Tootfinder

Puzzling? It is foolish to look for rationality in bigotry. Trump's campaign against immigrants is pure racist brutality staged for the entertainment of stupid people.
https://fortune.com/2026/01/15/trump-immigrant-visa-suspension-th…

Documents: a whistleblower details the Boshang scam compound in Laos that defrauded victims of ~$2.2M over 11 weeks and utilized a system of worker debt bondage (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/

Revealed: Leaked Chats Expose the Daily Life of a Scam Compound’s Enslaved Workforce
A whistleblower trapped inside a “pig butchering” scam compound gave WIRED a vast trove of its internal materials—including 4,200 pages of messages that lay out its operations in unprecedented detail.

Last day in lovely Luang Prabang, Laos. It's a UNESCO heritage protected colonial gem and probably the nicest little tourist town I've ever visited. #travel

I was unaware the Kavanaugh Stop was also the Kavanaugh Breaking and Entering.
(The man is a US citizen.)
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3mcrqy3wjac2n

Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com)
Sunday, at least 7 ICE agents stormed a house and took an elderly man out into the freezing cold, wearing only his underwear and a blanket. He was a member of the Hmong community, which came to the area from Laos in the 1970s after siding with the US in the Vietnam War. Notice the suppressors 1/2

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

$4.55 for a glass of Spanish wine and the most comfortable chair of my trip. Luang Prabang, Laos. #travel