Pelham al hotels near i 65

This sub has been an incredible source of information and inspiration, so I gave myself an hour to write down and share some insights from the recent three-week road trip I’ve had with my partner.
General remarks:
- Our main goal was to enjoy nature, so we were okay with spending absolutely no time on the golden circle or in Reykjavik. Due to the weather, we ended up doing both anyway; but these would be the parts of the trip I would skip first. Coming from continental Europe, we had almost no jetlag and could safely start directly with our journey. With more jet lag, some more time to adapt is definitely a good idea.
- We rented a 2WD campervan from Star Car Rental and spent all but the final night on campsites. Our experience with Star Car was very good. The price was competitive and included unlimited mileage, additional driver and all necessary utensils (chairs, table, cooking stuff). We got picked up from the airport and were ready to go within 15’. When giving back the car, we got driven to our hotel without any inspection (we did have zero excess insurance).
- Mid-May to beginning of June was a very nice time to travel. The days are long (I’ve seen no darkness), almost all camping places are open, but the crowds at the highlights are small – except for the big boys in the south.
- We started our days quite early and therefore typically arrived during the afternoon at the campsites. The kitchen area, showers and laundry spaces were often free to use. Be prepared to go to campsites that have only 2 stoves and 1 shower. During prime time, expect some waiting times.
- We picked up around 100 € worth of cash – two campsites were cash-only, everything else was absolutely card-first / cash-free.
Useful ressources:
- Vedur and Safetravel: This sub is absolutely right. Learn how to read and anticipate the weather before you get there. We were there during two yellow warnings and these things are really no joke. It helps to have plenty of time to spontaneously adapt the schedule. And we’ve seen it all: blizzard in the West, hail up North, storm in the East and sun in the South.
- Google reviews & park4night: These were pretty accurate for the campsites. 4+ stars are no-brainers, 3+ depend on your needs (kitchen, shower, electricity) and less than 3 should be avoided. Also, remember to rate them yourself during/after your trip to increase the statistical significance ;)
- Google Maps/MyMaps: MyMaps was useful during our planning to fill with random highlights (waterfalls, hotpots, hikes, campsites) and to set up a rough itinerary. Google Maps is accurate on paved roads. On gravel roads, expect some significant delays. Maps calculates with 80 km/h, while you will probably never exceed 50 km/h. In the Westfjords, we guess-timated our times with 2 minutes per kilometer on the gravel roads. The Happy Campers Campsite Map as well as the Hot Pot Iceland Map were nice to have in the back-pocket to check with some time to spare whether something is close by.
- Polarsteps: This was a cute little App, which we used to keep family and friends informed. You can add pictures and some text to your highlights. This way, you don’t send the same picture into various chats and there is a location- and time-dependent context.
Cost: This is the per-person cost breakdown for our 21-day trip (20-day camper rental, 1 hotel stay, total 3’500€).
- Rental (zero excess insurance, additional driver): 1’135 €
- Flight (from continental Europe): 700 €
- Activities (Pools, Spas, Horse-riding, Kayak): 300 €
- Camping (pretty consistent 2’000 +- 500 ISK p.P.): 275 €
- Groceries (Bonus, Kronan, Netto): 255 €
- Coffee, Beers, Food in Restaurants: 260 €
- Petrol (420 € in total for roughly 3’600 km): 210 €
- Souvenirs: 180 €
- Ferries (into Westfjords and to Westman Islands): 95 €
- Hotel: 75 €
Highlights:
- Sundlaug and Spas: When camping in small towns, very often there will be a swimming pool close by. They are not expensive (around 1000 ISK pP) and a great way to relax after a long day. Also, it feels nice to take longer, hot showers without knowing people are waiting in line. We decided to go for some smaller premium spas and were very happy with all of them: Krauma was one of our first stops, the Forest Lagoon was incredible during evening hours and GeoSea was also fantastic. Re: nudity. It takes a bit to get used to, but its very refreshing to see this very open approach to nudity in the pools. No one cares, no one watches – just do your thing. It’s cool to see groups of friends at all age groups be so open about it. Certainly very different compared to continental Europe.
- As we had to skip the Eastfjords a bit due to storm, we had some time left at the end. We spent the last 3 nights on the Westman Islands. It was great to leave the car for a longer while and do everything by foot. There are plenty of things to do and the swimming pool is fantastic.
- Mulagljufur: Use Google Maps to find the exact location, as of now, there is no sign along the road. The canyon is very beautiful and we ended up hiking for almost three hours. Couldn’t get enough of the views.
- Glymur: The infamous log wasn’t placed when we were there, but the short hike to the cave and towards the canyon was absolutely worth it.
- Camping highlights: Melanes campsite at Raudasandur beach (Westfjords): incredible scenery, wild drive to get there; Thingeyri campsite (Westfjords): directly at the fjord, fantastic infrastructure (probably the best kitchen we’ve had) and IMHO a great alternative to the Tungudalur campsite in Isafjordur; 66.12 N campsite (near Husavik): insane ocean view, good infrastructure, one of the best sites along the diamond circle; Glamping&Camping (Westmann Islands): beautiful setting, good infrastructure.
Itinerary (Highlights: *, ** or ***)
Day 1: Arrival at KEF during the afternoon in pouring rain, set up campervan, first grocery stops at Bonus and Kronan, Dinner at Issi’s Fish&Chips*, Camp at Hjalli Kjos
Day 2: Glymur hike** (up to river, no log), Krauma Spa**, scenic drive into Snaefellsnes, Camp at Freezer Hostel
Day 3: Check out Snaefellsnes highlights, get to Stykkisholmur in the afternoon, Ferry Baldur to Brjanslaekur, Hellulaug hotpot*, drive to Melanes campsite*** on Raudasandur beach
Day 4: full day at Raudasandur, great hikes, another night at Melanes campsite.
Day 5: Long drive through westfjords. Highlights included the self-service fish station in Talknafjordur (amazing fisk bollur**), Dynjandi waterfall and Sandfell hike. Camping at Thingeyri*, relax in local swimming pool
Day 6: drive to Isafjordur, check out city (kind of underwhelming, but it was a national holiday; the brewery is nice), do some small hikes in the area. Camp at Tungudalur.
Day 7: very long drive out of westfjords towards Varmahlid. Hot dog stop in Holmavik and arrive at Lambeyri campsite (cash only)
Day 8: woke up with dead battery, but got jump start by campsite owner. Horseriding tour at Lytingsstadir* was very nice, drive to Akureyri, visit Forest Lagoon**. It was Saturday night when we visited, upon leaving we had police checking every driver for alcohol – so better hold off the pool-side bar ;) wanted to camp at Vaglaskogur but campsite wasn’t open. Went up until the CJA campsite in Laugar with a late-night stop at Godafoss (around 10pm, were the only people there)
Day 9: check out Myvatn area: Dimmuborgir hike, Hverir, Leirhnjukur hike**. Then continue to Dettifoss and camp at Asbyrgi. Late night hike to Asbyrgi ‘island’*.
Day 10: Hike in Asbyrgi canyon, continue to Husavik, visit GeoSea**, camp at 66.12N***
Day 11: long drive with very strong winds. We had to go back to Akureyri (optician to fix broken glasses), so went through Myvatn again with a quick stop at Grjotagja. Beautiful drive, weather was too bad for Studlagil canyon, so we continued all the way to Borgarfjordur eystri. Crazy winds during the night and we were happy that our car didn’t get blown away.
Day 12: unfortunately, no hikes in this beautiful area. Waited for storm to pass until lunchtime, visited harbor with puffins**, drive to Egilsstadir (hot dog stop), continue to Seydisfjordur (kind of underwhelming town, the drive is gorgeous though) and, due to weather forecast, continue all the way to Djupivogur campsite.
Day 13: Incredible drive from Djupivogur to Höfn, stops at Hvalnes and Jökulsarlon. Hike at Mulagljufur***, camp at Svenifell.
Day 14: early-morning hike in Skaftafell**, continue to Kirjubaersklausur for campsite. Had to skip Fjardrargljufur due to weather, visited local swimming pool.
Day 15: yellow warning again. Continued to Vik for Skool Beans Coffee*, quick stop at Reynisfjara beach (red alert was on, so we didn’t go further than the sign), continue to Skogarfoss and hike part of Fimmvorduhals*, camp in Selfoss – swimming pool was closed unfortunately.
Day 16: Weather forecast was very bad, so we spent the day in Reykjavik. Walked around town, grabbed some coffees and visiting the local Sundhöll*. Camp at Mosskogar** (cash-only)
Day 17: Golden circle: hike at Thingvellir, look at Geysir, skipped Delfoss. Camp in Selfoss again.
Day 18: quick stop at Seljalandsfoss, ferry to Westman islands. Set up camp at Glamping&Camping** for the next 3 nights. Visited Brothers Brewery*.
Day 19: Kayak tour with Kayak-and-Puffins-company***. Visited local swimming pool* (trampoline slide was very nice) and watched a local handball game.
Day 20: Hike along volcanoes and coast**, visit brewery again, go to puffin bay**
Day 21: Ferry back to mainland. Drive back towards KEF. Drop-off campervan and spent night in Konvin Hotel. Early morning shuttle to airport (we arrived about 2h early for our 7 am flight and had plenty of time).
Of course, I’m very happy to answer any questions you might have!
Hope this is helpful to some of you :)

if anybody has any advice im all ears idk. but im planning to stay in a hotel near the stadium and ubering there and back. or should i just walk?? is downtown LA very walkable?
also give me ur instas if ur going😋

TLDR to start: met bartender’s gf, she’s an accomplished thru hiker, completed pct and done sections of other long trails. Wants to take her bf (the bartender & completely inexperienced backpacker) on a 65-70 ish mile hike through the Sierra from bishop pass to kearsarge pass in 4 days… in late July…. In this record snow year…. Should I pull him aside on a night when she’s not around and tell him what he’s in for?
So her and I hit it off as soon as she starts talking about backpacking. I haven’t done a ton of backpacking in the last 2 years, and even before that I’m not as seasoned as any thru hiker. I’ve never called myself a thru hiker. But I asked her if she had been to the Sierra to which she went on about her pct hike in 2016, and how her and the bartender had a trip planned for late July.
I’ll stop here to preface that between 2017 and 2021 I spent 4 of those summers doing short trips in the Sierra of 65-150 miles a piece. I feel like I really cut my teeth in the Sierra when it comes to longer distance hikes because before that I had done overnighters and 2 nighters. Then in 2017 I jumped into a 2 week trip. I digress.. but I know their route quite well to say the least.
I am flabbergasted that she is taking someone who’s completely inexperienced on a trip so long. And apparently with such little planning. She thought I was way overestimating the 70-80 mile range for that hike. I’m like no, you have bishop pass, Mather pass, Pinchot pass, Glenn pass, and kearsarge pass, all with roughly 10 miles of hiking between each, with at least 10 additional on each end. I learned after my brief map review after getting home it’s more like 64-72 miles. And it’s a record snow year in July, and he’s never done an overnighter. And you want to do this with him in 4 days. She got very frustrated and defensive with my sentiment, granted I came off strong but she just flatly ended the conversation.
Should I pull this guy aside next time I see him in private and tell him exactly what he’s in for? It seems like a newish relationship for them (last 6 months) and I don’t want to be that guy who seems like he’s trying to drive a wedge for whatever reason. But I know that terrain well. I’m going to an area of the Sierra further north this year, but am doing my first September trip because of the snow year and it’s an off trail route and I’m not familiar with the area outside of extensive google earth and map studies. I may be over cautious, but I’ve had a couple of backcountry scares in my time, and I know first hand that no matter how beautiful the mountains are, they don’t care about you.
I just can’t imagine ascending Glenn pass from the north as a part of my first backpacking trip. Or descending Pinchot pass for nearly 8 miles, or trying to deviate from the trail to cross the south fork of the San Joaquin. Or just getting over bishop pass and all the way to leconte canyon and beyond as a first day. That’s insane to me. If I was planning this trip for myself it’d be a 6 nighter with 7 days. I could do 5 nights and 6 days but man…
What’s the sentiment here. Am I way out of line for bringing this up to him when she’s not around?
Sorry if this doesn’t make complete sense. I’m kinda drunk.

My partner and I live in the UK and we both passed our driving test last year. I enjoy driving whereas my partner hates it. I got a work from home job shortly after passing so have had no need for a car and my gf cannot currently afford one. My gfs mum added us to her insurance so I have drove her car a few times when she needs driving somewhere or when she's not using it and I drive to visit family in a city near us.
My gf and I have planned a nice weekend away in a city that is roughly a 4 hour drive from us. We were planning to get a train or coach but when we came to book them the prices were a lot higher than expected and my gf said she cannot afford it. I suggested hiring a car for the weekend and I would drive us up since I checked and the price for the car was around half the train prices. She refused instantly and said since I've never driven to this place before she doesn't think I should. I pointed out there's always going to be a first time driving somewhere. I hadn't driven to my parents house before 6 months ago but it went fine and now I drive there each month.
She refused and said we'll just have to cancel the trip which annoyed me since I had paid for the hotel and it's non refundable so she'd rather I lose a lot of money instead of just letting me drive. She said because she wouldn't drive there herself she doesn't think I should drive there since I've never done it before and she knows she'd be anxious driving so she assumes I will be. AITA for suggesting I drive us on the trip?

PREVIOUS - THE NIGHTBUS
We were able to spend the night in the closest hotel, a dinky little inn that had a very disinterested hostess. She just gave us a key and waved us upstairs. Doesn’t money mean anything to them? All of us were too tired to argue, though, so we crawled into bed and fell asleep.
I woke up with the sun shining in my face. I sighed with relief. Okay, maybe it was all a bad dream? Did I have a weird trip from something some asshole put in my drink? When I pulled out my phone, I noticed with a lurch it was 11:59, but I calmed myself down. Noon, then. I hadn’t put my phone on 24-hour time but 12-hour. It was right before noon. I fished my charger out of my handbag (never leave without it!) and looked out the window.
Our room overlooked the town square. It had a memorial, a statue of some explorer - complete with coonskin cap - that stared out into the distance. The clock tower was across from us, still stuck at 11:59, but at least it seems the chiming had been given a rest. I couldn't see the bus terminal, as it was behind the clock tower, but I could see the edge of town from here - we were in a small valley with steep hills all around us, coated in pine trees.
I sighed and scrolled on my phone. I still couldn't see why I had wifi while the others didn't. The network was called TERMINUS - the same name as on the sign on the bus terminal - and it was free to connect to. I could scroll through news sites and wikipedia, but when I tried to message other friends, the messages didn't go through. I could only assume they couldn't send me anything either.
Caroline and the others slowly stirred awake. "Ugh, meggs, what's goin on..."
I turned around. "We're in... Terminus, I guess." I tried looking it up on google maps, but didn't get any results.
"So far from home... What do they have for breakfast?"
I shrugged, smiling. "We'll have to see. You up for getting up?/"
"No... my head..."
I nodded and waited for the boys to wake up as well. All three had a hangover, but Collin's and Caroline's were truly massive. Charlie was fit enough to get out of bed and get ready to explore the inn, at least. I kept the key of the door with me and told both of them to stay inside - not that they were going anywhere.
The hallways of the inn were bland. It wasn't big - one hallway on each floor with about five or six doors and a staircase on one end. The wallpaper was probably supposed to be a calming vanilla with a daisy motif, but it just ended up looking old and yellowed. The doors were exactly the same cream color save for the silver number on the door. Ours was 25 - second floor, fifth room. I noticed it also had a chip near the lock.
Charlie and I made our way to the staircase. The uncomfortable silence was only broken by our creaking footsteps over the carpeted floor.
"So..."
"So."
I chuckled awkwardly. "Last night was... something, huh?"
"Hah, yeah..."
Creaky steps. "How are you holding up? I know you didn't sign up for this... I mean, none of us did."
"What are you talking about? We just took the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong town. I'm sure we can catch a different bus at the bus terminal and go home."
I nodded. "Y-yeah..." My smile felt a little forced, even for me. "Yeah! You're right."
It was quiet the rest of the way down. I didn't mean to sound so insincere.
"There sure are a lot of stairs." Charlie joked. "We were only on the second floor, right?"
"Yeah, we should be-"
We landed on the ground floor. Before us were two doors - both the same bland vanilla as the room's doors.
"Which way to the reception?"
"Er..." I hadn't actually paid attention when we got up, as I was herding three tired drunk people up to a room. Not that I'm naturally good at directions, either. "Let's try the right door."
Behind the door on the right was another hallway with three more doors. Charlie blinked. "This makes no sense. This door-" he pointed to the door on his immediate left "-would just lead us to the hallway to the left door." He opened the door, but when he stepped through, he was in an empty room, lit by a single lightbulb. The same inoffensive vanilla wallpaper lined this room.
He quietly closed the door. "Where the fuck are we."
I didn't answer. I know I must have looked ridiculous, my mouth just open and closing like a fish. I mean, come on, this is physically impossible! "Maybe it's an optical illusion or something? The room looks bigger than it really is because... it's empty, or the light, or..."
"Right." Charlie didn't seem convinced. "Let's keep going straight, then. This building can't go on forever." He walked down the hallway to the last door. I meekly followed him through the door. This time the room had another two doors, and to the left, a staircase leading up.
I blinked. "Are we... back to where we started?"
Charlie yelled in frustration and barreled down the rightmost door. After a little bit, I heard running footsteps coming up behind me, and with a slam, he opened that door. "What the FUCK! I WENT in a STRAIGHT LINE!" He started kicking the walls while swearing, damaging the daisies on the wallpaper.
I chuckled quietly in disbelief. "Ha. This makes me think of Portal. Or Stanley's Parable."
Charlie stopped kicking. "What?"
"Y-yeah! In Stanley's Parable, you're a character in a story narrated by The Narrator. You can - you can choose to go along with him or go against him, but he can also go against you. It's - it's about the illusion of choice."
Charlie still didn't understand. "I don't - I'm not a game nerd. You make no sense."
"We don't... have a choice. Not really. This place will not give us one. So we have to let this place pick for us."
I fished through my pockets. I came across a coin - it wasn't there in my pocket before, but I didn't question it. "Heads for left, tails for right."
It landed on tails. I reached out for the rightmost door, and we both went through.
We stood in the restaurant-part of the inn. Breakfast was still laid out, but no-one else was there. No-one else was eating. I went towards the lady behind the counter. "Hey, uh, we'd... we'd like to pay for our rooms. And breakfast."
The lady stared at us as if we were crazy. "What are ya talkin' about? You already paid."

