Private equity firms have been buying veterinary offices at an increased rate since 2020 and jacking up rates, especially in high COL areas so I’m not surprised. My dog needed a tooth extracted at the end of last year and the cost was just under $1000. I understand there are highly trained individuals working there that need to be paid appropriately but I wonder what the cost for me to have one tooth extracted would be?

I just read your last paragraph and the recent comment and I agree there’s room for discussion in a lot of areas but people retreat to their tried and true positions because it’s comfortable and safe to think like everyone else around them. I wish you luck on your journey, self reflection and growth from a strong religious upbringing/society isn’t easy. I was raised Catholic but thankfully my parents and Catholic School weren’t the hardcore evangelical types so I was able to make my own mental/religious path pretty early in life.

I’ll be honest, I had to read your comments a couple of times to get the crux of what you were getting at. It’s tough trying to translate our depthless thoughts to a quick comment on a website so a lot of times I don’t comment. Or, if I do, I preface it by stating that I agree with the problem/issue, then I state my case/thought and then reiterate that agree again at the end because it doesn’t matter if it’s Lemmy, Reddit, or some other part of the internet, people read quick and then type something to get a response or make themselves feel better, unfortunately most people aren’t looking for a discussion. And, a lot of time the best discussions come from situations like this where a couple of back and forth comments gets to the real point.

Also good point on dictionary definitions and the use of literally.

To your point, I think it’s acceptable to call selling your body in a variety of ways prostitution. South Park has an episode from an early season about Kenny, Johnny Knoxville, and Tom Green doing gross stuff for money, in the episode Jesus calls the boys out for helping to make Kenny a prostitute. All that doesn’t change the dictionary definition of prostitution which is what the capuchin was participating in. From the Wikipedia article called “Prostitution”: Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of “sexual activity” varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penetrative sex, manual sex, oral sex, etc.) with the customer.

The capuchin engaged in sexual activity for payment, call it what you want but that pretty much the dictionary definition of prostitution. It’s not a moral or god question it’s semantics.

The Brits still use stone as unit of measurement for weight. I get bashing us here in the US for not using metric but at least we’re rigid in our stupid system. The Brits seem to be a certain kind of special when it comes to units of measurement, using whatever system they feel like depending on the circumstance.

I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

If you like Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello did a solo project called The Nightwatchman that had a lot of great protest songs. I think it’s closer to 15 years old, so not the last 10.

It’s really funny when they whine about outside money. I didn’t see the GOP up in arms as Citizens United passed, I don’t see them upset when they SuperPACs give money to their campaigns so it seems they only care when it affects them, big fucking shocker there….

I believe you’re thinking of phonetically, or spelling it how you hear it.

In your endo.

-The Todd

Yeah, this thought is someone trying to compare apples to oranges.

Then there’s the throw away comment of how you barely know anyone there, that’s a personal thing. I work for a small company now but I used to work for a hospital with over 2,000 employees, I didn’t know most of them but I knew the 100 or so people I interacted with pretty well and did things outside of work with many of them on more than one occasion.