#elish

[irene-5]

[pookieislife]

Two mothers

[firosart]

The Compleation of Atraxa

[lemonfodrizzleart]

Commission of @elishevart 's lovely dragon family <3

[crimsonfluidessence]

Prompt 13: Check

When Esredes stepped out of a building into the street, often times, he looked all around. He looked down and up the street as he walked down it. Nothing was there, but he often felt something, nonetheless. And it was hard to shake the feeling. For all Esredes knew, someone was always watching him. He knew he was on the Inquisition's Watchlist. He knew Inquisitors regularly appeared and stalked him. Alvere had done it, that hulking monster had done it, the imposter who bedded that one probably had too, there was that silver one who stepped out from nowhere and asked him to spy on a previous workplace, there was the Hyur one who tried to prove his pardon was fake, and those were just the ones he knew about.

It made walking around Ishgard a very peculiar experience. Some days, Esredes felt like Ishgard was the safest of the city-states, simply not the safest for him. Other days he could walk around normally, simply keeping in mind someone could be watching. And some days the feeling was more persistent. Yet no matter how much Esredes looked around corners, or stopped in alleyways hoping to lure someone out, no one came. Where were they hiding?

Even if he could find them, even if he could ask, Esredes knew the answer already. He was a threat, a monster, a predator, something that couldn't go unwatched in his cage. They were waiting, waiting for him to make a misstep, waiting for him to give them the perfect opportunity to drag him into that dark building and ensure he never came out. They wanted to topple him and destroy his people, then move on to everyone else for dessert.

Alvere never did apologize for stalking him either. Alvere didn't apologize for a lot, really, but that was fine. Esredes watched the man put himself through agony a lot, the most recent of which being watching him suffer to an allergic reaction, and in that he took penance. The hulking monster was nowhere to be seen, and he'd discovered that imposter inquisitor and exposed her, so she was no longer a threat. But he'd no idea what happened to the silver one, and he knew there were far more who could be assigned to watch him, or did it of their own volition. They wanted him out. They wanted him gone. They wanted all he worked for destroyed. And they were pursuit predators who, besides Alvere, couldn't be reasoned with. Whose heads should be lobbed from their bodies if this city really wanted to be safer, the disease-spreading rodents.

Esredes would be lying if he said he didn't have small bouts of shortness of breath sometimes, a faint hint of nausea, or wanted to scream to leave him alone and stop staring. But besides call upon one of the inquisitors he befriended to shadow him again willingly when he felt unsafe, what could he do about it, really? Nothing. And he hated it. He needed a name and a face to report them to his team, and without that, he could do nothing. For as much as he hated it, he was resigned to assuming he was always being watched. It would be embarrassing to be caught that way and laid low after all this time, and he could do better than that.

[idkmybffjillyy]

how i thought i would feel walking out of the theater:

how i actually felt:

[pi3qqck1kqj]

Nicki twerking red Petite Beauty with THICK Booty grinds till Orgasm Gulosa gostosa Tetona joven enviando video a novio filtrado Deluxe hot Asian slut getting fucked in a hot way Nipp castigation sure spices up the sex adventures for all gorda tetona que no se cansa de mamar la muy puta Ebony ass cheeks hanging out Straight gay man gets hard during physical xxx Dungeon tormentor with Busty milf tit fucking

[oqb5kehaci]

BLACK BBW GIGANTIC TITS ON WEBCAM Hot flexible babe rides hard penis on a camping voyage Tamaki Kotatsu FireForce 3D Hentai 4/6 Fishnet Blindfold Strip Brunette POV Lap Dance and Ride Body Rolls Gozando pela terceira vez hoje Hot teen first porn and extreme voyeur Fresh teenager labia like the Teen ass fucking with huge dildo my real german step sister with big tits likes when i fuck her pussy Aletta Ocean teasing with her massive knockers Open latin gay ass self and teen boys hole first time This young

[shakawat-opu]