Good Thread on twitter by Ali Al Salim:
https://twitter.com/alialsalim/status/1663443727036166145?s=46&t=j3Imx9tMnBKtdBS2JSezOQ
1/ Two questions for Gulf economies are increasingly important:
a) why do they lack innovation? b) why do they struggle to create jobs for citizens?
A few overarching and persistent reasons...
2/ For decades, Gulf states facilitated what is called REGULATORY CAPTURE, i.e. when a political entity, policymaker or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, in this case, the "Tijjar", or merchant class.
3/ Two primary and protectionist measures were born from this: a) WAKALA - enabling a local "agency" to be sole-distributor of foreign goods and services b) KAFALA - a mandatory local sponsorship of all expat labour.
4/ What emerged was a massively corrupted form of capitalism, one that focused on OLIGOPOLISTIC trading (in lieu of real production/value-add). For nearly a century, this fostered (in various forms) a culture of banal private sector rent-seeking.
5/ The tsunami of capital formation that followed, accrued to a minority segment of the population that used their growing power and influence to reinforce and perpetuate the regulatory capture; after all protecting one's commercial position is logical.
6/ Gulf private sectors chose to follow two state-sanctioned rentier business models: 1) an end-point of sale for consumer goods (wakala) 2) arbitraging & monopolising the price of labour (kafala) A consequence of this was a chronic lack of innovation and superficial development.
7/ Reinforcing the symbiotic arrangement, the state was (and largely continues to be) the source of almost all end demand. Even household consumption was ultimately a function of state salaries, distributed through an ever-expanding and mollifying bureaucracy.
8/ A captive source of demand and a protected local market thus failed to create incentives for the private sector to be dynamic or globally competitive. This meant that for decades, economic activity never became "productive" in an innovative or knowledge-building sense.
9/ This evidence supports the late Hisham Sharabi's theory of Neopatriarchy (h/t @Layla_AlAmmar). Private sectors, far from developing an intellectual capacity and independence, instead expanded under new protective legislation as mere extensions of the patronage system.
10/ As a result, Gulf private sectors chronically LACK a capacity to critically analyse and solve problems. Instead, solutions are imported and sold, skirting the acquisition of knowledge implicit in the solutions purveyed. This helped perpetuate the status quo for decades.
11/ Today we're confronted with a private sector that is narrow (trading-focused) and shallow (lacking deep participation in the value chain). Yet the sector's role in the political economy is being forced to change, in part, as the expectant provider of employment to citizens.
12/ As local markets are liberalised, protections removed and aggressive quotas to hire nationals are enforced, I envisage challenging times for many traditional Gulf businesses that fail to radically re-invent themselves.

My daughter lives in LA and I love bobbleheads. I had her goto the Mookie Betts bobblehead the other week and now want to send her to San Francisco for Joc Peterson bobblehead night.
Any recommendations for a hotel near the stadium? Would like to spend under $150 a night.
Thanks

Hi all, we are traveling to Italy June 10th until June 20th. We are staying near the beach in Cervia for 6 days. 2 days in Lugo (Best friend's wedding) and the last days in Bologna. Looking at the weather forecast has made me so sad. Esp during the 6 days in Cervia. I am not sure exactly how rain works in Italy. For eg in the UK, when it rains all day, it's impossible to go out. It's dark, cold and miserable. While in India, when it rains, it stops after a while and the sun comes out and it's so fresh and nice to be near a beach. How is it in Cervia ? If it rains all day, does that mean we have to be stuck in the hotel room? Any tips regarding this would be so helpful!
Thank you !

Hi all, we are traveling to Italy June 10th until June 20th. We are staying near the beach in Cervia for 6 days. 2 days in Lugo (Best friend's wedding) and the last days in Bologna. Looking at the weather forecast has made me so sad. Esp during the 6 days in Cervia. I am not sure exactly how rain works in Italy. For eg in the UK, when it rains all day, it's impossible to go out. It's dark, cold and miserable. While in India, when it rains, it stops after a while and the sun comes out and it's so fresh and nice to be near a beach. How is it in Cervia ? If it rains all day, does that mean we have to be stuck in the hotel room? Any tips regarding this would be so helpful!
Thank you

In 2021 I was diagnosed with the rarest type of breast cancer you can get. I was told I'm a Dr's entire career they would be lucky to see one case..So I was the unicorn. Even more rare it's usually in people over the age of 65. I had just turned 39. They also told me I had only about a 1% chance of becoming pregnant. My last child before this was 11 and I already had 4. From a previous abusive marriage. My ex husband is in prison 12 yrs from that abuse so the financial part for the kids has been on me. ..But anyway low and behold the day before my mastectomy i found out i was pregnant. It was during the pandemic still so the financial strain was already there. There was no financial assistance for me. My partner worked 2 jobs and I worked thru my cancer and while pregnant as much as possible while having to max out several credit cards just to live. Set that aside I have a electric bill that's outrageous I haven't been able to pay. I can hardly feed my children. Can't hardly afford gas, couldn't afford them school clothes so had to home school them. My daughter has celiac but has to eat ramen noodles..My toddler is still in a infant car seat. I have literally gone everywhere and because of our income we qualify for nothing but its not nearly enough to survive on. My 14 yr old son that has autism just got a job that he's struggling with at a fast food place just so he can try to buy his own needs and it makes me feel terrible. Just 4 yrs ago we had savings to put down on a home and now every month we are at risk of going homeless. I have to still have a surgery every 6 months I've now had 8. Still have 2 lumps in the breast I got to keep insurance wouldn't cover it i couldn't afford the double out of pocket. And I just feel like I'm worth more not here to my children than I am here. Anything will help. I have cash app and venmo.

I’ve lived in San Ramon for about 4 years and i have heard stories about the extended stay and other hotels near the chevron on Bollinger and San Ramon Valley.
Does anyone have any insight?

I feel like a sham of a parent! I know she is looking to me for advice that will point her in a direction, but she is the one that ultimately has to make a decision and life with the consequences of that decision.
She is 24yo. The last.5 years have been difficult. SA by a trusted family member sent her I to a mental health tailspin. She has managed to right the ship some, but still has quite a way to go.
He current boyfriend (well ex as of 2 days ago) is what I would consider a narcissist as well.as emotionally abusive. The started living together 1 month into the relationship. One and half years later and she finally go fed up enough to get away. Then she finds out she's pregnant.
She wants the baby, but not HIS baby, or the lifetime tether that would have. She works as a waitress at a place that's too slow to make any kind of real money. She move back home 3 months ago at the first BF split. But continued to go on dates (and obviously more). So providing for a baby alone would be near impossible. She has no real tract record of follow through on anything. Even before the SA.
She doesn't want to carry it to term and give it up because her cynical world view of people makes her believe the baby would more than likely end up in a crappy situation.
She doesn't believe in abortion, but believes this is her only option. I ask questions to illicit thoughts or plans on her part. DH and I can't raise a baby. He's on disability retirement and I have to work. We are prepared to be supportive grandparents of need be, but the financial toll of the last 5 years and her habitually making irresponsible decisions have made us cut of money support even prior to this situation.
So.here we are in a hotel in a different state because we live in a ban state. She is scheduled for tomorrow morning. And I feel like a worthless parent for not being able to give her what I belive she is wanting from me......a decision that absolves her of having to make a tough decision.
I have no idea what to say anymore. I'm here in this hotel not because I've pushed her to be here. I'm here because I told her I would be there for her regardless of her decision, short of raising it.
Has anyone out there been in this position? What helped? What hurt? I'm as lost as she is!

Ok look, I just want to open by saying that this is gonna be long and kind of a vauge rant; but i wanted to post it somewhere just so that someone might understand where i'm coming from.
Im pretty sure i fall into a smallish minority of players of the Phantasy Star series. My first foray was Phantasy Star Universe; and while it seems to be a bit of a blacksheep of the series, as someone just discovering my first mmo outside of Runescape (and on a console no less) it was pure MAGIC. There was SO much to do, so many cool and unique items to collect, a fun and engaging community who was friendly and willing to help. You had branching paths, themed bosses; everything just felt so ALIVE to me as a kid. All these people here in this awesome virtual world all having fun, making real memories with real people through the joy of fun community features, and a shared love of finding the next exciting drop.
Jump forward in time a couple years after the PSU shutdown; I catch wind that PSO2 is playable in japan, and its possible to play from the US. Immediately, nostalgia floods me, and i start trying to rig the wonky launcher and super primitive english patch on some crappy 200 dollar walmart laptop i had (SO many hours spent doing captchas in hiragana as a dumb american... holy hell). I get into the server, and its like magic all over again; im a little confused about how the field lobbies are gone and how the layout works as a whole; but im having a good time. I settle in on ship 2, i do a handful of missions and happen to run across some english speaking players and boom; i'm in an alliance, here comes the sense of community again! Now, at this point i'm a little older and wiser; i've played a good few f2p mmos at this point, and so it isn't long before i notice the cash shop and start trying to figure out what i'm missing. So I start asking about in the voice chat of this alliance i'm in; and most people tell me that if i'm having fun that a premium set is the biggest thing worth having. However i would need to find a way to convert my money (which at the time was quite complicated, though it later got easier i'm told). So i kind of hit a stone wall and decide "Well im having fun, all these new skill trees are really cool and im enjoying the game and its combat especially vs PSU..... so how hard can it be to grind it out as a f2p?
​
Well it wasn't the worst. I lasted a good 6 months and maxxed out 1 class, i survive through SG storage space, and learn that through shop tickets and room tickets i can get pretty much anything i want through smart grinding. At some point through the leveling process, the loop started to feel more rewarding the more you really learned combat; but the overall rewards just felt so slow and unsatisfying. I'm sure it didnt help that MANY items were untranslated; but so much of the loot felt so samey. There were no super cool special drops or anything outside of augments really that people wanted that werent AC scratch items; so i got to farming. Alot of my alliance members were very skilled and knowledgeable, and frankly carried me super hard in both knowledge and power (shout out to Cedric, Gorani, and Maileese). I started to learn and understand alot about the game outside of the fun community aspects that drew me in. I started bringing in ok money and got my character set up with a cool outfit; made my room nice and decorated so i could invite my alliance over to hang out. Overall, i managed to thrive as a f2p despite constant mid run banking, storage problems, slower xp, and shitty buff drinks. I stayed and learned to thrive, because it gave me the option to thrive as a f2p through learning the finer bits of the market (and being able to access it reasonably easy).
Jump forward like 5-6 more years; my crappy laptop is dead; I had long taken a break from pso2 JP when they started ip banning english players; and im playing on xbox as my main source of gaming entertainment. I had almost forgotten they ever promised to bring pso2 west nearly 10 years ago; but when i saw PSO2 at E3 of all things; needless to say I LOST MY MIND! i was beyond excited for it to finally touch back down; and whats more its even coming to the platform i have access too! so many years of content and things i missed! I was mentally preparing to lose myself in PSO2 for ages; but this time i was fully invested in "Min/maxxing" mentality. I know that lots of people are going to be playing for the first time, and that having already played a bunch myself; i have the advantage to some degree in knowledge; and can use it both to help myself and others. I like to think that overall i did pretty good; i ran an alliance with a good handful of friends who i convinced to play; and we all had a great time... for about 2ish weeks until we realized gearing peaked at revolsio weapons. I knew the content drip would be slow but steady; but there was such a renewed sense of community, that even though they began to trickle out; i couldnt help but stay.
I started getting into augementing and experimenting with builds; i start affixing units and weapons for profit, i engage in the community colored chair wars, i people watch on block 69; life is GREAT and im having a great time. Ofc i bought in for a founders pack and had premium and some cosmetics and stuff; i was actually an adult with money this time, and i mean hey; what's 30 bucks to support a game i love and get basically everything i need for one character? I occasionally grumble over the inability to trade people without premium, or that those without it level extra slow; but i know that if they just make it over a certain barrier that they can thrive no problem. I use photon capsule machines to trade friends gear; we do even more advance quests even more of the time to make sure people get the levels they need; and eventually they have a stockpile of tickets, and have a max level character; and start making money. At some point alot of them start having enough fun that they too buy into the game, some for a premium set; some full send whales. Now, the whales started being a double edged blade; because there were enough people making well affixed gear at steady enough of pace; but jussst slow enough at first that demand was still very much outweighing supply. So the market begins to skyrocket on perfect affixed units. Now me personally; i made alot of money on this. but for MANY of the other players who are just trying to get better gear and those who are chasing the "end game" so to speak; this became super punishing.
I could go on and on and on about how much stuff got super crazy on the market because of whaling. but as long as you were on the right side of it from a standpoint of affixes and material farming; you could make a fortune off of it; although at some point they even started making that not as good with premium capsules and whatnot. Soon capsules are best in slot across the board, shop tickets begin trickling out; The balloon breasts jump to like 2 billion meseta lol. so much stuff starts happening around me that im like "man this game isnt like... pay to win but SUPER pay to conveinence". but the reality was starting to get a little bit bleaker by the end of pso2 era for F2P players.
To come full circle here with what drove me to rant and rave about this al;l is how the model has progressed in NGS. We lived in an age where there was no player shop access for f2p (unless you were sitting on a dragons hoard of unsed 3 days from base game), there were no rooms, even premium benefits were basically nil outside of a shop. AC scratches were getting pumped at at an all time high, no concerts, no real entertainment of any kind; just fuggin resol forest all day. and finally we have come to an age of content where sega finally makes skill trees not cost money to change; but just sells you the ability to skip playing the game. and not only that but effectively spawn in the best items in the game for AC. It just feels so unfortunate that the content has dried up; nothing feels anywhere near as creative or fun. the combat is inch deep; as are the skill trees. theres no crazy combos; no 20 piece combo craziness. just the same 4-5 moves; on repeat; with mostly some % buffs thrown in.
I havent even begun to mention the mile long list of other stuff missing that even base game had. Bas egame had some genunely fun and challeneging content. there were fun missions to run and it made sense to do them. NGS is just devoid of any of the charm of fun that made any of its previous iterations great; and all while gouging you for more and more.
I know this trails all over the place and has a rushed conclusion, but i was just reading the patch notes considering dipping my toes back into the water again after skipping stia; and im just honestly so turned off by it. nothing has changed; no major interesting content has dropped; and now they are going full on pay to win. I'll be honest; i think ill just stick to clementine server or something; because at least there, the devs actually give a shit about the game. I feel like im in an abusive relationship im just waking up to after 10 years os PSO or something. and with that i dont have much else to say tbh. i love this franchise, and i want to love this game; but SEGA really just cannot do right with this game.

