our post-marriage lifestyles and the items we'd need in the kitchen/around the house.

I've decided not to mention the specific food places as far as possible because I think there's more than enough recommendations available elsewhere. I also think sometimes that we get a bit fomo if we build up too many must-go spots. Enjoy your trip and the process of discovering new places! But feel free to ask me more if you like.

A Lot of people will defend their favorite characters, even if they're “bad people”, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this. But I feel like the points they make can be incredibly dubious. Let me give you some examples.
Example 1: Superficial beauty (No, not when an evil character is liked for being hot.)
Many “redeeming” qualities are just pursuits that society considers "beautiful". Like art, music, and taking strolls through the park. These may give a character depth, but calling any of them redeeming feels cheap. They don’t help anyone but the character, and certain characters may even commit terrible acts in order to pursue these hobbies.
These are neutral traits, not moral ones.
Example 2: Forced to do good
A character may do good, but if the only reason is due to force, then calling this character good is a stretch to say the very least.
If there is someone good in the situation, it should be the enforcer, not the enforced.
Example 3: Ignorant Character
Moral luck is a thing, sometimes we get blamed for things outside of our control, the opposite is also true. When a character is praised for doing something beneficial, even if their intentions were completely malicious, it makes me feel weird. They didn’t plan for this to happen did they? It was a happy accident that a good result was achieved. Why do they get credit for sheer luck?
There are many more arguments I disagree with, but I highlighted these three because I feel like they're the most “neutral reasons' ', and I wanted to rant a little.

To finish this investigations-dedicated month I decided not to look at the content of the game itself (ok I will talk about the content, but I won't criticize it this time), but at the person who directed the short duology series. That person is Yamazaki, and while I could go on and on about the whole team, I decided to stick to one person. I will split this post into two section for Gyakuten Kenji 1 and Gyakuten Kenji 2.
1: I will admit, I have talked bad about this game, but in reality it actually is made to support GK2 and that is something that I can respect. I like to picture it as a sort of "stepping stone" for Yamazaki before he went on to work on GK2, one of the best Ace Attorney games ever made (imo). This game is good proof that Yamazaki could work on games and be the lead developer effectively. Even with his switch-off for Takumi after Apollo Justice, he still managed to get the concept for not a Gyakuten Saiban 5, but a Gyakuten Kenji??? It goes to show the great and unique ideas for features that were developed among this new team, and in only two years at that (AJ took 3 years). Despite not having the best third case, it still had a pretty well-developed storyline (even though many forget it). The main point is that this got Yamazaki's team off the ground and proved they could make a game.
2: Now this is where everyone put their full trust in Yamazaki, because he took the negativity from the other game and blew it out of the park with Gyakuten Kenji 2. This was proof enough that Yamazaki could keep making games for Capcom (which was obviously viewed by Capcom seeing as he directed DD). The quality of every case in this game beats out it's chronological partner in the other game (#3 cases are polar opposites). There's not much else to say besides that this game is the main root of the director's success in the Ace Attorney series and it's all thanks to the challenges put forth by Gyakuten Kenji 1. The ideas for these games were amazing, and they even built on the trilogy story which was something I did not expect (IS-7).
In the end, this is my opinion, but I don't see how his work on the trilogy or Apollo Justice could compare to what this duology has done for him. Anyone have any thoughts or disagreements?
The link to the initial post about the months of dedication (for anyone interested) is here.

Hi there! I'm a lover of all things animals, a video game enthusiast, and big fan of heavy metal music. Currently, I'm studying to become a veterinary technician and working as an assistant in the field because I love veterinary medicine that much! I also enjoy indulging in all things medieval and attending Renaissance fairs, exploring the pages of a good book, catching a great concert, and spending quality time with my furry and feathered kiddos. My heart belongs to my husband , but I'm also a history buff, crafting connoisseur, and avid movie buff. In my free time, you'll likely find me hiking through beautiful national parks, practicing my photography skills, and getting lost in the worlds of anime, Runescape, and Zelda. Looking to connect with like-minded individuals so give me a follow and let's chat!

Picked up my Model Y (with HW4) on May 29. Ordered on Apr 23. Vin F793xxx. North California.
Pre-delivery experience:
Awesome service during pre-delivery. I messaged the service agents to ask about HW3 vs HW4 on my car. They replied promptly and confirmed HW4. I also requested to pre-pone my car pick-up time. They proposed an earlier timeslot. They were friendly and helpful throughout our conversation, even replying with a warm "you are welcome.". Totally exceeded my expectation, especially considering the complaints I've seen on the forums about unresponsive service agents.
Delivery experience:
I was super anxious about the build quality and the support I would receive at the delivery site (North California). Again, I probably read too many “horror” stories in Tesla forums. But, after arriving at the delivery office, I was greeted immediately by Tesla staff. The staff welcomed me and offered help. As I proceeded to inspect my car, which was conveniently parked right in front of the office, the staff continuously offered their help in the most friendly and non-pushy manner. I was again surprised by the friendliness and professionalism of the Tesla staff.
Model Y build quality:
Equipped with a checklist I found on GitHub (GitHub - polymorphic/tesla-model-y-checklist: Checklist for Tesla Model Y), I meticulously examined my car. To my absolute delight, I couldn't find any flaws! The build quality was impeccable, without gap issues, paint chips, or misalignments. The delivery center had taken great care to clean and detail the car before my pick-up.
Hope you will have the same great experience as me! Enjoy your new Model Y.

"The heavens call out! The Earth calls out! The people call out! Justice calls to me, and I answer! Bakunetsumaru, the Blazing Samurai from Ark!"
Bakanetsumaru was a samurai Gundam from the world of Ark, fighting for his nation against the invading force of the Dark Axis. However, through not fully explained means, he was teleported away, appearing in the wholly different dimension of Neotopia. Finding this location also under attack by Dark Axis forces, he helped protect Captain Gundam, Zero, and Shute from their newfound enemy before discovering he was unable to return back to his home. Trapped in this dimension, he formed the Gundam Force with his new allies, protecting Neotopia and later other dimensions from the Dark Axis threat as he waited to return and do the same to his homeland.

Strength

Cutting

• Stabs his swords into stone to help slow down a larger robot
• Cuts a machine in three with his swords
• Slices the barrels off of Zapper Zako's three guns while dashing past
• While badly injured, cuts the extra arms off a Gundam in a passing clash
• Cut through pillars in a park off-screen
• With a feather dragon-fused Zero wielding one of his swords, destroys a mass of large launched spikes with a single swing, making them explode

Other

• Kicks Zapper Zako into the air
• Accidentally sends Captain Gundam flying by opening a door
• Catches a falling robot
• Throws a giant bunch of bananas on top of him high into the air
• With several other robots, helps stop a train that had broken off of its tracks before it hits a wall to a volatile storage area

Durability

• As a Gundam, his 'innards are made of high quality Gundanium', a highly durable metal.
  • The SDG Base was suspended in the air by thick Gundanium cables and were completely unaffected by a Gundam's slashes (from his dialogue, he was expecting it to be a different metal suspending the base which he would have been able to easily cleave through

Blunt Force

• Sent flying by a spiked club
• Kicked through the air on a bridge
• Thrown into the air by a giant boring robot emerging from the ground
• Hit by the arm of a giant boring robot, slammed into a stone wall, and is bored in a bit before leaping out of the hole shortly after
• Has a much larger robot land on him as he tries to slow it down from falling down an incredibly deep hole, before getting slammed between her and Entango

Slashing

• Blocks a sword swing with his armour
  • This opponent can cut through stone
• Gets slashed up by enemies moving too fast for him to see or sense. While he's able to respond after they had mud thrown on them, it's unclear if this means Bakunetsumaru was wrong to say he couldn't see them because of their speed or if this just cancelled out whatever was preventing him from sensing them
• Hit by Epyon, sending him flying
• Seems to be sent flying backwards with a downwards stab
• Is heavily slashed up by a rapid spinning attack that leaves the attacker looking like a blur. He's taken down for a short time, but after stands up to continue the fight, even though he is still heavily injured
  • With a regular attack, this opponent can cut through stone and with the spinning attack, it overpowered Bakunetsumaru's cross slash

Explosion

• Blasted back from an explosion presumably created by a mass of energy blasts
• Blasted out of a jail built into the ground from a missile hitting the top
• Is near a large shell as it explodes, setting the building it hits alight. He's up and still standing, but hurt
• Hit by one of five energy beams which ultimately create a giant explosion, sending him falling to the ground, still conscious
• Hit by a giant explosion from point blank range and comes out unharmed

Other

• After getting slashed away, falls a great distance onto a ship
• Falls a large distance, creating a deep Bakunetsumaru-shaped hole in the ground on landing
• While already badly injured, impales himself on his enemy's attack just to get slammed to the ground, tumbling but landing on his feet
• Impaled by several thrown blades, and is badly hurt but still standing to protect someone
• Sent flying back a great distance by energy balls he blocked
• When he first appeared, he was covered with fire, though it's unclear if this was an effect of the portal
• Hit with Fenn's fire breath