One day in mawa ferry ghat #photographeropu #mobilephotography #elish (at Mawa Ferry Ghat) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg7L6QOJ9SX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[her-favorite]

SNOWY DAY; B. EILISH

BILLIE EILISH X F!READER

WARNINGS: none! - unrelated but i was listening to christmas music (and billie’s new cover of ‘have yourself a merry little christmas on snl) and omg i love the christmas season sm i wanna cry

WC: 2136! - short but sweet! (this definitely isn’t my best work but i decided to make this at 1 am bc i need more billie stuff)

A/N: something cute for all my billie girls 🤭 i thought it was fitting since i’m in a christmas mood and i wanted to get something done bc my girls bday is today!! - and i’m so sorry to everyone that sent a billie request a few months back! i’ve read them all and they’re all in my drafts, but (as usual) my motivation is always rocky 😭 (if any of you are still here lmao), i thank you all for being so patient with me! <3

SUMMARY: A perfect snowy day with Billie <3

-

The fresh smell of the cold air wafted into the house through the cracked window. She shifted slightly in your hold as the cold breeze skimmed against her bare arms. Her nose tickled your neck as she dug her head into your warmth.

The faint ring of the wind flying outside was quiet in your ear, but it soothed you subconsciously. Your hand smoothed over your girlfriend’s hair, twirling the colored strands between your fingers. You were still getting used to the somewhat new color on her, but you loved it just as much as the others. The red on her roots brought out her light skin and her bright eyes, in contrast with the black ends of the strands.

Her eyes were closed as she rested against you, her chest rising and falling evenly. Her arms sat against you loosely, limp from her slumber. Her eyelashes were long and beautiful, pink lips perfectly plump and just barely chapped from the cold wind wafting in and the stuffy air inside the tiny house. She was truly a sight to behold.

A soft groan broke you out of your daze as you felt another shift on top of you. Your hand never stopped brushing through her silky hair as hers moved down your side to rest on your stomach. “Morning,” she whispered into your skin, her voice raspy from just waking up.

“G’morning, baby.” You smile, your eyes never leaving her face. Finally, she opened her eyes, those beautiful blue irises looking into yours. They always hypnotized you, putting you into a lovesick trance.

“Whats got you so happy?” Despite her teasing attitude, a smile grew on her lips. Billie’s finger poked your side lightly, making you jump and for her to giggle in response. “S’cold.” She grumbles and lies her head back onto your shoulder.

“Was just watching you,” you whisper, not paying too much attention to your words as your finger gently moves a short strand of hair that fell in front of her face. Your opposite hand searches the empty space before landing on her back and under her shirt, gently rubbing up and down, quickly soothing her into a relaxed state again.

“I don’t have to do anything today.” Billie mumbles. A smile spreads across your face at her words. Despite already knowing her schedule, your squeeze her tighter against you and lean down slightly to press a kiss to her bright roots. You turn your head to look at the small table next to her bed, reaching over to grab your phone and look at the time. 10:47 am.

“We should probably get up, Bil.” The unwanted words leave your mouth in a whisper, still moving your palm against her back softly.

She quickly protested, grumbling against your skin, vibrating it slightly. “No, mama, c’mon.” Her hold grew tighter against you, purposely locking herself on you. A quiet laugh left your lips at her action, wrapping your arms around her shoulders and letting her cuddle into you.

“Fine.. only a couple more minutes.” The smile on her face was worth the next hour you hadn’t allowed.

-

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

A loud clanking sound echoed from the kitchen, immediately catching your attention. You quickly make your way into the room as you watch Billie shake her hand in pain and an irritated moan leave her mouth.

“Oh my god! Billie, are you okay?” You rush over to her and hold her wrist gently, inspecting the light red blush covering her pale hand. “Why the hell did you take the pan out without any gloves?” You scold her, watching the way she pouts out her lips.

“I couldn’t find any,” she whines. “I didn’t feel like looking for them.” She looks over at you, giving you those perfect puppy dog eyes, immediately making your heart speed up and your playful anger dissolve in seconds.

