The "Pre-bronze age war between two tribes in West Papua, 1963" video in the article is an embedded tweet. Twitter currently doesn't allow to view it without an account (extensively discussed on HN [0]). Fortunately, it is also available on Youtube [1] (longer version [2]).
Random PNG fun facts: their most watched sporting event is State of Origin, a rugby league competition between two Australian states, over which many people have died in PNG. Australia recently allowed them a team in the NRL, its premier rugby league competition, essentially in exchange for PNG not signing a security agreement with China like the Solomon Islands did.
A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.
PNG is on my list to visit.
It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day.
I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country
It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight".
the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country.
I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country.
Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee.
The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting.
Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste.
I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_.
When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days.
I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight.
I wish I could share photos. Food is insanely cheap. I had street fried chicken, rice, and I think two sides for literally one US dollar.
Their primary currency usd.
They have all the child labor problems that other countries in the region have.
Everybody seems to know each other.
Unlike French colonialized countries, Vietnam, Timor Leste is proudly and vibrantly Portuguese. Similar to Macau but not as wealthy.
The public transit system is basically a tiny van that just drives around in loops around the city. You wave the driver down, jump in, and then tap your money against the metal framing when you’re ready to get off (there are no bus stops). I don’t know if you’ve been to Kenya, but it was like very similar to the vans in Kenya, except even smaller.
What's your criteria for mundane? Basically every decent sized island in that part of the world is going to have beautiful beaches, coral reefs, mountains, and jungles.
Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems:
I actually visited abandoned scam centers a couple weeks ago in Bavet, Cambodia. It’s really Erie now.
All the units had air conditioning units, which I thought was sweet, considering many Cambodians don’t have that. But the prison bars on the windows and barbed wire surrounding the complex was a bit uncomfortable to see.
> So nearly all groups eventually internalized a similar set of norms, a similar food culture and similar political institutions, without ever being part of the same political unit.
They managed to achieve eventual consistency in a distributed system, thousands of years before we even thought of it.
One of my parents' friends had spent a lot of time doing research in PNG as well as remote parts of South America. He was the nearest real life equivalent to Indiana Jones I've ever met. He told us some wild stories about the place. He would have been old enough to see the place when cannibalism was still around.
I have read somewhere that the cannibalism claims are overrated and kind of artificially inflated by the natives. (Most natives are actually Christian.) I have not looked closely into it though.
Unrelated. We have servers across the world; one in Mount Hagen. It has by far the biggest latency in the world; so I always use it as a "benchmark"; if it works in Mount Hagen, it works everywhere.
I randomly had a conversation with a guy at a bar in Taipei who was an administrator during the transition to self rule, and he said basically the same thing.
He said about many of the tribes modernized within a generation or two, and the ones that didn't still dropped the cannibalism stuff in the 50s.
I’ve just asked a friend of mine who lives in PNG and yeah, this definitely happened. Nowadays it doesn’t happen anymore except potentially in some insanely remote areas.
Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
> Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
Germans and Russians did too. Most humans with a survival instinct will turn to cannibalism if it their only means to survive. This is completely unrelated to cannibalism as a cultural practice.
Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification
In regards to Suharto, it seems the 1965 coup attempt that got him into power was a surprise even to the US embassy in Jakarta, but of course they welcomed it, considering the previous president (Sukarno) was anti-imperialist and was flirting with the 3rd largest communist party in the world (after USSR's and China's).
Somewhat relatedly, a documentary moviemaker realized what was behind the curtain of Indonesian society and said "it's as if I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power.". He made a documentary following a man who was sanctioned by the Suharto regime to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).
A review:
> Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.
The "Pre-bronze age war between two tribes in West Papua, 1963" video in the article is an embedded tweet. Twitter currently doesn't allow to view it without an account (extensively discussed on HN [0]). Fortunately, it is also available on Youtube [1] (longer version [2]).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694296
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHIP2FJzko
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI4uirwxx1Y
> People still shoot arrows at each other in urban centres
My mother (who is a doctor, although she's retired now) was part of the medical team who worked on this case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arrow-attack-attempted-rape-in-...
My mother isn't mentioned in that article, but the "Allan Mason" it mentions is her husband
Random PNG fun facts: their most watched sporting event is State of Origin, a rugby league competition between two Australian states, over which many people have died in PNG. Australia recently allowed them a team in the NRL, its premier rugby league competition, essentially in exchange for PNG not signing a security agreement with China like the Solomon Islands did.
A friend (now a very fine lawyer in London) travelled PNG during an election assisting in some fashion for several weeks if not months. She came home with a crimp in her hair and ridges on all her toe and fingernails from nutritional deficiencies. This is when I realised differences in standards of living were not theoretical.
>some random Aussie stumbles upon the highlands and discovers a million people living there
Coloniser's mindset much? Finding out people live in a place where is not the same as discovering Penicillin.
I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden
This is those articles that I would just skip but I didn't...very interesting
That was a great read !
PNG is on my list to visit. It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day.
