Sadness alert: She passed in April. But she made it to 18 and had a happy life, I think. :) Enjoy the pic, no need to be sorry for the loss or anything.

You can't see her other paws well, but that visible paw with the little white tip was the only spot on her, so cute :)

She never liked being held, but she'd tolerate it for a couple of minutes. But for a while there, when she wanted pettins and I wasn't paying attention, she'd bat at my arm - "Hey, pet me!" lol. And she was very demanding about nap time (She yelled at me while I followed her to the bedroom to put her underneath the blankets) and bed time (She would yell at us that it was time to go to bed, thank you very much). :)

I know people hate AI, but I find it to be a good starting place on things like this where ultimately, even if it hallucinates, little damage is done. I was discussing with it about some literary preterences. I grew up reading a lot of Asimov, although I'd never finished the Foundation series, so I'd been doing that - but I hadn't remembered how it just got completely bogged down in convesation with so little action… it got annoying.

Well, I have four recommendations I'm considering. I'd love your opinions on which one you think I should go with, and if you agree with the provided summary.

For brief reference, I adore the Discworld novels (which are fantasy, not sci-fi), The Expanse, much of Asimov's earlier works, the Miles Vorkosigan series… I think that's all I'd been talking about with it. heh. ninjaedit: Andor as well.

And if you're so anti-AI that this submission offends you, please feel free to ignore it and even block me if you wish, but I'd humbly ask you to keep AI discussion out of the comments. Obviously I have no way of enforcing that request, but I am humbly asking.

Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons

If you specifically love how Pratchett could weave distinct, isolated vignettes into a stunningly cohesive tapestry, you have to read Hyperion. The first book is essentially a sci-fi Canterbury Tales. Seven pilgrims are traveling to a distant, dangerous world on the eve of a galactic war, and they each tell their own deeply personal, vastly different story along the way. The writing is incredibly literary, the characters are richly drawn, and it all snaps together brilliantly.

Teixcalaan Series by Arkady Martine (starts with A Memory Called Empire)

This one is a masterclass in political science fiction. It follows an ambassador from a small mining station who is sent to the capital of a massive, overwhelming empire to replace her predecessor—who was murdered. It has that same incredibly tight, high-stakes imperial political tension as Andor, but wrapped in gorgeous, evocative prose. The characters are incredibly sharp, and the world-building feels intensely real and grounded.

The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks (start with The Player of Games)

This is the gold standard for beautifully written, sweeping space opera. Banks was a phenomenal writer who created a vast, post-scarcity utopian society run by highly eccentric, deeply sarcastic AI minds. Every book is a standalone story within the same universe, usually focusing on the messy, morally gray fringes where the utopia clashes with other civilizations. It has spectacular writing, profound philosophical weight, and excellent pacing.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (starts with All Systems Red)

If you loved the character-driven, slightly wry tone of the Vorkosigan saga, you will adore Murderbot. It is about a heavily weaponized security cyborg that hacks its own governor module so it can stop killing people and just watch soap operas instead. It is technically a series of fast-paced, action-heavy novellas, but the absolute triumph of the series is the deeply relatable, highly introverted protagonist. The writing is tight, funny, and incredibly human.

The latest forecast from the Dallas Fed projects the state will add jobs at a rate of less than 1% this year, well below Texas' historical average.

Texas lost nearly 19,000 jobs in September, according to figures published this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, representing the state’s largest monthly net jobs decrease since June 2025. The rough month also helped push the Reserve Bank’s 2026 Texas employment growth forecast downward to less than 1% — a significant drop from recent months and far below the state’s historical average.

September’s weak job numbers come as the country faces numerous economic headwinds, including high energy costs, interest rates that continue to weigh on homebuilding and an immigration crackdown restricting hiring in some key industries.

“Texas employment declined in September, slowing year-to-date job growth to 0.8%, well below the state’s long-running average of 2%,” Luis Torres, a Dallas Fed senior business economist, said in a statement. “The moderation in job growth is consistent with current labor supply constraints that partly result from sharply lower immigration.”

USA Today owns seven daily newspapers in the state, but its latest list of the nation’s best taco places completely omits Texas restaurants. Why tear out the heart of taco country?

This year has seen a myriad of taco lists, including our own roundup of the top 25 new or improved taquerias in Texas, but the latest, from USA Today, is perhaps the most flabbergasting. Texas-based Mexican restaurants, taquerias, and trucks are absent. Allow me to repeat that: Texas has zero representation on the list. I couldn’t let this stand without commentary.

