1. As usual with Green Action ELT events, scroll down the page a little* for more information on this one on at 14:00 UK time tomorrow, Friday 15 December, Showcasing 2023: inspiring environmental stories from ELT https://green-action-elt.uk/events/ Registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYkceyhrjopE9a7nIzpBobH5EzRW0dFdE9z#/registration

* Old fogey that I sometimes feel, I used to think that all files and still think that all web pages should have the most recent stuff on top! (The MS Word editor flagged ‘old fogey’ and warned me that ‘some age-related terms may strike your readers as biased’.)

2. Three pieces I’ve read recently on the war in Palestine:

i) a forthright interview with the former prime minister of Qatar in Der Spiegel, possibly too forthright for the interviewer’s comfort https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/former-qatari-premier-on-the-gaza-conflict-the-worst-thing-would-be-a-ceasefire-without-a-plan-a-bb9af49a-5c72-4767-8fc5-baac68cf67e3

ii) a piece (that I hope you can access) by Martha Giessen in The New Yorker, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, that puts the Der Spiegel interviewer’s discomfort into historical perspective https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust Let me know if you can’t access that second one, and I’ll see what I can do for you.

iii) Selma Dabbagh’s post on the LRB blog about the situation in Gaza, Don’t Look Away https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/december/don-t-look-away

3. Two pieces on ‘male language’ from The Conversation:

i) a little more on that word ‘rizz’ by Tom F. Wright from Sussex University, Rizz: I study the history of charisma – here’s why the word of the year is misunderstood https://theconversation.com/rizz-i-study-the-history-of-charisma-heres-why-the-word-of-the-year-is-misunderstood-219673

ii) a whole lot of other words I’d never heard or read before in this piece by Robert Lawson from Birmingham City University, A dictionary of the manosphere: five terms to understand the language of online male supremacists https://theconversation.com/a-dictionary-of-the-manosphere-five-terms-to-understand-the-language-of-online-male-supremacists-200206

4. I think there’s something in what John McWhorter says in this guest post on the Persuasion blog, Say No to Police Profanity https://www.persuasion.community/p/say-no-to-police-profanityMcWhorter teaches linguistics at Columbia University and writes for the New York Times.You can find his podcast, Lexicon Valley, here https://substack.com/@johnmcwhorterand here’s his most recent piece for the NYT, Black Students Are Being Trained to Think They Can’t Handle Discomfort http://tinyurl.com/3psk23my

5. And, finally, with its origins in Bokhara in Uzbekistan, a piece from Taste by Jason Diamond, The Many Garlics of My Childhood https://tastecooking.com/the-many-garlics-of-my-childhood/