There are plenty of smart people in Texas, of course. However, it may be difficult to attract scientific-minded employees to a location where their kids will be taught on a curriculum that rejects science in some regards.

That also hints at the larger culture clash that may result from the "liberal elites" moving to the area. If this migration does happen it'll be interesting to see how the culture in Texas changes.

Last I checked, there are _tons_ of "liberal elites" here (speaking as one of those, I suppose).

Let me check the public schools in my immediate neighborhood (I walk my dog past all of these)... We have two dual-language immersion schools (Spanish/English and Arabic/English), a Montessori school, and one school that doesn't fall into any particular bucket but is highly ranked. Those are the _public_ schools for this neighborhood. If you live here, you're going to one of those three or paying for one of the private (mostly Catholic) schools nearby. Hell, we're not even in one of the "good" school districts... Those are out in the suburbs.

You do realize that Houston _is_ the global R&D center for multiple domains, right? Medicine, Geoscience, several different engineering disciplines.

The migration you're talking about started in the 70's and has been going strong for many decades. As someone who moved here for work after getting a PhD, I can assure you, it's not that hard to "attract scientific-minded employees" here. My previous employer had thousands of positions that required a PhD. The overwhelming majority of those were filled by people who moved here for the job.

Yes, the TX state educational board is fucked up. That doesn't translate to what's taught in most schools in urban areas. It unfortunately _does_ mean that schools have the leeway to teach bizarre stuff, but most in the areas being discussed by this article don't.

The reason folks don't want to move here has more to do with the weather and traffic than anything else. (The weather really does suck half the year, but we get 4-5 really nice months of weather in the winter.)

There are definitely some sprawly areas that I'd recommend avoiding (Houston has more in common with LA than with SF), but by and large, Houston's a great place to live. I walk more or less everywhere I go, have a 110 year old house with a great backyard, and live within walking distance many of the best-rated restaurants and bars as well as downtown. This is the expensive area, and you can still easily buy a house for under $500k.

You just have to survive August...

Where does this happen in Texas public schools? Have you ever been to a populated city like Dallas or Houston? What culture change are you expecting? Texas is already full of liberal elites living in two of the largest cities in America.

Your post reminds me of when I studied abroad and some European exchange students asked me if I rode a horse to school and if the Indians were still around when they found out I was from Texas.

Why don’t you look through these job listings and tell me which state does most of the science on those rockets: https://www.spacex.com/careers/?department=

I don’t think SpaceX is a great example of “Texas science” given the vast majority of their major science and engineering work is located in their California offices.

Funny thing is their not using texas science. Just because a company is stationed in texas doesn't mean they adhere to nonsense like creationism.

I think that was the point. For all the stereotypes of Texas (I'm originally from Norway - we use Texas as a general synonym for "crazy" [1]), there are significant areas that are a lot more progressive, so to assume moving to Texas means moving to some creationist hellhole is excessive.

[1] https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/yall-norwegians-...

Given the specific Texans I know that have had expat assignments in Stavanger, I can't imagine that helped erase the stereotype... We seem to send some crazy folks over there... Not to mention drillers... Drilling engineers are nuts.

To be fair, the origin of the term probably has more to do with 50's and 60's Westerns than with any idea of present-day Texas. You'll also find references to "wild west" / "vill vest" used in pretty much the same contexts as "texas".

Though we also have the harsher term "Amerikanske tilstander" ("American conditions") that especially in the 80's was often used in politics by the left to evoke an image of a failing state.

Fellow Norwegian here, can confirm this is an old term related to the "cowboys & indians / wild west" stuff that was so prevalent in American cultural exports at the time. I actually grew up in Texas among a tiny colony of Norwegians in the Houston area (obviously centered around the oil industry).

It's given me an interesting window into all the weird obviously false stereotypes that Americans have about Scandinavians and that Scandinavians have about Americans (and Texans in particular).

Like pretty much everywhere in the US, big Texas cities lean (or, in Austin’s case, are quite) left, suburbs are increasingly very swing, and the rural areas are really right wing but have been emptying out. Texas has a somewhat higher proportion of rural to urban/suburban population than New York State which makes Texas overall a “red” state and New York “blue”, but a current Silicon Valley resident is probably going to feel far more at home in Austin, Houston or one of their closer suburbs than they would in rural western or upstate New York.