Each recommended taco restaurant is in a city with a USA Today–owned paper, but Texas has seven such newspapers—the Abilene Reporter-News, the Amarillo Globe-News, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the El Paso Times, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the San Angelo Standard-Times, and the Wichita Falls Times Record News—with no corresponding taquerias on the list. There is no excuse for leaving out taco spots like El Paso’s El Cometa, Taquería Elemi, and Taconeta. The absence of Jiménez y Friends Barbecue y Taqueria, in Lubbock, is a mistake. And Corpus Christi’s Southside Barbacoa deserves consideration, for not only its barbacoa but also its carne guisada.

The authority to issue executive orders traditionally belongs to the chief executive, like the governor or a county judge.

Three weeks ago, Texas Comptroller Don Huffines signed what he called an executive order aimed at eliminating a “hidden tax” on fees charged by virtual marketplaces to sellers.

“There will be a lot more coming,” Huffines said as he held up a jumbo printed version of the order in front of tax industry members, associations and consultants. “This puts tens of millions of dollars annually back in the pocket of Texas families and small businesses.”

Huffines made good on his promise in the weeks that followed, as he issued three more executive orders. The orders target a tax for medical records, funding for Flock surveillance cameras and ensuring no state dollars support diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Except they might be executive orders in name only. The orders themselves direct comptroller’s office staff to start the formal process of changing agency rules, something the comptroller can largely do on his own already.

It is not clear why Huffines is calling the directives executive orders, a unilateral authority that typically rests in the hands of the chief executive at each level of government, whether it is a county judge, Gov. Greg Abbott or President Donald Trump. Huffines’ office did not respond to a list of questions or an interview request.

A flyer addressed to Texas students is showing up in mailboxes across the state. It claims to come from an organization called the Texas Transgender Student Union. But who is behind it remains a mystery.

The mailer, which presents itself as a resource guide for LGBTQ+ students, began appearing as early voting got underway for the Nov. 3, 2026, midterm election. The pamphlet includes information on topics ranging from gender identity to what students can do if their parents do not support them.

Images of the flyer have spread widely on social media. Some users have expressed outrage over its contents, while others have questioned who created it and why it is being mailed to students.

Much of the information in the mailer appears to come from the Transgender Education Network of Texas, known as TENT.

However, TENT says it had nothing to do with the mailing.

AUSTIN — Allison Campolo wants experienced election workers to return. But she also needs people willing to learn the job.

For Campolo, the Tarrant County Democratic Party chair, that means recruiting at community events, reaching out through social media and calling people who have worked previous elections.

It’s a year-round effort with no breaks.

“It’s a lot of calls,” Campolo said. “They are usually pretty fruitful. If you’re able to have that one-on-one conversation, it’s very meaningful and very impactful and you can usually get them to say yes.”

Early voting in the Nov. 3 midterm elections begins Monday and runs through Oct. 30, and counties need workers to staff polling places for that and on Election Day.

To fill those positions, counties and political parties are recruiting workers through personal appeals, training programs and college internships.

A growing Texas convenience store and travel center chain—and no, not that one—is making moves in the Hill Country. The Kerrville City Council on Tuessday granted a conditional use permit for the development of "a truck stop and feuling station" at the intersection of state Highway 16 North and IH-10, paving the way for the arrival of The Texan.

The Texan, marked by its large convenience stores, gas stations and logo of a smiling man in a cowboy hat over the Texas state map (with prominent yellow), has 16 active locations across the state, primarily in the south and southeast. Its latest location is in Portland, and a 17th is on the way in College Station.

The gas station also has diesel pumps for tractor trailers, which is something the competitor Buc-ee's does not offer. Its convenience store includes much of the same kinds of things you'll find at Buc-ee's, including snacks and drinks, branded meats and cheeses, sporting goods, clothing and other merchandise.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas State celebrated the opening of its first-ever Round Rock campus weather station last week.

“So we’ve been working on this idea for about a year. I just happened to say, casually one time, I would love to build a weather station for Texas State University,” said Kenny L. Tapp, a meteorologist and lecturer with the university’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. He teaches a popular general elective meteorology course.

