Sasha von Oldershausen

Sep 10, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Sasha von Oldershausen

If Sam Stavinoha were a religious man, you might say the decision to buy a small-town grocery was his come-to-Jesus moment. He cried a lot, as if mourning a loss, though he couldn’t name it. This was in 2019, when the 29-year-old software engineer had a cushy job working remotely out of a San Antonio suburb for a New York cloud computing firm. He made good money. Yet something felt amiss.

Aug 27, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Sasha von Oldershausen

Last week, Razavi, who asked to be identified by his last name only, went to the Houston DPS office to change the name and sex on his Texas driver’s license. After transitioning to female a few years ago—and changing all legal documents accordingly—he said he’d realized he “would always be viewed as a second-class citizen.” So he detransitioned, and in March he obtained a court order from a district court in Travis County to change his license back.

Aug 20, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Sasha von Oldershausen

In the Wild West of ecocapitalism, where billions of dollars are invested yearly into companies that invoke some measure of sustainability, the ideas spawned by start-ups can feel like elements of the sort of dystopian future dreamed up in a sci-fi movie from the sixties: vodka made from carbon captured out of the atmosphere; sneakers made out of recycled chewing gum; a solar geoengineering project that would’ve sent sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet.

Jul 25, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Sasha von Oldershausen

Sporting work boots, cargo pants, a camo tee, and a bottom lip packed with dip, Jason Wilson looks like the sort of guy who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Prius. And yet that’s what he pulls up in when he meets me at a ranch gate off Interstate 10 more than a hundred miles south of Midland. Beyond the fence line, a handful of cattle graze. As we pass through one gate, then another and another, there’s no hint that this land is used for anything other than ranching.

Jul 3, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Sasha von Oldershausen

My boyfriend’s mother, a Boston chemist whose early career involved visiting oil refineries across the globe, has a saying about Texas: “There’s no place colder than Houston in the summer.” Of course, it’s not the outside temperatures she’s referring to, which regularly top 100 degrees in the summertime, but the aggressively air-conditioned indoor climate. As she is wont to note, the cold is intended for the comfort of those who wear suits—the sleeveless among us be damned.