I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country
It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight".
the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country.
I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country.
Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee.
The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting.
Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste.
I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_.
When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days.
I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight.
Some travel tools allow you to search for 18+ hour connections.
I visited Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Hawaii, and Turkey at almost no extra dollar cost. If I like the city I go back.
Any cool facts to share about Timor Leste? My usual go to - wikipedia - does paint a rather mundane picture of it.
I wish I could share photos. Food is insanely cheap. I had street fried chicken, rice, and I think two sides for literally one US dollar.
Their primary currency usd.
They have all the child labor problems that other countries in the region have.
Everybody seems to know each other.
Unlike French colonialized countries, Vietnam, Timor Leste is proudly and vibrantly Portuguese. Similar to Macau but not as wealthy.
The public transit system is basically a tiny van that just drives around in loops around the city. You wave the driver down, jump in, and then tap your money against the metal framing when you’re ready to get off (there are no bus stops). I don’t know if you’ve been to Kenya, but it was like very similar to the vans in Kenya, except even smaller.
What's your criteria for mundane? Basically every decent sized island in that part of the world is going to have beautiful beaches, coral reefs, mountains, and jungles.
Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems:
https://theconversation.com/asias-scamming-gangs-target-timo...
(More on those scam factories: https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-job-at-fir...
And from The Economist - lamentably paywalled: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc)
I actually visited abandoned scam centers a couple weeks ago in Bavet, Cambodia. It’s really Erie now.
All the units had air conditioning units, which I thought was sweet, considering many Cambodians don’t have that. But the prison bars on the windows and barbed wire surrounding the complex was a bit uncomfortable to see.
It sounds like it is easy to get to Port Moresby (which is apparently a bit of a dump and very dangerous), but difficult to get anywhere else.
PNG has changed very rapidly. Parts of the country were in the Stone Age within living memory and are moving over.
ChatGPT advised me to not even leave the Port Moresby airport and to fly immediately to one of the small domestic fishing towns for safety reasons.
> So nearly all groups eventually internalized a similar set of norms, a similar food culture and similar political institutions, without ever being part of the same political unit.
They managed to achieve eventual consistency in a distributed system, thousands of years before we even thought of it.
two great films in PNG are joe leahy's neighbours and black harvest
really excellent insight into society and values there as it meets capitalism
There was a discussion on it here yesterday: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1wfdnus/why...
One of my parents' friends had spent a lot of time doing research in PNG as well as remote parts of South America. He was the nearest real life equivalent to Indiana Jones I've ever met. He told us some wild stories about the place. He would have been old enough to see the place when cannibalism was still around.
I have read somewhere that the cannibalism claims are overrated and kind of artificially inflated by the natives. (Most natives are actually Christian.) I have not looked closely into it though.
Unrelated. We have servers across the world; one in Mount Hagen. It has by far the biggest latency in the world; so I always use it as a "benchmark"; if it works in Mount Hagen, it works everywhere.
I had to look that up. Wow. Does someone rent out rack space in Mount Hagen, or how did you come to have a server there?
I randomly had a conversation with a guy at a bar in Taipei who was an administrator during the transition to self rule, and he said basically the same thing.
He said about many of the tribes modernized within a generation or two, and the ones that didn't still dropped the cannibalism stuff in the 50s.
I’ve just asked a friend of mine who lives in PNG and yeah, this definitely happened. Nowadays it doesn’t happen anymore except potentially in some insanely remote areas.
Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
> Supposedly the Japanese during WW2 also resorted to cannibalism.
Germans and Russians did too. Most humans with a survival instinct will turn to cannibalism if it their only means to survive. This is completely unrelated to cannibalism as a cultural practice.
Servers for mining companies?
Just curious if the hospital still exists there. Do you know?
lol don't go there it's a trap. Civilization, despite all these people, is good.
This article makes me angry about colonialism, misrepresentation of genetic studies and just-so pseudo-scholars.
But still. Gourds up. Highlander pride worldwide.
Indonesia's dictator Suharto (who was put into power by the US) annexed West Papua in the 60's on behalf of US corporations. Indigenous groups united together to form the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and wage a guerilla war of resistance. The resistance is ongoing and most of West Papua (which is basically a colony) and PNG (which is basically a banana republic) want reunification
Carved open whole mountains: https://imgsrv2.voi.id/kn25_PwLY-AF-WW29WhOyKglpuHx95_W7T90y...
In regards to Suharto, it seems the 1965 coup attempt that got him into power was a surprise even to the US embassy in Jakarta, but of course they welcomed it, considering the previous president (Sukarno) was anti-imperialist and was flirting with the 3rd largest communist party in the world (after USSR's and China's).
Somewhat relatedly, a documentary moviemaker realized what was behind the curtain of Indonesian society and said "it's as if I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power.". He made a documentary following a man who was sanctioned by the Suharto regime to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).
A review:
> Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.
From: https://docthisway.com/2024/09/23/the-act-of-killing-review/