They traveled to Thailand. They wound up cyber scam slaves in Myanmar.
> Across Southeast Asia, a multibillion-dollar fraud industry has emerged, staffed in part by victims of trafficking.
> In lawless regions of the Myanmar-Thai border, compounds run by Chinese criminal gangs contain thousands of people forced to scam strangers online or face brutal punishment. Thailand has become a key transit hub for trafficking victims, Reuters found.
Pretty slick way to get me to finally get around to installing the Setel app 
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2025/09/22/budi95-preparations-underway-at-petrol-stations-nationwide-to-implement-targeted-subsidy
The TLDR for me being that everyone with a valid IC & driving license gets up to 300l of RON95 a month at the new subsidized rate
Very good web storytelling about the hawker centre signage and typography in Singapore
https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2025/09/singapore-hawker-signs/index.html
!BANA UPDATE!
she fine
I'm going to start a public #languages / casual #linguistics experiment here, starting tomorrow.
I'm going to video some words in Teochew via short vids. I'd like folks to respond with audio or video on what the same words sound like, in your/their languages 
Agoda, the Asian travel booking service now owned by Dutch firm Booking.com, laid off people in Singapore and somehow their lawyer thought it was a good idea to write that they will revoke severance payments if workers reported this to the Singapore government
"In one portion of the severance agreement seen by CNA, employees were instructed not to make reports with any government agencies, statutory boards or trade unions including the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) and Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP).
They were also asked to refrain from bringing any mediation requests, claims or proceedings on their employment or termination against the company.
Those who do so and breach the terms in the agreement will have their severance entitlements revoked, the document stated. If any severance payments were made by Agoda to the employee, they would have to repay the company "in full" and "on demand"."
n00bs
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/agoda-retrenchment-layoff-mom-ntuc-response-5354451
Conservation manager job in Singapore
https://jobs.careers.gov.sg/jobs/hrp/16549872/005056a3-d347-1fe0-a482-bdad9ec14278
A venture firm has been putting out 'state of investing in Southeast Asia' reports and they're a pretty good look into the state of the economy in that region
Their primary thesis has been 'we were wrong about where all the growth would be. we now know it is 100% in singapore, the only rich country in the region'.
https://lsvp.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Southeast-Asian-Consumer-Barbell.pdf (PDF)
Very occassionally I see this guy's video on my algorithm, and I don't always watch him (he's too relatable so I feel the pain of familiarity, lmao - namely his BrEng accent and his leftwing politics).
Anyway, this is a yap sesh, so feel free to watch it at 1.5x or 2x speed but it's a pretty good tho longwinded articulation of the peranakan (Straits Chinese) history vis-a-vis the racial chauvinism he's experienced from what would be considered his fellow Malaysian Chinese. Interesting because it's genuinely unusual to see the opposing position to come from the left (rather than a rightwing pro-capital view prone to anglo/sinophilia). The comments too.
I really do think one of Malaysians' biggest angst about our civic identity boils down to language (which isn't helped when we're surrounded by neighbours who managed to institutionalise assimilationism, so both us and Singapore get pointed questions about authenticity all the time).
A baleen whale washed up in Singapore. It will be studied.
The last time a whale (sperm whale) washed up a decade ago, they named it.. Jubi Lee.
Thailand Launches Digital Asset Payments Pilot to Stimulate Travel and Economy
> Thailand is rolling out a landmark crypto-to-baht conversion system for tourists, fusing digital asset regulation with e-money infrastructure to energize spending and boost tourism.
https://news.bitcoin.com/thailand-launches-digital-asset-payments-pilot-to-stimulate-travel-and-economy/ #Thailand #cryptocurrency #tourism #SouthEastAsia #TootSEA #crypyo
Sent this to my wife with the caption “every day at our house” (found on Reddit!)
When my dad died a few weeks ago the mortuary staff asked me, “what’s his bin?”
I was like, “Bin? What bin, recycle bin? Trash bin?” But I didn’t say it out loud.
He had to explain to me what he meant because he needed my grandpa’s name to write on my dad’s death certificate. Had he instead asked me what his dad’s name was I’d have understood immediately.
Because my dad was Muslim it’s required practice to state his name as [his name] bin [his dad’s name] on death certificates.
In almost any other occasion it’s not legal practice in Indonesia — as it is in many Muslim countries, of which Indonesia is not — to incorporate ancestry in our government name and most of our legal documents don’t have that. Even our birth certificates don’t format it in that specific way.
I guess when my mom goes they’ll ask me what’s her binti (daughter of).
Long story about Indonesia’s fuel corruption scandal leading to shortage across major population centers
DO FUCKING BETTER - ALL PRIVILEGED ASIANS IN DIASPORA. DON'T FUCKING JUSTIFY USA TERRORISM - EVER..YOU FUCKING DIPSHITS!!!
I'm pissed off at the cowardice. I'm pissed off you justifiers of mass #USATerrorism never actually experienced much brutal violence. You're not safe either.
You should be fucking ashamed for your goddamn weakness. You're too #whitewashed now. 
This lacking of real lived experienced awareness extends to my own family members who sound like fucking white people now. Except for when they want to show off their Asian foods & other materialistic shit - while being fucking disconnected from cultural histories, traditions & anything else they find offensive with their adopted white colonial culture
Nope. I'm too fucking old to buy that early 2000s whiteywashy Asians BS. Get your wishy-washy selves in order because #AsianWomen like me have ZERO IDENTITY ISSUES. We have fought for our goddamn existence. We have put our lives on the lines to fight for rights that you are living in, NOW.
SHUT THE FUCK UP - IF YOU AIN'T BEEN ON & NOT JOINING ANY REAL FRONTLINES. You are a fucking COWARD - end of long days.
The only #AsianDiaspora that I ever see trying to justify ongoing #USAFascism are almost all younger ones, who were born in safety & not under horrific frontlines war conditions. I think that is a huge reason why they can't truly comprehend folks like me - who were conceived/born under live war fire. Instead of being privileged & inexperienced with colonial violence in their own lives & trying to make USA seem decent - they should listen to living, hella working poor survivors like me, more & become more comfortable with cruel, discomforting evils that they never had to experience themselves.
They do us survivors - massive injustices - by trying to make the people who killed so many of our family, seem OK. They aren't fucking OK, unless you're so privileged that you can ignore us better than you promote them.
My friend got me these cute bird keycaps from Malaysia :)
I shared this keyboard cafe in Penang with her before she left https://www.clicknbrewcafe.com/ hope to go there myself one day
Rachel Heng wrote this in 2018. It is what I feel I can’t articulate: as ethnic Chinese people from Singapore we were not minorities, we were people with privilege. On moving to America it has been difficult to see ourselves as people of color or minorities in any way.
She says in the essay, and I agree to an extent; that our outcomes as lower middle class Chinese people in Singapore at the point of time, in the world we inhabited, was a far more privileged outcome than occupying the same position as an Asian American with exactly the same background. And that’s also what primed us to move through the world with the ease.
I feel like a chameleon occupying different worlds and spaces. I don’t think I had a similar initial experience at her (most people didn’t think I was ‘fobby’, they thought I was Californian immediately).
You’ve probably met the American side of me but I am just at home.. and a completely different person.. lots of other places.
https://therumpus.net/2018/07/10/on-becoming-a-person-of-color/
Bunch of events in Singapore including ‘lgbtq+ asset protection’ (essential in a place that doesn’t recognize anything other than heterosexual marriage)
https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/prout-to-be-tickets-1366950478679
