mkultra25

It's about time Rice addressed what has been a glaring gap in comparison with A&M. Look out, College Station, here come the Owls!

That's more common than you'd think in parts of the country that aren't accustomed to having a plethora of very good Mexican restaurants to choose from. When I was in college, I had a classmate that had grown up on the East Coast, and her frame of reference for Mexican restaurants was Taco Bell, because that was pretty much all there was to choose from where she was from. She was pretty amazed by what was available in Houston when she got here, and that was 30+ years ago. It's only gotten better since then.

Indeed. And the more cynical among us might also be inclined to speculate as to exactly what the "opportunity" in "opportunity zones" refers to.

Interesting piece from the Texas Observer on the potential for gentrification accelerating in Houston as a byproduct of the Trump tax cuts, which contain a $1.5 billion tax break for real estate investors in economically-disadvantaged areas defined as "opportunity zones": https://www.texasobserver.org/trumped-up-incentives-houston-gentrification/

Longreads ran one of the short stories from Lot yesterday: https://longreads.com/2019/03/20/navigation/

Haven't read it yet either, but I made a mental note to check it out after running across this piece about it in the Texas Observer last week: https://www.texasobserver.org/swamp-city-serenade/

I use these instead of the plastic bags: For what seems at first glance to be a cheesy infomercial product worthy of Ron Popeil, they work quite well, and despite reasonably heavy usage I haven't had any of the durability problems mentioned in the video comments. Almost invariably, someone will ask where I got them whenever I'm at the grocery store.

I alternated between a Bialetti and a Krups Espresso Mini for years. Bialettis are great - it's hard to beat the reliability of something that has almost no moving parts. Now I'm using a regular Hamilton Beach drip coffeemaker (the model that Wirecutter recommends as a budget pick) with Bustelo. It makes a full-sized cup of coffee that's considerably stronger and more flavorful than American-style coffee. As far as Latin coffee brands go, Cafe La Llave is a nice occasional alternative to Bustelo, but it's pretty hard to find in stores (Target is the only place I've been able to find it locally, and even there it's hit and miss). It's a bit more subtle and not as in-your-face as Bustelo. I'll have to go check out the popup and have a cafecito. One of my closest friends is Cuban and I grew up on a steady diet of Bustelo-based cafecitos that his mother would brew for us when we were in high school, so I'm curious to see how the pop-up's version stacks up against that frame of reference.

More often than I'd have suspected, I've googled some arcane topic of local interest, only to find that the first search result was a link to a post on HAIF.

Swamplot (RIP) had a piece up earlier this week about a local guy who parks his McLaren Senna in his living room: http://swamplot.com/when-the-cars-just-too-nice-for-the-garage/2019-03-01/

My favorite comment on the post announcing their shutdown was someone's lamentation "If only there had been more GFR".

I was wondering if something like this might work earlier. If it gets shot down, what about strategically-placed, ostensibly decorative boulders/large rocks? They seem to be popular with Heights homeowners intent on laying claim to parts of the public ROW (you obviously have a more legitimate use in mind), but they usually don't attract much unwelcome attention from the Powers that Be.

Well, I also pronounce "Gizmodo" with a soft "g". I'm starting to suspect I may be a contrarian.

Hard "g" as opposed to peanut butter, I assume. 😉