“We can show them, [these are] the cool weather instruments, and then we can look at the weather data in the classroom and in their homework and actually get to, it’s just as much as we can in meteorology with hands-on with the weather data, this is a way to do it,” Tapp said. “And there’s just a lot of cool weather that happens in our part of Texas.”

When he began looking for a spot for the project, he just looked out the window of his lecture hall at the open field.

Tapp worked with the Texas Water Development Board to design the station for teaching, research, and collecting real-time data for the community.

The motorist told the r/legaladvice subreddit that they took a back route near Vidor, Texas, on a drive from DeRidder, Louisiana, to Houston. They stopped after noticing what looked like an antique chair in the grass by the roadside, noting that they got out to inspect it because they like taking on small restoration projects.

The stop quickly became a police encounter. The driver said they determined the chair was too damaged to salvage and were heading back to the car when an officer arrived. The cop asked why they had stopped and whether they had hit the chair, and told them to take it or receive a littering ticket.

They later wrote that their dashcam footage showed the chair was already sitting in the grass before the officer pulled up, but they did not mention the video during the encounter.

Over the past decade, school districts across Texas have sought to make classrooms safer by swelling the number of police officers on campuses and taking a tougher stance on misbehavior. But the crackdown has had an unexpected consequence: sweeping tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system.

Children ages 10 to 13 were referred for prosecution after incidents in schools more than 47,000 times since 2014, an analysis by The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News found. About 4,800 students in that age group were referred during the 2024-25 academic year alone, the most recent school year for which data is available. That is a third more than the number a decade before.

Most of the students were accused of minor offenses, like making threats, using cannabis vapes or lashing out at classmates or teachers, the analysis found. Few caused serious physical harm.

Made this yesterday:

• Chop 2 medium or large yellow onions into small strips or dice, sautee in butter until translucent or so
• Add 1lb loose italian sausage (I use mild, feel free to use spicy) and break up as it cooks
• I take 8oz washed chopped kale and chop it into smaller pieces, add when the sausage is cooked and cookit for a couple of mins to help wilt
• Add 64oz (I use two 32oz tetra paks) chicken stock, 2 tabelspoons chicken Better than Bouillon.
• I also added 2 heaping tablespooons of loose cheese powder (like comes in mac'n'cheese boxes) which is optional but gives it an umami boost. You could add two teaspoons of MSG.
• Scrub four large russet potatoes (while all of the above is simmering), cut lengthwise in halves, then each half lengthwise in halves so you end up with long quaters. Slice (I usually slice two quarters at a time) into thin slices. Add to pot and simmer for a half hour until the potatoes are tender
• Add 1 cup of heavy cream

Msot of the seasoning is coming from the sausage, but feel free to add more (after you've tasted the result), especially pepper (black, white, or red).

This amount of liquid makes for a soup with plenty of veggies, which as someone on dialysis is important for me to restrict my fluid intake. If you'd like it to be a bit more soupy, feel free to add 32oz milk with another tablespoon of better than bouillon.

Makes 8-10 meal-sized portions (especially if you have some sort of bread like garlic toast or toasted sourdough with butter or something, maybe even a side salad).

As always, it's even better the next day.

Also, feel free to chop things before you start, but I find that I like extra time simmering the onions before I continue as I can't eat raw onion, so I need them to be fully smushy; and I like to give the kale extra time because sometimes it's tender pretty quick but other times it takes a while to get tender, whereas the potatoes cook in like 20-30 mins or so.

I think it took me about 1h15m in total start to finish.

I've played AoE since the first version along with various others. Are there any games like AoE or C&C - real time, build bases to built units, harvest resources - but MUCH larger maps? That allow you to turtle up at a nice slow pace and then take out your enemies?

I play Civ and with mods for larger map sizes, it fills one need, but I'd really like a larger real-time harvest-resources type game, so… figured I'd ask.

I'm a casual player. I tweak settings on AoE to slow down the AI coming to attack me so I can build up walls and impenetrable lines of outposts and keeps. heh. So then I can send out raiding armies at my leisure. But it's not perfect, and the largest maps are still too small for my preferences.

Nova Roma is really nice as a city builder - if that had huge huge maps and other cities t conquer, it might be perfect. heh.

There's a little town just across the James River from me named Surry. Apparently the city council is considering borrowing millions of dollars to build a new YMCA. One of the residents has written a letter to the local newspaper:

Can Surry afford a Y?