“Just call me next time, ‘kay?” You give her a look before she nods dramatically in response.

“C’mon, the cookies are gonna get cold!” Billie walks back over to the counter once you let go of her hand, her eyes wandering over the dozen of cookies on the pan. “Get the frosting, babe.” You stay put as you watch her, waiting for her to take notice. Once she realizes you haven’t moved, she looks up and rolls her eyes. “Pleeeease.”

You laugh at her attitude and turn to grab the frosting that you had made with your family’s recipe. Now, with a towel that you had made sure she used, Billie picked up the pan and made her way into the living room with you following behind, carrying a bowl full of frosting. She sat on the floor and placed the metal on the small wooden table, quickly reaching over to grab the remote that was stuck between the cushions on the couch.

Shark’s ears perked up at the footsteps, his paws hitting against the wooden floor as he walks over to you both. As Billie switches the TV on, Shark lies down beside you, resting his head on your lap. As you scratch his head softly, quiet snores invade the small room, making you both giggle.

The sound of a piano being played resonates through the area. You quickly recognize the song as you look up, watching the intro on the television play. As Michael and Dwight struggle to bring in a Christmas tree through the door to the office, you look over at Billie as she grabs a cookie and scoots closer to you. You join her as you scoop up some frosting on your butter knife and lather it on the cookie, decorating it with festive colors.

Placing it back down on the tray, you reach over to grab another cookie until something else catches your eye. “Billie! It’s snowing!” You point forward, the white snowflakes flying past the window. She gasps and sits up, setting down her inappropriately decorated cookie and rushing over to the window. You gently move Shark off your lap - not without an annoyed grumble from the dog - and follow her, watching the snow stick to the ground. You feel fingers being laced through yours, a smile on your lips as you squeeze her hand in response.

You both watch the snow for a little bit as it begins to pack, the weather growing heavier. After a couple of minutes, you guys move back towards the table, instead taking a seat on the couch and bringing the table closer to you both. As everyone in The Office exchange gifts during Secret Santa.. or White Elephant, you eventually finish decorating.

As the light outside grows dim, the soft lights on the Christmas tree in the corner of the room seem to grow brighter.

“Baby,” her voice makes you look away from the lights, noticing the cookie in her hand and the cute smile on her face. “Open your mouth,” a laugh escapes your lips as you follow her orders. She moves the cookie forward and rests part of it on your teeth before placing the other half in her mouth. You both try to stifle giggles as you share the cookie, your hand moving under your mouths to pick up the crumbs that fell, though you were sure most of them made their way onto the couch underneath you both.

Billie’s hands reached forward and rested on your cheeks, trying to hold you still, despite her laughing state. Finally, when you both finish the cookie, she leans forward with a smile, pressing her lips against yours. The remnant of the sweet taste of the cookie resides on her, and it only fuels your love for her kiss more.

Not caring about the crumbs anymore, you let them fall from your palms as you reach up to hold your face as well. When you pull away to gather air, you keep your foreheads together. She tucks your hair behind your ear, swiping her thumb over your cheek and resting her soft palm against the side of your face.

“You’re so pretty, mama.” Billie’s voice was a whisper, but it sounded as clear as day in your ear. It must’ve been the millionth time that day you had smiled because of her, but you wouldn’t have had it any other way. You lean forward and kiss her gently, the same taste of the sugary cookie resurfacing.

“That’s all you, baby.” You whisper back with a smile.

-

The only light in the house were the string on the Christmas tree. It was still a few days before the holiday, but you both sat by the tree, inspecting the wrapped presents underneath. The small skirt underneath captured all the ornaments that had fallen and the little strands from the garland.

Your eyes rake over the tree, stopping on an ornament in the middle. A picture of you and Billie was inside of it, a sweet gift from her parents that they had made you both. The date was on the back of the ornament, written in a worn out sharpie. It had been snowing hard that day, piling up outside and onto roofs and cars. You and Billie were outside at her parents house, celebrating the holiday with her family. You two had been making snow angels, sporting heavy coats and boots. You both supported a bright smile as your heads were turned to look at each other. Billie’s nose was red from the cold, as were her cheeks.

