Anyone else have over $250 in fees alone...on top of their rent? This just seems wildly obnoxious.

Not letting post a screenshot, so here it is in text format:

• 09/01/2026 - Rent-Lease Charges - $1,277.00
• 09/01/2026 - Sub-metered Sewer - $31.86
• 09/01/2026 - Community Amenity Fee - $25.00
• 09/01/2026 - RPMIS Insurance Fee - $25.00
• 09/01/2026 - Valet Trash - $25.00
• 09/01/2026 - Trash - $24.61
• 09/01/2026 - Deposit Prem (RPMIS)-Approved - $19.00
• 09/01/2026 - Sub-metered Water - $17.42
• 09/01/2026 - Drainage/Stormwater Allocation - $17.28
• 09/01/2026 - Gas - $15.85
• 09/01/2026 - Electric - $9.51
• 09/01/2026 - Pest Control - $7.00
• 09/01/2026 - City Service Fee - $4.38
• 09/01/2026 - Trash Admin Fee - $3.00
• 09/01/2026 - Drainage-Storm Water Admin Fee - $2.50
• 09/01/2026 - Util Billing Fee Not Water/Sewer - $0.32
• 09/01/2026 - Util Billing Fee Not Water/Sewer - $0.20
• 08/01/2026 - RPMIS Insurance Fee - $25.00

A 25-year-old Austin man returned to the United States from Mexico over the weekend after being deported despite telling federal immigration officials he was a U.S. citizen, according to his attorneys.

Brian José Morales García was deported in April after a traffic stop in Fredericksburg. Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Gillespie County sheriff's deputies who pulled over his work vehicle did not believe him when he said he was a U.S. citizen and contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

There are a handful of things in Austin - especially related to the summertime - that feel like they could easily be better for everyone. But whether it's the Bullock Museum IMAX Theater's seating dilemma or restaurants that should have stronger AC, I think this might be the most obvious thing in our city worth improving.

It’s impractical that Austin’s most accessible neighborhood pools shut down by mid‑August. I can’t imagine single adults, kids, families, or anyone in any stage of life from any walk of life opposing more full‑time public pools. And I’m not talking about Barton Springs or Deep Eddy, obviously. I mean the neighborhood pools that are unused for most of the year.

I’ve seen people mention this before, but I want to add my own experience. When I was a young kid, my family lived in the San Diego area for a few years. The weather there is famously great all the time, but the public pools were still year-round. And many cities across the country, with cooler climates than anywhere in Texas, keep their public pools open all year. It's not like it's some unachievable goal.

To be clear, I’m not complaining about Austin having warm/hot weather for half the year. What’s silly is limiting public pools to a 2–3 month arbitrary summer window when temperatures stay in the mid‑90s to low 100s sometimes into October. Closing pools in mid‑August just because “the season is changing” is a prime example of how impractical it can feel to live here.

And it’s not because lifeguards are teenagers enrolled in school. Every time I’ve gone, the lifeguards have been in their early-late 20s. YMCA pools, gym pools, Barton, Deep Eddy all manage to staff lifeguards year‑round. So why were these neighborhood pools built/renovated/maintained if they’re only open for a fraction of the year and don't actually benefit anyone a majority of the time? Not only does it feel wasteful, it feels insulting as someone who regularly walks by an unused public pool for several months out of the year.

I'm not necessarily saying the pools should be open for 12 months. But extending a few months is not some impossible mind-blowing proposition. If the city can maintain/redo pools, surely they can hire some people who aren't just in high school or college to cover a few additional weeks.

Is anyone's bill this month astronomical?! I know it's summer but bruh lol last year my bill was $75. This year it's almost $300 and Austin energy keeps telling me they don't know why. How can they charge these wiiiiiild figures without being able to explain why? I'm so annoyed

The beloved metal music venue that has operated at 710 Red River St. since 2009 will close after its property was sold to new owners. The space will be taken over by a franchise of the Tennessee-based chain Gus's Fried Chicken.

This website uses your regular Austin Energy account login if you have one.

You can see usage from a variety of perspectives to track down high demand usage times and within as low as 15 minute increments and correlate with your high demand appliance usage.

https://austinenergyapp.com/aware/login?path=/aware&userNamespace=Austin%20Energy

ps - Also keep in mind when an electric water heater element is active it typically pulls 4500 (edit:watts.)

