Our picksBrain-eating amoeba; Social media as war?; weathering the next Florence, and more

N.J. surfer dies of brain-eating amoeba after dip in Texas wave pool (Gianluca D’Elia, NJ.com)
A 29-year-old surfer from Atlantic County has died of what’s been described as a “brain-eating amoeba” after a visit to the wave pool of a Central Texas resort.
Fabrizio Stabile, of Ventnor, had been in the pool at BSR Cable Park in Waco prior to his death at Atlantic City Medical Center on Sept. 21, The Associated Press reported.
Stabile tested positive for Naegleria fowleri — an amoeba that typically occurs in warm fresh water — the day before his death, according to a GoFundMe page started by loved ones to create a foundation in his memory.
Stabile’s family and friends are hoping to raise awareness of the rare amoeba, which destroys brain tissue and has a fatality rate of more than 97 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Social media as war? (Kori Schake, War on the Rocks)
Along with August Cole, Peter Singer wrote one of the best books about how technology is changing warfare. Ghost Fleet was a delicious thriller that caused greater alarm about the American military losing its edge over China than any non-literary warning could have (why, why hasn’t it yet been made into a movie?). Along with Emerson T. Brooking, Singer has now turned his attention to the immediate crisis at hand: the weaponization of social media.

In the dead of night, Trump administration is shipping hundreds of undocumented minors to Texas tent camp (Elliot Hannon, Slate)
The national shame that is America’s treatment of undocumented children continues to devolve into a literal nightmare. The U.S. government is currently responsible for some 13,000 migrant children, five times the number in custody as recently as last year, which now amounts to the largest population of immigrant minors in custody ever. As the time spent in detention as increased—from 34 to 59 days—the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the children’s care, has struggled to house the growing number of unaccompanied minors, most of whom share rooms of two or three in private foster homes or shelters, where they receive schooling as their cases slowly work their way through the system.
That, however, is changing and the New York Times paints a devastating picture of hundreds of children getting rounded up each week, in the middle of the night in order to