1. We prefer things to be black and white, with no shades of grey. Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, made the mistake of suggesting in a video recently that the Taliban had some positive achievements to their name, and the political roof came down on his head, Tory MPs try to oust Tobias Ellwood from defence role for praising Taliban https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/20/tory-mp-tobias-ellwood-apologises-video-praising-taliban

More acceptably – very – critical is this piece from Persuasion, Slipping Past Taliban Censors https://www.persuasion.community/p/slipping-past-taliban-censors

But there probably is a bit of grey there somewhere, isn’t there?

2. Here’s a piece by Yun Li from Xinyang Normal University in China in the Frontiers in Psychology journal, courtesy of Maja Mandekic, which addresses how best learners of English develop their oral skills, Teaching mode of oral English in the age of artificial intelligence https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.953482/full PDF below.

3. A Vegan diet has just 30% of the environmental impact of a high-meat diet, reports this piece in The Conversation https://thec onversation.com/vegan-diet-has-just-30-of-the-environmental-impact-of-a-high-meat-diet-major-study-finds-210152

How much of the world, though, enjoys – if that’s the word I want – a ‘high meat’ diet?

4. Not Uganda! Here’s a blog post from William Henry Gates III on bean engineering there, Clare Mukankusi will make you geek out on beans https://www.gatesnotes.com/Heroes-in-the-Field-Clare-Mukankusi

5. And, finally and sticking with food, Jonny Crickmore from Fen Farm Dairy shows just how easy it is to make cheese at home https://youtu.be/5COLzyqaL5g