Michelin has responded to my story on Substack about the green stars and says they still “exist.” As for removing the stars from the website so you can’t know which restaurants have them? It’s to improve the user experience. www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2025...

There has been no official announcement yet, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that Michelin is dropping its green star distinctions. They were never quite right. open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

River dolphins are difficult to get a good photo of, but this one in Loreto, Peru kept leaving the most beautiful trails of mist (which are scientifically referred to as blow and are a mixture of air, mucus & water). To me, this one actually looks like a dolphin.

Young Baniwa girl with monkey. Camarão, Rio Ayari. Alto Rio Negro, Brazil. A few days ago.

I would add that we can also perceive it through taste.

I took a trip to the tip of Africa to research a story about how Homo sapiens, facing extinction 150,000 years ago, survived and then thrived bc of biodiversity. The 3-part story is a hopeful look at what we as a species have gone through and where we can still go. open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

The following photos are of yucca and yuca, two distinct plants. Their spelling is consistently confused in major media, academic papers and restaurant menus so I wrote this poem so you remember which is which. open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

“I’m a Republican, and yes, I did vote for Trump,” Mr. Hanes said in a phone interview. “But I didn’t vote for this. I didn’t vote for selling millions of acres of public land.” Actually you did. Voting Republica is a package of all kinds of terrible. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/c...

Sure, sex and drugs are OK, but have you ever taken a steaming hot shower while covered in poison ivy rashes?

The things you find while gardening.

Pope Bob?

I just had a tight connection in Madrid-Barajas airport where I had to cut the line (stress asking those in front of me if it was OK), run up and down escalators & through terminals, tripped over my suitcase and totally wiped out while crossing through Duty Free, and the flight was delayed. #Travel

I just saw a group of 20 or so protesters in my very Republican Ohio hometown. Things are shifting. Keep it up.

So there’s a trend for small restaurants in Colombia to get design ideas from Pinterest, which means a lot of flashing lights and signs to make social media posts in front of. Sadly, it doesn’t always turn out as they might hope:

One of my obsessions in my travels in Chile over 20 years has been their giant, too big to hold, knife and fork sandwiches. This guide breaks down common variations to obscure regional sandwiches, plus the types of breads, condiments, fillings & lingo. newworlder.substack.com/p/guide-to-c...

I want to be crystal clear about tariffs: The consumer will pay for them. If we get hit, we will 100% be passing this on, as will most industries.

I do a lot of writing in notebooks as I travel and I only just realized it’s possible to scan the pages with my iPhone camera and copy the text. The amount of time this is going to save me is 🤯

Bit into a shotgun pellet during lunch for the second time in a month #Amazonia

Your best caption in the comments:

What people forget about all of these right leaning voices is that they didn’t come out of nowhere. The right built them up. They gave them $. If the left wants to develop voices on their side they should invest in them too.

It’s going to be amazing eating all of that GMO corn and soy that’s grown for animal feed and ethanol!

Dusk in Cerro Azul, Peru.

Where castanhas (Brazil nuts) come from. Acre, #Brazil

I use an app that transcribes audio in Portuguese and I used it while it was raining here in the Amazon and the transcription is: para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para, para…

I’m in the Ecuadorian Amazon right now and regularly see the benefits of USAID. It can be the difference for a small, rural community between a sustainable, long term economy that benefits many and one built purely on short term extraction that benefits very few and threatens us all.

I stopped by a small restaurant for coffee and a snack in the Ecuadorian Amazon today and this photo was on the TV the entire time and now I’ll never forget it:

Arrived in #Ecuador:

The ice cream tricksters of #Istanbul. How fun would it be to have this as your teenage job?

My life right now consists of wandering around Istanbul while listening to Portuguese lessons through my headphones.

A few food and market snaps from around Istanbul this morning.

Is Turkey a major destination for plastic surgery? There are at least four people (that don’t know each other) at the breakfast buffet of my hotel with nose bandages.

The situation in #Venezuela just took a turn for the worse. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado came out of hiding to appear at a rally and was just taken away: www.caracaschronicles.com/2025/01/09/m...

Can we imagine food in the year 2125? What will happen with food systems, technology, culture and restaurants a hundred years from now. To celebrate our 100th episode of the New Worlder podcast, we asked some of our favorite past guests: open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

Can we imagine food in the year 2125? What will happen with food systems, technology, culture and restaurants a hundred years from now. To celebrate our 100th episode of the New Worlder podcast, we asked some of our favorite past guests: open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

Have any US citizens had any luck getting a visa for #Venezuela recently? If so, I would love to speak with you and see how you were able.

I saw A Complete Unknown and thought it was great. Various chronological inaccuracies but that mattered less than the spirit of the Dylan story that they were able to capture. Timothée Chalamet was brilliant. Felt like I needed my lungs cleaned after walking out of the theater though.

Have any US citizens had any luck getting a visa for #Venezuela recently? If so, I would love to speak with you and see how you were able.

I went to the National Museum of the American Indian in #DC the other day and they were setting up for a dinner in the atrium and man did it look cool.

A Negroni but with DayQuil instead of Campari season.

Note, this is specifically the Roxburgh Fig (Ficus auriculata).

I saw this tree on São Paulo sidewalk. The fruits grow along the trunk and branches like jabuticaba. Never saw one before. It’s apparently called a Himalayan fig tree. #biodiversity

I finally made it to #Brasilia, one of those cities that has long eluded me. open.substack.com/pub/newworld...

Form this morning on the docks of Ver-O-Peso, Belém do Pará #Brazil