All I can think: Well, if they can't, they're going to be Surr from now on…

And now you understand. I can't tell anyone else about this anywhere. It's a news article that doesn't allow comments. It came up in my news feed because I mod /r/NewportNews and this is news outside the city I can't post there. I could post to c/Virginia, I guess, but I suspect they wouldn't appreciate it. So you all are my only hope. :)

edit: y'all made my day. <3

The Real Deal compiled a list of all the municipalities throughout the state who have created legislation regulating the projects, either by way of moratorium or restriction. This list reflects a fast-changing landscape of development and regulatory action, offered as a current indicator, but not necessarily definitive account.

If you have information or tips on other data center regulation developments throughout Texas, email TRD at tips@therealdeal.com.

The people of Sand Branch have lived without a functioning water infrastructure for decades. Christina Parks is trying to preserve what’s left of her community.

SAND BRANCH, TEXAS — Days after a large grassfire ripped through four acres of land in Sand Branch, Christina Parks is exhausted.

On August 29, brush, trash and debris on a vacant property fueled the blaze, and two nearby structures were damaged. There were no reported injuries, though some residents were forced to temporarily evacuate. After two days of containment efforts by Dallas Fire-Rescue and mutual aid crews from nine neighboring areas, the fire was finally suppressed, according to the department. For Parks, who lives in Sand Branch, it’s another blow to the already struggling community that lacks clean accessible water and makes disasters such as this more difficult to handle.

“I’m drained physically and mentally,” she told The 19th. Amid the chaos, she’s once again assumed her role as a community leader. With the assistance of other volunteers and community organizations — some of whom traveled as long as two hours — Parks is taking the steps to care for her neighbors in the immediate aftermath of the fire as she grapples with their ongoing need for basic necessities.

Sand Branch is an impoverished pocket of land tucked away in Seagoville, Texas, roughly 14 miles southeast of downtown Dallas. It has been without safe drinking water for decades, and it does not have a sewage system or even trash collection. Historically, it’s a predominantly Black community.

Soon after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an effort last year to redraw California’s congressional maps in response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to do the same, he released an ad hyping the move.

As tense music plays, Newsom says the moment represents “a five-alarm fire for democracy” and that President Donald Trump “called Greg Abbott, who doesn’t have the courage, doesn’t have the conscience. And he has rolled over, and he said, ‘Yes, sir, and? ’”

When Fox News suggested Newsom’s use of the phrase “rolled over” was inappropriate, because Abbott uses a wheelchair, Newsom dug in: “How woke of you to ask!” his office told the network. “I’m sorry Greg’s feelings were hurt. Poor guy — we hope he recovers.”

Lawmakers have handed Texas homeowners serious property tax relief over the past few years. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Legislature’s property tax guru, announced at a recent interim committee hearing that 40% of Texas homeowners no longer pay any school district taxes. Almost 61% of disabled homeowners and those age 65 or older pay no school taxes. Republicans’ strategy of repeatedly raising various homestead exemptions, and using surplus funds to substitute for local tax dollars, worked.

Now lawmakers need to pause and consider how far to continue down this path. Both the governor and lieutenant governor have said they’d like to eliminate residential property taxes, at least those related to schools, though they diverge on how to accomplish that goal. They should drop the idea altogether because it’s irresponsible and fundamentally unfair. It only benefits select Texans, jeopardizes school districts’ most reliable source of funding and contributes to the state’s “stuck” housing market.

No doubt, most homeowners who still pay school property tax would love to pay less. The strategy of flat-dollar exemptions, which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has pushed, helps homeowners with lower-value properties the most, making it more equitable than a percentage discount.

A deadly disease called citrus greening has decimated much of Florida’s orange juice and citrus production in recent years. A researcher from Texas A&M University was part of a team that may have found a treatment.

EDIT: Updated with better link from comment below.

A 22-year-old San Antonio man was arrested and charged with a felony after investigators say he used an AI chatbot to plan a mass shooting at a local elementary school, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the San Antonio Express-News

Nathaniel Michael Carrasco, of San Antonio, was using an Anthropic AI chatbot on Aug. 11 when he began discussing plans to obtain a firearm and carry out the attack at Serna Elementary School, near his home.

“I’m getting a gun as soon as I can, and when Serna Elementary starts, I’m just gonna walk in there and start shooting up kids,” Carrasco wrote in one prompt, according to the Express-News.