Speed

Reaction

• Evades, deflects, and later blocks a jabbing attack so fast that the two weapons used left after images
• Dashes away from a ship before it lands on him, and then jumps away from its subsequent blasts
• Dodges a shot from Captain Gundam's gun after it was fired
• Blocks energy beams from Commander Sazabi with his swords after they were fired
• Deflects rapid gunfire while running towards the person firing at him before slicing through missiles launched at him, landing before they exploded
• From close range and with one sword, deflects the bullets from Zapper's two machine guns and one rotary gun
• While being slashed by enemies moving too fast for him to see and unable to be sensed by him, blocks one such attack after he was knocked down. He later was able to easily slash all of them after they had mud thrown on them, but it's unclear if he was wrong about saying he couldn't see them because of their speed or if the mud just stopped whatever prevented him sensing them

Other

• Suddenly appears behind a group of robots in an instant, though it's unclear if this is speed, an attack ability, or any other explanation

Skill

• Deflects an onslaught of attacks from an enemy with six arms
• While badly injured, cuts the extra arms off a Gundam in a passing clash

Bakunetsu Tenkyoken

Bakunetsumaru, after moving his swords in circles, dashes forwards with flames at his heels before letting loose a powerful cross slash, which has two giant intersecting energy blades travel through the air that he can travel with if he wishes

• The blades pass through a tower-like machine and takes down a smaller, but still large, machine behind it. The first machine ends up collapsing after the fight as a result of this attack
• After clashing with a Gundam next to it, causes a flying ship to shake
• Destroys a swarm of robotic bugs
• Carries Grappler Gouf through the air before busting into an enormous amount of fire
• Passes over a group of robots, afterwards creating an explosion which sends them flying into the air. Also potentially has Bakunetsumaru suddenly appear behind them, for some reason
• Combines with the power of Zero's Super Magical Violent Tornado and Captain Gundam's Soul Drive-enhanced punch to create a combo attack of incredible power, capable of sending a spaceship flying back

Entango

• Jumps up a giant robot
• With several other robots, helps stop a train that had broken off of its tracks before it hits a wall to a volatile storage area
• Jumps down an enormous crater and the deep hole below, not suffering any falling damage or buckling when Bakunetsumaru and a giant robot (albeit one he was trying to slow down) landed on him
• Weaves around energy blasts
• While further away from him than Captain or Zero, catches up to Shute after he was thrown through the air to let Bakunetsumaru catch him right before he hits the ground
• Keeps up with a speeding GunBike
• Runs up a wall, though it's unclear if Bakunetsumaru wearing the Baku Shin armour has an effect on that
• When he first appeared, he was covered with fire, though it's unclear if this was an effect of the portal
  • Does this again while Bakunetsumaru is wearing the Baku Shin armour, running through the air. Like this he stops a large, launched spike by running right into it

Baku Shin Armour

The Baku Shin armour is a fabled suit of flaming armour, capable of being worn only by the pure of heart. While it normally burns Bakunetsumaru when he touches it, in intense moments of combat when he's being pushed on by an intense determination to protect others the suit flies to him, donning itself onto him and granting him its power. Outside of these moments in combat, however, he's still unable to wear it. It also requires recharging after being used, with the time someone is able to wear it for depending on their spirit

• Kicks back a giant energy ball, hitting the person which fired it and knocking him back
• Blocks a lightning attack with his swords
  • This attack overpowered his regular Tenkyoken, though with clashing with the sword itself instead of just the electricity
• Shocked by four enemies, and soon overpowers it
• Charges surrounded in fire, dragging four robots behind him which had tried to bind him, destroying an enormous bamboo fence on collision
• Flies through the air surrounded in fire, and keeps up a rapid exchange of sword swings with Kibaomaru while before the opponent outsped him
• As an ultimate attack, releases an enormous burst of fire around him, obliterating robots, throwing giant bamboo fences up, and creating a deep crater in the ground. It requires a recharge after this, however
  • A better look at the depth of the crater from a later use of the attack, Bakunetsumaru being one of the figures by the mech's knife
• Combines the above attack with Zero's Infinity Wind and Captain Gundam's V Attack to destroy a giant robotic hand that they previously had been unable to damage
• Can fly without assistance

Other

• His sword deflects energy beams which easily one-shot Dark Axis robots
  • Also blocks electricity projected at him
• His helmet comes off
• Can't swim
• Is fooled by an obvious disguise
• Gundams from Ark like Bakunetsumaru can heal themselves in some form. For this, he asks for food made with love and care, saying that it counts as food for the soul
• When Gundams from Ark die, their souls leave their body to be reincarnated in a new one later

Looking for something similar to either Santa Monica seafood market or quality seafood redondo beach. Bonus if they have uni. We won’t have a car so gotta Uber. Staying at the inn at the mission for a wedding but have some opportunities to sneak away. Definitely going to check out that bbq place also.

From an article in today's Guardian, addressed to visitors to Cornwall:

So, you’re thinking of coming to Cornwall. . . . But what do you really know about this seemingly perfect, picture-postcard holiday destination?
For example, have you ever wondered where the local people live? . . . If you talk to the local people – the ones who serve you in the fancy fish restaurants or who clean your bed linen and come out to your rental on a Sunday night to help with the sticky front door – they will tell you that they have been priced out of their own towns.
The tourism industry, particularly in rural and coastal areas, is heavily reliant on healthy ecosystems. They bring a range of benefits, not least food, water and natural beauty for visitors and local people alike. However, tourists can threaten the quality of the local environment, and overtourism is a growing concern, bringing traffic, parking issues, pollution and litter. . . . The recent sharp growth in the sector has led to strain on infrastructure – including hospitals, [emergency services] and other local services – while unregulated rentals have meant unaffordable housing for residents.
So what can those visiting Cornwall do to counteract this? You could start by visiting beaches that don’t feature in the usual guidebooks. . . . Visitors can also protect the nature around them and contribute to its restoration by getting involved in nature-based activities and conservation . . . And try not to be rude to local people. If you’ve been asked to not drink from a glass bottle on the beach, there is a reason for that. Don’t forget to tip waiting staff. They are probably on minimum wage, and tipping is an easy way to support the local economy.
Don’t park wherever you like, especially on the beach! When taking to the coastal path, please don’t run or cycle; it speeds up erosion and is also incredibly dangerous. Don’t forget to take your rubbish away with you: many beaches, especially secluded ones, don’t have bins, so that bag full of waste and those disposable barbecues that you stack neatly against the cliff will end up in the sea, harming wildlife.
Please don’t buy a second home! If you do, and leave it empty for most of the year, you’re likely to get angry local people making their feelings known. And don’t do a mass Airbnb booking: there’s a housing crisis in Cornwall, and the unregulated accommodation option is putting pressure on housing and pricing local people out of the market. You could always book [camping/RV sites] or rooms in hotels.
Cornwall doesn’t stop being beautiful on the last day of August; it is incredibly beautiful all year round. Our winters are milder than the rest of the country and fewer people visit then, so holidaying then would definitely be less manic, and nothing beats a walk on a wet and windy beach. Everyone in Cornwall knows that the real summer starts in September – perfect for those who are not tied to school holidays. We locals know best, join us!

Much of what is mentioned in the article can apply to issues caused by overtourism here on the Coast - and, I suspect, in other parts of Oregon where short-term rentals have caused not only overtourism and environmental damage, but also a housing crisis that starves essential services as well as private sector businesses of needed workers.
I'd be curious to know what others on this sub who live in these areas might think of what the author recommends to visitors - as well as what you might add to these recommendations for those visiting your area.
Here's mine:
Those of you who are visiting the area - especially those who are here for the first time - whenever you are tootling along the local roads, enjoying the scenery, please keep in mind that those who live and work here have no choice but to use the same roads to conduct their day-to-day lives, including getting to and from work. Yes, they allow a lot of extra time for traffic during tourist season - but, from what many essential workers I've talked to have told me, there's invariably some derp who is so clueless on the road that they make everybody else look like Mario Andretti.
If you are making your leisurely way along a road with which you're not familiar, and you slow way down for curves, and if you notice a car coming up behind you - probably one that's a whole lot less nice than the one you're driving - be considerate and, at the first opportunity, PULL OVER and let this person pass. Don't speed up as soon as you hit a straightaway where they can pass you. This driver is likely a local who may end up serving the lunch you plan to stop for in a few hours - or, worse yet, they may be an emergency response worker who comes to help you if you get into an accident - and you may very well be making them late.
Also, I second the advice not to use AirBnBs, but I've made that recommendation so many times on this sub that I'm starting to feel like a broken record.
Any other "locals" - whether on the Coast, in the Cascades or another heavily-touristed part of the state - want to chime in here?

So my husband and I just drove 19 hours to Colorado and 19 hours back and somehow I convinced this man to listen to ACOTAR and ACOMAF. Now I was surprised I could even do this because this man does not enjoy reading much. But he loved The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson growing up so I thought he might enjoy this series. He also really liked The Hating Game (and had strong opinions on the movie...) so I knew he could read something romance-forward.
Here's how it went.
ACOTAR:

• Finds that it is a very slow start, had to tap out after listening for 7 hours and take a break
• Thinks that I'm into Tamlin (which I have to pretend and go along with and hide my absolute loathing for Tamlin)
• Because he thinks I am into Tamlin, he proceeds to mimic everything that Tamlin does. Including pretending to bite my neck like a predator lmao
• "I bet this 'her' person they keep mentioning is Tamlin's secret mate. I mean, it's obvious"
• "This is just beauty and the beast, isn't it?"
• "God. I bet people simp for this Rhys guy, don't they?" While I have to sit there knowing full well that I am a slut for Rhysand.
• "Rhys is like a good bad guy creep."
• Yells at the screen in the car "The worm is blind!" During the first trial, gasps during the second and says "Oh my god she can't read" During the third trial "NO SHE HAS TO STAB TAMLIN?" and then is blown away by the stone heart thing
• He then says "wait the series could have ended there what on earth happens in book 2? I guess she learns how to use her powers and be a fae?"