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:

1. SEC vs. Coinbase. Yep…crypto is now at war. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1666159275217911835
2. Brian Armstrong’s response. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1666129111025324035
3. The Cardano Foundation has disputed the characterization of Cardano as a security in comments to Fortune. https://twitter.com/Cardano_CF/status/1666128229952897024
4. Here’s Coinbase politely pointing out the SEC’s complete refusal to provide any direction or cooperation despite Coinbase’s continuous and plentiful attempts. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1666135834062467083
5. The question of regulatory jurisdiction may end up being the biggest problem for the SEC in all these crypto matters. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1653821211544092672
6. Rumor: There could also be a DOJ case coming for Binance. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1666180524535062529

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. A nice thread on the many strengths of Cardano. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1656388178369212416
2. Remember, lobster traps are a thing. https://twitter.com/TheCardanoTimes/status/1656064744225120257
3. Today (May 11 at 1pm EST) there will be a Messari Cardano Analyst call with Charles & Frederik. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1656272372452954112
4. I think we all love it when they start making our case for us. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1656379837823561730
5. Ethereum is lamenting many of its poor design choices that Cardano already fixed. https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1656215016016683008
6. Drunkenmiller says this is the broadest asset bubble he’s ever even studied let alone seen firsthand and we’ve only had a few soft landings since 1950. https://twitter.com/Stephen_Geigestatus/1656416819312222219
7. Live footage of meme coin investors accepting their ROI. https://twitter.com/KaylerSmithTV/status/1656130092966264834
8. Here’s the Messari call from today with both Fred & Chaz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUhWwF74MM
9. People really seem to be enjoying the CF’s Blockchain Education Alpha Program. https://twitter.com/andreassosilo/status/1644263843743293451
10. The US Chamber of Commerce brief in the Coinbase case is calling out the SEC for acting “unlawfully”. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1656737447756038177
11. About that whole self-custody thing we’ve discussed… https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1656706653801136132
12. The SPO poll on K and minFee starts today (May 15)! You should redelegate if your stake pool doesn’t vote the way you would vote! https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-poll-experiment-live-on-mainnet/
13. There are also a series of forum topics for discussion of the various options in the Cardano.org forums. https://twitter.com/Lovecoach_nic/status/1657700010148896770
14. Coinbase spotlights Empowa! May be the first time they’ve ever given such a spotlight to a Cardano project. Tides are turning. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1657081243518005254
15. Wow. Leaked “Key Messages” document for the joint committee meeting in the US House last week. Best part: they basically complain about separation of powers in point three. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1656362002577772544
16. Dr. Vanishree Rao on ZK-Rollups. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1657778843854274560
17. Here’s a new Decentralized Identity article from IOG. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2023/05/11/atala-prism-pioneering-digital-identity-with-decentralized-solutions/
18. There are reasons we’re in a hard capped cryptocurrency like Cardano. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/argentina-interest-rates-inflation/index.html
19. What is a dRep? This video is for you. There will be additional categories of default dReps that vote abstain or no confidence on every vote. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1658034085401337857
20. The US Dept. of Justice is officially saying they are targeting exchanges. Great. Great. https://www.ft.com/content/5aac457e-cc80-44ae-ac40-9b51d9b601a3
21. Wow! Ledger just made what is possibly the greatest PR blunder in the history of crypto. Trezor will be poppin’ bottles tonight. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658458714771169282
22. People are claiming that the hysteria is a misunderstanding of cryptography. But, that’s not what’s going on here if Ledger plus one of the other two shard custodians can reconstruct your private key without having to use your private key. https://twitter.com/nimuepool/status/1658517533836574720
23. The Ledger Recover FAQ seems to support this understanding as it suggests you use a brand new device for recovery. https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/9579368109597
24. Wow. Unfortunate timing for this. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658095051375800321
25. Ken Kodama will be doing a Japanese language interview on CardanoSpot on May 18. https://twitter.com/Emurgo_Ken/status/1658838077136162828
26. The stake pool operator poll on network parameters of K and minPoolCost is live. See the results here. The re-delegation phase will begin on May 25th. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
27. Cornucopias dropped some new in-game footage. As expected, Solace is beautiful. https://youtu.be/j5iwNsQVMDQ?t=1846
28. Wow….the Ledger shards are encrypted with “a master key that is contained in all devices”. Wut? https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1658809445965606913
29. Sadly, the Ledger CEO seemed to be denying exactly the above just a day ago. https://twitter.com/_pgauthiestatus/1658508082941403144
30. Here’s why 340 ADA minPoolCost promotes multi-pools. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1659387255537176581
31. Numbers are emerging on the benefits of K=1000 over K=500. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1659398551917727744
32. Here’s the latest on the Stake Pool Operator poll. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
33. Rep. Tom Emmer is trying to help crypto by cutting crypto assets out of the definition of a “security”. He creates a new non-security asset category called “investment contract asset”. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1659291641281146886
34. Prof. Wadler (co-inventor of Cardano’s Plutus) has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society joining the likes of Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, and Isaac Newton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOm-dWje-M
35. Huge amount of voting for economic self-interest by multi-poolers in the SPO poll. Earlier today (May 21), 84.73% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 340 ₳ was multi-poolers. Only 15.6% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was multi-poolers. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
36. Large pools also voted heavily for economic self-interest with the K parameter. 70.02% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools with delegation over 35 million. Only 30.57% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools over 35 million. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
37. Apparently Cardano has its own wiki now! Probably better given our previous treatment by the big wiki group. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660383700243329024
38. Rep. Tom Emmer is getting some reactions on the bill he sponsored with Rep. Soto. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1660329932495486977
39. You’re really gonna hold up a debt ceiling deal because you hate crypto so bad? https://twitter.com/gaborgurbacs/status/1660248530135515138
40. Looks like a few big multi-poolers have voted in the poll since yesterday. Pretty easy to predict what they didn’t vote for. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
41. Reports coming in that DCG has defaulted on the payment owed to Genesis. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1660671386388504577
42. Ledger Recover would allow governments to confiscate crypto assets by subpoena? Called “not a real concern in the end.” Really? https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1660677064700178436
43. Frederik Gregaard on DeFi and regulation. https://twitter.com/F_Gregaard/status/1660655806709211137
44. Don’t Forget, the May Cardano 360 will be on May 25th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660621805017608194
45. Here’s the daily check-in on the status of the SPO Poll. We have surpassed 590 pools voting (as of May 23). https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
46. The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has decided to get our hopes up with a proposed regulatory framework for crypto exchanges that could mean more trading for coins like Cardano. https://apps.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=23PR53
47. Here’s an IOG thread on the latest out of Atala Prism and Self-Sovereign Identity. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660904360925188097
48. Here’s an IOG article on Cardano native tokens. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660975383997448193
49. The difference in decentralization between Cardano and Bitcoin is still…laughable. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660979639907500033
50. Ledger is finally caving (a little) to the backlash. It’s reported that they will focus on open sourcing parts of their code and only release the “Recover” firmware after that open sourcing is finished. https://twitter.com/NFTherdestatus/1661026174779420672
51. Looks like the Hong Kong announcement yesterday might have been a hint of what’s coming. https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1661391542504902664
52. The Cardano Layerverse is coming to life. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1660697833115385856
53. Wow! Incredible! Thank you for voting in favor of decentralization, 1PCT! https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1661460222203002880
54. Federal Reserve report debunks claim that crypto is not useful to people in the US. https://twitter.com/SebVentures/status/1661063483369177108
55. The SPO phase of the poll is over. Nearly 800 pools voted. Now it’s your turn to see how your pool voted and re-delegate if you think they voted against decentralization and for their own pocketbook. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
56. The May Cardano 360 is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_bCa_xCoxA
57. Charles dropped an update today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfL2U2hAGWw
58. Sen. Cynthia Lummis declares her opposition to the 30% tax on bitcoin mining. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1661803569341759495
59. Lots of volume being transacted on Cardano recently! https://twitter.com/cwpaulm/status/1662929296329981952
60. Recent subpoenas to the Python Package Index don’t bode well for those hoping to store seed phrases with third-party custodians. https://twitter.com/_jonasschnelli_/status/1662531840606093312
61. Transaction volume is looking very interesting right now. https://messari.io/charts/cardano/txn-vol
62. JPG Store has now launched Android and IOS apps. https://twitter.com/jpgstoreNFT/status/1663281982262919170
63. It’s true. Cardano is straight killing it on the security leg of the trilemma.https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1662987243655684096
64. Just checked. Yep. The centralization in ETH is still staggering. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1663222056870350848
65. There’s a documentary about a 2022 Plutus hackathon in Argentina. https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1663111319732535297
66. Pavia is testing NFT gating. This could get very interesting. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1663153213988823040
67. Marlowe is on mainnet! You can now code Cardano smart contracts in javascript or blockly via Marlowe! This is an amazing leap forward. https://twitter.com/marlowe_io/status/1663480828016435200
68. Don’t forget! We are still in the re-delegation phase of the CF Poll. See how your stake pool voted! If they were voting for their pocketbook instead of decentralization, you should re-delegate! https://twitter.com/Cardano_CF/status/1663564854572244994
69. Wow! Cardano projects are doing big things these days! https://twitter.com/CardanoCrocClub/status/1663468916843114498
70. The CCP has dropped a white paper on how it will develop Web 3 including NFTs and the metaverse. https://twitter.com/milestones_nft/status/1663458500922712064
71. Lace is now open source! https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663953642045714433
72. Binance is back and apparently they don’t care if someone had that ticker first. https://twitter.com/pool_pm/status/1663809731603906560
73. Summon is now allowing for multichain swaps of ADA & ERG. https://twitter.com/N8iveToEarth/status/1664038846563225600
74. Charles did a Twitter Space with World Mobile. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663984094252810283
75. Here’s an easy infographic on CIP-1694 Voltaire governance from IOG. https://twitter.com/Hornan7/status/1664007623799185409
76. Apparently, Cardano sushi is a thing! https://twitter.com/Allison_Fromm/status/1663841386074976257
77. This kind of sums up the problems with central bank behavior over the last 20 years. https://twitter.com/JeffWenigestatus/1664012650781585409
78. Interesting news about the currency in one of Cardano’s biggest metaverse projects. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1664240389610704896
79. Messari has released an article on operational decentralization in proof-of-stake crypto. https://messari.io/report/evaluating-validator-decentralization-geographic-and-infrastructure-distribution-in-proof-of-stake-networks
80. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has MASSIVELY revised their figures on Q4 of 2022. No surprise, the numbers were much worse than they told us. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
81. Looks like DAOs are getting a little hesitant about fee switches due to possible legal/tax implications. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
82. We even have Arctic block production. https://twitter.com/Laponia_pool/status/1664226409466740737
83. Questions are being raised regarding the blockspace consumption of dApps still on Plutus v1. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1664385383122051073
84. Atomic wallet got hacked. https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1665080799253733377
85. No surprise: general interest in crypto & Cardano is still pretty low according to google trends. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=cardano&hl=en
86. Here’s the Weekly Development Update from June 2. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1665394985934499840
87. The Chairs of the House Committee on Financial Services (McHenry) and the House Committee on Agriculture (Thompson) are co-sponsoring a new pro-crypto Digital Asset Market Structure Bill. Currently just a discussion draft. Here’s the summary. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD002.pdf
88. Here’s the actual discussion draft. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD003.pdf
89. Here’s a section-by-section with exhibits. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD001.pdf
90. Cornucopias has released more game footage. https://twitter.com/RobGreig3/status/1665310543589040130
91. SEC vs. Binance/CZ. It begins!!!!! https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1665845917268815874
92. Written response from Charles to the SEC/Binance complaint. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1665780536177217537
93. Written response from Binance on the SEC complaint. https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/sec-complaint-aims-to-unilaterally-define-crypto-market-structure-8707489117122437402
94. Video response from Charles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBZ-aGqldA
95. Cornucopias has dropped a whole new reel of gameplay footage. It looks really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ftHH8bbxQ
96. Cardano Gaming at the NFT.Brazil event! https://twitter.com/cardanowarriors/status/1665815653398507520

