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Kenya’s youth-driven protest movement at crossroads as it considers future

✇The Guardian
Carlos Mureithi

President’s decision to drop finance bill after deadly violence leaves protesters divided over how to achieve broader goals

Kenya’s youth-driven, leaderless protest movement finds itself at a crossroads this weekend, buoyed up by President William Ruto’s surprise decision on Wednesday to abandon a finance bill containing planned tax rises even as it mourns those killed in deadly violence the day before.

The movement that brought thousands of people out on to the streets in recent weeks, against the backdrop of a cost of a living crisis that has left many young people feeling hopeless, has little precedence in Kenya where protests are traditionally elite-led.

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© Photograph: Edwin Ndeke/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Edwin Ndeke/The Guardian

Nairobi to New York and back: the loneliness of the internationally educated elite – podcast

✇The Guardian
Written by Carey Baraka and read by Rhashan Stone. Produced by Nicola Alexandrou. The executive producer was Ellie Bury

Every year, hundreds of Kenyans head off to study at elite universities in the US and UK. On graduating, many find themselves in a strange position: unable to fit in abroad, but no longer feeling like they belong back home. By Carey Baraka

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© Photograph: Drew Kamau

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© Photograph: Drew Kamau

Hisham Matar wins Orwell prize for political fiction

✇The Guardian
Ella Creamer

The Pulitzer winner’s third novel My Friends is based on an event from 1984, when officials opened fire on protesters at the Libyan embassy in London

Pulitzer prize winner Hisham Matar has won this year’s Orwell prize for political fiction for his third novel My Friends, which follows three Libyan exiles in London.

Matthew Longo won the nonfiction counterpart – the Orwell prize for political writing – for The Picnic, about a group of Hungarian activists who staged a pan-European summer party near the militarised Austrian border in August 1989. During the picnic, 600 East Germans breached the border unhindered by guards – an event which came to be seen as a catalyst for the fall of the Berlin wall.

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© Photograph: Awakening/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Awakening/Getty Images

Kenyan president scraps bill to raise taxes after violent protests leave 23 dead

✇The Guardian
Carlos Mureithi East Africa correspondent

William Ruto says he has listened to the people of Kenya, who gathered across the country to oppose the law

The Kenyan president, William Ruto, has withdrawn a bill to raise taxes a day after violent protests erupted around the country following its approval by parliament.

Ruto’s surprise decision not to sign the finance bill came after violent clashes between police and protesters at the Kenyan assembly and across the country left at least 23 people dead and scores wounded, according to medics.

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© Photograph: Hiram Omondi/KENYAN PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION SERVICE HANDOUT/EPA

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© Photograph: Hiram Omondi/KENYAN PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION SERVICE HANDOUT/EPA

We all love "The Catcher in the Rye," and we all hate it.

✇MetaFilter
chavenet
Christ may be able to live on cheeseburgers and Cokes, but Salinger wanted something more. This is his power and his downfall—his vampiric need to drain the potential of the young. Whether through his bohemian characters or the very real women in his own life, he was always ready to give a lecture and take power. Cute as Salinger's characters are, they live under his thumb. They're playthings, like dolls. We enjoy judging their powerlessness, but his fetish for purity was often what he tried to use to get off the hook for his ghoulish behavior. Marrying young women until they were no longer ingenues, feeding on the genre of YA as a source for so-called serious literary fiction, devouring Eastern prayers without regard for their context or specificity. YA is his Trojan horse. This is a grim realization. from Hagiography of a Narcissist: On J. D. Salinger's "Hapworth 16, 1924" by Grace Byron [LARB; ungated]

OpenAI Whistle-Blowers Describe Reckless and Secretive Culture

✇NYT: Technology
Kevin Roose
A group of current and former employees is calling for sweeping changes to the artificial intelligence industry, including greater transparency and protections for whistle-blowers.

© Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher in OpenAI’s governance division, is an organizer of a group of former and current employees who say the company has a reckless culture.
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