Ashley Thomas

Texas A&M University Former Student | South Texas College of Law Grad

[Dolly Spice- Jones 🌱🎵 @Herb_Minstrel]

Six weeks.

SIX FLIPPING WEEKS.

Lucy has not heard our voices. She hasn't slept on her rug. She hasn't gone for a ride in the truck. She hasn't been snuggled by her family, played with Lex, or run free in her own field.

SIX WEEKS.

She's been locked in a tiny cell, sleeping on concrete, likely wondering why we abandoned her.

SIX WEEKS.

She's eleven years old. She doesn't have endless time ahead of her. She could get sick. Her health could fail. Every day matters.

And while everyone moves at a snail's pace, without a care in the world, time keeps slipping away from MY DOG—the dog who was taken because a petty neighbor decided to call the authorities when she slipped out of her collar in our OWN YARD!

This wasn't some outrageous act! This wasn't a purposeful violation of anything and didn’t cause incident. This wasn't the terrifying incident the neighbors or government would like people to believe it was.

It was a normal, everyday occurrence that happened on our private property!

We could have lied. We could have denied it happened. No one had proof otherwise:

But that's not who we are.

So for six weeks, my Lucy—my eleven-year-old dog who stood watch over our family through deployment after deployment, who kept me company during the lonely nights when I watched the news and wondered if my husband would make it home alive—has sat in prison.

This is a sick abuse of the law, and an innocent animal is paying the price.

Not for biting someone.
Not for attacking someone.
Not for leaving and roaming the neighborhood.
For being in her own yard.

Let that sink in.

And because malicious neighbors refused to mind their own business, and because officials with the power to do the right thing have refused to exercise any bit of common sense, she remains there.

They make me sick.

The abuse of power makes me sick.

The character assassination makes me sick.

The lies make me sick.

The fact that people who have never met us, never spoken to us, and don't know the first thing about our family have spent years trying to destroy our peace makes me sick.

Enough is enough!

Let Lucy come home already! Is this really the hill anyone wants to die on? It’s a single dog. It’s an average family. Send her back and leave us alone. That’s all we want.

And for those who have participated in this injustice—whether through malice, cowardice, pride, or indifference, know this:

God sees every bit of it.
He knows the truth.
And one day, every one of us will answer to Him.

Until our Lucy is home and beyond. We will not stop fighting.

#savelucy

[J.B. Sauceda @jaybsauceda]

I have an ask of all of you.

During last year's floods in Kerrville, my colleague Aaron Parsley and his family were swept away by rushing waters while still in their home.

Sadly, his nephew perished.
Miraculously, the rest survived.

Aaron wrote a reflection of the experience in the hours after, and it became one of the most-read stories @TexasMonthly has ever published, and went on to win a Pulitzer last week.

He recently completed a podcast in which he interviews other flood survivors and reflects on their experiences. It will premiere on May 26th.

Please listen to the trailer and subscribe. It'll help extend the reach of these important stories on the day it publishes.

Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/eK5PKwI49k

Spotify:
https://t.co/JHz5VURL4o

[Texas Monthly @TexasMonthly]

Texas Monthly senior editor Aaron Parsley has been awarded the @PulitzerPrizes for feature writing, for his heartrending, first-person account of his family’s fight for survival during last year’s devastating Central Texas floods. https://t.co/11ozulEy3A

[Leisha @LoneStarChica]

🚨 SAVE LUCY: A Soldier Saved Her in War. Now She Faces Death Over a MINOR Complaint at Home

Lucy is an 11-year-old dog who survived the Middle East and was brought home by U.S. Army veteran Brendan Jones after they bonded during deployment.

She has been with his family for 10 years and has never spent a day away from them… until now.

Lucy is currently sitting in the Shenandoah County Animal Shelter in Edinburg, Virginia, facing possible e*thanasia.

She is sitting there confused and alone after a lifetime with the family who loves her.

A year ago, Lucy had a single incident while recovering from surgery, medicated, and wearing a cone. A jogger’s arm reached inside the cone, and she reacted with one defensive nip, then immediately let go. Even that person did not want to press charges.

After that, the county labeled Lucy a dangerous dog.

On April 17th in Strasburg, Lucy slipped out of her collar for a few seconds on her own property and barked at someone walking by. She did not attack anyone and never left the yard.

That was enough for her to be taken.

Now she is sitting in a cage after a lifetime with her family.

Lucy is not dangerous. She is a senior dog who deserves to spend her final years with the family who loves her.

📞 PLEASE TAKE ACTION - COURT DATE IS MAY 8

Takes 10 seconds. Please call:

Shenandoah County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office

[phone]

Say: “Hi, I’m calling about the dangerous dog case involving Lucy, owned by U.S. Army veteran Brendan Jones in Shenandoah County.

I’m asking that Lucy be returned to her owner immediately.”