~Army of Spies

We are a family of 4 with two young kids, a toddler who’s nearing 3 years old and an infant who is 9 months old. We visited Japan in May of 2023 for 18 nights. We stayed in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, and took day trips to Nara and Kobe.
Some people might call us crazy for taking an international trip with two small children. But my wife and I, who were avid travelers before we had kids, hadn’t been out of the country since 2019 due to 1) having kids and 2) Covid. We were itching for a trip, so we took the chance. Were there some crazy times? Of course. Was it worth it? Definitely.
I did a lot of research and prep before the trip, but there are always surprises that come up when you have kids. I’ll try to share some of the lessons I learned on the trip.
—Flights—
This was our first time on an airplane with the kids. I was a bit worried beforehand and in retrospect the flights were the worst parts of the trip. The main advice I’d give is do as much as you can to make your flight more tolerable, which no doubt means spending more money on tickets and gear. But it’s worth it.
I considered a few different airlines for this trip: ZipAir, Singapore, ANA, and Japan Airlines. JAL was too expensive. ZipAir was interesting because they provide car seats, you don’t have to take your own. We didn’t rent a car in Japan so we didn’t need our own car seats. I was just worried about racking up extra fees on ZipAir. Singapore and ANA were similar, they both provide bassinets and the price was similar. I ended up going with ANA for two reasons: 1) I had flown ANA on a previous trip and been happy with them and 2) they fly to Haneda instead of Narita, which saves you time getting from the airport to your hotel.
We opted for 3 seats and a bassinet. My infant is big for her age so she barely fit in the bassinet (she’s 21 pounds). But we were glad to have it. I had to call in to ANA customer service which had an hour+ wait time to get the bassinet, but other than that it was no trouble.
Which leads me into probably the most important part of flying with kids on a lengthy flight: get your kids to sleep on the plane. The more they sleep the less likely you are to run into a tantrum or meltdown.
To encourage sleeping we did a few things: 1) Take an overnight flight 2) Get a bassinet for our infant 3) Get a JetKids bed box for our toddler. Our ANA flight from LAX left at 5pm, which allowed time for the dinner service to show up before we put our kids to bed. They set the bassinet up right after you get to cruising altitude, so it’s there the majority of the flight. Our infant rejected it at first but eventually fell asleep.
As far as our toddler sleeping, the JetKids worked well. There was a bit of trouble with it staying in place since we had bulkhead seats, but overall I was happy with it as a bed. I absolutely hate the JetKids a piece of luggage though, it’s not easy to lug around and holds nearly nothing. But it helped our toddler stay asleep most of the flight. You don’t necessarily need a JetKids though, other airline seat bed solutions may work just as well. Just bring something that will help your toddler sleep. If we had to do it again, I think I’d prefer having car seats over both the bassinet and JetKids. That’s probably what we’ll do on the next trip.
There were a few unexpected problems we ran into on the flights. On the first flight, our infant got motion sickness and spit up multiple times. She ruined one of my shirts and my wife’s pants. Not to mention my wife got motion sickness as well so I had to do most of the heavy lifting with the kids alone. It was a sleepless and messy flight.
On our flight home, there was a mechanical issue with the plane. They said we were losing oil. So on a Tokyo to Los Angeles flight we somehow ended up landing In Anchorage, Alaska. It goes without saying this was horrible and the flight home from Anchorage on Alaska Airlines was horrible too. But that’s not really relevant to flying to/from Japan so I’ll leave the details out. We won’t be flying with ANA ever again.
To reiterate, do what you can to make your flight easier. Get the non-stop flight. Get the extra seat. This isn’t the area to be frugal.
—Stroller—
So you survived the flight. How do you get your kids around once you’ve landed? We have two kids so we need a twin stroller right? Wrong. Taking a twin stroller to Japan is a huge mistake, don’t do it.
Most guides will tell you to use a carrier, and if you only have one small infant then that’s likely the way to go. But with two kids we used a travel stroller and carrier combo. At first I expected to only use the carrier and carry the stroller around until we needed it, but I quickly realized that carrying the stroller around all day is a huge pain. We have the Cybex Libelle which is small at 13lbs, but 13lbs is still heavy enough that you don’t want to carry it all day.
So our stroller remained deployed basically all the time. My infant sat in the stroller most of the day, until it was my toddler’s nap time. Then the infant went in the carrier and toddler in the stroller to sleep. It worked well for us.
How did we keep the stroller deployed the whole time? Elevators. Lots of elevators. And occasionally carrying it up and down stairs. The availability of elevators depends on where you are. Of the cities we visited, I’d say Tokyo is the best and Kyoto is the worst for elevator availability.
The wide majority of metro and train stations are going to have elevators. It can be hard to find the right entrance to use to find an elevator, but there is always signage and almost always a map. You may need to walk an extra 5 minutes, or wait in line, or get lost, so always give yourself extra time when catching a train if you are using your stroller. We spent a LOT of time looking for elevators on this trip.
We only found two stations our whole trip that had no elevator at all, one was the JR Kobe station and the other was a JR station in Tokyo (I forget which one). When this happened, I picked up the stroller and carried it with our infant in it on the stairs. If our toddler was in it I made her get up and walk, then carried the stroller.
The other problem at metro / train stations with a stroller is the gap between the train and the platform. There’s always either a gap or the train and platform are at different elevations. You don’t have a lot of time to get on / off the train so this was a constant source of anxiety. Once our stroller wheel got stuck in between the train and the platform. It took some effort to pop it out. Another time my toddler stepped in the gap, but luckily I was holding her hand and stopped her from falling in. Always be mindful of the gap when you have kids. It’s probably one of the least safe situations you’ll constantly run into in Japan.
Malls and shopping centers almost always have elevators. You may need to wait a while to get one though. In the malls with 10+ floors, you might need to wait 5 minutes for an elevator. Sometimes they have “priority” elevators for the handicapped and strollers but often times perfectly abled people rudely take up all the space in those elevators.
We thought we would have trouble taking our stroller into restaurants but it was actually much less trouble than expected. There was only one restaurant that flat out turned us away, Sushi Tokyo Ten in Roppongi. Other establishments will usually move a chair so you can put your stroller at the table or counter where the chair was.
So overall the stroller was annoying to use but I don’t think we could have done the trip without it. It was a necessary evil with two young kids.
—Shinkansen—
We used the Shinkansen to get between cities. We had two trips, Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka to Tokyo. We did not bother with the JR Pass, it wasn’t worth it. Mostly because our trips were 8 days apart so we would’ve needed the 14 days pass which wasn’t worth it for two Shinkansen trips.
One thing that caught us off-guard about the Shinkansen is how quickly it leaves a station when it makes a stop. We were expecting to have some time to get on when the train arrived, but it’s basically the same as a Metro stop. You have to get on right away. We made the mistake of buying a reserved seat for a train leaving in less than 15 minutes, without knowing where the elevator was. So we scrambled to get to where we needed to go on the platform and were the last ones on the train. We jumped on the train at the last second, we wanted to get to our specific car from the platform but we weren’t going to make it. It’s a miracle we didn’t lose a piece of luggage or a kid on the way. On the second trip I reserved a seat on a train that was 40 minutes out.
As far as seating we only needed to buy two seats. We would have put our toddler on our lap if needed, but we didn’t need to. Basically, one side of the train has 2 seats and the other 3. If you find a row that has the window seat open on the 3 seat side, then it is very unlikely anyone will sit in the aisle seat if you reserve the window and middle seat. We basically got a free seat for our toddler this way on both trips.
—Baby supplies—
We had more trouble than expected finding baby supplies. A lot of guides online tell you to go to drugstores, and maybe we were going to the wrong drugstores but that wasn’t working out for us. We were distraught until we by chance came across Babies R Us. Yes, the Babies R Us that went out of business in the USA. We happened to be browsing the malls in Odaiba when we came across this gem. It’s a treasure trove of western style baby food and supplies.
Our infant is in the “purée” food stage and we didn’t find any in drugstores. Most of the baby food is juice or rice porridge. Babies R Us has aisles worth of puréed food. It has diapers, wet wipes, formula, nose cleaners, and basically anything else you’d ever want for your baby. We stocked up on everything when we found this place. There are several locations but we went to the Odaiba location in Tokyo and the Harborland location in Kobe.
Another smaller store we found in the mall below Tokyo Skytree is Dadway. They don’t have as much as Babies R Us but we did pick up some purée here.
The other place we picked up diapers and a few others things is Don Quijote, which has locations all over the place. Their baby food collection is basically as limited as drugstores, but it’s fine in a pinch.
—Eating—
I’ve spoken a lot about logistics, but I had one primary reason for going to Japan: to eat tasty food. I had been to Japan once before I had kids and fell in love with the food.
Most guides will tell you families should go to family restaurants. Nope. Not happening. We did not go to a single Saizeriya or Bikkuri Donkey. And I definitely did not go through all of this trouble to eat at Denny’s. We went to a total of ZERO family restaurants.
I’m here to tell you there are plenty of good restaurants you can go to with kids. Even with a baby. Even with a baby and a toddler.
I’ll tell you my main approach to finding restaurants that will allow kids to dine with you. Your main tools are: Tablelog, Google Maps, and the individual restaurant websites. Tablelog is a great tool and their “with children” section on the restaurant info page is very accurate. If a restaurant is listed as “Babies are welcome” or “Baby Strollers accepted”, then you can very likely eat there with a baby. If a place does not have such a listing, it isn’t necessarily a no, it’s a maybe. That’s when you need to search Google Maps reviews for “kids”, “children”, “family” to see if anyone mentions the restaurant’s stance on such things. If you can’t find anything on Google Maps, go to the restaurant’s website. If they have an online reservation system, it is likely to list their stance on kids on the reservation page.
I did a lot of research beforehand and pinned all the relevant restaurants on Google Maps. That way, no matter where I was, I could find some good kid tolerant restaurants. I say “kid-tolerant” instead of “kid friendly” because I consider “kid-tolerant” to mean that they let kids in the restaurant, while “kid-friendly” means they have a kid’s menu, high chairs, etc.
We were able to eat at a wide variety of restaurants, from overpriced Michelin starred places to budget Omakase places. There are a lot of restaurants in Japan. If a restaurant doesn’t let you in because you have kids, it’s fine because there’s another similar one that will.
This is a list of good restaurants we ate at with our infant and toddler. These are just the places we made it to, there were plenty more I had on my list we didn’t make it to:
Gion Maruyama, Gion, Kyoto
Sushi Wakon, Four Seasons, Kyoto
The Oak Door, Grand Hyatt, Tokyo
Kobe Plaisir, Kobe
Roku Roku, Grand Hyatt, Tokyo
Daiwa Sushi, Toyosu Market, Tokyo
Inshotei, Ueno Park, Tokyo
Sushidan, Eat Play Works, Tokyo
Nishiya, Shinsaibashi, Osaka
Tonkatsu Wako, JR Isetan, Kyoto
Soju Dining, Tokyo Midtown, Tokyo
Imakatsu, Roppongi, Tokyo
Mizuno, Dotonbori, Osaka
Rokurinsha, Tokyo Station, Tokyo
Tsumigi, Tsukiji, Tokyo
Lots of different food stalls in Tsukiji Market, Tokyo
Other times we ate at conveyor belt sushi places, department store basements, or ramen places. The basements are a good place to get something for everyone. My toddler ate a lot of gyoza and noodles on this trip, she didn’t take a liking to much else. But Ichiran and Ippudo were right down her alley.
Tsukiji market was our go to breakfast place when we stayed in Tokyo. There’s plenty of different choices there and it opens early enough for jet-lagged families.
Overall I had a great time eating. If my toddler is eating she’s usually not having a tantrum, and we tried as best as possible to put our infant to sleep before we went to any higher end restaurants. There were some awkward tantrum moments but for the most part it was fine.
—City by City Report—
Tokyo
We had two different stays in Tokyo, the first after landing in Japan and the second right before departing Japan. We stayed a total of 10 nights in Tokyo, but we wish we had even more.
We could have come to Tokyo alone the whole trip and been perfectly content. It has the best food, the most kid friendly facilities, and there’s plenty to see and do.
Here’s a few choice things we did with the kids:
DisneySea: My toddler loved this one. We’ve been to Disneyland in SoCal but this is completely different. Even I was excited since it’s been a long while since I’ve been to an unexplored Disney park. A lot of people will say DisneySea is for older kids but there were plenty of rides my toddler could get on. It’s a great place for toddlers. A must visit with kids.
Ueno park: We spent a whole day in Ueno Park. There’s a great zoo, a fun Natural History Museum, and good restaurants. We picked up bento boxes from Inshotei and ate them at a picnic table in the zoo. I think this park is also a must do with kids.
One of the city views: you have a few choices here but we went to Tokyo Skytree and Shibuya Sky. Shibuya sky is a little less kid friendly, because they don’t allow strollers on the roof and they have some weird rules about holding your baby on the roof. I think they’re scared of a wind gust pulling your baby off the roof? I like the mall at Tokyo Skytree, and there’s a Rokurinsha there too (very good dipping ramen).
Small Worlds: This is a miniature museum on one of the man-made islands in the bay. It’s a little out of the way, but we made a day out of Toyosu Market, Small Worlds, and Odaiba. My toddler liked this one, the exhibits are interactive and fun to look at. It was better than expected.
Other than that we did a lot of eating and shopping in Tokyo for us adults.
Kyoto
Kyoto was probably our least favorite city to do with kids. In general it’s just hard to get around. There’s a lot of stroller unfriendly places. Streets without sidewalks. Rough cobblestone-like roads. Temples are not stroller friendly. Hills everywhere. Good luck getting to the top of the monkey park with a stroller. It’s definitely a trend in this city.
Maybe if you have older kids it’s fine. But if you have younger than elementary school kids it’s probably skippable. There’s not that many kid friendly activities here either. Temples aren’t interesting for kids. The best kid activity here is probably the Arashiyama Monkey Park. My toddler got a real kick out of feeding the monkeys. Just be aware there is a significant hike to get to the top of the hill where the monkeys are. My toddler is a pretty good walker, she made it all the way without crying or complaining. But I saw some other kids that didn’t fare as well.
The other thing you might try near the monkey park is the Arashiyama bamboo forest. I think it’s one of the most overrated sights in Japan though. It’s just mobbed with tourists all day. It’s not enjoyable with the crowds. I’ve been here twice and I’ve been disappointed both times.
I doubt we will be back to Kyoto any time soon.
Osaka
Osaka was nice. It was a bit refreshing to have many of the Tokyo conveniences again. Elevators everywhere, well paved and flat roads, and plenty of baby rooms.
Osaka is a good base for taking nearby day trips as well. We went to both Kobe and Nara without needing to take the Shinkansen.
The best kid experience in Osaka is the Kaiyukan aquarium. It’s big. The central tank with the whale sharks is impressive. They have lots of different animals from all over the world. It’s bigger and better than any aquarium we have in California.
The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the lines. You need to pre-book your timed entry tickets online. We didn’t, and ended up getting tickets that were for entry two hours later. And we were there right when they opened. If I go to the aquarium at opening time on a weekday where we are from we can walk right in. Lesson learned.
We stayed in Shinsaibashi and it’s a very walkable area. There’s a covered shopping street that goes all the way down to Dotonbori. Namba is walkable from there. And America-mura is between Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori.
The Daimaru mall in Shinsaibashi is good for kids. There’s a Bornelund in there with a small indoor playground, a Pokémon Center, and good food.
I liked Osaka overall. The only thing I thought was a let down was okonomiyaki.
Nara
Nara was worth the trip. It’s about 45 minutes from Namba on the train, so not too out of the way.
There’s deer all over. Deer that bow to you. In the park, on the sidewalk, in the street. It’s a unique experience you should see at least once.
The deer are rather aggressive when you have food for them. It’s not a place where you want your kids feeding the deer. As soon as you buy the food from the street vendor, they mob you. They try to snatch the food out of your hand. Make sure you watch someone else do it first before deciding to do it yourself. If I let my toddler do it she probably would have been terrified.
The other must see in Nara is Todai-ji. It’s impressive. The giant Buddha is something. This was probably the best temple we saw on this trip, it’s visually stunning. More than anything we saw in Kyoto. I did have to carry the stroller up and down some steps, but there’s not too many.
Kobe
Kobe was great. It exceeded my expectations. The trip from Osaka is easy. We spent a full day there.
We started our one day in Kobe at the Nunobiki Herb Gardens. I wasn’t expecting too much but this place is really nice. It’s big, with lots of different gardens and exhibits to see. There’s great views as well. We took lots of pictures.
There’s a few different places to eat and drink in the gardens as well. We had some sparkling rose at “The Veranda” which had a great view of Kobe. We didn’t eat because we had a lunch reservation down the hill.
There’s a few things to watch out for. This place gets busy, so get there early. There’s no reservations, you just go early and wait in line. When we left at midday the line was massive, so get there when they open.
The herb garden only takes up the top half the hill. At first I thought it extended to the bottom of the hill, but the bottom half of the hill is actually a hiking trail without gardens. So I bought a one way gondola ticket to the top expecting to walk down all the way, but after I realized the garden ended at the middle I bought another ticket to go down (instead of getting the round trip ticket like I should have).
After the gardens we went to eat Kobe beef. Kobe Plaisir was the restaurant I chose, which was both high end and had a kids menu. The beef was great and everyone had a good time.
Afterwards we went to Harborland. It’s a nice area on the harbor that has a big boat you can go out on, and a couple of shopping malls. The Anpanman museum is here too but by the time we got there tickets were sold out for the day. This is also where you can find a Babies R Us.
Our Kobe day was one of the best days of our trip. I’d suggest a day trip here for anyone.
—Closing—
It’s hard to travel with kids this age. No doubt. Everything will take more time and be more expensive than when you used to travel alone. But I do not regret taking this trip at all. As a matter of fact I want to go back right now. My wife loved the trip, and my toddler might even remember it when she grows up. She still talks about feeding the monkeys and how dad ate a “real fish” (A Japanese sweetfish they grilled in front of us at Gion Maruyama). Japan is a great place for a first family trip.

