Nicholas Gill

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...

A Conservative’s Plan to Sell Public Lands Faces MAGA Pushback

“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...

I might even know the artist. And the llama.

I want this

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 🤯

I’ll keep my eyes open when I’m back in Peru. Chiles get called different things by region, even the common ones, so mix ups are likely.

Looking closer you are probably right. It doesn’t look like aji limo either, which I keep seeing lemon drop translated as. I’m sure it’s around, though I don’t know of a common name for it.

Hi! I believe they are aji mochero, which is fairly easy to find on the north coast. You won’t see it everywhere though.

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

“Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing some corniness. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.”

Your best caption in the comments:

Definitely not copying them. Has to be distinct. But support for independent voices could go a long way in countering the sea of right wing misinformation.

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…

If we really want to look at government waste there’s the military, healthcare, corporate tax cuts. Elon Musk, Trump and everyone else in the Republican Party is not doing this for a vision of a better America, but for their own personal greed and vengeance. We cannot lose sight of that.

The benefits of foreign aid in reducing migration, biodiversity and cultural preservation, human rights, and a thousand other things are overwhelming. These benefits aren’t just for the people and communities directly involved but everyone.

Not all funding projects work out and of course proposals should be given fair scrutiny. However, the idea that a few singled out projects with absolutely no context are reason to eliminate foreign aid completely is misguided and tragic.

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: