It’s hard to name my favorite with certainty, but one of my favorites is The Incredibles. The world building, the score, the action, the comedy, the relationships. It’s all great.

The stakes are very real too. Syndrome is willing to murder not just superheroes, but kids. When he orders Elasti-Girl’s plane shot down knowing it has her and Bob’s kids on board, you feel every bit of tension as Helen tries to stay calm while doing everything she can to save her kids. The scene is even more believable because the way she uses pilot jargon while speaking through the radio.

And the themes! Each main character’s power is tied to their role. Super strong Bob being weighed down with the crushing burden of mediocrity. Over functioning Helen has to stretch herself to take care of everyone. Super fast Dash has too much energy and resents being contained. Insecure Violet just wants to be invisible to the world. Even baby Jack Jack is just full of possibilities.

Honestly I could go on and on. It’s a movie that’s suitable for kids but has some very grownup themes and relationships. It hits different after you have kids, feeling what the parents are going through on a new level. To me it’s not just a great superhero movie, it’s just a great movie that most people can find something to relate to in.

Administrative cost is certainly part of it. That’s not just higher salaries, but the size of administrations as more positions are added to fill different roles. But honestly that’s not even the biggest factor, especially for these small to mid size private schools that are on the chopping block. Those administrators aren’t making millions.

The biggest factor as another commenter already pointed out is the elimination or reduction of state support, shifting the burden to the student. You may ask how this applies to private schools. True, they have never received operational support like public universities. But they have historically received state funded research grants, tax exemptions, subsidies, land, etc., not to mention the students who receive government funded tuition grants. All of that government support has been reduced or eliminated over the years, and the burden has shifted to the student.

Another huge factor is the fact that there is no bankruptcy for student loans. This means lenders have no problem lending ridiculous amounts of money to kids who can’t even legally buy a beer. When there’s no limit to how much can be borrowed, it incentivizes schools to raise the cost simply because they can.

A huge factor that isn’t discussed openly very often is the fact that higher tuition allows schools to shape their student body the way they want. They can offer assistance to the students they want most that way and weed out unremarkable ones. They can attract some of the best and brightest, and the rest of the students are basically footing the bill for them.

Another big factor is the campus expansion and renovation projects that are constantly happening to attract students. The infamous “lazy river” projects and other luxuries designed to attract students so they can compete with other schools but drive up the price tag. State of the art stadiums, gyms, dining, maker spaces, etc. all costs money. The amenities that are standard today would never have been dreamed of 25 years ago.

Anyway, these are some of the ones off the top of my head. I know there’s more. Yes administrative cost is part of it, and yes you should be mad that the tuition is so out of control, but to boil it down to greedy administrators doesn’t really capture the majority of the problem.

I don’t disagree, but the article isn’t talking about for-profit universities. Private and for-profit are not the same thing (though it doesn’t go out of its way to point out the difference). Most private universities in the US are nonprofit. From the article:

There are about 3,700 two- and four-year public and private degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. That’s already down from a peak of 4,726 in 2012. Almost all that have closed since then were private, for-profit schools, which enjoyed a brief boom before crashing under the weight of consumer discontent and increased regulation.

Many converging reasons explain why private, nonprofit colleges and universities, too, are now under existential strain.

None of that changes the fact that tuition is so absurdly out of control that it certainly feels like a scam. There are a ton of reasons for these rising costs. But for most schools, profit actually isn’t the reason.

I think that given human nature, there will certainly be some providers who overly rely on it. There are already therapists and other professionals who cut corners where they shouldn’t in a variety of ways. Probably the most common example of this is when therapists write bare-bones notes with practically no useful information to bridge one session to the next. That’s been happening since documentation was a legal requirement.

However, as always, any serious professional is going to take the time to do it right. They will understand how to use a tool effectively while keeping their skills sharp. In my field, with this tool, that would mean every note is read and edited so that it is truly useful. For example, editing the content of the note so that it can be interpreted through the therapist’s theoretical orientation.

I would hope that training programs and continuing education providers emphasize that any note they sign, including one generated by AI, is one that they are still legally responsible for. So it behooves them to always read it thoroughly and check it for accuracy.

With any new tool, certain skills will diminish but new skills will be developed. So writing skills may suffer, but good therapists will be good at editing and using effective prompts to get a good note.

Also, for what it’s worth, documentation skills and intervention skills are very different. I have known a few excellent therapists who were absolute shit at documenting. These therapists tend to be so naturally gifted and intuitive that they don’t need to document very well to be effective. And many therapists write very good notes but are mediocre at the actual therapy. So, at least for now, I tend to see the potential pros as outweighing the potential cons. That could change though!

I understand those concerns and I think there’s validity. But there’s also enormous potential for benefit.