We get to Colorado and at dinner with our friends he tells them that I have converted him into "someone who listens to fairy porn" and then tries to convince the table to also read ACOTAR because "it's pretty good honestly."
ACOMAF:

• The first few chapters he's pretty quiet as they're just setting everything up
• "You're kinda losing it Tamlin" the when he won't let Feyre do anything
• "OBVIOUSLY Feyre is out of the bargain since she literally died so Rhys CAN'T come steal her."
• "[My name].... Tamlin is kind of a misogynist"
• Says "Rhys is still the good bad guy, but I think we are supposed to like him."
• Clicks his tongue multiple times any time anyone in the book clicks their tongue (this happens a lot)
• Yells "THEY'RE SEXTING" when Feyre and Rhys are writing notes back and forth about licking each other
• FANS HIMSELF and says "whew it's gettin' steamy" during the scene in the inn
• Has to be convinced that "only one bed" is indeed a real romance novel trope that we go crazy for
• Literally punches the air when Tamlin and Lucien are revealed as traitors in the final scenes of ACOMAF
• Almost cries when Cassian's wings are destroyed
• Is heartbroken that Elaine and Nesta are about to be put in the cauldron (which is where we stopped today because we got home--I said "you don't even like Nesta!" and he said "I know but she shouldn't have to become the thing she hates!"
• "How on earth is this your favorite book in the series?? Horrible things are happening to everyone!"

We park in the drive way, after a long 12 hour drive today, and he goes "how dare you trick me into reading this series with you." I said "wait does that mean you'll read book three?" and he goes "OBVIOUSLY I HAVE TO!"
And that's the story of how I turned my husband into an ACOTAR fan.
edit to add: I just read him my post and some of your comments and he was laughing. I said “congratulations, you were written by a woman!”

I found myself in a blank white room without doors. It was cold and I was sitting alone on a single-seat, white sofa while a big screen played out a presentation
Two things that stood out as strange to me was how I was aware of it being a dream and yet I wasn't able to control it like how a lucid state allows.
Additionally, I felt the temperature of the room perfectly. The texture of the sofa was similar to leather and I sank right into it like it's stuffed with gel.
I didn't see any faces or learn any names. The voice sounded hard to distinguish as male or female and was somewhat robotic. The presentation involved imagery that was strictly familiar to me so I didn't get to see any aliens in it either
What makes think the room was a ufo was it's odd oval shape and the absence of sharp corners. The floor neatly blended into the wall which blended into the ceiling etc
I will try my best to remember what I learned:
Their religion revolves around the pursuit of happiness and the quest for self-actualization and belonging. They believe that true happiness is achieved when who the person thinks they are, who they want to be, and who they're perceived as are one and the same person
According to them, this need is universal across different species, suggesting a pattern in nature
For instance, atoms combine to form biological matter, which gives rise to cells, and cells create living beings with consciousness. Consciousness represents the peak of complexity, but they told me their research has revealed that it continues to evolve into more advanced forms
Collective consciousness forms another chain in the line. A complex form of life called thoughtforms or Egregores in English. They rely on the energy, emotions, beliefs, and thoughts of conscious entities in a wide variety. There is those who feed on negative emotions, positive emotions, beliefs and even abstract things like dreams etc. While we coexist with these beings without full awareness( similar to how nerve cells are unaware of the mind they are a part of) they have realized their profound influence on their society
By becoming aware of these beings and actively promoting positive collective consciousness, they have freed themselves from the harm caused by negative feeding entities. They urge our society to become aware of thoughtforms and restructure our way of life to foster equality and a sense of belonging for all
In their pursuit of equality and belonging, they have implemented a strange system of temporary identities. People can choose specific roles within society, such as a fish farmer caring for an elderly father. They join host families that treat them no differently than any other adopter. To preserve anonymity, and ensure unbiased treatment individuals wear masks and full-body suits for their role. The outfit is the same for every participant who adopts the role. They can switch roles indefinitely, exploring different lives or settle into one they created for themselves. After death, they pass on the identity they created for others. This system has proven instrumental in achieving self-actualization.
Furthermore, their architecture fosters community and social interaction. Park tables, for example, feature small lights that individuals can change the color of to signal their openness to conversation. Apartments have built-in private networks that allow residents to chat with neighbors on the same floor or in the same building etc
In short, their religion emphasizes the pursuit of happiness, self-actualization, and a sense of belonging to improve their collective thoughtform
This was very vital for them to achieve. They say that just how our body's cells don't understand why they get cut or recieve less nutrition sometimes, we have good and bad experiences at seemingly random patterns because of our egregores. By concentrating on feeding the positive energy beings they managed to virtually purge suffering from their daily lives.
This is absolutely bizarre to me but I had to share it to get it off my chest. Another interesting part was about how their economy is designed to achieve equality, less-waste and encourage innovation
They have a system that can be visualized as a pyramid of cards rather than the traditional trickle-down economy. The pyramid represents the structure of wealth distribution, ensuring that no class disproportionately grows over others. To explain this concept, let's consider a lemonade stand as an example.
In traditional capitalism, the owner of the stand and resources would receive the largest share of the profit, while the worker is paid a fixed wage, regardless of their contribution to the business. This system encourages the owner to reduce costs, including worker wages, and increase output, often resulting in poor quality products. Moreover, any unsold or unused items go to waste, which harms both individuals and the environment.
In their system, the worker receives a fixed ratio or percentage of the earnings rather than a fixed salary. For instance, if they split the earnings in a 1:3 ratio, and the stand makes $20 a day, the owner would receive $14, while the worker receives $6.5. By increasing the number of workers, the profits can grow. If two workers generate $40 a day, the owner would get $27, while each worker continues to receive $6.5 (a total of $13). If the owner puts pressure on a single worker to increase output, that worker would receive a higher compensation, such as $13.5. When sales increase further, let's say to $80 a day, the owner would get $53.4, and both workers would split $23.4, resulting in an increase in their wages to $13.5 each. This system prevents extreme inequality and maintains a balance among different wealth groups, akin to a pyramid of cards
Another advantage of their economy is the use of digital currency managed by a powerful AI-operated bank. This bank tracks business profits and determines fair payments. Owners are legally required to register employees on the fair-pay program, and all transactions must go through the bank. This approach eliminates human involvement to prevent corruption. To maintain transparency and prevent hacking, the AI's decision-making process and transactions are publicly visible through a live-feed. Any hacking attempts or discrepancies between reported payments and actual receipts would be immediately evident. Additionally, the system has robust cybersecurity measures, including compartmentalization of information and regular checks by a randomly selected team of developers
Their government does not control the bank or the payment ratio. It runs automatically and isn't staffed by anyone but the publicly transparent AI. Instead, people get to vote on the appropriate ratio for different skillsets. The government's role is to safeguard the system and provide public surveillance of the bank's activities. Innovation and education are highly valued, with scientists, educators, and engineers receiving the highest salaries and belonging to the top layer of the pyramid. They are paid in an exclusive currency that is priced at three times the standard currency
While the private sector has full control over means of production, raw resources have shared control between the private and government sectors. For instance, if a company discovers a copper mine and develops an effective extraction/purification method, they receive a fixed percentage of the profit, while the government sets a fair price for the resources based on extraction costs. People can buy these resources and use private sector machinery and blueprints to create items of their choice.
There are machinery and blueprints available to the general public for free, but they are limited to basic designs necessary for survival. This restriction prevents exploitation during emergencies. Businesses, therefore, focus on innovation and improving designs, ideas, patents, and machinery to produce items more effectively.
Their system has a strict made-to-order process for purchasing items, reducing environmental damage from unsold goods. Only perishable items like food, vital medicines and digital-goods are allowed to have surplus quantities. If a food item nears its expiration date, it would be offered at an extremely low price rather than being disposed off. This discourages businesses from over farming
Additionally supermarkets don't use packaging to sell food. To minimize harm to the environment, they bring in their own reusable containers to fill up from their product of choice, which is stored in large containers within the shop. Weight/volume determines the cost
In politics they don't have a party system and prefer direct democracy over representative democracy because they see the existence of a middle-man as a doorway for corruption. Their people get to vote on individual issues just like what happens in Switzerland. One difference is that they're required to do a lot more than simply tick yes or no. They believe that education is a vital part of successful democracy, therefore the voter has to write a short essay weighing the pros and cons behind their decision to demonstrate that they've learned enough before making a decision
The consequence of this system is that it takes very long to collect and process votes (It's done by AI which also has it's process live-streamed) The person is required to write it while at the voting center (to prevent copy-pastes) The booth provides them with a PC which has all the gathered points and research supporting each side of the decision.
To reduce the time it takes to submit and process votes, they prioritise those who are most affected by a decision. For example if it's about women's reproductive health then only women can vote. The rest of the population can still participate by adding to the information stockpile for the voting booth. Another example is when it comes to war, only those who are enlisted are allowed to vote in favour of it to discourage an eagerness for violence
Just like the bank system the government is also unstaffed. There is only an AI controlling humanoid drones to complete tasks. It's also publicly surveyed (I find it interesting how the government is watched by people rather than the other way around) they also have a randomly selected maintenance team to work on the program running it. They're taken to work immediately to prevent anyone from bribing them. Even more public surveillance goes into their work
There is lots more finer details about their society but I unfortunately forgot it after years passed. I might remember more with time but this post already got ridiculously long. After the dream ended I just woke up home and was in a cold sweat because of how bizarrely detailed it was. My dreams are usually random junk that I forget completely the instant I wake up
Edit: format, typoes etc
Edit: Some people are accusing me of making it all up which is reasonable. All I can respond by is that I want absolutely nothing to do with this "message" and anyone is free to publish a book using it if they want to
Tldr: Had a dream, in which I was on board a ufo and was taught about an alien society. They valued happiness, self-actualization, and belonging. They introduced me to the concept of thoughtforms and how they affect our society. Their economy focused on equality, less waste, and innovation. They had an AI-operated bank and emphasized education and direct democracy