I have my little side project in a decent enough state to share. I am a huge fan of AFS and all the cinema they curate. I have been exposed to some very cool flicks and directors over the years that I would have never known about if this gem didn't exist. My one little irk with the AFS site is that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no archive that shows all the past films that have been screened. To that end, I made myself a little thing that has that information.

It's a pretty simple layout but the gist is this:

• Cataloged as much information I could using the wayback machine
• Have a daily run to scrape the screenings page from AFS
• Cross reference everything with TMDB (IMDB wanted $50,000 to use their api)

To the best of my ability I preserve the poster and synopsis provided by AFS as it is usually more interesting than the TMDB alternative, I tend to defer to TMDB for release year, run time, and similar fields. I am having to hand curate a good bunch of the entries due to the nature of pulling old and not universally organized data. Of the ~1500 movies in the database I've manually fixed about 300 of them so far.

I'm sure there are going to be errors, wikipedia out-links that go to the wrong place (I'm fixing these now), duplicate films, maybe some entries the scraper added as a movie that instead was a special director talk.

Site is free, no signup or anything and there are no ads so I hope it's OK to share the link. I really just wanted to make a tool for myself and others who are interested in the offerings of AFS. If there are any improvements that can be made let me know and I'll absolutely consider them.

Cheers

https://afsvault.com/

p.s. afsarchive was taken by someone working on an American Field Service catalog which is super cool to look through. :)

September 21 - October 18, 2026 (or beyond sometimes). Then maybe a little bit of time before the Trail of Lights closure.

A nearly 500-acre stretch of Central Texas is poised for a massive makeover, with plans for a $1 billion community featuring more than 1,300 homes and nearly 100 acres of shops and commercial space. 

Austin car break-ins fell again in 2025, continuing a retreat from a pandemic-era surge that at its peak brought more than 9,600 reported vehicle burglaries in a single year.

Austin recorded 6,889 vehicle burglaries last year, down 12% from 2024 and about 28% from 2020, according to data analyzed by the American-Statesman. Even with the decline, that amounts to nearly 19 reported break-ins a day.

Mount Bonnell, one of Austin's best-known overlooks, topped the data for the most car break-ins.

Wondering if anyone else is getting this error today on the SOS portal for voter registration. Yesterday it was showing my status as Active but now I’m getting this message.

FWIW, I called the Travis County tax office and they confirmed my status was still showing Active in their system (they used my driver’s license number to check).

I was walking the trail on lady bird lake for an hour or so and stopped by a small area to look at the water and started getting emotional.

I want to say thank you to the man who gave me kind words and advice. I didn't get ur name but I'd love to buy u coffee or tea sometime if ur okay with it before I leave. Please reach out to me if ur comfortable.

not a romance thing, just trying to say thank you

Huge accident, for sure a semi truck accident been here for about a hour

My package was out for delivery this morning at 9 am and at 10 am I notice the status has changed to “Merchandise is missing”. I called UPS and she said it fell out of the truck. I’m sorry, what? I even asked her to provide me with the route the driver took so I could go drive it and see if I could find it and she said she couldn’t do that. Has this happened to anyone? It’s ridiculous

Roger Beasley, a longtime Austin automobile dealer who built a three-person operation into a network of dealerships across Central Texas, died Friday at his Austin home. He was 87.

Beasley founded what became the Roger Beasley Auto Group in 1972, beginning with a single dealership on Burnet Road and three employees. Over the next four decades, the business grew to include 13 franchises and 11 dealerships with more than 600 employees, according to his obituary and a professional biography published before his death.

The AC unit at my house went out last week during that brutal stretch of 105° days. It was 90° in the house!

I cleaned the coils, replaced the capacitor, and eventually had to hire someone to replace the motor in the condenser.

The unit is 18 years old and the indoor blower/furnace is 17 years old, so I decided to start getting quotes for a new system. I was absolutely shocked at the initial prices for this.

Without influencing you all with my two quotes, just curious what the going rate for a system replacement should be in our area. Also, who would you hire or recommend to do the job? Bonus points if they have good financing options (because dayummm)…