And Electabuzz is already finished. Sometimes, I just really feel like doing a run and just because I can. Electabuzz was a Pokemon I loved in XD, my history with it came from the Elekid you could get in a trade named Zaprong. It was the MVP of all my teams in XD, even when half my team was Electric type already. Without further ado...
Up to Brock: Moveset: Quick Attack, Leer Electabuzz actually has more Attack than I thought. It's good that he has a nice stat for it. It's nearly as much as Special in this case. I had confidence Electabuzz would be very good at this. He had more than enough power to take down Gary's Bulbasaur, and he got through Viridian Forest pretty well. Nearly ran out of Quick Attacks, but I managed to do it by using Leer to help save my last bits of PP. I took out Gary 1A very quickly, too, and didn't even have a rough time against Buzz Lightyear. Sandshrew's Sand-Attacks hardly did anything. Even before getting Thunderbolt, I was doing pretty damn well. I did utilize Leer against Geodude to try to keep his Defenses low while I hit him with Quick Attack. It didn't work the first time, but I grinded up just one level, from 12 to 13, and while I took a beating from Geodude, I took him out. Then Onix... played the absolute worst I had ever seen him play. He kept switching between Screech and Bide, never using Tackle once, allowing me to lower him to -6 Defense, killing him off.
Up to Misty: Moveset: Quick Attack, Leer, Mega Punch, Thunder Wave I caught a Spearow while going through the grass to Mt. Moon, but a Jigglypuff who came after wasted all my Poke Balls. Not a big loss, I got the Spearow. I chose the Helix Fossil. Mega Punch gave me quite a big boost in power. Not having an Electric move worried me slightly, so I chose to trounce Gary 2. Turned out all Electabuzz had to do was clench his fists and punch through his entire team, much like Kangaskhan did. Now I felt like a boss. I punched through Nugget Bridge, punched through a few other trainers, and then I remembered Seismic Toss. I knew I had to beat both the Hiker and the Jr. Trainer to get it now, but I chose to get it now. Through Leer and Mega Punch, I pummeled the Geodudes down. Still wouldn't advise it. It'd make a bit more sense to utilize Cut when you get it later to go here, I think. When I came back to heal after that... battle, I came back to see if I could handle Misty. I was able to handle her, too. The Thunder Wave I picked up to help kept Starmie at bay, Leer made sure her X Defends did nothing, and I punched through both of Misty's starfish.
Up to Surge: Moveset: Body Slam, Seismic Toss, Mega Punch, Thunder Wave I went back to obtain the S.S. Ticket, and got to the boat pretty fast. Got the Seismic Toss as well. Felt pretty good about the pace at the moment. As I did, I went through all the normal fights I usually did, and Gary 3 went by pretty fast. Body Slam just solidified my damage even more than normal. I slammed through everything he had. I got Cut after I traded for Dux, and I caught a Diglett when I left the boat. Surge was yet again, an easy fight. I spammed Body Slam through the whole fight. Except with Voltorb. I ended it with Mega Punch to conserve Body Slam PP. Legitimately, having both those moves isn't always bad.
Up to Erika: Moveset: Body Slam, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave You'd think Boomer would mess him up. He didn't. Seismic Toss was a 2HKO on each of his three Pokemon, even the Graveler. It chose to hit me with Tackle, which did jack, and shit. Do I even need to mention Gary 4? I had Thunderbolt. My man tore through his team at that point. ZAPPITY ZAP ZAP DOUBLE D! Oh, and I Body Slammed Kadabra and Ivysaur pretty easily. These stats are PERFECT for solo running. I stopped to both buy the Reflect TM from the Celadon store, and also to get Psychic from Saffron. Psychic beat up Giovanni 1 straight up, and while Erika gave me a reset because Vileplume hit with a strong Sleep Powder, I kicked her butt. Psychic swept her, too.
Up to Koga: Moveset: Same Well, this felt like a literal lightning round. I got Fly for Dux to get back to Lavender, and again, Psychic got through it, even Ghost Marowak didn't like Psychic very much. Snorlax got zapped out, and I cycled to the gym immediately. I was already underleveled, and despite this, I won with Psychic. Now... Weezing's Sludge HURT like a bitch, but I took it out. I still had the speed to win. Good enough for me.
Up to Sabrina: Moveset: NOW I'M MOTIVATED! I hope that helps signify how I felt about this thing. Rival Fival didn't have me reset. I just zapped through one part of his team (being Pidgeot, Gyarados, and Growlithe), slammed Alakazam out of the way, and Psychic was good enough to take down Venusaur. With a crit. Giovanni 2 was yet another sweep with Psychic (though Kangaskhan took the zap), and Sabrina wasn't bad at all. Body Slam killed Kadabra, Mr. Mime got zapped out, Venomoth took two Psychics, and I zapped Alakazam with a Thunder Wave. It hit me with Psywaves as I kept slamming it. The first one did 1 damage. Literally 1. MY GIRL, STOP USING THIS!
Up to Blaine: YOU SHALL DIE.. SHISHISNSIHISNSHING... Um... Zappity Zap Zap... Double D... I'm beginning to think I need a new bit. Did this while also being underleveled.
Up to Giovanni 3: I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROAAAACHIIINNGGGG... Despite the fact that only two of his Pokemon are actually weak to Psychic, I took out his whole team with Psychic. While still being underleveled. Again.
Gary 6: Moveset: Body Slam, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Reflect I used my Rare Candies now, for sure, because I was sure I couldn't be THIS underleveled anymore. I took a reset here, too, I think because Pidgeot Quick Attacked me. Or because I missed a Thunderbolt on Gyarados and took a strong Hydro Pump. Either way, not good. Thunderbolt killed Pidgeot, Psychic ended Rhyhorn, I then shocked Growlithe and Gyarados, slammed down Alakazam, and I crit on Venusaur with Psychic again.
Elite Four: Moveset: PROOVOOOKINNGG... BLACK CLOUDS IN ISOLAAATIIOONN... I AM RECLAIMER OF MY NAAAAAMMMEEEE!!! BORN IN FLAMES, I HAVE BEEN BLESSED, MY FAMILY CREST IS A DEMON OF DEATH!!!! Yet I am an Electric type. I could care less of my type not matching up to the lyrics, for now, I am against the League. My level was low enough to where I made it necessary to fight several Victory Road Trainers. Turned out, that was enough.
Lorelei: I will spare you the zap bit and just say Thunderbolt did it.
Bruno: Same as Lorelei, but I set up Reflect and spammed Psychic.
Agatha: Psychic did it. Thunderbolted the Golbat.
Lance: After Gyarados died to Thunderbolt, I set up Reflect, and spammed Psychic on the Dragonairs, and used Thunderbolt on Aerodactyl and Dragonite. And to think I was debating between Reflect and Light Screen...
Champion Gary: I set up Reflect immediately, zapped Pidgeot, slammed Alakazam, it lived to also copy my strat, then I zapped it. Rhydon died to Psychic... Gyarados and Arcanine both die to Thunderbolt, and I hit Venusaur with Psychic. It's Mega Drain did nothing, and then Psychic finished it off.
I won at Level 63 and at a time of 3:58.
​
Rankings: 1. Gengar: 62, 3:21, 4 resets. (Thunderbolt, Mega Drain, Psychic, Body Slam) 2. Kangaskhan: 62, 3:24, 1 reset. (Body Slam, Blizzard, Earthquake, Rock Slide 3. Victreebel: 62, 3:30, 2 resets. (Razor Leaf, Swords Dance, Body Slam, Sleep Powder) 4. Blastoise: 63, 3:32, 8 resets. (Blizzard, Withdraw, Surf, Earthquake) 5. Nidoking: 67, 3:43, 8 resets. (Body Slam, Blizzard, Earthquake, Thunderbolt) 6. Venusaur: 62, 3:47, 7 resets. (Body Slam, Swords Dance, Sleep Powder, Razor Leaf) 7. Mr. Mime: 70, 3:47, 7 resets. (Psychic, Meditate/Reflect, Body Slam, Thunderbolt) 8. Primeape: 63, 3:52, 5 resets. (Dig, Thunderbolt, Karate Chop, Rock Slide) 9. Poliwrath: 63, 3:56, 12 resets. (Blizzard, Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf) 10. Lickitung: 63, 3:57, 3 resets. (Swords Dance, Body Slam, Earthquake, Blizzard) 11. Electabuzz: 63, 3:58, 3 resets. (Body Slam, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Reflect) 12. Charizard: 66, 3:59, 10 resets. (Earthquake, Body Slam, Flamethrower, Swords Dance) 13. Hitmonlee: 69, 3:59, 13 resets. (Hi Jump Kick, Meditate, Seismic Toss, Body Slam/Mimic/Mega Kick) 14. Slowbro: 64, 4:00, 12 resets. (Psychic, Blizzard, Surf, Amnesia) 15. Machamp: 67, 4:05, 8 resets. (Rock Slide, Body Slam, Submission, Earthquake) 16. Kingler: 64, 4:14, 13 resets. (Surf, Blizzard, Swords Dance, Body Slam) 17. Raticate: 68, 4:17, 13 resets (Blizzard, Dig, Body Slam, Thunderbolt) 18. Seadra: 67, 4:26. 16 resets. (Surf, Blizzard, Double-Edge, Agility) 19. Tentacruel: 60, 4:28, 10 resets (Blizzard, Barrier, Mega Drain, Surf) 20. Ninetales: 67, 4:28, 11 resets (Flamethrower, Body Slam, Mimic, Dig) 21. Nidoqueen: 67, 4:29, 11 resets. (Earthquake, Blizzard, Body Slam, Thunderbolt) 22. Farfetch'd: 70, 4:33, 10 resets. (Fly, Slash, Swords Dance, Body Slam) 23. Hypno: 62, 4:38, 8 resets. (Meditate, Hypnosis, Body Slam, Psychic) 24. Clefable, 67, 4:39, 4 resets. (Body Slam, Psychic/Blizzard, Minimize, Thunderbolt) 25. Wigglytuff, 66, 4:41, 6 resets. (Thunderbolt, Body Slam, Psychic/Blizzard, Defense Curl) 26. Dewgong: 64, 4:44, 5 resets. (Blizzard, Mimic, Surf, Body Slam) 27. Scyther: 63, 4:46, 18 resets. (Swords Dance, Swift/Mimic, Slash, Double Team) 28. Golem: 68: 4:49, 8 resets. (Earthquake, Defense Curl, Rock Slide, Body Slam) 29. Chansey: 68, 4:51, 2 resets. (Minimize, Psychic/Softboiled, Thunderbolt, Blizzard) 30. Butterfree: 66, 4:53, 28 resets. (Mimic, Sleep Powder, Psychic, Mega Drain) 31. Jynx: 61, 4:57, 4 resets. (Body Slam, Lovely Kiss, Psychic, Blizzard) 32. Persian: 70, 4:58, 13 resets. (Mimic, Bubblebeam, Thunderbolt, Body Slam) 33. Sandslash: 67, 5:00, 11 resets. (Body Slam, Rock Slide, Swords Dance, Earthquake) 34. Vileplume: 67, 5:04, 15 resets. (Mega Drain, Body Slam/Mimic, Swords Dance, Sleep Powder) 35. Marowak: 73, 5:10, 9 resets. (Blizzard, Earthquake, Mimic, Body Slam) 36. Alakazam: 63, 5:18, 4 resets. (Toxic, Psychic, Recover, Seismic Toss) 37. Seaking: 64, 5:20, 8 resets. (Agility, Double-Edge, Blizzard, Surf) 38. Tangela: 66, 5:24, 16 resets. (Sleep Powder, Growth, Body Slam/Mimic, Mega Drain) 39. Rapidash: 72. 5:24, 10 resets. (Fire Blast, Body Slam, Mimic, Agility) 40. Arbok: 71, 5:28, 27 resets. (Mimic, Earthquake, Body Slam, Rock Slide) 41. Raichu: 63, 5:29, 5 resets. (Thunderbolt, Mimic, Agility, Seismic Toss) 42. Golduck: 64, 5:34, 6 resets. (Dig, Blizzard, Mimic, Surf) 43. Starmie: 61, 5:42, 16 resets. (Thunderbolt, Blizzard, Surf, Psychic) 44. Muk: 66, 5:42, 11 resets. (Mega Drain/Fire Blast, Thunderbolt, Minimize, Sludge) 45. Hitmonchan: 73. 5:44, 12 resets. (Submission/Mimic/Submission, Agility, Ice Punch/Seismic Toss, Body Slam) 46. Dodrio: 72, 5:49, 17 resets. (Drill Peck, Mimic, Agility, Body Slam) 47. Fearow: 73, 6:00, 30 resets. (Drill Peck, Mimic, Agility, Swift) 48. Venomoth: 65, 6:24, 15 resets. (Mimic, Psychic, Sleep Powder, Mega Drain) 49. Golbat: 74, 6:26, 12 resets. (Double-Edge, Wing Attack, Mega Drain, Mimic) 50. Electrode: 70, 6:29, 25 resets. (Thunderbolt, Mimic, Swift, Toxic/Reflect) 51. Parasect, 71, 6:32, 18 resets. (Body Slam, Spore, Swords Dance, Dig) 52. Cloyster, 62, 6:55, 17 resets. (Blizzard, Withdraw, Surf, Tri Attack) 53. Beedrill: 65, 6:55, 23 resets. (Swords Dance, Mega Drain, Double-Edge, Twineedle) 54. Magneton: 64. 6:58, 10 resets. (Rest, Double-Edge, Thunderbolt, Mimic) 55. Onix: 80, 7:11, 25 resets. (Earthquake, Harden, Body Slam, Rock Slide) 56. Pidgeot: 76, 7:16, 13 resets. (Mimic, Agility, Double-Edge, Fly) 57. Arcanine: 72, 7:17. 14 resets. (Body Slam, Dig, Fire Blast, Agility) 58. Weezing: 72, 7:31, 12 resets. (Mimic, Sludge, Thunderbolt, Fire Blast) 59. Rhydon: 73, 7:33, 16 resets. (Thunderbolt, Earthquake, Mimic, Rock Slide) 60. Dugtrio: 78, 7:47, 33 resets. (Slash, Mimic, Earthquake, Rock Slide) 61. Exeggutor: 71, 9:16, 25 resets. (Mimic, Psychic, Mega Drain, Sleep Powder)
While this run MOTIVATED me, I was utterly SHOCKED at the fact he just barely MISSED the top 10: S: Gengar,Kangaskhan, Victreebel, Blastoise, Nidoking, Venusaur, Mr. Mime, Primeape, Poliwrath, Lickitung, Electabuzz, Charizard, Hitmonlee A: Slowbro, Machamp, Kingler, Raticate, Seadra, Tentacruel, Ninetales, Nidoqueen, Farfetch'd, Hypno, Clefable, Wigglytuff, Dewgong, Scyther, Golem, Chansey, Butterfree, Jynx, Persian B: Sandslash, Vileplume, Marowak, Alakazam, Seaking, Tangela, Rapidash, Arbok, Raichu, Golduck, Starmie, Muk, Hitmonchan, Dodrio C: Fearow, Venomoth, Golbat, Electrode, Parasect, Cloyster, Beedrill, Magneton D: Onix, Pidgeot, Arcanine, Weezing, Rhydon, Dugtrio E: N/A F: Exeggutor
And Electabuzz is the best Electric type so far. Sorry Raichu. Next is his twin brother... or I guess Fire-type counterpart... DANTE, I mean Magmar. I think it should be kinda neat.

(Sorry Kim...you must have called it an early night!) ;)
-Another indicator we are on the way to exiting BK:
-Posted Summary below....seems like both parties are "walking-away". Don't think it affects our claim against the Catch-and-kill against PSS! This may free up PD1 ( Socazolimab ) developmental work or further news with Lee's Pham/China Oncology Focus - just speculating about SRNE ties in China?
-Hearing June 29/2023 at 1pm
-Cut and paste summary below:
Docket 810:
" Motion for Entry of an Order Approving and Implementing Mediation Settlement and Granting Related Relief Filed by Debtor Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. Hearing scheduled for 6/29/2023 at 01:00 PM at telephone and video conference. (Attachments: # (1) Exhibit A # (2) Exhibit B # (3) Exhibit C # (4) Exhibit D # (5) Exhibit E # (6) Exhibit F # (7) Exhibit G # (8) Proposed Order) (Peguero, Kristhy) "
Stretto: https://cases.stretto.com/public/x228/12086/PLEADINGS/1208606072380000000042.pdf
.....
Settlement Summary

1. Debtors’ Settlement with the Nant Parties—Payment or Mutual Releases. The Settlement has a toggle framework whereby the Debtors can either (i) raise sufficient funds to irrevocably pay the more than $175 million owed to NantCell and NANTibody (on account of their two respective judgments) (the “Nant Payments”) or (ii) elect to not make such payments and “walk away” with a full “divorce” from the Nant Parties.
   
2. In the payment scenario, referred to in paragraph 9(i) above, the Debtors have agreed with the DIP Lender, the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee, and the Equity Committee that they will not make the Nant Payments unless they have secured committed financing (without material contingencies) to pay each of (i) the DIP Facility, and (ii) unless otherwise agreed in 3 The summary of the Settlement set forth below is subject to the more detailed terms of the Order. In the event of any inconsistency between this summary and the Order, the Order shall control. Case 23-90085 Document 810 Filed in TXSB on 06/06/23 Page 4 of 12 5 US-DOCS\142224284 advance in writing by the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee, all allowed general unsecured claims in full in cash on the effective date of a chapter 11 plan of reorganization (a “Plan”).
   