Hello everyone, and welcome to the annual peak back into the past!
It's been another year since the 2022 capsule was posted, and for the 9th time we'll be unpacking all sorts of info that was stored away in this annual tradition. Not only is this a great way to look back on what all changed over the last year, but the time capsule also serves as the most complete recap for the current state of Mindcrack and is the best way to see the entire group's recent overall activity with info not found anywhere else.
We'll be opening the ninth edition of the mindcrack time capsule from 2022. You can also find these frozen moments in time for every year going back to 2014 here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. Now that all that's out of the way, let's officially open the 2022 time capsule!

Today is the 29th of May, 2022.

General Information

A current concise definition of Mindcrack is "A group of friends and content creators founded in 2010 who come together for gaming content and regular charity events primarily based on Twitch."
Mindcrack currently has 24 official members and around 18 VIPs/Friends active in the group, though there is no official list on who all is a Friend and the linked image is probably missing at least Darkosto and Sapphyrei. Mindcrackers and Friends essentially differ only in name.
The latest member to join officially was OMGChad on the 31st of October, 2014. The latest member to leave was BTC (BlameTheController) on the 12th of November, 2015. The latest Friend to join is difficult to determine, as most Friends have gradually become involved in the group over multiple years.

Charity

There have been nine full Mindcrack Marathons to date and a multitude of other charity efforts, both from individuals and the full group. In total Mindcrack has raised an incredible $1,950,563.23 for others through their group fundraising streams since 2013, of which $1,817,090.78 has been for the charity Extra Life (totals missing $0-5K). The latest full marathon was on November 8-14 and ran for 117 hours across a full week for the first time, raising a record $348,565.69 for Extra Life plus Twitch and merch revenue.
A complete list of all totals raised during Mindcrack group fundraising streams can be found here, the source message is pinned in the Mindcrack Discord and regularly updated.
The most recent fundraising event was held less than a month ago for Arbor Day and was Mindcrack's first time supporting Gone West, the UHC raised £6,161 for the company, helping plant over 1,125 trees for the planet. It's been mentioned that Gone West will return in future fundraising events. Mindcrack also raised $15,651.94 for Extra Life last month during the first spring marathon since 2019 which ran for 12 hours. It was followed up by Extra life United's return to Florida just over a month ago, Mindcrack had multiple attendees who also spent several days at Disney together where some of them unfortunately got COVID-19. ELU 2022 featured the return of the Minecraft Building Competition, and Pakratt led team Mindcrack to a 1st place finish against 6 other teams which included Aureylian.
The Mindcrack Patreon has now been supporting Mindcrack's charity efforts for over 2 years, allowing the marathon to grow in size and production quality. A new $10 tier was added in fall which gives monthly behind the scenes updates on charity events. Currently the Patreon has 413 Patrons pledging $3,626 per month, with 88 Patrons on the $25 tier, 1 on the $500 tier, and the rest split between $5 and $10.
Kurt's Far Lands or Bust journey has continued on as always, having just started Season 10 with Season 9 ending a couple months ago after close to a million blocks traveled in a year. He is currently at 5,765,878 blocks traveled towards the Far Lands as of March 28th, 2022, sitting at 45.9% of the way there. The latest episode was #829 on May 28th, 2022. The series has raised $472,939.92 for 7 different charities since 2011, with $4,470.00 raised during Season 9 for Rise Above The Disorder, and $4,600.00 raised for Equality Texas Foundation during the recent FLoB-a-Thon.
MCGamer and the Zeldathon Team have raised $3,064,623 for 11 different charities during their 32 charity events. The latest Zeldathon was Zeldathon Ascent which raised $176,843.00 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital from December 26th to January 1st, and they just finished the smaller event Piece of Heart raising $20,120 for St. Jude at MomoCon from May 26th-28th. The next Zeldathon will be Zeldathon Daybreak, scheduled to start on August 2nd raising money for Direct Relief.
There's also a multitude of individual charity efforts in Mindcrack; several people in the group hold streams supporting their individual Extra Life campaigns, and there's frequently one-off streams for various charities, such as a few days ago where Justin, McLaffyTaffy, and MyLawyerFriend were in a D&D stream supporting St. Jude. A complete list wouldn't be feasible to collect, but their efforts are appreciated. In total everyone in the group have raised over $5.5 million for charity over the years.

Regular Series

The Mindcrack Podcast is hosted by Sevadus, Guude, and recently Soccer releasing two episodes every week, consisting of a public episode every Monday and a Patron-exclusive episode every Thursday. Additionally, Patrons at the $25 tier can watch the recordings live and discuss in the live chat. The latest public episode was S2E99 which released on May 23rd, 2022, and the latest premium episode was episode 99 released on May 26th, 2022. The 10 year anniversary of the podcast is just a few weeks away.
Cone, Kurt, and Zeekay host the podcast Ran When Parked which releases new episodes every other week, the latest episode was episode 78.
As of tonight Coestar's StreamADay is sitting at Day 3,099, and Phedran's daily streaming streak is on Day 1,702. Coe still holds the second longest daily streaming streak on Twitch.
There have been over 500 collabs within Mindcrack in the last year, but with Mhykol's Discord bot not posting VODs it's hard to track them and get specific numbers. In the last year Monday Group Games, Space Cops, and the Dads have gone on indefinite hiatus, so there's currently fewer weekly series than normal.
The following is a list of the more stable weekly collab series within Mindcrack currently:

• Armo, Breon, Coestar, and Kingster play PUBG for Sunday Gunday every week, and PUBG also makes frequent appearances throughout the week with other squad combinations.
• Pakratt's Vintage Story Tuesday with Honney and DireDwarf recently ended after 38 weeks, it's likely TFC Tuesdays in MC 1.18 will replace it in the near future.
• Coestar and Guude's Two Bananas for Sale continues strong, playing games together or with Patrons every Friday night. Their most recent games include We Were Here Forever, UHC, Traitors in Salem, and Codenames. Their joint Patreon currently raises $625 per month thanks to 36 Patrons.
• Arkas, Guude, Nebris, and Pakratt have recently returned after a long hiatus to play Divine Journey 2 every other Saturday and just passed their 7-year anniversary playing together.
• Arkas and Cone just wrapped up another season of Cities Skylines, this one being a challenge to build the best city in 36 hours.

Servers

Season 9 of the Minecraft vanilla server is currently ongoing; Amethyst, Guude, his daughter Apple, Honney, Mookake, Pakratt, Phedran, and a multitude of $25 tier Patrons have been on in the last month. The current season started on December 11th, 2021, and the server is running on 1.18.2 with some extra plug-ins. For the first time the majority of Mindcrack is using shaders on the server in a client modpack with other QoL mods. This season has had approximately 765 hours streamed by Mindcrack so far. The most recent event on the server was the Spring Festival held on May 1st and 7th; Amethyst, Guude, his daughter Apple, Honney, Pakratt, and about 15 Patrons attended one of the two.
Mhykol hosts a server map at https://mindcrackmap.com, the map uses BlueMap which was used as a secondary map on the previous season.
The most recent full modded server was Crackpack Season 4, Mindcrack's 7th modded season which was active from November 2019 until January 2020. A more restricted Crackpack 3 server was active for 3 hours every week from May to October last year as part of Monday Group Games.
The Dadcraft Minecraft server reset at the start of December for 1.18, Arkas and Jaaski joined Chiblee, Coestar, Justin, and Pause with others and the server was active for about a month.
Adlington, Arkas, Cone, Dire, Doc, Kurt, Phedran, and VintageBeef all have fan servers for Twitch subs and/or Patrons.