#SaveLucy #JusticeForLucy
@WHSVnews @wusa9 @fox5dc

[𐌁𐌉Ᏽ 𐌕𐌉𐌌𐌉 @OrevaZSN]

Logging onto the dark web tomorrow (Teams, Outlook, and Excel).

[Bethany | Commercial Real Estate @bethanyjbabcock]

Mother’s Day is coming up.

I share this every year. Here are a few things that she probably wants at various budget level:

✅ Family pictures with a professional photographer. Check the family calendar and schedule it. She doesn’t need another thing to do.

✅ A super high quality bathrobe like they have at a fancy hotel with bath salts and some nice candles

✅ Carry out for lunch. Avoid the crowds and kid meltdowns and get her favorite carry out (order in advance) - do not tell her to do it 🙄

✅ Take over the bedtime routine and send her to read a book and take a bath

✅ Spa day but don’t schedule it for Mother’s Day, she will probably feel weird not being with the family.
Book it for her a couple weeks later and if you can afford it, pay for a friend to go with her.

✅ Car detailing- arrange for her car to get a deep clean from fruit snacks and glitter crafts so she can feel like an adult for a while and not a mobile preschool.

✅ Get together with your guy friends and organize and schedule a quarterly - “moms night out” where the guys take on the kids and send the moms out together. This gift is really about organizing it for her with all the different schedules so don’t skip that part.

✅ Photo collage - grab her iPhone and pod of a digital frame or print and frame a bunch of the ones she has marked favorite. Get them off the phone and around the house. She has been meaning to do this forever.

✅ Hand print anything. Stepping stone for the garden, mug, picture. We really do like these things and they cost next to nothing. Things that need to be glazed need a couple weeks lead time.

✅ Mom’s Snack Vault. Grab a lockable container and stuff it with her favorite snacks you and the kids keep stealing.

✅ Of course home made cards and crafts made by the kids and framed and wrapped. We aren’t just saying it, we really love that stuff.

[wanye @xwanyex]

There’s a moment that happens to new parents, probably around four in the morning, when you’ve been up all night with a sick kid, and they’ve just thrown up again, and you’re so fucking tired and frustrated, but it’s outweighed by the sympathy you feel for this helpless dependent, and most of all you just want them to feel better, and then it hits you that this is what your mom did for you, and in that moment you understand your parents in a new way, fully comprehend what they did for you — like, you really get it, way down in your stomach, not just in the abstract way that anybody can understand what parents do for children — and you realize that from now on you’re always going to see things from the perspective of the parent, not as a child, and a lot of your complaints and hangups and neuroses will melt away, never to return, and from now on the stories you’ll tell about your childhood, stories you’ve told 1000 times before, will have a slightly different character, will be based on a fuller understanding of who you are and what actually happened to you, and you’ll think, “my God, in all those years of childlessness, I’ve cheated myself of this realization, of this opportunity to understand the world as it really is and move on.”

And if you’re childless and reading this, then maybe you’re thinking, “sure, but obviously I can intellectually understand this without having children of my own” and it’s just, like, no, probably not.

It just doesn’t really work like that.

[Kentucky Girl @Notwokenow]

If someone treated my dog like this, I’m going to jail.

[Drunk Old Grad @DrunkOldGrad]

This is incredibly difficult to write, however a West Point brother needs us right now.

Ben Lemon (2017) lost his 7-year-old son Solomon last month. His two remaining boys (ages 5 and 3) have the same rare mitochondrial disease.

Ben and his lovely wife Katja are not giving up. They are researching trials, going to work, and fighting for their family. 

Two things you can do right now: Share this post and support by giving what you can, link below: https://t.co/xnEBsb9F8a 

If you have connections in pharma or mitochondrial disease research, DM me directly. Pretzel Therapeutics (drug: PX578) is in trials that could change everything for his boys.

For Solomon. And for the Lemon family. 🖤💛

[Christian Ruf @pinpulleddrmf]

Veteran buried his eldest and it’s not looking good for his two others.

Posting for any connections, help that can be made while they fight for time.

[“Sudden And Unexpected” @toobaffled]

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐬𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 (𝐀𝐋) 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭.

“Our daughter was born premature at 34 weeks + 6 days due to pre-eclampsia and IUGR from my high blood pressure. She came out crying, pink, and healthy — no oxygen needed.

A NICU nurse had promised us 30-40 minutes of immediate skin-to-skin if she didn’t require oxygen. Instead, they ripped her off my chest after just 90 seconds, wrapped her up, gave me a quick kiss, and whisked her to the NICU.

There, Dr. James Morris immediately started listing shots he planned to give her. We respectfully declined, wanting to defer to our pediatrician due to our religious beliefs and desire for a gentle recovery.

Dr. Morris instantly threatened to call DHR (Department of Human Resources), falsely claiming the shots were “mandatory” and “Huntsville Hospital policy.” My husband (a charge nurse at the same hospital for 15 years) knew this was a lie — it’s not hospital policy or Alabama law. He recorded the threats.