Maggie had been the one to capture the moment, quickly snapping a picture before you both had gotten up. She kept it hidden until Christmas morning, gifting it to you two with a sweet smile on her face. Since then, you both had been excited to put it on your christmas tree.

“Open it.” A box was presented in front of you, Billie’s voice, once again, coaxing you out of your daze. The grin on her face was breathtaking, the action alone able to convince you.

“Bil, there’s only a few days until Christmas.” You laugh at her stubbornness, picking up the present and putting it up to your ear as you playfully shake it.

“Hey! Careful, sweetheart.” She cautions with a smile. “I know,” she drags out the word, tilting her head slightly. “But I wanna give this to you now.” Her voice was smooth, silky almost. It entranced you so much that you hadn’t even thought of questioning her. You knew better than to keep doing so anyway.

You give her a playful look before beginning to unwrap the gift. It was a smaller box, the size of your hand more or less. Tearing off the wrapping paper, you spare a glance up at your girlfriend, before opening the box. You reach in and pull out a heart shaped necklace.

“Open it,” she repeats, her voice soft. You follow her words, noticing the split in the middle. You click open the necklace and look at either side of the locket. A picture of you was on the left side, looking over to the right, locking eyes with a picture of Billie. The smile on your face grew wider at the present, a hand reaching up to press against your lips.

“Billie,” your voice came out quiet, your admiration and love for her and the gift seeping through your tone. Your gaze moves up to look at her, noticing the way she anxiously bites at her perfect lips. “Billie,” you repeat, speechless. You let out a quiet, soft laugh, not being able to find anything to say. You gently set the necklace back into the packaging, moving closer to her and wrapping your arms around her shoulders, bringing her as close to you as possible. She giggles and moves her hands under your thighs, shifting them over her lap, making you straddle her. “I love it, I love you.” You gush, your cheeks starting to hurt from how much you were smiling.

“I love you more, baby.” Billie smiles just as wide, leaning up and pressing her lips on yours before you could rebuttal. When she pulls away, she keeps you close while she reaches around you to grab the necklace. Her fingers click the clasp together behind your neck, letting the locket rest against your chest. Her soft hands move down your skin, opening the middle and looking between the pictures inside. She smiles and leans forward, kissing your picture before pecking your collarbone, the base of your neck, your jaw, chin, and finally, your lips.

As the night grew even darker, the light you both drew out of each other lit brighter. Ending the night just how it started, you held her tightly as you both watched the snow fall outside and the cool air flow in through the cracked window.

A perfect snowy day.

[redz0nez9]

Matt Sturniolo pt 15.. SOMEONE NEEDS TO EDIT HIM TO ILOMILO BY BILLIE ELISH!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cigna’s nopeinator

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THURSDAY (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Cigna – like all private health insurers – has two contradictory imperatives:

To keep its customers healthy; and

To make as much money for its shareholders as is possible.

Now, there's a hypothetical way to resolve these contradictions, a story much beloved by advocates of America's wasteful, cruel, inefficient private health industry: "If health is a "market," then a health insurer that fails to keep its customers healthy will lose those customers and thus make less for its shareholders." In this thought-experiment, Cigna will "find an equilibrium" between spending money to keep its customers healthy, thus retaining their business, and also "seeking efficiencies" to create a standard of care that's cost-effective.

But health care isn't a market. Most of us get our health-care through our employers, who offer small handful of options that nevertheless manage to be so complex in their particulars that they're impossible to directly compare, and somehow all end up not covering the things we need them for. Oh, and you can only change insurers once or twice per year, and doing so incurs savage switching costs, like losing access to your family doctor and specialists providers.

Cigna – like other health insurers – is "too big to care." It doesn't have to worry about losing your business, so it grows progressively less interested in even pretending to keep you healthy.