Ultra Hardcore (UHC)

There have been 33+28 (Twenty-seven donation UHCs and S4b) seasons of Mindcrack UHC. There were 8 Mindcrack UHCs in 2021, the most since 2012 with 9 UHCs.
Breon, Coestar, ConeDodger, and Kingster are the winners of the latest UHC season, Season 33, which was streamed on the 26th of February, 2022.
Mookake and SethBling are the winners of the latest donation UHC, the 27th of its kind, which was streamed on the 30th of April, 2022 for Gone West.
PauseUnpause is the most deadly player in regular UHCs with 36 kills, and Coestar is the most deadly player in donation UHCs with 38 kills, having recently taken the lead from Arkas. Nebris and VintageBeef are tied for the most wins in regular UHCs with 9, and Guude and Kurt are tied for the most wins in charity UHCs with 7. (Latest UHC Stats by Guardax)
Seasons can be categorized as follows: 21 teams of four, 15 teams of two, 13 teams of three, 8 free-for-all, 2 PvE, 1 teams of five, 1 teams of ten.
UHCs have been becoming more frequent recently with renewed interest from the group and there's plans for even more in the future, starting with the first ever collaboration between VintageCraft and Mindcrack Patrons with a UHC next month on June 11th.

Individual Members

The table below contains current subscription, follower, and member data for the Mindcrackers' various social media accounts. Each number is hyperlinked to include an image of that member's account as it appears on this day for easy comparison of account contents, videos, and Discord channels:

Mindcracker	Twitch	YouTube	Twitter	Patreon	Discord Size	Discord Messages**
Adlingtont	2,889	35,200	6,405	9 ($71)	44	29,700
AnderZEL	286,781	532,000*	72,995		Twitch sub to join	4,160
Arkas	39,358	86,300*/383	25,712		447	51,640
Aureylian	148,698	267,000*	164,528
AvidyaZen	21,652	274*	353		78(new)	9,090
Coestar	62,880	110,000*	30,709	29 ($79)	1,554	1,943,640
Docm77	128,355	982,000	225,648	124 ($952)	Patron only	?
Guude	45,651	366,000	95,260		Twitch sub only	875,670
JSano19	5,103	48,800	14,035	1 ($5)	Patron only	?
Kurt	53,293	412,000	57,844	199	Patron or Twitch sub only	180,680
MCGamer	87,722	HIDDEN	36,934
Mhykol	15,793	53,000	25,336		154	17,280
Millbee	55,977	114,000	45,799		545	754,160
Nebris	20,809	134,000*
OMGchad	53,832	119,000*/1,390,000	32,816		2,047	34,920
Pakratt	102,661	50,200	20,929		562	351,980
PauseUnpause	151,562	HIDDEN			947	134,680
Pyropuncher	29,807	HIDDEN	48,857
SethBling	246,113	2,020,000	380,303		330	37,240
Sevadus	412,912	45,600*	57,420		1,875	45,810
Vechs	9,692	171,000	50,404	114	1,061	154,270
VintageBeef	28,405*	1,570,000/13,800/19,800*	197,020	251	Patron only	?
W92Baj	9,548	113,000	43,394	7	Patron only	?
Zisteau	55,408	340,000/981(new)	72,216	91	1,240	400,910
Mindcrack Network	70,390	153,000	50,044	413($3,626)	2,711	262,240

* indicates accounts that haven't been used in the last year ** Discord messages are all messages sent in default channels since server creation.
The following table is the same info for Friends that are content creators, though this isn't an official list so it may have extras and not be complete:

Friend	Twitch	YouTube	Twitter	Patreon	Discord size	Discord messages**
Amethyst	552		852
Breon	2,605	291	1,705		167	49,230
Chiblee	24,332	4,330(new)/1,540(new)	31,923		2,338	473,600
ConeDodger	5,598	9,340	1,423	160	Patron or Twitch sub to join/use	1,006,770
Dahl	458	21,400/25(new)	837	0	Patron to join	51,560
Darkosto	76,839	3,560	6,049		7,947	439,360
DireDwarf	18,335	4,730	3,104	5($56)	372	190,740
Drooo	346	11	446		54	21,150
HCJustin	66,741	13,500	19,144	29($178)	Twitch sub to join	1,184,780
HonneyPlay	11,607	3,100	1,259	11	562(shared w/ Pak)	351,980
Jaaski	10,850	458*	2,694		606	220,530
Kingster	390	2(new)	20
Mookake	690	2,360*	244
Phedran	9,470	8,870*	4,900	52($388)	372	89,430
Ryuski	1,383	181	436		75	26,541
Sapphyrei(formerly OnlyBentley)	17,636	58(new)/129,000(old)	12,243	3($19)
Soccer	505	137*	251		Twitch sub to join	440

There are currently about 28 people part of Mindcrack that stream on Twitch regularly, and about 10 that upload to YouTube regularly.
In the last year there were approximately 30,813 hours streamed on Twitch by about 41 Members and Friends, with 2,483 combined hours streamed during last month. During that year there were 792 unique categories streamed, 4,294,294 total views, and 3,863,022 hours watched on Twitch which is equal to 441 years.
The most streamed games in order were Minecraft, PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, RimWorld, and Elden Ring. Minecraft had the most streamers with 37, most hours streamed with 6,278, and most hours watched with 713,580; the category Just Chatting was also among the most streamed and had the most views with 718,610.
Here's a chart showing monthly hours streamed by Mindcrack members from August 2015 to April 2022; here's a similar chart with Friends added from May 2020 to April 2022.
According to the Mindcrack website, the total YouTube subscribers across all official Mindcrackers is 9,042,471(+24,900 in the last year), the total number of videos is 71,787(+1,586), and the total views is 2,418,417,594(+36,497,698). The website hasn't been updated in years so the accuracy of those numbers isn't guaranteed.
The total member count across public Discord servers in Mindcrack is 25,526 which includes significant overlap(13,595 for just Mindcrack Members). In total there's been approximately 9,394,181 messages sent across all 33 servers including from bots, but I don't currently have Doc's or Beef's numbers which would push that number well over 10 million. Coe's server remains heavily active and is poised to be the first to reach 2 million messages in about 4 months.
SethBling is the most subscribed on YouTube with 2.02 million subscribers as well as the most followed on Twitter with 380k followers. Sevadus has the most Twitch followers with 412k followers. Darkosto has the largest Discord server with 7,947 members, and among the Mindcrack Members OMGchad has the largest with 2,047 members.

Subreddit

mindcrack has approximately 45,100 subscribers. Discord servers and Twitch chats are the primary places the active Mindcrack community's interactions are based, so the subreddit sees minimal activity.
The Moderator Team of mindcrack consists of 10 humans and 2 robots: GuudeBoulderfist, pakratt0013, stinusmeret, Zisteau, pajam, Lost-Chord, Compieuter, ArmoAram, stevetheclimber, emilythecool, MindcrackTwitchBot, and CrackBot / AutoModerator.
This is the subreddit today using old Reddit (Picture Version), and this is the same page using the redesign (Picture Version).
Here's the current flair selection, and here are the subreddit's traffic stats which are normally only viewable by mods.

Miscellaneous

Docm77 and VintageBeef are both also members of HermitCraft, and Arkas, Chiblee, Coestar, Jaaski, Justin, and Pause are all members of Dadcraft.
SethBling currently holds 2nd place for the Super Mario World 0 Exit speedrun with a time of 41.350 seconds. He also holds records for several speedrun categories he created, including SMAS+SMW All Five Games with ACE which he'll be running in this year's SGDQ in July, he currently holds a record of exactly 9 minutes for it.
On the IRL side of things several people in Mindcrack have gone through changes in life; in the last year, Guude and Jess got engaged, Cone and Paint also got engaged and announced they have a baby coming, and DireDwarf got married. There's also been multiple kittens and other pets, at least half a dozen job changes, and several moves, including Soccer living with Guude until earlier this month.
There have been no updates in the last year on Mindcrack's progress towards becoming a non-profit that's publicly been in the works for years.

Community Contributions

u/Omegatron9 has kept his spreadsheet and graphs on YouTube subscribers up to date.
The events of Mindcrack's first 10 years are covered in my History of Mindcrack written in 2020.
Some spreadsheets I have with stats:

• Mindcrack monthly hours streamed - August 2015 to April 2022 copy
• Mindcrack Stream stats - May 29, 2021 to May 28, 2022, has extensive numbers for every category streamed by everyone in Mindcrack in the last year
• Quarterly content produced by Mindcrack Members, 2010 Q4 to 2020 Q2, useful for seeing Twitch overtake YT for Mindcrack content

Thanks to Guardax, Pellervo_page, and Ageofdune for providing Discord numbers.

And there we have it, another look back into the past is complete as we take a moment to reflect on how we got here amongst the never ending flow of time. Even in just one year there's been countless changes throughout the many people in Mindcrack, both good and bad, and it's easy to lose track of just how much happens with so many different people each living their own lives. Who knows what kinds of changes we'll see as another year passes and we open the 10th time capsule in 12 months.
The 2023 time capsule will be coming soon, there's a lot of info to collect so I'll be asking for help in the Discord, and anyone in the community will be welcome to add their own messages and info in the capsule. For the time being though let's focus on this capsule and all the changes that took place in the last year, and feel free to discuss any of them that stood out to you!