Dr. Morris called DHR anyway and falsely reported us for “abusing and neglecting” our newborn by refusing the shots.

Within 30 minutes, DHR showed up, detained my husband for nearly 2 hours, threatened to take custody of our baby, and couldn’t even produce the “mandatory policy” they claimed existed.
Meanwhile, I was stuck in L&D with dangerously high blood pressure (213/117 and climbing), forced to talk to a DHR caseworker instead of recovering or bonding with my daughter.

That same night at 12:07 AM, DHR went to our home and woke my mother-in-law and five of our eight children to “check if they were alive,” traumatizing our 8-year-old daughter so badly she still has night terrors about DHR taking her and her siblings.

Our own pediatrician (Dr. Thotakura) and high-risk OB (Dr. Lewis, Head of OB at Huntsville Hospital Women & Children’s) both confirmed Dr. Morris’s actions were illegal, medically unnecessary, and a violation of our rights. Dr. Morris even bragged to Dr. Thotakura that he routinely uses DHR threats to bully parents into compliance — and that “most give in.”

Multiple NICU and L&D nurses were shocked and outraged, saying they’ve cared for plenty of families who refused shots with zero DHR involvement. Even the NICU social worker told the DHR worker we had every right to refuse.

Because of his false report, we had to get DHR “permission” to take our daughter home and endure a home inspection.

We lost irreplaceable first hours with our baby. Our whole family suffered emotional trauma. I now fear taking prescribed pain meds in case they’re used against me. And our children live with lasting fear of medical staff and the state.
This was a blatant violation of our 14th Amendment rights, medical consent rights under Alabama law, and basic human decency.

Dr. James Morris:

• Lied to DHR to trigger state intervention
• Threatened, intimidated, and humiliated us
• Used his position to force procedures against our will
• Brags about doing it to other families

Parents, protect your rights. Ask questions. Say no when it doesn’t feel right.”

Shared with permission from Cindy Searcy Adams (posted on behalf of the family).
You can read her original post here:

https://t.co/zFPic0euBE

(Photo of Dr. James H. Morris Jr. attached as it appeared in Cindy’s original post)

[Lissa♥️♥️ @lizzkelly7]

The fake urgency created in corporate life for absolutely no reason is one of the worst things humans have invented.

[S.🎧 @1ssve]

If you CC my boss on an email just to “loop him in,” Oh let’s go. Meet me in the Teams chat parking lot

[S.🎧 @1ssve]

Yeah TikTok is bad for our mental health but what about Outlook and Teams

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The scariest finding in this paper: the subjects couldn't tell it was happening.

UPenn ran this study on 48 healthy adults. One group slept 8 hours. Another slept 6. Another slept 4. For 14 straight days. They tested cognitive performance every 2 hours from 7:30am to 11:30pm.

The 6-hour group's reaction times, working memory, and sustained attention deteriorated on a near-linear curve. By day 14 they were performing at the same level as someone who hadn't slept at all in 48 hours. The 4-hour group hit that threshold by day 6.

Here's the part that should unsettle everyone who thinks they "do fine" on 6 hours: the subjects' self-reported sleepiness flatlined after the first few days. Their brains kept getting worse. Their perception of how impaired they were stopped updating. The cognitive decline was invisible to the person experiencing it.

The researchers found a hard threshold. Any wakefulness beyond 15.84 hours in a day produces cumulative neurobiological cost. That cost compounds every single day you exceed it and does not reset with a weekend of sleeping in.

About 35% of American adults sleep less than 7 hours a night. 40% of those get 6 hours or less. In 1942 that number was 11%. We built an entire professional culture around a sleep schedule that this paper says is functionally equivalent to pulling consecutive all-nighters.

"I'm fine on 6 hours" is the most common response to sleep research. The first thing chronic sleep debt destroys is your ability to notice chronic sleep debt.

[Apetimus Primate @taeminluvr7]

if u cared about punch, please help sweet elderly opal the orangutan :( kids at the zoo throw things at her, shes all alone and her enclosure is boring and lifeless

[WeRateDogs @dog_rates]

This is Honey. She's a half-blind senior who survived a bear attack while protecting her family and farm. “She protected our chickens and our family," said her mom. "She’s our little savior." Honey has been treated for her injuries and is on the mend. We're awarding her our highest honor, a 15/10

[lev (eastern woodland) @abookofsymbols]

nobody understands the “McDonalds coffee too hot” tort case and it bugs me so much. a 79 year old woman suffered third degree burns on 6% of her skin when she spilled the coffee she just bought! she was right!

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Iran has reportedly kidnapped the families of the Iranian women’s soccer team members who requested asylum & the women are now abandoning those claims and returning to the country to face torture or death. No prominent left wing American women’s soccer players have said a word.

[Collin McLelland 🏴‍☠️ @FracSlap]

The Houston Rodeo is dragging Lina Hidalgo