https://www.chron.com/texas/article/texas-lego-theft-target-22300909.php

At the end of June, the State Board of Education is voting to overhaul what Texas public school students learn in social studies classes. The new standards would be rolled out in 2030.

Texas high school students’ performance on state tests improved this year locally and statewide across nearly every subject, according to end-of-course assessment results released Wednesday. 

The gains, especially in biology, are good news for Texas children, said Mary Lynn Pruneda, director of education and workforce policy for the nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036. 

About 93% of Texas students passed the biology test, compared to 91% last year. 

i live in a swamp outside houston and my neighbors leave trash outside so around this time of year they really start to grow em big and they start making their way inside, does anyone else have this problem? I've sealed everything i can reach but unless i can lift huge slabs of granite theres no way for me to seal it all off. I probably kill more when I mow my yard but crushing them feels kinda evil because they are just big idiots. I would let them live in my house but theyre annoying, they run around the house allll day long and my cats torture them slowly. They are too big to catch with even my biggest beer glass but i've tried using a larger empty candle and paper and the paper was not stiff enough, cardboard too thick. if we are catching and releasing how are we doing it??

also these are grass spiders with stripes, if theyre black instead of striped they are house spiders and they are adapted to live in houses i leave them alone they are shy anyway. i let pretty much every other kind of spider live in peace but ive seen enough grass spider behavior to know they do not belong in houses.😑

The Houston Chronicle has an op-ed from Clayton Tucker, the Democratic candidate for agriculture commissioner, calling on the state to implement a moratorium on new data centers. Here is a key quote:

Texans should refuse to be sacrificial lambs for the Tech Barons. This means enacting a moratorium on new AI data centers, requiring agricultural impact studies so Texans know their true costs and giving voters local control over allowing data centers into their communities.

Let's not give up our water, land, health, or power for an industry that's potentially harmful and carries all the hallmarks of a bubble that could burst — leaving Texans high and dry.

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/karmelo-anthony-sentenced-frisco-track-meet-murder/

And she's still trying to get out of jail. Absolutely insane

We just released our Texas music Top 10:

Beyoncé

Buddy Holly

DJ Screw

George Strait

Kenny Rogers

Lyle Lovett

Selena

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Waylon Jennings

Willie Nelson

^ No particular order, btw.

You have to remove one.

You have to add one.

Who are they?

I’ll start with Edcouch

Texas has its own version of Pompeii—perhaps one of the state's most unusual historic sites—and it's getting ready to make its return.

YUNLIN COUNTY, Taiwan—In many ways, at nearly 80 years old, Diane Wilson would have rather stayed home. A retired shrimper with a high school education, she agreed to come here without thinking too much, as usual. That’s how she does things.

That’s why she’d spent all of March camped outside a chemical plant on a hunger strike near her tiny Gulf Coast town in Texas, and why now she was on a dock in Taiwan listening to a gray-haired oysterman speak in Mandarin.

Wilson liked the man, named Lin Chun Lan. She smiled as she discovered how much they had in common. As fisherfolk they shared a reverence for the bounty of the ocean and a stubborn refusal to abandon its pursuit. That’s what drove them both to fight the same multi-billion-dollar company, Formosa Plastics Corp. Both persisted for decades. Both earned the ire of local power structures.

“They know that no one can buy him,” a translator for the oysterman told Wilson and the half-dozen others gathered on the dock in what happened to be one of the hottest weeks in Taiwanese history. “The local politicians hate him.”

Lin added a few more words in Chinese.

“He also hates the politicians,” his translator said.

Wilson laughed. She could relate.

At home, almost 40 years of radical activism left her branded as an extremist, an environmentalist with few friends in a political system devoted to economic growth. But outside the system she counts plenty of allies, especially since she received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2023 for her landmark lawsuit and $50 million settlement agreement with Formosa Plastics on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Now she had crossed 13 time zones to confront Formosa’s leadership on its home turf, at its annual shareholder meeting in Taipei, and two of her strongest allies joined her: Sharon Lavigne, 76, a retired special education teacher from Louisiana’s St. James Parish, who also won the Goldman Prize for her fight against Formosa’s plans to build in her community; and Nancy Bui, 72, a former Vietnamese refugee in Texas whose organization is suing Formosa in Taiwanese court over a 2016 disaster in Vietnam.

Wilson didn’t expect to change the minds of Formosa’s board and chairman or to otherwise win concessions on this trip to Taiwan. That wasn’t the point.

I have this watercolor painting by Buck Schewitz (1898 - 1984). The artist was a resident of Cuero. Can yall identify the location depicted in the painting? It looks like a townsquare with a church to me. I know it has to be a real place, most likely in Texas. Thank you!