Going to Japan with my sister (24F) and parents (early 60s) early October. They're adventurous decently active but I want to make sure I'm not overdoing and rushing the trip too much. Most of my goals have been to integrate all their favorite things (small, scenic towns; cool architecture, adventures; food and drinking) since this will their first time in Japan (and my second time).
DAY 0
Commute to Kadoya (50 mins)
Gyoen Garden
Golden Gai
Kabukicho - Godzilla statue
Hanazono Shrine
DAY 1
Jimbocho
Imperial Gardens
Ootoya
Ueno: Tokyo National Museum
Dinner, then Shibuya Crossing Taishushusen Terumae - nomihoudai $4 1hr
Karaoke?
Day 2-4
SHIBUYA/Harajuku + Meiji Shrine
GINZA
Café de l'Ambre - kissaten
Kabuki-za
Tsukiji Outer market
Monja Street
Team labs
High end shopping district
ASAKUSA
Tokyo National Museum
senso ji
kappabashi st nearby (knives)
imo pippi - sweet potato angel hair
Hoppy Dori street
Hakone - 1 (arrive morning) (5-6th)
Be at inn by 5pm, ready to chillax, onsen, etc
Hakone Circuit (6-8 hours)
Open air museum
Tori
Cable car and ship
Kyoto - 3 (6-9th)
Kaiseki
nishiki market
Fushimi Inari shrine
Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum
Kinkajou temple
Arashiyama bamboo
Cruise hozugawa river?
yebisu bar - matcha beer
Hiroshima - 2 (9-11)
Arrive: Okonomiyaki at station, then go to hotel SUNDAY peace room
Peace museum
Hiroshima castle
Dad’s bday! Miyajima island (45 minute ferry)
ROUTE FROM HIROSHIMA TO OSAKA early on 11th if we wanna go on side trips
Hejimi 30 min walk either way off route
Kobe (beef, carpentry museum - Takenaka)
Osaka - 2 (11-13)
Osaka cocktail library akashic records
Osaka castle
Shinsekai
dotonbori
kuromon
round1
Nara (30 min by bus) - Buddha and deer park, Horyuji temple -wood
COMMUTE: 3 hours by JR to Kanazawa, get there afternoon/evening
Kanazawa - 2 (13-15)
Kanazawa night tour + dinner $100pp
Kanazawa castle - wood
Kenrokuen garden
DAY TRIP
SHIRAKAWA town (1 hr 45 mins each way)
COMMUTE: 3hr mins back to Tokyo by bus and JR, arrive late evening
Tokyo 1 (15-16th)
Any leftover activities – flight at 5pm
​
I worry Kanazawa is one place too many, but my sister wants to see a small town and Shirakawa seemed like a great choice. Is this pace too much? We'll be taking the JR

Fantasticland, a novel sold on the premise of “Lord of the Flies in an amusement park,” was one that I’d seen recommended frequently and was quite pumped to read. The idea is solid, the after-the-fact interview style is engaging and the concept of young adults murdering each other after a societal collapse seemed like a can’t-miss. It missed, though.
I won’t recount the plot, as it’s a quite simple one, but the gist is that employees of a fictional amusement park, intentionally left to tend to the park after a massive hurricane floods the surrounding area, devolve into tribes and begin murdering one another over resources. Again, a somewhat plausible (albeit familiar) scenario and seemingly one that would deliver.
But the author just wasn’t up the the challenge. The interview format was a good idea and feels tailored for an adaptation. The true crime/found footage/mockumentary quality of it would translate well to the screen. But my main issue was in the overall sameness of the characters. Apart from one or two, the characters melt together and form a singular whole of the same opinion with the same style of gallows humor for almost every one.
Clearly inspired by Stephen King (he even name drops him at one point), nearly every character speaks in that 23-skidoo-how-do-you-do, rip-roarin’, eye-rolly style that King pulls off by the skin of his teeth. I got so tired of every person lauding the central monster character while simultaneously lambasting him. You could argue that staff that works alongside one another would talk similarly, but it was just so much of the same (from the employees to the managers to the custodians to the National Guardsmen) it ended up sounding like the author just didn’t have the chops to create unique, individual voices. And they sounded like what a 40 year old thinks a 25 year old talks like. Not to mention zero character development. There was just none.
Plus, nearly every chapter referenced some phrase or action mentioned in the previous one. Again, the format could allow for this, given the in-book writer organized the layout, but it all just felt too pat. Too convenient. The book would have worked better if events were moved around maybe or looked at from unique perspectives (sociologists, crime scene investigations, etc).
And then, the reasoning behind the whole thing, that kids without their phones will just turn into murderous savages was laughable and truly felt like a generational gap misstep. Maybe the whole thing was satirical, but it felt like a drunken observation turned into a half-baked story idea that could’ve used tons more research and beta readers.
All critiques aside, I think it would make for a good film or short-form series - if someone else tackled the writing. I’m usually not in favor of plot changes in adaptations, but I really think it would work better if a more accomplished writer tweaked some things. Also, it’s an easy read, so there’s that for some fun escapism. It’s a shame that the author didn’t flesh things out more. There’s greatness in it.

Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
2. If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
3. The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
4. BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
5. Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
6. Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
7. Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
8. The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
9. Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
10. Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
11. Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
12. A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
13. Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
14. Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
15. Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
16. Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
17. Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
18. The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
19. eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
20. Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
21. Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
22. Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
23. Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
24. Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
25. Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
26. eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
27. Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
28. Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
29. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.

I hope you find this news recap helpful. See you next week!
-PAUL

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
2. If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
3. The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
4. BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
5. Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
6. Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
7. Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
8. The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
9. Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
10. Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
11. Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
12. A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
13. Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
14. Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
15. Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
16. Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
17. Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
18. The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
19. eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
20. Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
21. Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
22. Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
23. Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
24. Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
25. Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
26. eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
27. Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
28. Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
29. Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/how-much-money-does-temu-lose-per-orde
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL

Updated May 2023
I recently changed Reddit accounts and it's been about a year, so it seemed prudent to repost this for visibility. :)

Link to the Below Zero guide

https://subnauticamap.io/ - This is an interactive map of the crater. However, be warned that it will show the general location of things you need to find. This can be toggled but if you have zero point of reference for the places mentioned in this guide, this map should provide one.

General tips are at the bottom, however, they rely on you having played at least part of the way through the game so I don't recommend checking them until at least part 3, AKA "Going Traveling"

Subnautica is a game primarily about exploring your environment while overcoming the trepidation that the game sets up in you over doing so. Although there isn't a perfect guide to being able to clear the game, there also isn't an unambiguous path of progression for the player, either.
Consequently new players often find themselves at an impasse in terms of progression and where to go. The following is a no-nonsense, straight to the point guide on how to progress, but it's not a bible. You can do most of this just by exploring and wandering around.
A blind playthrough is critical to the first time player experience. This is often true of every game but for Subnautica it makes or breaks the whole story - you need to have no idea what the hell is going on the first time you clear the game. If you spoil it for yourself you will regret it, please believe me in this. This guide is meant to give you a nudge when you find you don't know where to go next, it's not really meant as a walkthrough, even though it can be used as one. Do yourself a favor friends, don't go wandering /subnautica or the wiki too much and this guide will not lead you astray. It is written specifically for brand new players.

The Beginning

When you first arrive on 4546b, you find yourself with basically nothing. You're hungry, thirsty, your lifepod is broken and your cookies are gone. The Aurora is burning (and you nearly did too) but despite all that, you're alive and this planet is about to get some Ryley in it.
The environment around you has most of what you need to get started. The metal scrap strewn around the shallows provides an easy source of Titanium while you can break limestone and sandstone to get the minerals you need for your starting tools. You'll want the quartz you find for glass.
Although you have a number of options for making equipment, at this stage I don't recommend using resources for the air pump or pipes. Truth is they don't really have much use; they create a breathing line from the surface for when you're diving, but they're expensive and there's better alternatives in your near future.
Once you have a scanner and knife, take the time to scan everything you can. All the local wildlife can be scanned and most of the flora.
Your objective at this point is to build a repair gun, knife, seaglide, flashlight and scanner.

Branching Out

Now that you've got your basic tools and you can get around a little, it's time to begin exploring. At this point you've seen the deeper waters on the edges of the kelp forest.
It's time to go take a look.
The red grassy plains have what you need to progress to deeper waters. You'll want to explore the wrecks there. There are four grassy plains surrounding the shallows at compass points and cave systems exist in three of them which will become relevant later, but are largely out of your reach for now. It is out here that you will find fragments necessary for an important task you must complete soon. Raiding the aurora will require the laser cutter you learn to make here. You'll also want a propulsion cannon, which you can find the fragments to near the side of the Aurora. DO NOT GO AROUND THE BACK OF THE AURORA. SERIOUSLY. You are not prepared for that level of giggling insanity yet.
By now you've fixed the radio and may have triggered the sunbeam event, in which case you will want to go follow that. Give yourself the full span of time to go to the island and explore unless you'd prefer to explore after the event, but don't let yourself get distracted by what you find there and miss the ship arriving. The signals you've been getting are important prompts and need to be checked out when possible, so make sure you take the time to do that. Also, when you go to either island DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACH. There is a real risk of it phasing through the ground and becoming inaccessible and then you'll end up on this subreddit asking how to get it back like the other 5 guys a week. Seriously.
Also note that bringing an ion cube to the top of the mountains caves will let you do something interesting up there, but I won't be specific. A scanner room at this spot is ideal not just to track the reaper leviathan on the eastern side of the island but there is quite a lot of shale and lithium here as well, which is probably something you're gonna want.

