Month: January 2025

My 2024 Reading

Rex

I challenged myself to read 52 books in 2024: One book a week. In 2023 this led to a lot of reading at the end of the year to keep up, but this year I did a much better job keeping an even pace, so reaching the goal was not as stressful. This year my goal is to read longer and more serious books while keeping up this pace.

I used StoryGraph to keep track of my reading. I like it ok. Its best feature is that its developers are independent. But I was also thinking of going back to LibraryThing in 20025 for a full Indie experience.

Here are all the books I read in 2024, extracted from StoryGraph and regex’d into something like a readable form:

Seaweed: A Global History by Kaori O’Connor
Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime: Secrets of Calculated Questioning From a Veteran Interrogator by James O. Pyle, Maryann Karinch
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper
The Algerian War, the Algerian Revolution by Natalya Vince
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Seven Meanings in Life: The Threads that Connect by Thomas Hylland EriksenSeven Meanings in Life: The Threads that Connect
Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality by Fredric Jameson
Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea by Mitchell Duneier
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution by Chris DeRose
Becoming Other: Heterogeneity and Plasticity of the Self by David BerlinerBecoming Other: Heterogeneity and Plasticity of the Self
Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides
Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France: The Making of an Intellectual Generation by Johannes Angermuller
Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America by Ruth Gay
Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles
Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination by Webb KeaneAnimals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Revolution in the Revolution?: Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America by Régis Debray
Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians by Tara Isabella Burton
Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self by Jay L. Garfield
Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever by Joseph Cox
Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 by Agnès C. Poirier
Smart on Crime by Kamala Harris
Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine by Anna Della Subin
Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs by Johann Hari
Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation: Journeys in Bougainville by Gordon PeakeUnsung Land, Aspiring Nation: Journeys in Bougainville
The Other Paris by Lucy Sante
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux
Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against a Fascist State in Iraq and the Levant, 1941 by John Broich
Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black
How “natives” Think: About Captain Cook, for Example by Marshall Sahlins
Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis
Avengers and Defenders: Glimpses of Chicago’s Jewish Past by Walter Roth
A Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah by Matteo BortoliniA Joyfully Serious Man: The Life of Robert Bellah
To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World: The Life of Freida Fromm-Reichmann by Gail A. Hornstein
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The Galton Case: A Lew Archer Novel by Ross MacDonald
The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras by Sharony GreenThe Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras
Love, Loyalty and Deceit: Rosemary Firth, a Life in the Shadow of Two Eminent Men by Loulou Brown, Hugh Firth
1968: Radical Protest and Its Enemies by Richard Vinen
Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

Porgera update 18 Dec 2024 – 1 Jan 2025

Rex

Before we get started some small print: This is (ideally) a weekly update about events in Porgera. Before we get started a few caveats: I’m not in Porgera and I’m only relying on my own knowledge of the valley and open sources. I am not a lawyer. I do my best to keep the dates straight but they may get a day off due to my being in a different time zone than Porgera. Thanks to everyone who sent me links and articles. I’m always interested in hearing more about Porgera if you have information to share. With that out of the way, let’s talk about what has happened since around roughly the 18th of December:

The post reported on 20 Dec that on 16 Dec that there was a landslip along Wangima track. Wangima is on the edge of the mine’s open cut. Luckily no one is reported to have been injured, although 15 houses were “affected”. The mines Corporate Social Responsibility team (CSR) is giving food and tents to those affected. I imagine many are thinking of Mulitaka when they respond to this landslip.

Also on the 20th, Simon Yandapake reported at the Post that the Aiyala-Nomali fight has come to an end. He writes that SOE controller Joseph Tondop was at a ceremony “where Yarip Belen of Aiyala tribes paid a total of 10 pigs and K500.00 as compensation to Mr Namo of Nomali clan yesterday at the Porgera Police station.” There is a YouTube video of Tondop’s announcement of peace, although I will note that the video ends before Belen and Namo shake hands. This is not the first time peace has been declared in this fight iirc, so I hope this peace is longer lasting than previous halts to the conflict.

A separate article records Tondop’s speech at the compensation ceremony. He promised 2 more companies of PNGDF and additional police to “come to Porgera”. In the speech he also argued that “it must be in everyone’s interest to make sure that the mining operates without disturbance so that we will benefit from it” since “this mine is the future of Porgera and the future of Papua New Guinea.” Tondop pointed out that “When the mine is operating smoothly, you will live a good life as it brings services that you will be needing such as Schools, Hospitals and even employment opportunities. The money taken from these projects are making it possible for us to put clothes on our body, food on our table, a roof over our heads and education for our children.”

Turning to the Pianda fight, Yandapake reported on 29 Dec that Pianda released two hostages “believed to be from Kandep District” who were “captured by the Pianda tribesman while they were inside the Porgera Gold mine premises looking for gold as illegal miners on Thursday” rather than killing them. This makes it sound like Pianda is actively patrolling the open pit. Yandapake reports that Councilor Tawa Kina acted for the Pianda side, and Sergeant Gordan, the Acting Police Station Commander for Porgera, was present.

The Post reported that Porgera had a quiet Christmas and New Year — to the apparent surprise of some residents, as “many fled the valley before the new years eve with anticipations that there was going to be a heated gun battle between the warring tribes on the last day of 2024.” The piece from the Post also includes a valuable aerial image of Porgera station which shows much the area has been built up.