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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • You’re on the bus, in a seat, but if the bus driver finishes the day and left his hat behind, his hat is in the bus on a seat. Active/private/static vs passive/public/transitory. You’re generally in buildings but on vehicles, unless that vehicle is both private and enclosed. It’s not much more complicated than in[side] vs on [top of]; just keep in mind that it’s predicated on whether or not the encapsulatory nature of the object is necessary to its identity. For instance, you could also ride on a flat parade float without walls or roof, and putting a box on it to make it a bus doesn’t change that, so it remains ‘on’.















  • People like that, who almost universally profess Christian faith, should be attentive to the words of the early Church fathers on the intrinsically corrupting nature of wealth:

    “The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally.”
    — John Chrysostom

    “You are not making a gift of your possession to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his.”
    — Ambrose of Milan

    “The property of the wealthy holds them in chains […] which shackle their courage and choke their faith and hamper their judgment and throttle their souls. They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”
    —Cyprian

    And for a direct Bible passage, it’s hard to be more succinct than James.