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The Oracle Headquarters on April 24, 2024 in Austin.Back in the halcyon days of 2020, a year we all remember fondly, a new flash point opened in the enduring war between Texas and California. Technologists started picking up sticks in Taxifornia and moving to the Lone Star State in greater numbers. The enemy’s chief newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, worried that Silicon Valley’s “monopoly” was over and wondered if Austin was “the future.” Governor Greg Abbott declared Texas was “truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity.”In the wave of stories about Austin’s ascension in 2020, there were always two pieces of evidence given top billing. That year the tech goliath Oracle relocated its HQ to Austin, where it had already built a massive campus on the south shore of Town Lake, and…

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ut-austin-pro-palestine-protestMohammed, a 21-year-old economics major at the University of Texas at Austin, has only sporadic communication with his extended family in Gaza. He might hear from them a couple times a week—usually in a text, sometimes in a video, or maybe in a phone call if he’s lucky. Whatever the medium, he said, the news is never good. “You don’t even feel happy about that ‘I’m alive’ text,” he said, “because you know, at that same time, they might only have two minutes left.” His family, whose home is in the center of the Gaza Strip, was trying to make it down to Rafah, in the territory’s southernmost region, a couple weeks after Israel began its ground invasion. Subjected to an embargo on food and water,…

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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.

A tiger moth caterpillar (Spilosoma dubia) moves along a twig.Ah, springtime in Texas. Perfect weather for margaritas on the patio, pollen-induced allergy attacks, and, in many backyard gardens, sidewalks, and roads across the state, an invasion of fuzzy black caterpillars.Often called woolly bear or salt marsh caterpillars, these bristly critters often crawl out of their winter hiding spots this time of year. With many flowers and plants in full bloom across the state, spring is an ideal time for caterpillars to gorge themselves on food, gathering the energy they’ll need to weave a cocoon and undergo their transformation into moths later in the season. Rather than a single species, these caterpillars are a large group belonging to the subfamily Arctiinae, which includes more than six thousand species. “When people see a fuzzy caterpillar like…

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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.

Revamped from fifty shipping containers and an old city vehicle–maintenance warehouse and repainted black, Waco’s Hotel Herringbone still appears utilitarian from the street. Striking portraiture murals by Hawaii-based muralist Kamea Hadar and a red neon “Lobby” sign flashing to the street are the only hints of what lies beyond the corrugated walls. But past the iron gates is a steel menagerie of animal prints, comestibles, greenery, and time periods.Guests might start feeling the spirit of Greta Garbo or Jay Gatsby somewhere between checking in at the Persian carpet–covered reception desk and entering an art deco hotel room with an ostrich-feather floor lamp, a rotary phone, and a rolling not-so-mini bar cart. To provide visual relief from bold color blocking in the bedrooms, the bathrooms’ monochromatic…

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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 "Contract with Texas" and the rightwing effort to shut Democrats out of the Texas HouseState representative Brian Harrison had spent only a day and a half at the Capitol when he experienced his first “betrayal,” as he puts it. It was early January, and the representative from Midlothian, 25 miles south of Dallas, was standing near his desk on the House floor as the chamber discussed rote procedural matters. One of Harrison’s allies, representative Bryan Slaton—who, later in the session, would be ejected from the Legislature after he plied a nineteen-year-old staffer with alcohol and had sex with her—had enlivened the usually dreary discussion, proposing two amendments to end what Harrison called the “insane practice” of granting some committee chairmanships to Democrats. Harrison watched as, without much debate, both measures were shot down through points of order, or POOs—the unfortunate…

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Interstellar BBQ Polish SausageAt InterStellar BBQ, outside Cedar Park, owner John Bates has just begun a year-long exploration into the roots of Texas barbecue sausages. He first chose to survey the origins of Polish sausage in Texas, and he is now serving the first in a series of kielbasas through the end of April. When I asked Bates to describe it, he said, “I hope this represents what a Polish immigrant might have been trying to make when he got to Texas.”“Kiełbasa” in Polish simply means “sausage.” There are many different varieties of kielbasa that vary in protein, seasoning, coarseness, casing type, and preparation. Bates developed InterStellar’s version based on kiełbasa wędzona, an all-pork Polish smoked sausage. He studied historical recipes to find a classic style with simple…

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How TikTok Became the Modern Dance HallThe dance steps come in on the lyric, “Did your boots stop workin’?”: Right heel, left heel, right heel, lift and tap the right foot forward then back, pivot turn, and swirl an arm overhead like a lasso. Some online guides will tell you the lasso move is optional, but you will need to do it if you want to perform the line dance just as pop-country star Dasha does on TikTok.“I really wanted to get people dancing at my shows,” says the 24-year-old singer, who also created the choreography. “I’ve gone out line dancing so many times in Nashville and I see how the culture isn’t as big in my generation. I wanted to bring it back.”This February, Dasha dropped a TikTok line dance…

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In 2020, Netflix released a show about a ragtag team of competitive cheerleaders from a small-town Texas junior college under the direction of a tough but loving coach. Cheer became an instant cultural sensation. But as quickly as the cast’s popularity soared, scandals began to mount. In this episode of the Story, Sarah Hepola recounts the challenges of covering the roller-coaster reputation of Navarro cheer for Texas Monthly‘s May 2024 cover feature: “What ‘Cheer’ Led to: How Viral Fame Upended Monica Aldama’s Life.”

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Roar of the CrowdDunn DealI have subscribed to Texas Monthly for going on forty years. While the magazine has always had more of an Austin perspective, there was enough honest reporting and humor that one could still enjoy reading. But your “Billionaire Bully” article about Tim Dunn [“The Billionaire Who Runs Texas,” March 2024] was the final straw. Even if you disagreed with Dunn’s faith, politics, and methods, you still could have presented a fair and objective story. But this article reminded me of the way Tucker Carlson would smugly treat his guests—a scorched-earth attack, justified because your author, of course, thinks his position is correct.Dave Odom, CrockettI am deeply dismayed by Texas Monthly’s increasingly blatant attacks on religious conservatives. I am not a Dunn supporter, and I…

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Art producer Darice Chavira, art director Jenn Hair Tompkins and assistant photo editor Kayla Miracle in Austin on March 27, 2024.No matter how enterprising its reporting may be, or how lyrical its writing, a magazine hasn’t earned a spot on your coffee table unless its stories are enlivened with handsome photography and illustrations and design. That’s what our art department strives to accomplish in every print issue and on our other storytelling platforms. And I’m proud to report that its work is earning recognition from our peers.When the National Magazine Awards were presented in New York City in April, Texas Monthly was a finalist in three categories, including Best News and Entertainment Photograph, for a cover image that I’ll bet you remember—of a mischievous-looking feral hog. In the City and Regional Magazine Association awards, to be presented in May, we’ve been short-listed in all seven…

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