The State of Texas: October 30, 2015

End Times Friday

If you read this tweet Thursday, please, don’t be alarmed. Although Texas Monthly‘s barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn declared his intentions to go meatless for a day leading up to the TMBBQ Fest on Sunday, it has been confirmed in follow-up tweets that, when it comes to meat, Vaughn is as soft as fatty brisket.

Battered, baked, fried, and cheesy; Eating vegetarian at SlowBone sure is easy.

On a one day #BBQbreak. pic.twitter.com/iZDjUisZkp

— Daniel Vaughn (@BBQsnob) October 29, 2015

Video of the Day

How else do you truly honor a golf phenom except by creating a mosaic of their face with 24,000 golf balls? No, really, how else? Texas golfer Jordan Spieth was honored with such a prize, but imagine how much bigger it’d be if he was actually the number one player, though.

Daily Roundup

Twin Peek — The stories have been going around since May, but seeing is believing. Kudos then to CNN, which was able to obtain pretty upsetting footage of the Waco Twin Peaks shooting that left nine dead. In addition to the security tape, CNN also “obtained thousands of pages of documents — including police intelligence reports, crime scene photos and witness interviews.” Even with the footage, it’s still “difficult to know for certain who started the mayhem” though “a review of the voluminous police file raises some troubling questions and intriguing theories,” CNN reports. As has been suggested before, there appears to have been some sort of disagreement between the Cossacks and Bandidos which turned into fighting, then gunfire. The story and timeline as told by CNN hews pretty close to the official line from police, so the largely skeptical biker community is no doubt going to have issues with it. Still, this is the most the public has been able to see and learn of the shootout since local authorities locked down details of the case. No one has been charged with the nine deaths.

Big Trouble in China — The detention of Texas woman in China for the past seven months has led to something of an escalation in tensions. China is investigating 55-year-old businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis for spying and stealing state secrets, but “in the eight months since her arrest, little information has been released and it wasn’t even publicly revealed until September when they moved her from a form of house arrest known as residential surveillance into a higher-security detention center in Nanning, Guangxi, a province bordering Vietnam,” the Houston Chronicle writes. The Texan is basically in limbo now as China claims to investigate the matter, though the deadline for such an investigation, about six months, passed long ago.

In-Fighting — It seems Dallas police are having some departmental issues. “The Black Police Association of Greater Dallas president wants criminal charges against whoever leaked a video of him talking about how the police chief had helped him get members good jobs and out of trouble,” reports the Dallas Morning News. The Sergeant Cletus Judge “alleges that the anonymous leaker is a ‘former board member’ of the association, but does not name the person. He said he will ‘vigorously seek criminal indictment against all who played a role’ in the video’s release.” As the Dallas Morning News lays it out, it certainly seems there’s some sort of power play going on. “Leaders of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police and Dallas Police Association — organizations that tried to oust the chief recently — said that the video validates their long-held belief that Judge traded his support of [Police Chief David] Brown for favors. Judge has supported Brown in the last month as the chief’s leadership style has been under fire from the two groups, as well as state and national police organizations.” Meanwhile, the Dallas Observer asks some pretty interesting questions about the issue. Namely, why are there unions divided by race in this day and age?