Going traveling

At this point you should have a seamoth, your basic tools, a laser cutter, propulsion cannon and lead suit. You are prepared. It's time to go to the Aurora... but only if you've gotten the communication from Alterra with the captains door code. Otherwise, you must wait for that radio event. You can go explore the ship anyways of course, but not having the code means you can't get into the captains room, requiring you to go back and get it later. So it's up to you. You can open the door anyways if you get the code off the internet or something but since the game gives it to you anyways, you can always wait for the prompt. If not, the door code is 2679
If you have a cyclops I don't recommend taking it, since reapers hang out at the front and back ends of the ship. However, a seamoth is small enough to fit through the broken superstructure of the ship at the front and thus avoid this danger. There are two ways to access the ship and although it seems impossible, you CAN in fact climb up to access the open one. Otherwise, you can use the prop cannon to move the debris out of the way of the door near water level. Be sure to take the time to explore inside and use the carry-all bags to leave stuff you want to keep from the ship out the front so you can come back and pick it all up later. There's lots of useful stuff in there.
As a side note here, the leech-like things that annoy you in the reactor room are called Bleeders. I hate Bleeders personally, but I noted that if you grab one with the propulsion cannon and fling it into the wall out of sheer spite then other bleeders will be attracted to the body, which makes grabbing and doing the same to them quite easy. Clearing the entire room of those little #*([email protected]'s only takes a couple minutes.
You can get the codes for various rooms inside from the PDA's you find. Also note that some doors can only be opened once you repair them. Sometimes the Aurora glitches and these repair sections don't work but because the ship has two entrances, you can always go around the back to clear the whole thing, which is... annoying. If you don't mind being patient, leaving the Aurora and doing other things for awhile will reset the wreck, allowing you to come back later and potentially be able to repair the doors then.
The codes for the ship are:
Cabin No. 1: 1869
Captain's Quarters: 2679
Cargo Bay: 1454
Lab Access: 6483

Time to go down

With the Aurora repaired you have the ability to wear things other than the lead suit, so it's time to chuck that in the trash 'cuz you won't need it again. It's time to get the outer wrecks in the zones beyond the shallows and hoo boy ain't that gonna be an experience.
The cyclops is your friend here. But what's this, you don't have a cyclops? Well, that's okay. You may have found one of the engine fragments on the aurora in the cargo bay but if you missed it, it's not really a big deal. Your next objective to build one is to go explore mushroom forest and the underwater floating islands for the fragments you'll need. If you've been following your radio signals you've probably been to the aurora rendezvous point by now, but if not, take the time to go thoroughly explore that island. One of the PDAs you need to find the next place is not at the degasi base, but on one of the paths of the island near an arch of rock. You'll need to explore the island thoroughly to find it. Make sure to scan everything and bring back plant samples if you have a seabase. You can use plant pots to keep food trees on your cyclops for easy access to food without worrying about curing everything all the time.
Once you have the cyclops, you need to take the time to upgrade your seamoth to depth so you can explore the various wrecks, supplement your PDA database and establish yourself properly for long-term operations. At this point in the game you should be aiming for or already have:
A seabase, even a basic one. A couple corridors with lockers are invaluable for storage and operations and the scanner room is MISSION CRITICAL. If you haven't built one yet, get on that!
A seamoth, either at or being upgraded to 500m depth
Knife, flashlight, repair gun, seaglide, scanner, laser cutter, propulsion or repulsion cannon, rebreather
Be sure to check everything, then check it again! It's easy to miss things on the island. Be sure to check the buildings on the tops of the hills there too. Although it would be nice to be able to plant land beacons (hint hint, Unknown Worlds), it's not feasible for marking out the precursor gate on the floating island so unfortunately, it's not of much use unless you have your base on one island or the other. I don't recommend the floating island for this for reasons which will become apparent later in the game.

Looking into the abyss

If you've explored most of or all of the wrecks and no longer have missing technology, it's time to go deeper. If you've been following your PDA signals you need to check out the degasi bases and follow their story, as they lead you to a large, deep cave which is the path to deeper places you need to explore.
There are several inlets to the place you need to reach. Northern Bulb Zone where it meets Mountains has a large entrance. Blood Kelp Zone and Trench both have entrances. The last one is in deep grand reef, where the final Degasi base is. I personally recommend either Deep Grand Reef or Bulb Zone but the latter has the most accessibility.
Raiding the final Degasi Base before exploring this cave system will get you the orange precursor key which you'll need to access something hidden at the southern end of the caves near blood kelp trench's entrance. While working down here I strongly recommend making liberal use of beacons as navigational guides if you're new to this place. It is VERY confusing and looks very same-y if you haven't spend a lot of time here.
Deep inside the caves you'll come upon a chamber with a massive skull sitting on a chunk of land in the middle and access to a slightly lower part of the cave system which is not green. This is the Cove Tree Cave and the brine there will not hurt you the way the green brine does. This leaves you able to free dive there to gather materials without needing to rely on your prawn.
This chamber with the skull is, in fact, the central chamber of Lost River. It is an excellent place for building a scanner station and the entire area is ludicrously rich in resources. It's a perfect place to stock up and catch up any upgrades, tools or devices you may be lacking so far. You'll want the resource stocks for later and honestly, it's just a really cool place to have a base in general.
The Disease Research Facility is in the north-eastern arm of Lost River, accessible through the Bulb Zone entrance. A juvenile ghost leviathan guards the path but as with most leviathans, operating in silent running and staying above or below it while sticking to the cave walls will get you by without any issue. If they do notice you, just pop a decoy, go full speed for about 5-8 seconds and then drop the engine to low and stay in silent running until you get far enough for the big ugly to stop bothering you.
The southern part of Lost River holds a large chamber with a ghost leviathan juvenile and houses another rather large skeleton. This area in particular is rich in large ore deposits and crystallized sulfur that you'll be needing for some big upgrades.
By the way, remember the cyclops shield? By now you're probably noticing that using the auxiliary functions on the cyclops eats a lot of power. Redundant power cells are your friend and if you feel you're worried about power costs while exploring, you lose nothing by having a buttload of spare power cells. It can pay off, being able to spam the shield for awhile and run away.
You'll want that shield for what's coming next.

Once More Unto The Deep

By now you've probably explored Lost River a bit and you're wondering where to go from here. If you've built a scanner room in the central chamber, you'll have noticed that the scanner, when at full range, shows a chamber below Lost River.
This is the inactive lava zone and it is here your answers lay.
You have two access points to reach this chamber. The North-east arm past the disease research facility and the cove tree caves. Both entrances are equally difficult to get through but the first one feels more open, if you don't mind the ghost leviathan circling around above the opening.
This chamber is rich with even more valuable resources, if you somehow haven't got enough already. The cove tree cave entrance leads to the western part of the ILZ chamber. The North-east entrance leads to the north edge of the chamber. The chamber itself is rather oval-shaped, with the western edge of it relatively empty and the eastern part containing a massive lava bubble.
If you wander around down here long enough the PDA will prompt you to take a look at that bubble a bit more closely. You will need two purple precursor keys to access the facility inside. Now that you're down here you'll notice there's a fair number of warpers, crimson rays (who are harmless) and leech-like things which will attach to the hull of your ship and drain power. That sounds like a problem, doesn't it?
Don't worry though, we got you covered. Once you're down here, go grab some kyanite and you can build the cyclops thermal reactor which pretty much eliminates the whole running out of power problem. The shield is a great way to get the leeches off your hull at the same time.
As for the leviathan, the sea dragon isn't actually a whole lot of threat. It might spit fire at you and is capable of picking up and biting the prawn but will mostly ignore you if you don't go hanging out in front of it.
With that said, treat it like any other leviathan while in the cyclops. Drive slow, keep an eye on it and if it gets curious, drop a decoy and move away ASAP. Cutting your engines once you've gotten a little distance will almost always make them lose interest.

But Wait, There's More!

If you've explored the inner depths of the lava bubble, then you have the blue key, ion battery plans and have opened the portal to the QEP. Great! Now coming down here in the prawn isn't a big deal and you don't have to drive the cyclops all the way down here to go grab resources. A small scanner base down here would be great for quickly finding what you need.
As you can probably guess, there's an even deeper chamber than this, which is the active lava zone. You can find the entrance by following the lava flows around the ILZ and keeping an eye on the floor. You'll find a large space big enough for the cyclops to lower down into.
Down here you'll find 2 sea dragons to avoid, so don't you get conservative with your power. By now you'll probably have built ion power cells and those can run your shield and sonar together for a full 5 minutes with silent running going so don't be shy about using them!
Getting into the alien base down here will require two blue keys, one for accessing the facility, the other for accessing the inner facility. It is here you will find the ion cube fabricator which requires the prawn. You can use this to open the warp gates in the facility. Six ion cubes in total are required for this. Four for the warp gates on the upper floor and two in the Sea Emperors tank. One of these leads back to the upper floor, if you find you're struggling to get back out. This gate in particular is about halfway up the tank at the back and sits on a large ledge. An ion cube is provided to activate it, giving you a way to walk out of the tank if you find you're struggling to get out.
And... that's pretty much it, really. After that encounter you'll know where to go and what to do. The paths laid out for you in the final facility lead you to the places you need to go to find the things you require.

