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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.

Rep. Colin Allred standing on the House floor in Washington D.C.Colin Allred was running late, but it didn’t matter—nobody was waiting for him. Only staff and a single journalist occupied the cavernous International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Hall in Houston at 2:30 on a recent Tuesday afternoon, the time Allred’s campaign had provided for what it was touting as a “roundtable on Texas energy jobs.” Three conference tables were arranged in a U shape beneath the IBEW Local 716 flag, but neither the congressman nor the roundtable participants had shown up. Journalists had been informed of the event just the previous day; the invitation did not extend to the public.Nearly half an hour passed before the nine invited union representatives—mostly electrical workers and city bus drivers—finally shuffled into the hall and took their seats…

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The Wildest Details at Yolanda Hadid's Fort Worth RanchSometimes you’re working, trying to endure a long week, when you come across a piece of online content that synthesizes your interests and personal values so perfectly that you are given a new lease on life. That was me a couple hours ago, when Architectural Digest posted a video tour of Yolanda Hadid’s Texas ranch house. Hadid, mother to models Gigi and Bella; ex-wife of Katharine McPhee’s current husband, David Foster; onetime cast member of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; OG “almond mom”; and no fan of former boy bander Zayn Malik, is apparently now a resident. As she explains during the best ten minutes I’ve spent in recent memory, she fell in love with Cowtown when her fiancé, Joseph Jingoli, first took her…

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A Wildfire-Ravaged Panhandle Town Rallies Around High School Football“I’m very excited for football season,” said Jessa Bell, a senior cheerleader at Canadian High School. “We’ve been doing a lot to get ready.”Bell’s sentiment is shared by many CHS Wildcats fans from the Texas Panhandle town, with the team playing its first game Thursday in Elk City. In fact, the enthusiasm for high school football in Canadian this year likely exceeds that at many other Texas schools—only in Canadian, it has almost nothing to do with returning starters or a chance to make the playoffs.The Bells were among the more than fifty families in and around Canadian who lost their homes to the Smokehouse Creek wildfire six months ago. The fire, considered the largest in Texas history, raged over slightly more than one million…

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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.

The headquarters of RealPage in Richardson, Texas.On Friday, the United States Department of Justice—along with the attorneys general of eight states—announced a civil antitrust lawsuit against the Richardson-based company RealPage. The firm’s software allows the owners of rental properties to anonymously share the details of their rates, lease terms, vacancies, and other information previously regarded as trade secrets, and to receive suggested rent prices based on an algorithm that aggregates that data. The lawsuit alleges that this violates the Sherman Act, the famous antitrust law, that has been in place since the late 1800s. The implications of the case could be significant. Rent prices nationally have increased an average of 33 percent over their prepandemic rates. The problem is particularly acute in Texas: according to research from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing…

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Vertical FarmingWander through the labyrinthine tunnels twenty feet beneath downtown Houston, and the past practically oozes from the walls. Office workers walk over pink-and-green speckled tiles. Steve Winwood’s eighties banger “Valerie” plays over a sound system. But next to the Smoothie King and across from a restaurant called Pastabilities that reeks of marinara, a door to a well-lit space displays a potential glimpse of the future.Bart Womack, a former nightclub owner and music event entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of Eden Grow Systems. Inside his showroom, a gardener tends to three carts, each about the size of an office desk, from which a couple of dozen golden and purple flowers grow out of trays connected to the sides of the cart. Rather than extend into…

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Houston’s Geothermal Energy Sector Is Hot—and SteamyEarlier this week, tech giant Meta—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—unveiled plans to buy a lot of electricity from an innovative power plant to be built by geothermal energy start-up Sage Geosystems. The location of the new-fangled facility remains sketchy. Somewhere east of the Rockies was all the companies said.But there’s another, even more important, location worth noting: Sage Geosystems is based in northern Houston, not far from Greenspoint Mall. Hop on Interstate 45 and head about fifteen miles south, to the downtown skyscrapers, and you’ll find the headquarters of Fervo Energy, another geothermal start-up, which recently announced an even larger power deal with Southern California’s largest utility.Arguably the two most promising companies in what is arguably the most promising new source of energy…

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Bearded Fireworm (Hermodice carunculata)Texas is home to some of the creepiest, crawliest, and otherwise oddest animals on the planet. We introduce you to them in What in Tarnation?!, an occasional series. If most of us were to stumble upon six inches of spiked, segmented worm flesh during a leisurely walk along the beach, we’d react, at best, with “eww.” But when Jace Tunnell was beachcombing just north of Mustang Island State Park, in mid-August, and found a marine polychaete—also known as a bristle worm or fireworm—on a barnacle-covered log that had washed ashore, he was as excited to see that bad boy as that bad boy had once been excited to see the barnacles on that log. (Fireworms feed on barnacles.)Tunnell serves as the director of community engagement…

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austin bachelors jfk assassination conspiracy hingeOne of the many hazards of being a politics reporter in Texas is that when I’m talking to potential dates, I am usually asked my party affiliation or what “type” of outlet I write for. (Do I lean left or right? Does my outlet have a slant?) When I was an active Hinge user, I never shied away from the fact of my job. That said, the political discussions I’ve been roped into have typically centered around events that happened after 1963. Until now. At my editor’s behest, I reluctantly descended back into Hinge’s sordid world. On the app, in addition to required photos, users are asked to showcase their personalities through their answers to three written prompts. My experience on dating apps suggests that most…

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Centerpoint's community listening tourOn Saturday morning, eleven members of the Northwood Manor Civic Club boarded a city bus for the half-hour drive to the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center at West Gray, in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood. They came to meet CenterPoint Energy CEO Jason Wells, who, in the wake of widespread power outages following Hurricane Beryl last month, has become the face of the city’s dysfunctional electrical grid. Four days after Beryl made landfall, with more than a million Houstonians still in the dark, Wells was photographed by the Houston Chronicle in the utility company’s downtown office building next to a thermostat set to 70 degrees. On his wrist was a watch identified by online horologists as a Rolex Daytona. (Wells made more than $7 million last year as CenterPoint’s…

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Texas Monthly Releases List of Top Texas-Style BBQ Joints Outside the Lone Star StateAs a key member of the editorial team that puts together Texas Monthly’s quadrennial Top 50 BBQ list, Daniel Vaughn has spent the last decade traveling to thousands of restaurants across Texas. Now, with Texas barbecue culture spreading across social media and influencing pitmasters nationwide, our BBQ editor has embarked on a new challenge: creating a national list of the best Texas-style BBQ joints outside of the Lone Star State. Today, Vaughn released the United States of Texas Barbecue, his first-ever list of 53 national barbecue joints that excel in the time-honored craft of slow-cooked meats smoked with the full flavors of hardwoods like hickory and oak. It’s a craft in which the meat, especially beef, shines and brisket is king. To compile the list, Vaughn…

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