The most important way for an insurer to protect its profits at the expense of your health is to deny care that your doctor believes you need. Cigna has transformed itself into a care-denying assembly line.

Dr Debby Day is a Cigna whistleblower. Dr Day was a Cigna medical director, charged with reviewing denied cases, a job she held for 20 years. In 2022, she was forced out by Cigna. Writing for Propublica and The Capitol Forum, Patrick Rucker and David Armstrong tell her story, revealing the true "equilibrium" that Cigna has found:

https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-medical-director-doctor-patient-preapproval-denials-insurance

Dr Day took her job seriously. Early in her career, she discovered a pattern of claims from doctors for an expensive therapy called intravenous immunoglobulin in cases where this made no medical sense. Dr Day reviewed the scientific literature on IVIG and developed a Cigna-wide policy for its use that saved the company millions of dollars.

This is how it's supposed to work: insurers (whether private or public) should permit all the medically necessary interventions and deny interventions that aren't supported by evidence, and they should determine the difference through internal reviewers who are treated as independent experts.

But as the competitive landscape for US healthcare dwindled – and as Cigna bought out more parts of its supply chain and merged with more of its major rivals – the company became uniquely focused on denying claims, irrespective of their medical merit.

In Dr Day's story, the turning point came when Cinga outsourced pre-approvals to registered nurses in the Philippines. Legally, a nurse can approve a claim, but only an MD can deny a claim. So Dr Day and her colleagues would have to sign off when a nurse deemed a procedure, therapy or drug to be medically unnecessary.

This is a complex determination to make, even under ideal circumstances, but Cigna's Filipino outsource partners were far from ideal. Dr Day found that nurses were "sloppy" – they'd confuse a mother with her newborn baby and deny care on that grounds, or confuse an injured hip with an injured neck and deny permission for an ultrasound. Dr Day reviewed a claim for a test that was denied because STI tests weren't "medically necessary" – but the patient's doctor had applied for a test to diagnose a toenail fungus, not an STI.

Even if the nurses' evaluations had been careful, Dr Day wanted to conduct her own, thorough investigation before overriding another doctor's judgment about the care that doctor's patient warranted. When a nurse recommended denying care "for a cancer patient or a sick baby," Dr Day would research medical guidelines, read studies and review the patient's record before signing off on the recommendation.

This was how the claims denial process is said to work, but it's not how it was supposed to work. Dr Day was markedly slower than her peers, who would "click and close" claims by pasting the nurses' own rationale for denying the claim into the relevant form, acting as a rubber-stamp rather than a skilled reviewer.

Dr Day knew she was slower than her peers. Cigna made sure of that, producing a "productivity dashboard" that scored doctors based on "handle time," which Cigna describes as the average time its doctors spend on different kinds of claims. But Dr Day and other Cigna sources say that this was a maximum, not an average – a way of disciplining doctors.

These were not long times. If a doctor asked Cigna not to discharge their patient from hospital care and a nurse denied that claim, the doctor reviewing that claim was supposed to spend not more than 4.5 minutes on their review. Other timelines were even more aggressive: many denials of prescription drugs were meant to be resolved in fewer than two minutes.

Cigna told Propublica and The Capitol Forum that its productivity scores weren't based on a simple calculation about whether its MD reviewers were hitting these brutal processing time targets, describing the scores as a proprietary mix of factors that reflected a nuanced view of care. But when Propublica and The Capitol Forum created a crude algorithm to generate scores by comparing a doctor's performance relative to the company's targets, they found the results fit very neatly into the actual scores that Cigna assigned to its docs:

The newsrooms’ formula accurately reproduced the scores of 87% of the Cigna doctors listed; the scores of all but one of the rest fell within 1 to 2 percentage points of the number generated by this formula. When asked about this formula, Cigna said it may be inaccurate but didn’t elaborate.

As Dr Day slipped lower on the productivity chart, her bosses pressured her bring her score up (Day recorded her phone calls and saved her emails, and the reporters verified them). Among other things, Dr Day's boss made it clear that her annual bonus and stock options were contingent on her making quota.