3. In the walk-away scenario, referred to in paragraph 9(ii) above, (i) the Debtors and the Nant Parties (including their respective Related Parties) will mutually release their pending litigation matters and all other claims and judgments against each other, including the approximately $175 million owed to NantCell and NANTibody; (ii) the Debtors will convey all of their ownership in NANTibody, NantCancerStemCell, LLC, and NantBio, Inc. to those respective entities (and Sorrento’s membership, directorship, and any other rights in those entities, as applicable, will be canceled); (iii) NantBio will pay the Debtors $1.5 million; and (iv) NantCell and the Nant Parties will obtain a full release of the Debtors’ royalty rights with respect to the PDL1 antibody that is the subject of the April 21, 2015 Exclusive License Agreement between NantCell and Sorrento. In short, the walk-away would be a full divorce of all relationships between the Debtors and the Nant Parties (and their respective Related Parties), so that both sides can continue operating without needing to interact with each other, thereby minimizing the prospect of future litigation.
   
4. This toggle framework will allow the Debtors to preserve optionality in the near term and determine the most value-maximizing path forward, as they continue their ongoing sale and financing marketing process. The implementation of the Settlement with the Nant Parties (i) will be effectuated through the Plan if the Plan is effective on or prior to July 14, 2023, or (ii) if the Plan is not effective on or prior to July 14, 2023, will be effectuated prior to and separate from the Plan pursuant to the Order.
   
5. Plan Support. Upon the entry of the Order, the Nant Parties agree to support and vote to accept the Plan (and will take no actions that could interfere with or delay confirmation of Case 23-90085 Document 810 Filed in TXSB on 06/06/23 Page 5 of 12 6 US-DOCS\142224284 the Plan or that support any competing plan), provided that the Plan contains (i) the terms of the Settlement and all of the terms and conditions contained in the Order, (ii) no terms and conditions inconsistent with the Settlement or any terms and conditions contained in the Order, and (iii) only such other terms that are acceptable to the Nant Parties to the extent any of them are affected by any of such other terms.
   
6. Post-Judgment Discovery Related to the Approximately $125 Million Owed by NantPharma. The judgment debtor examination currently scheduled for June 14, 2023 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles (“Los Angeles Superior Court”) shall be adjourned by agreement of Sorrento and NantPharma to the earliest date available in Department 14 of Los Angeles Superior Court, on or after July 20, 2023. Nothing in the Order shall affect any party’s rights or obligations with respect to (a) the subpoenas duces tecum previously served on NantWorks LLC (“NantWorks”) and Nant Capital LLC (“Nant Capital”) (save for the requirement to provide oral testimony on June 14, 2023), or (b) the written discovery requests previously served on NantPharma; provided, however, that NantPharma, NantWorks, and Nant Capital will not use the adjournment of the judgment debtor examination or anything else in the Order as a basis for any motion or argument to quash, modify, delay, or limit their responses to the subpoenas and written discovery.
   
7. Other Litigation. Other litigation proceedings4 between the Debtors and the Nant Parties will be unaffected (until any releases are effectuated by the Order, if applicable). Nevertheless, if, at any time prior to July 14, 2023, the Chief Restructuring Officer of the Debtors (the “CRO”) determines in his sole discretion that it is not expected to be reasonably possible for 4 Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. vs. NantCell, Inc., et al., Case No. 19STCV11328, Immunotherapy NANTibody, LLC, et al. v. Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc., et. al., Case No. 19STCV18304, and Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. v. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Case No. 20STCV08789 (each in Los Angeles Superior Court). Case 23-90085 Document 810 Filed in TXSB on 06/06/23 Page 6 of 12 7 US-DOCS\142224284 Sorrento to make the Nant Payments, the CRO will promptly give written notice of this determination to counsel for the Nant Parties at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and counsel for the Debtors at Latham & Watkins LLP, whereupon Quinn Emanuel and Latham & Watkins shall meet and confer to, and exert their respective best efforts to, minimize legal expenses and costs to be incurred thereafter in any and all pending litigation between their respective clients.
   

.....

Deathnote plot confusion season 2 spoiler alERT.
Little confused about spoiler format, i will try. Il also just notify before typing this that this contains spoilers so if youre currently watching dont read this.
Im confused AF about season 2. Episode 29 I really dont even get whats going on. Is there 3 deathnotes or something?
Okay so. 1 notebook is in the hands of japanese police after L is murdered by kira. So between misa and light there is 1 notebook. But maybe there is still 2? Im really confused. Thats kind of matters i guess.
So now this character mello wants the notebook to get ahead of his brother NEAR in becoming the next L. So, he kidnapps the cheifs daughter and holds her ransom in exchange for notebook thats in the hands of the japanese authorities.
So the cheif makes the trade. If there is 2 notebooks, and japanese police have 1. Japanese police give mello 1 notebook. Now japanese police dont have notebook. Therefore, kira[light] has his notebook.
Then they use misas eyes to get the names of mafia members, looks through pictures of them, and finds one without name, meaning he has the notebook. They get that mafia member to die and in his death send cordinates for the hideout.
This is where it makes no sense to me.
Light says hes going to give his notebook to ryuk, and keep misas so he doesnt forget his memories, im unsure if this should work because hes still giving up his notebook. But for simplicity sake, that can work, i guess it does. The main problem here, is i though mello still has one of the notebooks. So is there 2 again? It doesnt make sense to me at all.
Then light uses that notebook to give his father the eyes. They get the mafia members names. If light has misas notebook, why does ryuk appear when the taskforce touch the notebook? Im really confused it doesnt make sense. Wasnt that shinigami before rem the orginal owner? Rem took ownership of his notebook. I guess ryuk took ownership of both deathnotes at this point. But how are there 2 notebooks in their possesion when one of them is in mellos possession?
Then the missle thing, they launched the missle with the notebook, jm really confused this doesnt make any sense.
Then the 3rd shinigami. Was that a new deathnote? Or was that the original deathnote that light got? If there were 3 deathnotes it could make sense. But even so, how can they turn over 1 deathnore and also have 2? heLP AM I OKAY???? im obviously not getting something. I feel this anime is at a downward trend in quality. No offense to anyone that like this one.

I had been contacted by the magistrate to investigate a night wedding in the countryside that had involved the loss of human life. There seemed to be a recent rise in tourists involved in ghost dowries over the years. However, from my research I believe it was a man in search of night weddings for personal gain that was the cause of so many deaths.
When I received the request, I was nearby on Green Island, and addressing a rather unique matter even for my line of work. A little girl from the mainland had arrived two weeks prior and claimed to be the recently deceased husband of the grieving widow.
The child claimed to have woken up in the hospital where the doctors informed them that they had drowned and was clinically dead for 4 minutes when the body inexplicably sat upright in the gurney. This would have seemed to be great news, except when the child looked into the mirror, it was not their face staring back at them.
In old Taoist texts I have read of such events, where the bodies of the recently deceased are not put to ground quickly enough, and their souls are left to wander. They could get carried away by the Northeast or Southwest wind. Depending on the location from where they died. And possibly attach to an empty host.
This seemed to be the case, as the wife acknowledged that due to the wet season, they did not bury her husband's body right away. Because the grounds were so wet, that any graves would wash away, leaving corpses laying in the street. Still, I had the responsibility of testing the child. Whom passed a simple test of naming names. Where they used to live. The wife's habits. A conversation they recently had, and even childhood memories. All were confirmed by friends and family. But it would be the child's handwriting that ultimately convinced me. They were a perfect match, down to the signature.
Upon my approval, the villagers had no choice but to accept that this child was indeed the man come back to life. And when I left, he was sitting outside of his house cleaning fish as he had always done for 32 years, except now in the body of a 10 year old girl.
I didn't have much time to dwell on this case as I was needed at the aftermath of the failed night wedding. Ghost dowries have been in use for thousands of years, and traces of it can be found in many different cultures. From the Aztec to the Egyptians, and more recently from old Spain to the streets of Southeast Asia. Though in recent times, only a few remote places continued the practice, and there are a limited number of priests today who are qualified enough to handle such a case. Luckily, I had plenty of experience in this matter.
In my early years, I had married many ghost brides.
And was often asked, "But you're a priest, how can you get married?"
"Zhengyi Taoist priests can choose to take a wife or not. In fact, in order to pass on my Celestial title, I must have an heir."
The man looked distraught, "And you're sure this will stop her from whispering into my ear every night?" He clutched the bag rather tightly.
"Don't you worry," I took the bag from his hands. "Everything will be fine."
We would perform the customary vows and the following night the man reported no more whisperings from his daughter, yet a week later, the police raided my hotel in a different district. The man had claimed that I had swindled him. That his daughter had returned and continued her whispering of terrible, horrible things that he dare not listen. Clanking and banging away in the walls as he covered his ears in fear until sunrise.
Fortunately, I was allowed to prove my innocence.
I returned and stayed in the man's room, waiting with him for signs of his daughter. And surely enough, late in the hour, I heard the wretched scraping and dragging in the walls. The man stopped breathing in his bed and laid perfectly still. Even I was afraid to move as the most dangerous aspects of my job are in the unknown. My mind began racing, wondering if I had somehow botched the night wedding. Or worse, that the ghost bride wasn't his daughter at all, and I had inadvertently given this mysterious entity a special anchor to this world, a holy man.
The walls shook without reason. And a tiny noise could be heard near the man's bedside. He jumped off his mattress and ran to my side. The two of us watched as the noise traveled back and forth against the back wall like wooden clogs.
"My daughter did always carry around a rattle drum when she was little," the man whispered.
"Hush, don't let it capture your breath," I warned him. "Whatever this is, I don't believe it is your daughter. And because of the ritual, we may have increased its hold on this realm."
He whimpered, "Not my daughter?"
I held up my finger and traced the noise as it traveled in an odd form. I began to wonder if the entity was creating some sort of symbol.
"What are you drawing," the man cried.
"It may be creating a portal," I told him. "Now hush before it turns its attention toward us."
"Please, there must be something you can do?"
I reached into my bag and pulled out some incense. I lit the ends and began chanting. From my waist I pulled out a long yellow parchment. And drew on it a sealing spell. "Spirit," I called as I stepped forward. "I am a guiding light." The noise rattled with conviction as I drew closer. "Let me lead you to peace!" And with one quick motion I punched my hand into the wall, clutching the sealing spell in my palm, at the last place I heard the noise. To my displeasure I felt something wriggling in my grasp as something long and thin wrapped itself around my wrist, its end clawing at my forearm. I screamed when I felt its teeth sink between the soft flesh of my thumb and index finger. But I did not let go. Instead I pulled out this demon from the wall and threw it roughly to the ground.
The man screamed as he jumped onto a chair and screamed, "Rat!"
Yes. A simple field rat. That had a trap stuck on its tail which caused its movements to rattle in the wall. That had been rummaging near the man's nightstand because in one of the drawers he had left a bag of watermelon seeds.
Not all cases are this simple, and plenty are true to life supernatural encounters. Over the years my experience has taught me to be more cautious in my evaluations. Which was why when I finally arrived at the house of the massacre due to a failed night wedding. Every hair on my neck stood on end as I tried to be objective as possible.
But there was no denying that something heinous had occurred here. Bodies were still laying on the floor. Some with their faces in the dirt. Some missing their heads completely. And those with their faces up, were unrecognizable. And my first wife leaned into my ear and whispered to me, "This is the work of a ghost bride."
"How do you know?"
"I recognize her anger. It was mine before we were married."
"How do I know what?" A man walking toward me asked. "Are you the priest they called out here?"
He was average built, and in plain clothes, "Detective, why yes. I am here to assist you in anyway that I can."
The detective spit on the ground, "Assist me? As far as I'm concerned we're wasting valuable time carrying on with this hocus pocus bullshit. The killer's trail will be cold by the time we get through all this religious tape." He wafted the air in front of his face, "And the dead bodies boiling out here. This is all your fault as far as I'm concerned. Assist me," he snorted.
"Where there any eyewitnesses, Detective?"
"Several. But they're all saying the same damn thing. Spouting a bunch of nonsense. Which is why those religious nuts down at the station dredged you up."
"All non-relatives to the home owners?"
He snorted again, "Coincidence."
"Let us hope so," I told him. "Because the alternative is much worse." I walked the scene, going around the upturned tables, tracing the steps of carnage in the courtyard, to the main living room. There I saw the body of an old man, both hands clutching his chest, his face was completely missing. "Any surviving family members?"
"Some are still left," he grunted. "But we've gathered most of them under police protection."
"Have you located the husband?"
"Yeah, we're trying to extradite him."
"Extradite?"
"The foreigner took off in the middle of all the commotion. Boarded a flight back home according to our investigation. We've contacted the airline, and the airport security in America will hold him when he lands. As he is currently my number one suspect."
I circled the area in front of the shrine. Noting the spilled bowl and its contents on the ground. The position of the spoon next to it. Before standing in the spot on the left side where the effigy would have stood. "What about the bride?"
The detective shook his head, "What bride?"
"It was a night wedding," I told him. "There must have been a physical object acting as a stand in for the daughter's soul."
"Nothing more than bags of cotton usually," he paused. "But they did report that the stand-in this time was some sort of department figurine. A mannequin of some sort."
"Have you looked into that?"
"Why would I look into that. Are you crazy?"
"Right, you're right of course. You'd have to wait until after sunset to be able to figure out which mannequin serves as the ghost bride's earthly form."
The detective stormed off as if I had said something outlandish. Leaving me to my own devices, I interviewed a few of the neighbors who attended the night wedding, gathered some evidence and sorted with the other officers at the site, and then left for the nearest hotel in the city.
It had been a long month for me and I couldn't think of anything better than I would enjoy more than a cold beer. So after checking in I went down to the bar, where an ethereal creature sat alone. She was beautiful to say the least and I had to strike up a conversation lest I live a life of regret, "S'il te plaît ma chérie, dis-moi comment on t'appelle pour que quand je sois perdu dans les ténèbres. Puis-je demander la lumière."
"What?"
"Oh, American. I apologize. I thought you were French."
"On my mother's side," she brushed away her hair.
I noticed the ring, "Ah, you are married. My sincerest apologies miss."
"Newly married," she told me. "My husband speaking with the concierge."
"Activities on vacation," I mused. "How wonderful."
"It's nothing like that. It seems someone has left him a note. And we're technically on our honeymoon." She paused, "Though this isn't where we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be in Hawaii."
I ordered a beer with the bartender and sipped my drink, "Hawaii is wonderful, but this is also a beautiful island. In fact, when the Portuguese came here, they named it Formosa. Which translates to beautiful island. It may not be where you're supposed to be, but perhaps you'll find that this is exactly where you need to be."
The woman sighed, "I don't even know anymore."
"Ah, I know what this is. I've great experience in these matters. Having been married many times. You feel doubt."
She laughed, "How many times have you gotten a divorce?"
"Divorce?" I laughed. "I never leave a woman after we have been wed."
She looked taken aback, "Oh. I didn't know polygamy was so common in these parts." She glanced behind her to where a tall man was standing with what looked to be the hotel's concierge. "I guess we're in the same boat."
"It's not what you think," I told her.
"Where have I heard that one before," she rolled her eyes.
"Larissa!" The man called for her.
She stood up, "Well, it was nice meeting you. Tell your wives I said hello."
I smiled as she left, glancing at my sides. "If only you knew," I said while sipping my beer.
Now in hindsight, if I were not so fatigued after nearly a month of hard work and constant traveling. I would have perhaps picked up on the fact that she too was familiar with the concubine lifestyle. Which was unusual in itself for an American. Or perhaps I would have picked up on the fact that Larissa was an uncommon name. As I had read Jim's article. But there was no such luck, which is why, when I say that I am deeply regretful of what I read on the news later about the couple, I am truly at a loss for what I could have prevented. But that is not my story to tell.
After I finished drinking at the bar I made my way to the elevator and got in. When a man came towards me to hold the door, I called out, "It's full." He looked at me bewildered as I was the only person he could see in the elevator, before sticking his hand out to stop the doors from closing. Huffing and puffing as he glared at me angrily before pressing his floor number. Except the elevator pinged. The weight capacity light had turned on above our heads. "Like I said, it's full." The man shook his head in amazement. Pressing his floor number again. The elevator pinged again. Unwilling to budge. I sighed and got out, "I'll wait for the next one."
And wait I did, even in my room I waited for night fall instead of resting. The thoughts of a botched night wedding swirling in my head. For the many things that could go wrong. Because even though I had much practice in these matters, I was still always nervous before a fight. So when night fell, I was red eyed and exhausted, but better mentally prepared than before.
But when I arrived back at the scene of the crime, I was not prepared for all of the commotion.
"Ka-kin-eh Ka-kin-eh," a man shouted as the fire blazed.
I grabbed one of the men running by with an empty bucket, "What happened here?"
"T-the villagers, they set the p-place on fire. Trying to rid the evil demon."
I let him go and shook my head. The fools! I made my way toward the courtyard where I saw the detective from earlier moping his forehead as he was helping put out the fire. "Detective! This is terrible," I yelled as the flames licked the night.
"No shit dumbass, it's a fire."
"You don't understand," I told him. "Now the entity has nowhere to return. We may never find it."
He threw the bucket to the floor and whirled around, "Enough! I've had enough! Listen here, there is a fire. F-I-R-E. This a real problem. If it catches to the fields, it could light the newly laid fertilizer on fire and catch the entire mountain!"
"Detective!"
That was the only word I had to say before he punched me. It was a dark night out, but stars had suddenly appeared. He hovered over me and I thought he would strike me again but then suddenly he froze. "What is that?"
I turned my head and looked out into the field. The heat of the fire burning the back of my head as I tried to stop my nose from bleeding. "Where?"
Neither one of us moved as we watched the tall field.
"Right there." He pointed.
I reached up and threw his hand down, "No! You never point at entities," I told him. "Now you could be marked!"
He ignored me and reached for his gun, "Stop! Hey you! I order you to stop or I'll shoot!"
I looked into the field, scanning the endless rows before my eyes stopped and froze in horror. At one point in time the thing must have been a simple plastic mannequin. Standing in a department store perhaps. But now, it was twisted and gnarled. It's first dirty and unrecognizable. It stood on all fours sometimes threes as it swayed slowly back and forth. The thing was also without form because it didn't need to bend or move as normal people. It was still objectively, plastic. It swung its arms behind it and used that as leverage to run, turning its head - cracking the seams that had somehow still held and took off.
The detective rung a shot out at it. I think it struck but it didn't matter. Though the mannequin was gone. The detective must have lost his mind because he gave chase.
I couldn't let him go alone so I followed. Pulling out my long yellow parchment as I wrote on it the symbols for sealing, hoping the simple spell would work. As we entered the tall field.
It was chaos. The ground was mushy beneath my feet, and the smell of fecal matter assaulted my senses further. In the brush I had lost the detective, so I was forced to tell my wives to help me locate his whereabouts. They didn't often leave my side, and some were reluctant but ultimately agreed.
I stood in the field, waiting with bated breath as I heard further gunshots in the distance. I couldn't wait for my wives to gather as I tore after the detective. And just in time as I saw him standing, looking absolutely terrified as he shot blindly into the fauna until his pistol clicked. The mannequin lunged for him. But I got there first. Pushing him to the ground, causing both of us to tumble.
He was eating a mouth of dirt as I pulled him to his feet. "We have to get out of this field! The ghost bride will pick us off in this thicket!"
Stumbling, and running, the two of us were covered in more than dirt. Several times we heard rustling nearby as if something were running alongside us. But eventually we made it out into the open plain. The detective trying to catch his breath as he reloaded his pistol.
"Shooting it doesn't work," he panted. "But maybe I can disable it from moving."
"Shut up," I told him. "Listen."
He stopped for a moment and we waited. Then all of the stalks before us shook wildly as if a hundred people were running through it. The detective raised his arm but I stopped him as my wives ran out of the field.
They were terrified as they ran right through us.
I hadn't experienced the feeling in awhile but the coldness as their ghostly forms went through our bodies was cold as ice. It was enough to bring us both to our knees, clutching our chests as we struggled to breathe. I had passed through one or two in a row before. But never 10 or 20 at a time. I lost count.
"What was that," the detective managed to gasp, his fingers in a death grip around his gun.
"A blue procession," I told him. "Something caused all of my dead wives to flee."
We looked up as the leaves in front of us rustled.
"Is it..."
I shook my head, running forward to catch her. My 13th wife, Ah-ren. Her arm was missing, and a part of her shoulder. She was an innocent girl that had drowned when she was alive. Her innocence carried on with her to the afterlife where many souls generally grew up embittered. But never her, always sweet my girl, just weary of water.
"I didn't want to go," she told me.
"I know," I held her. "I'm sorry."
"It got some of the others too. But Meita got in its way and told me to run." She cried.
"Don't cry I told her. You know how you hate getting wet."
"I don't want to go. I wanted to stay with you. All of us together."
I watched as her soul splintered and disappeared forever.
I had never felt such fury. In all my years, a womanizer, a liar, a cheat at cards, a scoundrel, a bastard even. But an undutiful husband? Never.
Without thinking I approached the field and cast a spell that was been forbidden.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm purging the field. All beings alive or dead will forever feel displaced when they enter here. A feeling of unending dread and doom will overcome them, causing madness if they do not leave or are unable to. But I have no other choice." I reached into my side and threw a handful of salt. It landed on the ground as I chanted. The winds carrying it into the field, the small white morsels rolling obediently into the darkness.
"Nothings happening," the detective's word stuck in his mouth as a horrible scream echoed into the night. It sounded like two pieces of steel being twisted together.
"There," I took off after it. The jumbled figure of the mannequin fled toward the village.
We followed it through people's homes, and between alleyways; the villagers screamed and fled when they saw it. We barged through home after home as we chased it. Until we cornered it at an abandoned building at the edge of town.
"It was supposed to be a mall," the detective told me. "But the developers ran out of money."
We walked quietly into the empty building. Shells of stores stood in various degrees of construction. Checking a few of the fronts before venturing further inside.
"You've got to be kidding me," the detective said as we came near the center of the complex. There next to the escalators and the fountains was an army of mannequins of all shapes and sizes lined up like terracotta warriors. "They must have stashed them all here when the place was being built, and forgot about them when it closed."
"There are hundreds."
"We'll go through together. Quickly and quietly." He added, "Stay alert."
We moved through the rows, staring at all of the stuck faces, searching for one covered in grime and bullet holes. But it was more difficult than it sounded. Many of the mannequins were in bad shape, weathered, broken, laying in pieces on the ground. It was hard to tell if a pile of parts was indeed our culprit.
Slowly we began to clear the rows and I could see the other side in sight.
"There!" The detective shot his gun. The surrounding mannequins dropped like dominoes when the entity scattered. Falling down all around us, drowning in a sea of plastic arms and smiling faces. I was struggling to stand as I looked up and saw the entity come rushing toward us. The detective fired his gun blowing out a knee cap. I hurriedly reached for my parchment but could not find my pen. Another shot, but the scorned bride kept on charging unable to feel pain.
It jumped into the air and another shot blew a part of its face away. The detective screamed as it tore at him. Pieces of his sinew was launched into the air as he was torn apart. I rushed forward trying to help but the creature grabbed me by the throat and lifted me into the air. My feet searching for the ground as my lungs folded trying to breathe. The thing turned its head toward me and said, "Will you marry me?" As the darkness closed into the corners of my eyes.
The fight was leaving my body as I saw several of my wives rushing forward. Their ghostly forms ethereal as they began tearing at the mannequin, slowly pulling out pieces of her soul, causing the mannequins arms and legs to go limp as they dragged her out.
I scrambled the floor blindly with my fingers searching for my sacred parchment but could not find it amongst the rubble and the ghost bride was fleeing, leaving the shell of her mannequin in a heap on the floor. My wives chasing her, screaming their fury for killing the others. For destroying their souls.
I chased after them into the open air, where she was being cornered. Crying as I approached, trying to escape into the Southwest wind. I knew what I should have done, but could not bring myself to do the right thing. Instead I bit my finger and drew symbols on my forearms with my own blood. Approaching the bride that never was and tore her soul into pieces.
When I was done my wives sat down around me before slowly dispersing as the sun began to rise.
"We did it huh?"
I continued staring at the sun, "Yeah."
"Well then," the detective said before disappearing. "Maybe in the next life I'll be sooner to trust you."
Later they would find his body in the abandoned mall. Still clutching his gun. The department gave him a 21 gun salute at his funeral and a medal as commemoration. I was just glad that his soul had not been eaten.
I, on the other hand, went back to the hotel. To the bar and ordered a well deserved drink. Where I saw a pretty woman sitting alone, "Did you know that in order for me to pass on my Celestial title, I must bear an heir?"
​
​
s

