your friendly neighborhood heretic

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) announced last week that they're changing their billing policy next year so limited license mental health therapists in the state (21% of the mental health work force in Michigan) won't be able to bill them for therapy sessions if they work in a private practice or school setting.

Since BCBSM holds almost 70% of Michigan's commercial market, limited license therapists almost certainly will be forced out of private practice - interrupting care for (possibly hundreds? of) thousands of clients and severely restricting training opportunities for practitioners trying to get fully licensed.

Here are a few news articles about this:

Michigan Blue Cross to limit mental health benefit. Will thousands lose care?

‘Devastating’: Michigan mental health care workers concerned BCBSM billing change could cut access to counselors

Mental health providers warn BCBSM billing changes could disrupt care for hundreds

Ways Michiganders can help:

- Post about this on other social media platforms.

- Call your state legislator and say you're against this policy.

- If you have BCBSM insurance, call the number on the back of your insurance card and complain.

"held by pro-Kurdish fighters" sure is one way to say "governed by the will of the people through direct democracy, until the violent assault by the Syrian and Turkish states which is now repressing that democratic system and the people's autonomy" but okay! sure let's present things this way. say these regions were "under Kurdish rule" when that isn't how it works but sure!!!!!!!

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Much of the footage being recorded by the glasses is being sent to offshore contractors for data labeling, a widely-used preprocessing step in training new AI models in which human contractors are asked to review and annotate footage. It’s a laborious and highly resource-intensive process that tech companies often gloss over when discussing the prowess of their latest AI models. The reality can be messy. Meta contractors based in Nairobi, Kenya, told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten in a recently published joint investigation that they’re being told to review highly sensitive and intimate data. “In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor for a company called Sama said. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.” “I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room,” one data annotator told the newspapers. “Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes.” Other footage included imagery of people’s bank cards, users watching porn, or even filming entire “sex scenes.” An employee added that they felt forced to watch and annotate or else risk losing their job. “You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” the employee said. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”

Ignoring the experts on the subject while also appealing to "common sense" and dismissing all research that contradicts them while also appealing to "basic science."

2020:

LinkedIn post by Jürgen Geuter, research director at art + com

Very few narratives piss me off as much as the whole "let's give marginalized people LLM assistance for inclusion".

Inclusion does not mean giving marginalized people shittier versions of a thing. Sure you can give kids from poor backgrounds an LLM to "learn" but what you are saying is that poor people are not worthy of having trustworthy sources of information. When you say that older or lonely people can talk to chatbots to feel less alone you are saying that some people are not worth a social life.