Jeebus! CashApp charges 2.50% to buy #Bitcoin (on the relatively small amount I am trying to convert from cash). They want their cut, they use a spread, in addition to a fee.

Puts me right off.

starting a 3 day water fast tomorrow to honor president's day

On Lincoln

----------------

Lincoln wasn't a good president. He wasn't even a mediocre president. He was a terrible president. He suspended individual rights. He massively expanded the government through money printing. He led millions of people to their deaths. All for power.

What we learn in school is that he was the great emancipator, ending slavery and winning a war that had to be won. That he was some man of genius and virtue, thrust upon the national stage at the right time to progress history.

Such is the result of the history being written by the winners. Similar hagiographies have been written about FDR and even Woodrow Wilson. But like the news, much of history is spun to manipulate us. Most of conventional history is fake and even a cursory study of what actually happened is enough to make you question how virtuous they were, and why they made the decisions they did. Almost always, you find that they were opportunistic cowards that did what would cost them least, even at the expense of the people they affected.

History is a tricky topic because the counterfactuals are always very speculative. But what we can judge is the values played out in actions taken, and in that sense, Lincoln was pretty terrible. He suspended habeas corpus, he cheated in border state elections to keep them in the union, and he massively, massively expanded the scope, power and size of government through inflationary theft.

It's hard to imagine what things were like before Lincoln, because before him, was a string of single-term Jacksonian, hard-money Democrat presidents. This was back when liberal meant being for personal liberty and that era of government before 1860 was insanely small, about 2% of the GDP. He would oversee an unprecedented expansion which would take the government to 20%.

Much of it, was, of course, because of the Civil War, and the popular narrative is that he needed to wage that war to end slavery. And yes, the issue was a major one in that era, but the elimination of slavery was more of a lucky by-product than an aim. His main goal, as he stated over and over again and as acted out in his policies, was to preserve the union, not to end slavery.

In preserving the union, he destroyed the idea that states had the right of secession, he weakened the idea of natural rights and he stole through inflation and sent many to their deaths. The centralizing of the federal government, the behemoth that we live with today began during his heyday.

The main thing that preserved his legacy was his assassination. Had a couple of battles gone the wrong way in 1863 and 1864, he wouldn't have been re-elected and he would have disappeared into the annals of history as a political amateur that lucked into the presidency in 1860 and screwed things up for 4 years. Instead, he was re-elected, assassinated and the horrific legacy of reconstruction was blamed on others. In short, he died at the right time.

There are those, of course, that will argue that Lincoln would have done things differently, and that he would have been more merciful to the south and rebuilt things as to spare them the suffering. But that's inconsistent with everything he did. Like most politicians he was a power grabber and he did what was politically expedient and not what was virtuous or right. He suspended habeas corpus (needing a reason to arrest and detain people)! He made generals do what would make him look good so he would get elected, not what would save the most lives or win the war the quickest. He created the greenback, which was a form of money printing to finance the war. And he spent an insane sum of other peoples' money through implicit and explicit taxes to "preserve the union."

Ending slavery, of course, was a big deal and in the annals of history, it's a dark mark in the history of the US that the institution survived so long. And yes, the Civil War did end it, but that wasn't the objective of the war itself.

Being Republican, he had a large Radical wing that he had to deal with and they wanted abolition, and later full voting rights for blacks. Because the south had seceded, they had the votes to pass the constitutional amendments, though only toward the end of the war when it was clear the north would win. That was a political expediency that ended up defining his legacy. But really, it's his biographers and historians of the winning side that have spun him to be a hero, when he was anything but.

The big flaw of Lincoln is that he created an unnecessary war that cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, one that set back the US by decades. Letting the south secede and revoking the Fugitive Slave Act would have ended the institution just as well, for much less cost. And this isn't idle speculation. Brazil had the second largest slave population in the 19th century that was whittled down quickly because the slaves had northern provinces where they could escape. The price of slaves dropped dramatically and soon, the institution itself was destroyed through economic means, not martial ones.

What's worse about Lincoln's legacy is that he set a precedent for federal power that brought forth the progressive era and eventually to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The centralization of federal power began with him.

Lincoln wasn't a good president. But the history is written by the winners and they have made a secular saint out of him.

