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Houston Cougars guard Jamal Shead (1) controls the ball while being guarded by Texas Longhorns forward Dillon Mitchell (23) and Texas Longhorns guard Tyrese Hunter (4) during the Big 12 college basketball game between Texas Longhorns and Houston Cougars on January 29, 2024, at Moody Center in Austin, Texas.Surely the University of Houston would not dominate the nation’s toughest men’s college basketball conference the way it dominated its previous league. Even Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson wasn’t sure what to expect from this debut season in the Big 12 after six straight years of finishing first or second in the American Athletic Conference. Sampson warned that the math might change.“We get the internet here in Houston,” he said last fall. “We get cable. We don’t need someone to tell us how good Kansas is or how good Baylor is. We get it. We know that our record isn’t going to be what it was, but I’m excited about it.”Or maybe the bottom line wouldn’t change much at all. Welcome to the transition season that…

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FEBRUARY PIT PERKS Brisket U | Get $15 off any Brisket U Class with code TXMNEWS24scTW Juan and Allie’s BBQ | Address: 114 Texas Spur 511 Sunset Texas 76270 La Barbecue | Hand cut smoked and seared ribeyes with two sides and a dessert for Valentines Day (2/14) 11am-6:00pm Eaker Barbecue | See calendar for specials

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Do open primaries really kill rightwing candidates?There’s a new way Democrats are “rigging” elections, according to some right-wing Texas Republicans: by voting in them. After Republican Jill Dutton won a special-election runoff for a North Texas state House seat against Brent Money on Tuesday night, Luke Macias, a GOP consultant, seemed incensed. Dutton, a former school board member, who had the backing of groups aligned with Texas House leadership, eked out a narrow 111-vote victory over Money, a lawyer backed by Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Defend Texas Liberty, which is overwhelmingly financed by West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. Macias claimed that Dutton won only because she was supported by the deep-red district’s few liberals. “Over 500 Democrats voted early in…

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Miguel and Modesty Vidal have joked that they’ll keep moving their barbecue joint farther south until they get to Miguel’s hometown of San Antonio. They first opened Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ as a food truck on Sixth Street in Austin in 2013 before heading south to Brodie Lane, then to Menchaca Road in the southern tip of Austin. They made the jump to Buda last June with a new location in the Buda Mill & Grain Co. development.This is the first location for Valentina’s that isn’t a truck. I stopped in one Saturday soon after it opened, and the line of people waiting to order wrapped around the dining room and between the rows of long tables. I gave up, not aware of the possible…

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U.S. National Guards take measures at Shelby Park, where migrants try to cross the wire-spikes on the border in Eagle Pass, on January 30, 2024.Greg Abbott has long saluted U.S. Border Patrol. Just a few years ago, he made it clear that he’d stand by them, even if the man in the White House did not. In September 2021, Joe Biden condemned a crew of Border Patrol agents on horseback in Del Rio, on the Texas border, for charging at a group of Haitian migrants. Abbott was disgusted when he learned the agents—who “risk their lives to secure the border”—were under official investigation. “I have worked side by side with those Border Patrol agents. I want them to know something: if they are at risk of losing their job . . . you have a job in the state of Texas,” he said on Fox News. “I will hire you to help Texas…

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Taking Texit seriously: What would it look likeSecession has long tantalized Texans. Twice we’ve been moved to pursue it—first in 1836, when we fought to win independence from Mexico, then again in 1861, when Texas joined the other states of the Confederacy in leaving the United States. The latter move’s failure seemed to settle the question of whether Texas (or any other state) held the right to secede from the union. The U.S. Supreme Court case that made secession illegal—Texas v. White, from 1869—also rejected the notion that, because Texas was once an independent republic, it enjoys special privileges when it comes to secession. Still, the matter has never been put to bed entirely, and has been attracting fresh attention amid the Lone Star State’s latest clash with the federal government at…

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The Story: Six BrothersIn the October 2005 issue of Texas Monthly, John Spong profiled Kevin Von Erich, the only surviving son in the famous Von Erich family—a family that dominated the world of professional wrestling in the 1980s, and that was marked by extreme tragedy. The 2023 feature film The Iron Claw has introduced new audiences to the tale, and in this installment of “The Story,” Spong reflects on what’s at the heart of it all.

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Austin Westlake's head coach Todd Dodge walks the sideline during the Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) Class 6A Division 1 state semifinal game between the Austin Westlake Chaparrals and the Galena Park North Shore Mustangs at Legacy Stadium in Katy, Texas. Austin Westlake defeated Galena Park North Shore 24-21.Todd Dodge slid back into the saddle at 6:30 Monday morning as the new head football coach at Lovejoy High School, in the Dallas suburb of Lucas, about thirty miles north of the city. Seldom has one man oozed so much joy about a first day on the job. “Gosh, am I fired up to be back in it,” he told me this week. “I guess I didn’t know how much I missed it.”Dodge is among the greatest Texas high school football coaches ever, with a 234–72 overall record, including a 79–1 run during one five-year stretch. His teams have played in nine state championship games and won seven of them, four at Southlake Carroll and three at Austin Westlake.Dodge had the best of intentions…

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The San Antonio Zoo Is Selling a Valentine's Day Candle That Smells Like Hippo PoopAh, February in South Texas, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love! They preen, they sing, they . . . fling poop?It might not sound romantic to you, but it’s the peak of debonair deportment if you’re a hippo, like the San Antonio Zoo’s Timothy. It turns out male hippos literally aim to spread the love, attracting mates by windmilling feces around with their tails. The behavior is a little bit like a teenage boy dousing himself in Axe body spray before heading to the prom. Now that Timothy is a young adult, at almost nine years old, his keepers say he’s been perfecting his slinging skills, and he’s lent his, um, signature scent to the zoo’s latest fundraiser: a poop-scented Hippo Love Candle, on…

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How Used Coffee Grounds May Fend Off Parkinson’sMahesh Narayan, a biophysicist and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, envisions a day when a truck from a lab might back into a parking spot behind the local Starbucks in service of treating Parkinson’s disease. Recent studies have demonstrated a correlation between drinking coffee and improved neurological function, but the chemical engineers in Narayan’s hypothetical scenario aren’t looking for a cup of coffee—they want the used grounds.In a recent study published in the journal Environmental Research, graduate students in Narayan’s lab at UTEP demonstrated that tiny particles called caffeic acid–based carbon quantum dots (CACQD)—which can be derived from spent coffee grounds—may have attributes useful in fending off neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. These conditions affect millions of Americans, and…

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