Tips and tricks

• Keep floaters in your cyclops. When you're operating above 500m, running out of power, floaters will allow you to passively bring your ship to the surface without power expense so that you can resupply it. This is pretty much a last ditch move but it never hurts to be prepared.
  
• You can fit up to 8 basic plant pots in an observatory, which will grant you twice the amount of growing space as an indoor grow bed for the same amount of floor space while also making the crops more easily accessible.
  
• The engine comparment of the cyclops has a lower deck behind the vehicle bay which everybody ignores, but it's a great spot for plant shelves and marble melons for food security.
  
• Load your vehicles. Dedicate storage in them to supplies. Water, food, medkits, beacons, flares (bonesharks and crabsquids react to them) and spare power supplies for the vehicles. Keep this kit supplied and you will never be caught unprepared for an 'oh crap' situation.
  
• Okay, so you don't want to give up inventory space for your vehicles. The next best thing is then to fill a watertight locker or two with food, water, medpacks and maybe a couple spare batteries and power cells, then drop them someplace with a beacon next to them. Do this a dozen times in random spots around the map as you travel and now you have emergency caches you can access if you get into trouble.
  
• When you reach the point where materials gathering is easy, consider creating vehicle-creation drop points. 2-3 spots on the map with a mobile vehicle bay, a couple lockers with everything you need for a new seamoth and some basic supplies. If you lose your vehicle, it's a lot easier to make a replacement and get the mats than to get the mats to make a replacement.
  
• The propulsion gun is your friend. Use it to grab items to pick up, use it to grab cave crawlers and yeet them into low orbit, use it to pick up rocks and fling them at things you particularly don't like. Use it to collect gas pods from gasopods without getting hit by the cloud. Use it to move debris in wrecks. Bring a spare battery specifically for it because flinging things around uses a lot of power but the sheer utility of the tool makes it worth the cost.
  
• You'll be tempted to deck your seamoth out with all the toys but the truth is once you have the prawn, it's obsolete. Don't fall into the temptation of continuing to build tons of upgrades for it unless you plan to use it for a fast-fetch vehicle for things you need from far away. However, with that said, the seamoth is really the superior vehicle for wreck-diving.
  
• Keeping a second air tank in your inventory and swapping them mid-dive is a perfectly viable option. However, the tanks only refill when wearing them, so make sure to switch again once you're back in breathing space. This can and will save you when wreck diving and two ultra high quality tanks equals 450 seconds of air in total, or 7m30s of air.
  
• Speaking of air, you can use the air bladders alternate use key (F on PC - the same button for self-scanning) to get a few seconds of air out of it into your tank. It's not much - 20 seconds or so - but sometimes, that little bit extra can save your life if you're just out of reach of your vehicle.
  
• You can collect flora and fauna samples as you progress through the game and have a garden base specifically for growing plant samples from around the crater. Obviously this looks really nice (creepvine in an alien tank under the floor provides the room in your base with a nice golden glow) but is also useful later.
  
• SCANNER ROOMS. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. If you're struggling to find the magnetite, go to Jellyshroom. If you're struggling to find Jellyshroom, always remember that lifepod 17 is directly next to one of its exit points. The range upgrades are incredibly important and the HUD chip makes the whole thing work.
  
• Farm supplies! You don't need to work or power anything to grow crops. Consider dropping a foundation with some growbeds, a beacon and your farmables (gel sack, creepvine seeds, creepvine samples, acid mushroom, blood oil and deepshrooms). Now you can stock up on things like batteries, rubber, lubricant, benzene, polyaniline. Keep a few of these crops in your cyclops for planting in new spots and never run out of the stuff you need while keeping your home base nice and lag free.
  
• Creature decoys can be deployed both by hand and by prawn propulsion arm, which lets you pull items out of your inventory to 'throw'. You can also do this with the propulsion cannon by using the F key (the alternate tool use button, the same one you use to self-scan, for all you console folks).
  
• Turning off your engines greatly reduces the chance of a leviathan damaging the cyclops, even if it's right on top of you. Moving is what gets their attention. If one is swimming near the sub, cut all engines and just wait patiently for it to get a little distance, then silent running and max speed for a few seconds. Pop a decoy for good measure if you want to make absolutely sure.
  
• You can access the right side of the Aurora relatively safely by going south to Crag Zone and then banking east into the deeper parts of crash zone. Most of the reapers are up by the ship, sticking to the bottom will keep you relatively safe and net you as much titanium as you will ever need.
  
• Blood kelp zone, the sea treader wreck and the meteor crater in Dunes all have secrets that you may find interesting.
  
• Remember the Bleeders in the reactor room of the Aurora? Bring a grav trap along - they're cheap, it's disposable - and enter through the top door by climbing along the wreckage up there. Pop the grav trap in the reactor room and kill one of them with the propulsion cannon - the others will come for the body and be stuck in the trap, making picking them off much, much easier than it would be trying to find them all individually. You can just leave the trap behind. If you have the stasis gun, you can wait for them to stack up in the grav trap, stun them, then drop gas pods amidst the several bleeders and watch them get bodied.
  
• Gas pods 'o doom also work against leviathans. They work against EVERYTHING. You just need a lot of them, but getting a lot of them is really easy with the propulsion cannon (which can fire them too, by the way).
  
• Reefback barnacles are a good source of copper and silver, but beware the tiger plants on their backs. If you have a reinforced dive suit, tiger plants can't hurt you, but without one they're a pain. You can yeet them with the propulsion cannon. That trick works for drooping stingers too.
  
• Beacons everywhere. No seriously, everywhere. You'd be amazed how few people use them as much as they ought to be used.
  
• Eastern red grass plains has deep caves with a type of plant which can only be found in a few select spots on the map. Bulb Zone's lifepod has caves with some nearby and the Dunes also has some, but a Reaper is guarding them. If you do manage to find the spot though, it's GREAT for rubies!
  
• Scanner room cameras are a good way to keep track of nearby leviathans. They also force the terrain to load, which is required for the scanner room to actually pick things up. Stalkers will snag the cameras and move them around, but they're pretty useful for quickly getting the scanner room working right. The wildlife ignores the cameras too, so if you want a really nice picture of some creature you really hate getting close to, they're a great way to get it.
  
• Breed some stalkers, release them outside your base next to a pile of metal scrap and never worry about finding teeth for glass again. Barring that? Drop a random beacon in the kelp forest and wait for a stalker to collect it, follow it back to their stash and drop a grav trap.
  
• Light sticks can be good for wreck diving, as are flares. Flares provide much better lighting in large open spaces than the flashlight or seaglide. It makes them a good alternative to the flashlight in the early game.
  

• DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES. DO NOT PARK YOUR SEAMOTH NEAR THE BEACHES.

• The following is a list of zones where one can find particular ores. It isn't a complete list, but will allow you to find everything you need in a timely fashion:
  

Lithium - Jellyshroom, Bulb Zone, Mushroom Forest, Lost River
Loose Lithium - Mushroom Forest, Mountains, Grand Reef, Shale, lost river
Magnetite - Jellyshroom is the only biome with large nodes
Loose Magnetite - Jellyshroom, mountains, cove tree cave, blood kelp zone, lost river
Rubies - Dunes, Spare Reef Caves, Lost River, Grand Reef, Underwater Islands
Diamonds - Lost River, Shale, Inactive Lava Zone, Sea Treader Path, sometimes caves
Table Coral - Shallows, Lost River
Copper - Mushroom forest, blood kelp zone, bulb zone, lost river, limestone, Inactive Lava Zone
Silver - Crag Zone, Mountains, Lost River, sandstone, Inactive Lava Zone
Gold - Jellyshroom, Blood Kelp Zone, Lost River, sandstone, shale
Lead - Sandstone, mountains, crash zone, lost river, Inactive Lava Zone
Titanium - Crash Zone, Dunes, Limestone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone
Metal Salvage - Crash Zone, Crag Zone, Kelp Forest
Kyanite - Inactive Lava Zone
Crystalline Sulfur - Lost River
Nickel - Lost River
Uraninite - Blood Kelp Zone, Blood Kelp Trench, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Grand Reef
Quartz - Dunes, Crag Zone, Lost River, Inactive Lava Zone, Red Grassy Plains
If you're reading this guide and have any suggestions for additional information, feel free to share them for the next iteration.

Good luck, survivor!

After having my own issues with the recent updates, I started looking to see if others have as well. Just a scan of this sub and other places clearly shows that there are major functionality issues with this release. I'm not sure if it's Android Auto, Waze, or a combination of both, but either way they're both Google products and it's absurd that these bugs made it out into production code.
GPS issues, lag, being told I can't enter an address while driving even though I'm literally in park, stupid UI changes (who's the genius who though "other side" was the best first option for reporting police), etc.
I'm sorry, but whomever has the responsibility for software quality assurance for Android Auto and/or Waze should be fired. I don't use that word lightly, but this level of incompetence is quite astounding.
To people who use Waze on Android Auto, some of these bugs were downright dangerous.