Thank you to everybody who bought coffee from me this week. It put an unexpected boost in my bugdet & my mood. I never really "try" to sell around here for probably 20 different reasons... so it just feels extra special. And I just really, deeply appreciate it. 🫂 I hope to get some feedback from you all... I'm always open to criticism or compliments 😅

I like my life

The Nostr mail would be so damn awesome if you could set a minimum sat threshold to recieve messages from people that are not in your contact list. An email contact list would need to be encrypted and not the same as the note1-follow list because privacy, and should contain other metadata like nip-05, nickname, realname, other private data, but ultimately the client can be where the contact list is unlocked and a payment threshold enforced. The only thing email has over nostr DM is the ability to create one-off distribution lists (To, Cc, Bcc), and attachments included in the message itself.

Distribution lists can be done akin to private message groups, and encrypted files can be done the same way as images on nostr, but the existing note1 oriented app is not suitable for email and likely would need a separate client based on an email client (yes I still hate email, but normies expect this mess).

Could email context sorting be solved differently than LDA sieves and IMAP folders? I'd like to know.

India banning Proton Mail is why we are here

Hello, my name is Ben and I am addicted to #Bitcoin Twitter.

“Attempting murder”?

Hey Brunswick, maybe you should familiarize yourself with the Ulbricht case before spouting off demonstrably false nonsense like that. It is public information, after all.

For “attempted murder,” a court would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he attempted to kill someone. However, in the Ulbricht case, the judge determined that *did not* happen.

You are confusing that with the allegations that Ross agreed to pay a contract to kill someone.

And yet, Ross was never charged at trial with “murder for hire” and thus this charge was never ruled on by a jury. In fact, these unproven and unprosecuted allegations were dismissed *with prejudice* in 2018.

What did happen? During the trial, prosecutors alleged that he discussed and paid a contract, but this was only presented as evidence by the prosecutors and was weak. Why weak? Because “the accusations relied on anonymous chats and text files never proven to have been authored by Ross. Hard evidence and testimony, including from the lead Silk Road investigator, showed that, over time, multiple people were behind the site admin’s DPR handle. Most significantly, two corrupt investigators (who later sent to prison) also had unfettered access to Silk Road and were admittedly involved in numerous plots.”

Ross has always denied being involved with these allegations, and even Curtis Green, the only alleged victim ever identified, is a longtime, fervent supporter of Ross’s release.

“Attempting murder”?

Hey Brunswick, maybe you should familiarize yourself with the Ulbricht case before spouting off demonstrably false nonsense like that. It is public information, after all.

For “attempted murder,” a court would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he attempted to kill someone. However, in the Ulbricht case, the judge determined that *did not* happen.

You are confusing that with the allegations that Ross agreed to pay a contract to kill someone.

And yet, Ross was never charged at trial with “murder for hire” and thus this charge was never ruled on by a jury. In fact, these unproven and unprosecuted allegations were dismissed *with prejudice* in 2018.

What did happen? During the trial, prosecutors alleged that he discussed and paid a contract, but this was only presented as evidence by the prosecutors and was weak. Why weak? Because “the accusations relied on anonymous chats and text files never proven to have been authored by Ross. Hard evidence and testimony, including from the lead Silk Road investigator, showed that, over time, multiple people were behind the site admin’s DPR handle. Most significantly, two corrupt investigators (who later sent to prison) also had unfettered access to Silk Road and were admittedly involved in numerous plots.”

Ross has always denied being involved with these allegations, and even Curtis Green, the only alleged victim ever identified, is a longtime, fervent supporter of Ross’s release.

The hire for murder was thrown out in court and the individual the FBI set up to be murdered doesnt even believe Ross attempted to murder him. The FBI had admin privileges of Ross's account and easily could have staged that (and likely did!) 99% of people who still think Ross should be in prison don't know the trumped up murder for hire charges were thrown out in court, but they will remember the headline. What was done to Ross was unjust and it has no equal.

seriously?? what do tou think he did thaf he shouldnt be pardoned from a double life sentence for non-violent crimes??

He created a website ?

I mean, he got multiple times longer prison sentence than Maxine Ghislaine. That's just?

RIP Alexei Navalny.

The US/UK should free Assange, free Ulbricht, pardon Snowden, and double-down on freedom as a contrast. They won't, but they should.

Russia is way more politically controlled and censored than their western counterparts, but if the western counterparts were smart they would emphasize this fact rather than lean more into being even half-like Russia.

Kudos to builders of various freedom tech.