I know the title sounds bad But I 16 F was invited to go on my best friends 17F’s family vacation to DisneyLand. I was told that I would need to pay for my food and souvenir as which my family and I thought was completely reasonable. Best friends family is more well off than mine so their last Disney trips included dinners at Disney’s exclusives clubs and a tour guide. I was told that this trip wasn’t going to be like that one and that the most extra event thing would be staying at the Grand Californian. I was fine with this not being an extravagant trip considering that every time my family and I go we stay at a really cheap hotel off the property. This trip only became a problem when on the first night they decided to eat an expensive place in downtown, I ordered the chicken strips and paid $30 but I just brushed it off as Disney being unreasonable. ON our first day at the park they surprised me with a tour guides. I was excited and ready to go into the park, but the first restraint we ate at I got a small crappy bowl of pasta my share was $30 dollars again so I venomed my friends mother and I was fine with this until she said “that was a nice snack.” But I also brushed that off but then she offered to pay for the tours guide lunch multiple times. The trip continued to go like that, the only thing that I didn’t pay for and consumed was hot chocolate that we shared from the hotels room service. But the worst part of the trip was on our last day in the park when they surprised me with a lunch at Club 33, I was panicking because the menu didn’t have the prices and I only had $93 dollars. They didn’t even tell my parents about this so they couldn’t tell me about it in order to have enough money. I had to panic call my mom and she sent me $200 dollars which barely covered it. When we finally got back home my friend kept telling me how lucky I was to go on vacation with them. That was the most stressful vacation off my life. When I got home we totaled how much I spent on food it was nearly $1000 dollars for a four day trip. Am I the asshole for not seeing my friend in the same way and being a little made at her?
View Poll

Posts in this series (note: link will only work properly in new Reddit): https://www.reddit.com/lds/collection/363e4ce4-8cec-40ad-8ea9-5954cf1fe52d
Sorry for taking so long to get this posted! I’ve been putting in more than 60 hours a week at work lately, and I just didn’t have time to properly research this post.
This week, the topic under discussion is Joseph’s wives and the way that he personally practiced plural marriage. It’s true that some of the circumstances a little unusual compared to how later members practiced it, and it’s also true that sealing practices in general were unusual compared to how we practice them today. The world was also very different in the 1840s than it is today in the 2020s.
All of that means that it can be very difficult for us to understand what was going on and why. I’m going to do my best to break this all down so that it makes sense, but just remember, it’s okay if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s okay if you don’t like the idea of plural marriage. It’s okay if you don’t ever want to practice it. I don’t, either.
But I do have a firm testimony that it was commanded by God. That testimony didn’t just magically appear one day. I had to earn it. I had to get on my knees and pray, and I had to ask Heavenly Father whether He instituted it or not. I had to study the issue and the circumstances surrounding it. More importantly, I had to ask Him to help me understand the reasons why He instituted it.
That’s the only way to really know for yourself.
So, having said that, let’s get into Faulk’s claims.

• The Women

Due to the secretive nature of Joseph’s affairs, the actual total number of wives Joseph took is unclear. Written records, primary accounts and second hand accounts puts the number between 29-65 women.

They were not affairs, they were sealings. Sixty-five is also a pretty exaggerated number. Most reputable sources put it at around 30-35. And again, remember that sealings are different than marriages, even though we often perform them together today. Many of those sealings were for eternity only, not for both time and eternity the way that sealings are done today. In fact, some of those wives, such as Cordelia Morley and Rachel Ivins Grant, did not have any kind of union with him at all while he was alive, and were sealed to Joseph for the very first time after he was already dead.
One thing to remember is that the sealing power is to seal us all together as one giant family. It’ll be one unbroken chain connecting all of us together. Many of these sealings of Joseph’s were done for that specific reason, to bind families together in the next life. That’s why there were things like adoption sealings, where people would be “adopted” into each other’s families through the sealing process. Siblings were sometimes sealed together. Women who were married to men who were not members of the Church would sometimes to be sealed to righteous Priesthood holders for the next life.
Also, it drives me batty that Faulk keeps repeating that Joseph took wives. None of them were married to him against their will. They all had a choice in the matter.

Most disturbing was the fact that many of these women were already married, much younger and related to each other.

Why is that “most disturbing”? The women were all of legal marriageable age, and there is no evidence of any sexual relations between Joseph and any of the civilly married women, or with any of the youngest wives.
One of the reasons it’s believed that Joseph was sealed to so many women who were already married is because he was trying to satisfy God’s commandment while not hurting Emma. If he was sealing himself to married women, he wouldn’t have to actually marry them and live together as husband and wife. As the Gospel Topics Essay Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo says:

These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships. This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice. After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.

Joseph’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, was sealed to Joseph when she was fourteen. We’ll discuss her in some detail a little later in this post. But that union was done for dynastic/adoptive reasons at her father’s request, to join Heber C. Kimball’s family to Joseph’s in the eternities.
And, believe it or not, some of the women who practiced plural marriage probably found it easier to do so when the other wife was biologically related to them. After all, they already loved them and knew how to live together with them in harmony.
At this point in the LFMW, Faulk posts a small chart taken from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness. You can find that chart here.

1. Married: Between 8-11 women were married to other men at the time Joseph took them for his wives.

And every single one of them remained married to their husbands after they were sealed to Joseph. That’s because, again, sealings and marriages are not the same thing, and sealings for the next life had no bearing on their marriages in this one. Joseph did not live with these women as husband and wife.

He sent several men on missions for the Church then married their wives, or married their wives in secret and then sent the husbands on missions afterwards.

Many of the husbands in question knew about the sealings and even participated in them. Joseph also did not send the husbands on missions so he could marry their wives in secret.

• Marinda Nancy Johnson-Hyde-Smith

In September 1831, Joseph and Emma Smith moved in with the Johnson family while Joseph and Sidney Rigdon worked on translating the Bible. While staying with the Johnsons in March, 1832, Joseph Smith was dragged out by a mob and tarred and feathered. Marinda’s brother Eli led the mob because he felt that Joseph had been too intimate with Marinda.

Um. No. Eli Johnson was Marinda’s uncle, not her brother, and he wasn’t the leader of the mob. The mob also didn’t attack him for that reason. Marinda herself said that Joseph had never acted inappropriately while he was staying in her father’s home. This accusation was first introduced during the infamous 1884 Braden-Kelley debate, and repeated by Fawn Brodie, Grant Palmer, and a host of others.
The mob was led by Symonds Ryder and Ezra Booth, because they thought he’d try to steal their property under the Law of Consecration. They’d both already apostatized for various reasons, then led a smear campaign against Joseph and the Church through local newspapers for a while before leading the attack. The only evidence that Eli Johnson was even involved are brief reports that he was the one who provided and heated the tar. According to at least one account, he wasn’t even an active participant, but just left it out for them to use. The mob tried to castrate then murder Joseph and nearly did kill Sidney Rigdon, and were unsuccessful in all attempts.
However, as we all know, Joseph’s infant son tragically died from the effects of the frigid weather that night. Pretty tough bunch of guys, right? Gathering up a violent mob to go murder a baby.

Soon Marinda married apostle Orson Hyde. On April 6, 1840, Orson was sent on a 3 year mission to Jerusalem. Shortly after his departure, Joseph married his wife Nancy Marinda Johnson-Hyde while Orson was gone. In Joseph Smith’s journal, in a list of his marriages he wrote “Apr 42 Marinda Johnson to Joseph Smith.” In 1858 Orson and Marinda separated.