Cigna denies all of this. They smeared Dr Day as a "disgruntled former employee" (as though that has any bearing on the truthfulness of her account), and declined to explain the discrepancies between Dr Day's accusations and Cigna's bland denials.

This isn't new for Cigna. Last year, Propublica and Capitol Forum revealed the existence of an algorithmic claims denial system that allowed its doctors to bulk-deny claims in as little as 1.2 seconds:

https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims

Cigna insisted that this was a mischaracterization, saying the system existed to speed up the approval of claims, despite the first-hand accounts of Cigna's own doctors and the doctors whose care recommendations were blocked by the system. One Cigna doctor used this system to "review" and deny 60,000 claims in one month.

Beyond serving as an indictment of the US for-profit health industry, and of Cigna's business practices, this is also a cautionary tale about the idea that critical AI applications can be resolved with "humans in the loop."

AI pitchmen claim that even unreliable AI can be fixed by adding a "human in the loop" that reviews the AI's judgments:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

In this world, the AI is an assistant to the human. For example, a radiologist might have an AI double-check their assessments of chest X-rays, and revisit those X-rays where the AI's assessment didn't match their own. This robot-assisted-human configuration is called a "centaur."

In reality, "human in the loop" is almost always a reverse-centaur. If the hospital buys an AI, fires half its radiologists and orders the remainder to review the AI's superhuman assessments of chest X-rays, that's not an AI assisted radiologist, that's a radiologist-assisted AI. Accuracy goes down, but so do costs. That's the bet that AI investors are making.

Many AI applications turn out not to even be "AI" – they're just low-waged workers in an overseas call-center pretending to be an algorithm (some Indian techies joke that AI stands for "absent Indians"). That was the case with Amazon's Grab and Go stores where, supposedly, AI-enabled cameras counted up all the things you put in your shopping basket and automatically billed you for them. In reality, the cameras were connected to Indian call-centers where low-waged workers made those assessments:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

This Potemkin AI represents an intermediate step between outsourcing and AI. Over the past three decades, the growth of cheap telecommunications and logistics systems let corporations outsource customer service to low-waged offshore workers. The corporations used the excuse that these subcontractors were far from the firm and its customers to deny them any agency, giving them rigid scripts and procedures to follow.

This was a very usefully dysfunctional system. As a customer with a complaint, you would call the customer service line, wait for a long time on hold, spend an interminable time working through a proscribed claims-handling process with a rep who was prohibited from diverging from that process. That process nearly always ended with you being told that nothing could be done.

At that point, a large number of customers would have given up on getting a refund, exchange or credit. The money paid out to the few customers who were stubborn or angry enough to karen their way to a supervisor and get something out of the company amounted to pennies, relative to the sums the company reaped by ripping off the rest.

The Amazon Grab and Go workers were humans in robot suits, but these customer service reps were robots in human suits. The software told them what to say, and they said it, and all they were allowed to say was what appeared on their screens. They were reverse centaurs, serving as the human faces of the intransigent robots programmed by monopolists that were too big to care.

AI is the final stage of this progression: robots without the human suits. The AI turns its "human in the loop" into a "moral crumple zone," which Madeleine Clare Elish describes as "a component that bears the brunt of the moral and legal responsibilities when the overall system malfunctions":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

The Filipino nurses in the Cigna system are an avoidable expense. As Cigna's own dabbling in algorithmic claim-denial shows, they can be jettisoned in favor of a system that uses productivity dashboards and other bossware to push doctors to robosign hundreds or thousands of denials per day, on the pretense that these denials were "reviewed" by a licensed physician.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

[sheidoesart]

“You were never on our side”

I was inspired by @blitzy-blitzwing work!

As well as the music “No time to die” by Billie Eilish which I found this suiting for the two .

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Though popular music has existed since before recorded history, post-emo-alt-pop was invented by the Babylonians as chronicled in their epic, the "Enuma Eilish."

[sosexycelebs]

[tokyicons]

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