Thumbs down: All you office bosses out there cracking down on remote and hybrid workers, how about taking a page from Mayor John Whitmire? The Houston Chronicle reported in June that Chris Brown only swiped in eight times in 2024 and three times in 2025 while earning a salary of $127,321. He is working as — wait for it — Whitmire’s senior advisor for financial integrity. (In other words: The guy the mayor picked to root out waste and corruption.) This week, Brown admitted to 15-hour work weeks, claiming his work is “project- and output-based.” So what if his output of emails was less than one per week? Who really emails anymore? And what, really, is “work,” anyways? 

Thumbs up: Remember how a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott strong-armed Houston into removing the rainbow crosswalk in Montrose? A big hoorah to the LGBT leaders and City Council members who worked over months to establish a district to put up Pride banners. And kudos to Whitmire for personally paying $10,000 for the installation of ten Pride banners along Westheimer Boulevard between Taft and Montrose. Sure, the mayor could have saved himself from months of vitriol during public comments at City Hall meetings had he put up banners sooner. But we’re proud that the city is showing our true colors once more.  

Thumbs up: Remember last month’s kerfuffle over Republican candidate Bo French’s racist tweet about University of Texas students? And how Gov. Abbott tsk-tsked but didn’t actually withdraw his endorsement? This week, we learned that in fact, it’s possible for a Republican to go too far even for Abbott. After video surfaced showing candidate David Flores not just being stopped for a DUI, but also calling the cop the n-word and invoking the governor’s endorsement. Did it matter to Abbott that Flores, who’s running for Texas House seat in a super-Democratic district, doesn’t have a prayer of winning, while Bo French might actually take a seat on the powerful Texas Railroad Commission? Surely not.

Thumbs twiddled: Yay! Defying expectations once more, the Astros set a record by winning their division. Boo! The record they set was becoming the first team to make the playoffs without actually winning more games than they lost. And then, to top it off, they got swept by the White Sox. 

Thumbs up: At least, with all the professional sports teams that now call Houston home, hope springs eternal and there’s always a new hero to root for — or, maybe even better, a GOAT to celebrate. The Houston Comets’ new billboard announces, “She’s back,” and it shows a woman’s hand gripping a basketball while displaying astonishingly long silver nails and four championship rings. Is that hand a shout-out to Sheryl Swoopes, who in the Comets’ prior life in Houston led them to four championships? We’d sure like to think so.

Thumbs down: We’d thought that Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate, always toed the MAGA line, which means, above all, never, ever criticizing the president. But this week, according to the New York Times, Paxton said at a private gathering that the Trump-led GOP convention actually hurt Republican candidates. Paxton’s campaign denies that he said it, and public post-convention polls show no real difference either way. Sen. John Cornyn — who lost in the primary to the Trump-endorsed Paxton —  gleefully called Paxton’s statement “another self-inflicted wound.” Or maybe Paxton’s jet-setting lifestyle — all that time at ski resorts and California wineries — gave him the perspective that it’s finally time to put some distance between himself and the president.

Thumbs up: Houston-based fiction writer Bryan Washington was named a MacArthur fellow, receiving what’s commonly known as the “genius grant.” The announcement celebrated Washington for “capturing the fragile beauty of modern relationships in stories shaped by place, memory, and the quiet rituals of daily care.” Oh, how Houston could use more of that these days.

Thumbs up: Amazing: Sen. Ted Cruz, who made his name nationally by gumming Congress — for instance, by reading “Green Eggs and Ham” during a one-man filibuster — is now passing bills. His Protect College Sports Act strikes us as a mixed bag. But bipartisan sausage-making is at least better than total gridlock and dysfunction in D.C.