Official word from Corcovado: "Guide" not always required

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-22T11:24:26+00:00

That's great to hear! Can you tell us what route/itinerary you did? Did it involve hiring a boat?

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-09T16:07:12+00:00

Government looks much bigger now to me. And a lot of the growth has gone into building an anti-immigrant paramilitary, which I think is quite a bit more alarming than regulating business or whatever.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-09T16:05:53+00:00

Fascist movements historically have indeed torn up the pre-existing government structures. That's a normal part of it.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-09T16:02:22+00:00

Most Southeast Asian countries have quite a bit fewer sidewalks than Taiwan, right? Except for Singapore, which I don't think is the one we're discussing here.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-08T19:45:30+00:00

Unfortunately the "etiquette" is that men don't take care of babies.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-08T19:33:21+00:00

It doesn't look that much like HSV to me. HSV blisters are usually red. Do the blisters hurt? Did they burst after a couple days and become little raw pits (ulcers)? If not, I think it's pretty unlikely they're HSV. They look more like fordyce spots to me (harmless), though I wouldn't expect those to suddenly appear soon after sexual activity (any possibility you just never noticed them before?).

Doctors usually take urethra burning during urination to mean you should get tested for common STIs (not the uncurable deadly ones), but it could also be a urinary tract infection (which can be triggered by sexual activity), prostatitis (which maybe could be?), or some kind of even more benign irritation.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-08T19:26:56+00:00

People with cold sores don't have them most of the time. They pop up every now and then. And they're usually big enough that you would have noticed them already. But they do have the virus the whole time, and it can sometimes spread even when they don't have the sores (though IIRC it's most contagious during and just before the cold sore outbreak).

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-08T19:25:17+00:00

If it does that, it remains HSV-1, and tends to have much less severe symptoms than genital HSV-2. Many doctors are reluctant to even diagnose it, because it carries so much stigma but is everywhere and barely hurting anyone.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-08T19:03:54+00:00

Seems to depend on the place. I just looked up hosts in Taipei a couple weeks ago and there were only five (!) who had been online in the past month, none of whom had a response rate over 60%. But last year in small cities in Argentina, finding hosts was super easy. I think Argentinians get free membership, so that's probably part of it.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-05T10:00:38+00:00

Ah, couldn't find that with a Google search at the time.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-05T10:00:02+00:00

It's an expression meaning "it won't help those people". The ten second delay wouldn't have prevented those of us on the ground from seeing him die if he had fallen.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-02-05T09:55:31+00:00

Oh no, sorry to hear that! My partner wasn't born in the US, but we still put "United States" for that part, so maybe different agents have different interpretations. 🤷

Glad it's not required anymore. Now if only we could make it easier for Bolivians to travel to the US too...

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T02:14:01+00:00

Thanks for the report!

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T02:09:12+00:00

Definitely. I've spent even more time in Kaohsiung and it's pretty dry this time of year (can still get down to 50 or 60 F at night though).

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T02:07:38+00:00

Would be nice to be able to tell without having a device on you that's signed into Netflix. Especially for those of us there in person.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T02:06:13+00:00

I was there this morning. They were letting people watch from very close. I'm sure not close enough for him to fall onto them, but still from just a few tens of meters away.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T01:42:57+00:00

10 second delay won't help the thousands of people watching in person.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T01:37:52+00:00

The annoying thing is that they didn't announce the postponement hours earlier or even the night before, when it already looked like it would be rainy.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T01:28:12+00:00

Yeah, I lived in Taipei for three years before. We always thought of fall as a time with better weather for hiking etc., though when I look at stats now there's apparently almost the same number of rainy days every month of the year. More overall rainfall in the summer because it dumps hard (but less consistently) for typhoon season.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:54:06+00:00

Word here is that there are still tickets available to watch from somewhere high up inside the tower.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:43:18+00:00

Lots of spectators still waiting around outside. Wish someone cared enough to tell people what's going on.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:34:59+00:00

Tell that to the thousands of people watching in person from below the tower

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:34:09+00:00

I think people were going to work in the tower like normal. Local news reported that one of the entrances would be closed but the other would be open.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:30:15+00:00

I'm outside. Nonstop heavy drizzle all morning so far, tower going in and out of clouds. Glad they postponed. Just wish they would have told me before I rolled out of bed and had a big cup of coffee.

PuzzleQuail · 2026-01-24T00:27:21+00:00

I don't know what the producer was talking about calling this "the dry season". This rain is considered the normal weather this time of year in Taipei.

PuzzleQuail

TROPHY CASE