1. A free ‘reading experience’ with which to start today, The Universal Turing Machine: a memoir by Richard Beard https://universalturingmachine.co.uk/ The Universal Turing Machine is a reading experience not a game, a memoir about what it means to live a human, unartificially (sic) intelligent life. It is a whole-life memoir – from the age of zero to sixty-three – with a thousand words allocated to each year. The reader can plot a course starting at 1986, a year for falling in love and for Garry Kasparov to check-mate ten supercomputers, blind-folded, at the same time. A very fine year for humankind. Re-enacting the mental leaps of anticipation and memory, other years can be reached by moving like a knight in a game of chess. Available moves are outlined in blue, and progress can be monitored by turning on tracking which marks every opened square with a red dot. Great stuff!

And here’s the interestingly different Engelsberg Ideas ‘summer reading’ feature from which I pinched that recommendation https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-summer-of-reading/

2. Bad Days and Worse Days by Selma Dabbagh for the London Review of Books blog https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/july/bad-days-and-worse-days

Last month, Gazans honoured their donkeys, dressing them up and walking them down a red carpet to celebrate the animals and contrast their resilience and support to that provided by global leaders. Reports soon followed of the large-scale theft of donkeys from Gaza by Israel. Some are being transferred to a farm in Israel called ‘Let’s Start Again’. Glossy videos describe their care. Some are said to have been exported to France and Belgium.

Meanwhile trauma centres in Gaza are recording the questions that children are asking: when it rains will we drown in the tent? When they bomb the tent, will we burn? Why do they always bomb us? I don’t want to die in pieces. Will the dogs that ate the dead bodies of the martyrs turn into humans? Do children who have their legs amputated grow new legs? Do the Israeli pilots who bomb children have children?

3. Two new think pieces from Chatham House:

Why the Indo-Pacific should be a higher priority for the UK by Ben Bland, Olivia O’Sullivan & Chietigj Bajpaee https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/07/why-indo-pacific-should-be-higher-priority-uk

Although UK foreign policy has for some time acknowledged the Indo-Pacific’s importance to Britain’s long-term interests, the government has yet to articulate and instrumentalize a sufficiently coherent approach to the region. Worries over European security, and over unpredictable US foreign policy, have understandably dominated policy attention. This paper argues, however, that the UK does not have the luxury of focusing on one region or problem at a time.

What the UK must get right in its China strategy by William Matthews https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/07/what-uk-must-get-right-its-china-strategy

China’s power, economic reach and technological prowess mean the UK’s relationship with it is of vital importance. However, the UK’s approach has fallen short of the strategic response required by the challenges China presents. Deeper bilateral links are unavoidable given China’s geopolitical and economic influence. But closer engagement requires significantly stronger mitigation of the risks China poses to UK national security, as well as steps to build resilience to the effects of Sino-US competition.

PDFs of both papers attached.

4. A gift article from The New York Times, The Essential Jane Austen https://tinyurl.com/yp8d6wf2

5. And, finally and cross-culturally, ‘what a palaver’ was an expression my grandmother used to use, to mean ‘such a fuss’ or something similar. I just learnt today about palaver trees, where perhaps conversation is more valued than in North Yorkshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaver_(custom) The Cambridge Dictionary definition, however, is one my grandmother would have recognised https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/palaver