‘People inside a community can be just as resistant to its complexity’
‘Why Latinos join ICE’
Geraldo L. Cadava at The Atlantic
People have “treated the phenomenon of Latino border agents as something of a puzzle,” says Geraldo L. Cadava. Some have “argued that these Latinos come to embrace the mission of the Border Patrol through the process of socialization during training,” but a “simpler explanation is that Latinos who join ICE believe in the enforcement of immigration laws and that they are protecting, not antagonizing, their communities.” But this “of course doesn’t mean that other Latinos accept their logic.”
‘The mall was an American experience. Not anymore.’
Blake Fontenay at USA Today
There was a “time, not so long ago, when malls felt like the centers of the cultural and social universe in American towns across the country,” says Blake Fontenay. Malls “used to be like watering holes on the Serengeti, where all sorts of creatures would gather and learn to coexist.” Time “has moved on. Consumer habits have changed,” but as “progress marches forward, we need to take stock of what we may be leaving behind.”
‘To save lives in nursing homes, make inspections random’
Margaret Morganroth Gullette at The Boston Globe
Nursing homes “tend to increase staffing levels and expend more effort on patient care as a government inspection looms and cut back afterward,” says Margaret Morganroth Gullette. But the “predictability of inspections influences the homes’ timing: they’ll do what they need to do to clean up and then go back to business as usual.” Sending out “inspectors randomly would be a simple fix.” Another solution “could be to focus the surprise inspections on the homes with the most complaints.”
‘Trump’s new cyber strategy is catnip for Beijing’
Ahana Datta Fasel at Foreign Policy
Even “best-in-class cyber capabilities rarely stay contained, and once exposed, they move rapidly,” says Ahana Datta Fasel. But Donald Trump’s “new six-pillar national cyber strategy” doubles down “on this risk, elevating offensive cyber operations as Washington’s primary instrument of deterrence.” This is a “dangerous gamble — one that Beijing, which has emerged as the prime cyber adversary to the United States, will see not just as an escalation but also as a legitimization of its own destabilizing posture.”