I know of several therapists who are very good at being present with a client but terrible at documentation. And if one of these has a busy day or two it is easy to get behind. By the time they get around to writing the note the details are very fuzzy. Human memory is notoriously unreliable. A therapist I respect has said that if you’re writing a note 24 hours or more after the session, you’re probably writing fiction. A tool like this has the potential to greatly help the documentation process. But I agree that it should never become a replacement. I thoroughly read all my notes and often make edits to make them more relevant to me.

An attorney I know who specializes in representing therapists and regularly conducts legal and ethics trainings has also said that from a legal standpoint, when comparing human to AI generated notes, the AI notes are usually superior. They contain details like quotes and they automatically include all the stuff that matters for legal or insurance requirements. This attorney is VERY risk averse and honestly I thought she would have been against this, expecting horror stories like artifacts. Her opinion was a factor in me trying it out.

Again, I stress that this is a tool and not a replacement. When I read through a note, I am considering the things my clients said and my interventions to see if it matches up. It’s not perfect but it is very good and I’ve regularly been surprised with how helpful it can be.

I can’t know for certain, as I’m not on the product side of things. But I do know that HIPAA standards are very rigorous and if it were discovered that they were intentionally misleading therapists and clients then it would invite a class action lawsuit that would be insanely large.

I do ask for and document my clients’ consent, though, so if anyone is not comfortable with it that’s fine. I just write the note the old fashioned way. Most are fine but a few have said they don’t want to and it’s not a big deal.

Yes basically, but since it is HIPAA compliant the recording is automatically destroyed when the note is saved. Also no protected recordings are used to teach the AI. The therapist can also choose from a number of different case note formats that might focus on different things

I’m a therapist. I use HIPAA compliant AI to generate my (editable) case notes for my sessions now. Not only is it a huge time saver to simply edit a generated note as opposed to making one from scratch, but in many cases it takes more detailed notes, including quotes from clients.

I have heard of other therapists and medical doctors also using AI to help with diagnosing.

The danger is when therapistsdon’t review the content to check for accuracy. Because occasionally it will generate something not really reflective of what the therapist might have been doing, or it might lack detail that the therapist might have otherwise inclused. But more often the stuff it comes up with is surprisingly accurate.And editing is even easier when you can just tell the AI something like, “include more details about how the client noticed their pattern of putting their own feelings last,” and it just does what you asked. You don’t necessarily have to edit manually, though you can.

There have been many organized protests against Trump since he took office. I’m not sure how much press they’ve received outside the US. Though many still support him because they are indoctrinated into the MAGA cult, I would say that most (over half) of Americans are against the war for a variety of reasons.

The problem is that there is not much we can do in the short term to create change. Our system of government does not have an effective means to recall a leader.

The threat of legal action does little to deter this administration. For one thing, it’s slow. For another, they’ve shown that they can and will ignore court orders and this far don’t suffer any consequences. Finally, the administration has done as much as possible to install loyalists and remove honest people in every part of government, including the legal system.

Impeachment is a joke. Even if the process was started again, Republicans in the Senate would never convict one of their own.

So the average citizen doesn’t approve of what is happening but don’t see any effective means to change. It’s a very helpless feeling. Many disgruntled communities have been able to create some change in their local government but even changing political parties is not real change. We still have 2 right wing parties bought by special interests. I think many of us just try to do good where we can in our own sphere of influence.

Is this epic fury?

Fellow Eagle Scout here. I’m so glad my son dropped out last year so he doesn’t have to deal with this bullshit. It’s so embarrassing to see them cave on their principles when tested

Actually they kept girls in. What they caved on was they removed a merit badge that was specifically created in the wake of BLM to teach Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. They are now going to have a military service merit badge.

It’s still bad, just not the specific kind of bad you were thinking.

Depression is a label used to describe a combination of symptoms, but the cause of this combination can differ from person to person. That’s why in some cases meds and exercise might not help. Unfortunately there’s just still a lot we don’t know about the different causes.

I hear this a lot, and part of me understands the sentiment. But it’s important to keep in mind that these are state level politicians, not national. Representing their districts is a part time job. Most of them have jobs like attorney, doctor, business owner employing other people, etc. To stay absent would mean not only leaving these responsibilities, but it’s also leaving their spouses and kids. On top of that the state government started imposing $500/day fines. Then they sued and froze the accounts of Beto O’Rourke’s fundraiser to help them meet their expenses (that was just overturned by a judge this afternoon).

When it became clear that other states were willing to redraw their maps to cancel out Texas’s naked power grab, it changed the calculus. They achieved the objective of drawing attention to the issue and they got other states to commit to action so that even if Texas redraws the map, it won’t matter on a national level. They’ve already paid significant personal cost. How much should they be expected to pay? Should their families/clients/patients/employees also suffer?

I don’t know that there’s a right answer. Maybe this is the sort of tough call that defines real rebellions from performative ones. I do think that it’s easy to criticize from a distance because for most of us the principles and ideas are abstract. But for them the costs are already being felt in concrete ways.