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Diego Miró-Rivera has always been drawn to objects and spaces that others overlook. Cigarette butts, chunks of melting snow, and Texas mountain laurel seeds are among the materials the Austin artist has used. Miró-Rivera, 24, draws on the natural world to create works that are often massive in scale. For one piece, he simply stood in different places in a dry lake bed in rural Utah, using his feet to leave hundreds of precisely aligned footprints on the sand. To create another huge piece of land art, he trudged for more than five miles across three snow-covered soccer fields in Brooklyn; his looping path became a huge drawing that he then photographed from a helicopter. His latest work may be his most ambitious yet. “Cicada Paintings,” on…

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WHO: The cutest adult pygmy hippo you ever did see. WHAT: A new arrival at the Houston Zoo. WHY IT’S SO GREAT: One of the more wholesome global phenomena we’ve enjoyed over the past few months has been the emergence of Moo Deng, baby pygmy hippo and viral sensation. The playful, charismatic li’l beast is a native of eastern Thailand, where she lives at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo. She has a warm, friendly-looking face and adorable rolls along her neck, and she has helped introduce the very existence of the pygmy hippo—a species with only about 2,500 individuals left in the wild—to the wider world. She is a pure and good thing in these unusual times. And she can go straight to heck, because Texas has…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

In 1952 Church’s Fried Chicken-to-Go opened on Alamo Street in downtown San Antonio, selling only two-piece orders of fried chicken along with a roll for 49 cents. Founder George William Church Sr. placed the fryers right next to the pickup window, a shrewd act of marketing that meant that not only could customers watch their chicken being freshly fried, but they could also smell the intoxicating aroma that escaped the small building and permeated the area. No growling stomach stood a chance.It’s been a while since that particular scent lured hungry office workers, families, and tourists to line up at the original Church’s across from the Alamo. (The building is no longer standing, but a historical marker was installed in 2022 to note its location.)…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

When he was campaigning against Ted Cruz in 2018, Beto O’Rourke barnstormed across Texas in his Toyota Tundra, visiting all 254 counties and inspiring near-messianic fervor among Democrats. Spurning the advice of national political consultants, the El Paso congressman relied on small-dollar donations to power a proudly independent campaign. He maintained an unapologetically progressive platform while striking an upbeat, centrist tone, at one point embarking on a road trip with Republican Congressman Will Hurd. On Election Day, O’Rourke fell less than three points shy of beating Cruz—the closest any Democrat had come to winning a statewide race in two decades. A star was born. Six years later, Cruz had supported an attempted insurrection and fled to Cancún while his constituents shivered in the dark. He looked…

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WHO: Jason Osborne, of Odessa, who scuba dives across the country looking for ancient marine life. WHAT: A newly discovered genus and species of parasitic marine isopod, known as Calverteca osbornei, that lived 18 million years ago.WHY IT’S SO GREAT: It will shock no one that few explorers volunteer to scuba dive in mucky water. In near darkness, divers may suddenly encounter alligators, catfish with mouths as wide as your shoulders, or water snakes as big around as a forearm. They may find they’re surrounded by a large fishing net or a fallen tree. They may try to rise to the surface and realize (whoops) they’re in a cave. “I’ve been bumped by a bull shark in a river system in Virginia,” said Jason Osborne, a…

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