We're spending a few days on the beach with friends and family. Not a vacation for me -- just another Thursday.
Ever heard of an icaco, or (in English), coco plum or paradise plum? It's a tropical fruit that grows on trees as close as 30 feet from the ocean. The closer to the water, the sweeter the fruit.
The tree is native to the tropical parts of the Americas, especially the Caribbean.
People eat them raw, cooked or made into jam.
The seed of the icaco is 21% oil, and some people burn them for light.
You can buy great pupusas in El Salvador -- great curtido (cabbage-based vinegar-flavored stuff) and sauce are harder to come by. But home-made is the best.
My wife's cousin, Reina, made riguas for breakfast, which I had never tried before. (The rigua in this picture is the long, oval item, part of this complete breakfast that also includes a tamal, cheese and red silk beans.) They're delicious!
Riguas are one of the many foods unique to El Salvador that were retained in the diet from indigenous cooking.
They're made with rough-ground fresh corn cooked in banana leaves.
You can have this pre-Spanish item with nothing on top, or topped with foods brought by the Spanish: sugar, butter, sour cream or curds.
I found my beach.
Virtual girlfriend accountants, "diverse" non-humans, TikTok tricks, explosive team names, blow-up controllers, awesome AI tools and more! Get it free now.
I'm enjoying a nice bowl of Atol Shuco (also spelled "Atol Chuco," and "Atol Shuko") at my beach hotel in the Southeastern-most corner of El Salvador. Shuco is one of the indigenous staples that Salvadorans never stopped eating. It's a massively nutritious dish for two reasons: 1) it's made with "black corn" that's made black by large quantities of polyphenols, so it's highly antioxidant-packed; and 2) it's fermented, so it's loaded with probiotics for healthy gut flora.
For my breakfast, it's got ground roasted aihuashte (also called "aiguashte" or "pepitoria") on top, made from the ground seed (pepitas) of a Salvadoran pumpkin-like squash, which is common when taken for breakfast. Shuco is also eaten with beans and white "pan francés" (basically a white-bread roll) if you have it at night.
People here make it at home. Rural Salvadorans eat it on their way to or from work, purchased from a street vendor.
Before OpenAI, the company behind both ChatGPT and DALL-E, the sustained panic centered around deepfake videos, produced by generative adversarial networks (GANs). Everybody feared that deepfake videos would become the ultimate tool for spreading disinformation. Deepfakes, we were told, could produce “evidence” that political leaders, for example, said or did things they never said or did.
Deepfake fears haven’t been realized yet. The tech isn’t convincing enough. (And, once they are convincing, I fear the bigger threat will be that people caught on video will plausibly deny the truth by falsely claiming the real video is a deepfake.)
But this week a new panic set in. Rumors circulated about the imminent indictment and arrest of former president Donald Trump (rumors started by Trump himself in a Truth Social post that falsely claimed he’d be arrested Tuesday).
Read the rest on my Substack.
The Salvadoran government has not only installed them all over El Salvador, but 50 such machines in the US where 20% of the Salvadoran people live.
Despite the high number of job openings, the number of qualified applicants has dropped significantly, leaving many employers feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, job seekers are finding it difficult to land a job, even with all the opportunities out there. They are applying for various job openings but getting ghosted by potential employers.
It's called the “Great Mismatch.” Here's what's causing it.
You get to taste amazing wines nobody has tried yet, and even wines that are only halfway between grape juice and incredible wine. (This is an incredible winery in Veneto, Italy, during The Venice Prosecco Experience.)
I got to guest on TWiG with hosts Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and Stacey Higginbotham! We explored the shiny, new GPT-4 AI language model, Silicon Valley Bank's implosion, Deadpool's sale to T-Mobile of Mint Mobile, Google matters, Facebook fiascos, Microsoft layoffs, LEGO houseplants and more!
Watch this episode of TWiG now, and go here to subscribe!
Watching the sun rise over the Sahara desert give you an indescribable feeling. No need for shoes. It’s all just pure burnt-orange sand in the Moroccan Sahara. You really should add this to your bucket list.
The restaurant is newish and has no signage. It’s not on Google Maps. You just have to know about it, I guess.
Reverse prompt engineering is the process of querying text-producing generative AI tools like ChatGPT to find out which text prompts led to a specific output result.
It's so good, it's almost a dessert. Amazing bread, the cooks hand-whip the milk and egg batter custom with each order, tons of cinnamon, organic berries on top and whipped cream. This french toast is not to be trifled with.
Dr. Pizza used to be the best pizza in Mexico City. But it's time for Dr. Pizza to go back to pizza medical school because now Aborigen is the best!! Their crust is unusual, in that it's not only naturally leavened, but it has a rustic quality to it that's just incredible.
It's a tiny one-room place in a tiny town in the Oaxaca valley. The lady who makes it just ladles the stuff out of the plastic buckets she ferments it in. So fresh and good. (Pictured above: The outside of the place; below: my pulque lady with one of her customers and also her pet goat, who happens to be peeing on the floor in this picture.)
Mexico is the food capital of Latin America. And Oaxaca is the food capital of Mexico. Oaxaca is where Mexicans go when they want to go to Mexico. AMA.
I'm not a vegan anymore, but I love vegan tacos at a sidewalk stand called Por Siempre. Always tasty!
You really should join us for the Mexico City Cocktail Experience!
In this issue of Mike's List:
Why paid social is a no good, horrible idea
Now you can find a stalker’s AirTag *before* it “travels with you”
This tiny 3D printer actually works!
Waterproof boots look like LEGOS but they’re actually made out of coffee
Why go to a regular bar when you can find one with retro arcade games?
And more!