The separation of Orson and Marinda Hyde had nothing to do with her sealing to Joseph, which had happened 15 years earlier. The rest of this is also pretty heavily distorted. Orson Hyde was sent on his mission on April 15, 1840, and returned on December 7, 1842. There are two sealing dates for Joseph and Marinda, making it unclear when it actually happened. It was written down in Joseph’s journal by his scribe Thomas Bullock as taking place in May of 1842. This entry was apparently not recorded until after July 14, 1843, however, and the affidavit Marinda signed stated that the sealing took place in May 1843, after Orson was home.
Regardless of which date is accurate, Orson was not sent on a mission so Joseph could steal his wife if the sealing happened 2-3 years after he left. They were not sealed “shortly after his departure” at all. In fact, even the earliest sealing date is closer to the date he returned than the date he left.

• Zina Diantha Huntington-Jacobs-Smith-Young

Zina was 18 when her mother died and after went to live in the Smith’s home. Soon she met Joseph’s friend, Henry Jacobs. Joseph was to officiate their wedding, but never showed. Instead, bishop John C. Bennett performed the marriage. Later, Zina asked Joseph why he didn’t show, “He told her it had been made known to him that she was to be his Celestial Wife and he could not give to another one who had been given to him.” (Henry Jacobs, History of Henry Bailey Jacobs)
During Henry and Zina’s marriage, Joseph sent Henry on 8 missions. At one point Joseph sent a message to Zina through her brother Dimick. It read, “Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.” After four proposals and pressured with the responsibility for the life of the prophet, Zina finally accepted. (Brian C. Hales, Mormon Historical Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 69–70.)

That last line there is a pretty big exaggeration of what the article actually says. In fact, the article doesn’t talk about Zina Huntington at all. The only place she’s mentioned at all is her inclusion in a chart of the different accounts of the angel with the drawn sword. I’ve included a screenshot of the only three mentions of her from Faulk’s cited source. In fact, it’s actually a paraphrased line from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness.
Zina, however, clarified that she came to accept the principle through searching the scriptures and praying, and that she received an answer from God that it was from Him. It wasn’t because she felt pressured into it at all.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to pin down exact details when it comes to Zina’s timeline, as there are a lot of discrepancies. When I wrote my response to the CES Letter, I cited liberally from a book titled 4 Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier. This book used to be housed on the Internet Archive, but has since been taken down. Forgive me that I can’t show exact pages anymore on those citations. Many years after all these events took place, Zina gave testimony saying that she first learned of the principle of plural marriage from Dimick, who had heard it from Joseph. Other sources, seemingly reliant on her diary, say that she learned it from Joseph while she was staying at his home. Some sources say that Joseph proposed to her three times while she was living at his home and that she refused him each time out of respect for Emma. Other sources say she declined to give him an answer and kept putting him off, also out of respect for Emma. Some sources say that Joseph wrote Zina a letter saying he’d been threatened by an angel with a drawn sword, while others say that it was a verbal message passed to her by Dimick, who had been sent to offer her another proposal (even though she was already married to Henry Jacobs at that point). Some sources say that Henry was present for that initial sealing to Joseph, but absent from the other resealing to Joseph for eternity and sealing to Brigham for time. Others say Henry was there for the sealing to Brigham, but are silent on whether he was there for the first sealing to Joseph. Zina said in her later testimony that it was just Joseph, her, and Dimick present at their initial sealing, but that Brigham later resealed them after he returned from a mission to England, meaning that she would have been sealed to Joseph three times in total. However, in signed affidavits collected by the Church, Zina, Dimick, and Dimick’s wife Fanny all verified that Fanny was there at the sealing, too. Etc.
Because of all of this, it’s difficult to know exactly what happened, who was aware of what, and when and how they all became aware of it. However, Zina did say that the Lord had prepared her for the doctrine prior to her hearing it:

I will tell you the facts. I had dreams — I am no dreamer but I had dreams that I could not account for. I know this is the work of the Lord; it was revealed to me, even when young. Things were presented to my mind that I could not account for. When Joseph Smith revealed this order I knew what it meant; the Lord was preparing my mind to receive it.

Additionally, Henry was called on his first mission in May of 1839, before he ever even met Zina. The guy was a prolific missionary who served repeatedly throughout his life. None of those missions overlapped with Joseph’s sealing to Zina.
In fact, according to family tradition, he was present when Joseph told Zina that the reason he hadn’t officiated their wedding is because she was meant to be his plural wife. Henry accepted the news because he was close to Joseph and trusted him. Zina was the one who hadn’t received an answer yet and still had reservations.

After Joseph’s death, Brigham Young also took Zina for his wife while she was still married to Henry Jacobs. Brigham called Henry to serve a mission in England and told him to find another wife. While Henry was in England, Zina began living at the Young house with her children and soon bore a child with Brigham.

Let’s walk through all of this. First, many of Joseph’s sealed wives who were already civilly married to someone else just stayed married to their husbands after his death. They had the choice on whether to re-seal themselves to Joseph or not, and the single wives had the choice of which members of the Twelve they wanted to be sealed to for time. Zina wasn’t forced to leave her marriage to seal herself to Brigham. She chose to do that.
Brigham supposedly told Henry to find another wife, though that can’t be corroborated. He also supposedly had to tell Henry to stop writing love letters to Zina after they were married.
Brigham eventually had several dozen wives and 57 children, in addition to being the leader of the Church and the governor of Utah Territory, owning multiple businesses, and directing the settlement efforts across a very large area. Dude was a busy guy, just saying. Zina did not live with him and did not spent tons of alone time with him. She lived for a time in a separate home with her children, and for a time in a house with several of his other wives. The time she spent alone together with him was sporadic and infrequent.
How would Brigham know that Zina was getting love letters from Henry Jacobs unless she told him? And if she enjoyed receiving those letters, why would she tell him? Why not hide them from him? It would’ve been pretty easy to do so—all she had to do was keep her mouth shut. It’s not like Brigham was snooping through all of his wives’ things in his limited free time. The only reason for her to bring the letters to his attention was if she didn’t like receiving them.
Imagine it from her point of view. You get divorced and move on. You describe that marriage as an unhappy one at several points throughout the rest of your life. You marry someone else and even have a child with them, but your ex keeps contacting you, telling you how much they still love you and still want to be with you. How uncomfortable would that be? It’d be an extremely awkward situation for anyone.
To me, it’s far more likely that Zina went to Brigham and asked him to intervene because it was making her uncomfortable than it is that Brigham found out on his own and flew into a rage and forbade Henry from contacting Zina despite her protestations.
Aside from a very few notable exceptions, most of Brigham’s wives and children spoke of him in glowing terms. Zina herself mentioned his kindness repeatedly.
Henry, meanwhile, was married three more times and all four of his marriages ended in divorce. I don’t know what led to the end of the other three marriages, but I do know that he’s the common denominator in all of those marriages.
It seems clear that Zina left him in what is sometimes called a “folk divorce,” which was a thing in the 19th Century where the man and woman decided to dissolve their marriage and go their separate ways, leaving each of them free to marry again. She chose to marry Brigham for time, and Henry struggled to move on afterward...for a time. Brigham asked him to back off, and he did.

• Vilate Kimball

Shortly after Heber’s return from England, he was introduced to the doctrine of plural marriage directly through a startling test. He had already sacrificed homes, possessions, friends, relatives, all worldly rewards, peace, and tranquility for the Restoration. Nothing was left to place on the altar save his life, his children, and his wife. Then came the Abrahamic test. Joseph demanded for himself what to Heber was the unthinkable, his Vilate. Totally crushed spiritually and emotionally, Heber touched neither food nor water for three days and three nights and continually sought confirmation and comfort from God. On the evening of the third day, some kind of assurance came, and Heber took Vilate to the upper room of Joseph’s store on Water Street. The Prophet wept at this act of faith, devotion, and obedience. Joseph never intended to take Vilate. It was all a test.” (Heber C. Kimball, Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer by Stanley B. Kimball, p.93)

Yep, because blessings come after the trial of our faith. Heber and Vilate were sealed for time and eternity that same night as a reward for their faithfulness. Theirs was one of the very first sealings of this dispensation.

Teenagers: Ten of Joseph’s wives were teenagers.

Here, Faulk posts another little chart, which I have also linked.

• Helen Mar Kimball-Smith

Instead of taking Heber C. Kimball’s wife, Vilate, as Joseph had done with others, he married Heber’s 14 year-old daughter, Helen, in May of 1843.

This is presented somewhat disingenuously. Joseph and Helen were sealed two years after Heber and Vilate were sealed. The two incidents are not connected at all. And, as mentioned earlier, Joseph and Helen were sealed at Heber’s urging. He wanted to link his family to Joseph’s in the eternities.

“The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.” (Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo, LDS.org, Oct. 2014)
In a letter written by Helen Kimball, her father had asked her if she would be willing to be sealed to Joseph Smith, Joseph himself came to her and said,
“If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.” She talks of her mother’s hidden grief “to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path [of polygamy].” “I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.” (Helen Mar Kimball, Mormon Polygamy: A History, by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, p.53)

Ooh, this is super dishonest framing! The first two lines in quotation marks are indeed taken from an autobiographical letter written by Helen to her children in 1881. The first is from page 482 of a book titled A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History, and the second from page 486.
But that third quotation, about how she’d never have been sealed to Joseph if she knew it was anything more than a ceremony? That’s taken from page 19 of an early anti-Mormon pamphlet called Narrative of Some of the Proceedings of the Mormons: Giving an Account of Their Iniquities by Catherine Lewis, published in 1848. She claimed to have heard Helen say this to her mother at some point, though everything in the book is suspect. It’s all pretty badly distorted from reality, which you can see for yourself just by reading it.
Helen herself certainly never backed up its claim. She did admit to being upset as a 15-year-old at being prevented from going out to dances with her friends because of the sealing, so it’s possible she said something like that at one point in her frustration and disappointment. But the circumstances surrounding it are certainly skewed, since Catherine reports it in the context of Helen refusing, after Joseph’s death, to be sealed for time as her father’s plural wife. That surely never happened. And in fact, after a few more years, Helen became a very vocal defender of plural marriage and of Joseph Smith for the rest of her life.
So, I’d take that statement with a very big grain of salt. That Faulk presents it here as if it was a direct quote from Helen’s own letter to her children is repulsive.

Joseph told a reluctant Helen Mar Kimball that if she married him it would ensure her salvation and the salvation of all her family. Imagine the burden on a 14 year old girl’s emotions of the salvation for her entire family riding on accepting Joseph’s proposal.

Except that Helen herself admitted that she didn’t understand what he was trying to teach her, and neither of her parents, who were there at the time of the proposal, understood it that way at all.

• Nancy Winchester Smith

While records show Nancy was married to Joseph, no dates were written. At the time of Joseph’s death, Nancy was 15 years old. It is possible that, like Helen Mar Kimball, Nancy could have been 14.

It’s not confirmed that Nancy Winchester was a plural wife of Joseph Smith, though evidence leans that way. We also have no idea when that sealing would have taken place, because no records of the sealing exist. We don’t know much about her at all. Her brother Benjamin was a known and rather hostile critic of Joseph’s who never mentioned the fact that they were sealed, so either he didn’t know about it, he didn’t see anything wrong with it (which is highly doubtful), or it never happened and her inclusion on the list was a mistake.
Eliza R. Snow listed her as one of his wives, and so did Orson Whitney, the son of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Helen was one of Nancy’s good friends so there’s solid evidence to believe it, but it’s not confirmed.

Unlike what is commonly taught in Sunday school lessons, marriages to young teenagers were not “common in pioneer days.”

Not true, and Faulk’s evidence for this claim doesn’t even say that:

“In 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting marriage data, it was recorded that the average age of a first marriage for men was 26 years, and the average age of marriage for women was 22 years.” (http://classroom.synonym.com/agemarriage-us-1800s-23174.html)

Note that this quote says the average age was 22 years old. That means that some women were much older and some were much younger. 1890 is also half a century later than 1840, and society can change a lot in 50 years.
Craig Foster wrote a great article for the Interpreter a few years ago) which demonstrated that in frontier America in the 1800s, females often married quite young, and their husbands were usually older and more settled. It was much less common in the settled cities along the East Coast, but on the frontier (which included Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and especially Utah), it was relatively common. Men in their 20s-40s marrying teenagers was not unusual.
Even today, it’s legal for teenagers to get married. Let’s not forget that most of Joseph’s teenaged wives were 17-19 years old. Many of us in this church know women who got married at 18 or 19. While they are technically still teenagers, calling them teen brides is implies that they were underage.
The entire concept of “underage” did not exist in the 1800s. In fact, the concept of “teenagers” didn’t even exist back then. You were either a child or an adult, and there was no in-between.
Applying our societal standards to a past society and judging them for their lack of adherence to our norms is a logical fallacy known as “presentism.” I get it—today, it’s unusual and it makes us squirm to hear of girls aged 14-16 getting married. But it was also not out of place in that day and age. And, most importantly, there is no evidence of any sexual activity between Joseph and his youngest wives.

3. Mothers and Daughters: Joseph married a mother and daughter pair.

• Patty Bartlett Sessions (Mother – already married to David Sessions)

She was sealed to Joseph for eternity while her husband was a faithful member of the Church, and though she and her husband both later received their endowment, they weren’t sealed at that time. She also didn’t re-seal herself to Joseph in the temple after his death the way that many of his other plural wives did. The reasons why are unclear. After her husband’s death, she was sealed for time to another man. Around 1867, after submitting an affidavit concerning her plural marriage to Joseph, she was offered the chance to be re-sealed to Joseph again, though I’m not sure if she accepted or not.
We don’t know the reasons for this sealing, just like we don’t know the reasons behind many of Joseph’s sealings to civilly married women.

• Sylvia Sessions Lyon (Daughter – already married to Windsor Lyon).

Windsor Lyon was excommunicated from the Church in November of 1842. Joseph and Windsor remained good friends for the rest of Joseph’s life. There are conflicting dates from two unsigned affidavits saying that Sylvia’s sealing to Joseph either took place in early 1842 or early 1843. Brian Hales favors the later date.
If he’s right, this appears to be one of those sealings where Joseph was sealed to a woman whose husband wasn’t (at the time) a faithful member of the Church so that she could still obtain exaltation.

Sylvia bore children with both husbands; three children with Windsor and one with Joseph. (Josephine - February 8, 1844)

No, no, no. She most certainly did not have a child with Joseph. For a long time, it was considered an unproven possibility, but was never definitive. However, even the possibility was ruled out by DNA testing in 2016, seven years ago.
The fact that this is still in the LFMW after all this time caught me by surprise. We know the LFMW has been updated since its first posting, since the original FAIR rebuttal addresses differently worded accusations. There was plenty of time to correct the inaccuracy. In fact, this particular objection appears to have been added to the original text, rather than removed.

4. Pairs of Sisters: Joseph married 3 pairs of sisters.

• Emily Dow Partridge and Eliza Maria Partridge.
  
• Sara Lawrence and Maria Lawrence.
  
• Zina Huntington Jacobs and Presidia Huntington Buell.
  

Yep, he sure did. Zina and Presendia (her name is not Presidia) were both sealed to Joseph for eternity only, with no marriage in this lifetime. But Emily and Eliza Partridge and Sarah and Maria Lawrence were all sealed to Joseph for time and eternity.
Again, though, I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a point of scandal. None of them were married against their will. They all had the choice, and they all agreed to these arrangements. Is it unusual? Sure. It’s weird, I think we can all agree with that. But is it sinful? Nope. When God commands polygamy, it’s not sinful, and levirate marriages have been around for thousands of years. This is somewhat similar to that practice, particularly in the case of Mary and Mercy Fielding and Hyrum Smith. Or, one could argue, between Zina Huntington and Brigham Young.
Remember, when plural marriage was first introduced, they weren’t really given a rule book. There are some directions and guidelines given in D&C 132, but they only cover certain situations. In the Nauvoo days, they were basically winging it. They had to adjust to the new commandment that completely upended their entire lives and then figure out the best way to live it. There was trial and error, heartache, sacrifice, and suffering involved. It was not easy for any of them, and they did the best they could. If they made mistakes, they need our grace, not our judgment.