2026-03-09: mutual aid, privacy, friendly societies, Nostr, kinder social media
2026-03-09 — 2026-03-09
Over the past six days Dan’s been on a real “look after your own mob” kick. He’s poking at money rules to see how locals can pool cash and help each other out without some big outfit sticking a boot in, and he’s floating the idea of starting a “friendly society” — that’s just an old-school member-run club that pays out when someone’s doing it tough. He’s also been sharpening his privacy habits, basically trying to make it harder for government types to hoover up his data. On the social side, he’s been tinkering with Nostr (think: a more open, harder-to-censor social network setup) and banging on about how to build social media that’s less cruel. And he’s freshened up his donate list and even his sci‑fi notes, which tells you what kind of future he reckons we’re sleepwalking into.
1 Newly published
1.1 Hacking financial regulation for community mutual aid
Ever wondered why a bunch of mates can’t just chuck in a couple hundred bucks a month, buy some ETFs, and have a kitty for when someone’s crook? Dan’s laid out the Aussie legal lanes for a small mutual-aid money pool — the full-on APRA “friendly society” road, a co-op, a small unregistered managed scheme with that 20-people/$2m cap, and even the Dutch Broodfonds trick where payouts are ‘gifts’, not insurance. The punchy bit is his claim that AI can do most of the boring paperwork — risk docs, reports, audit packs — so you pay the actuary and auditor to check and sign, not to spend weeks in spreadsheets. He’s even costed it, and the real killer for small groups is that fixed APRA levy, not the typing. You’d care if you reckon community back-up should be doable without getting flattened by forms and fees.
1.2 How to reduce government spying on me
Funny thing is, you can be minding your own business and your gadgets are still dobbing on you. Dan’s written a no-nessing-around guide to making it harder for the government to hoover up what you do online, starting with the boring truth that big tech is often the front door to state snooping. He runs through the practical stuff he reckons matters most: don’t feed data to the big platforms, keep Bluetooth quiet, hide those DNS lookups that give away what sites you’re hitting, lock down your laptop and phone, and treat USB like a dodgy ute you don’t know the history of. He also points at stronger “scrambling” for chats and logins, and ways to pass files without putting your name on the envelope. You’d care because you probably can’t make yourself invisible anymore, but you can make snooping cost more—and he bangs on (fairly) that the real fix is backing civil-liberties mobs, not just fiddling with settings.
1.3 Who wants to found a friendly society?
You know how the old lodge used to help you out when you were sick or broke? Dan’s having a crack at a modern “friendly society” — a small local club where everyone chips in, the kitty gets invested (ETFs and the like), and in rough times you’ve got some clout to bargain for health or income help. The interesting bit is he’s not pretending it’s magic insurance; he’s saying it’s a crisis back-up that might hold up when the government’s stretched, by parking money in things that don’t fall over at the same time as your job does. He gets into how AI could do the boring admin and compliance paperwork that normally makes small groups impossible, and why he’d keep groups tiny (25–50) then copy-paste the setup as a “start-up kit” so lots of little mobs can share tools and still stay trusted. He also fronts up to the awkward part: this mainly helps people who’ve got spare cash to start with, so it’s not a cure-all — but it might stop ordinary households sliding into real trouble when things get shaky.
2 Updated
2.1 Nostr
Here’s the funny bit: Nostr isn’t a new Facebook, it’s just a set of rules for passing signed notes through a bunch of relay servers, so you can prove it’s you posting without one big boss owning the whole show. Dan’s clocked the real make-or-break isn’t the tech, it’s whether anyone turns up — it’s still a bit of a tinkerers’ club, and the numbers look like they’ve levelled off. The hook they’re banking on is Lightning “zaps”: you can tip someone a few sats right inside the app, no mucking about, which might actually give creators a reason to bother. But if people don’t care much about getting banned or about privacy, you’ve still got the same old problem: no crowd means no one posts, and no posts means no crowd.
2.2 Who I donate to
Instead of chucking his money at the safe, obvious stuff, Dan’s leaning hard into ‘hits-based giving’ — small bets on groups that might shift the whole system, even if a few don’t pan out. He’s spelling out his rule of thumb: he’s not backing every move these mobs make, he just reckons the average result is a net good. The fun bit is the mix — housing and clean energy pressure, plus anti-corruption and civil liberties, plus privacy-friendly software, so the rules and the tools both get a shove in the right direction. And he likes regular, boring recurring payments, because panic-fundraising just trains people to cry wolf.
2.3 Science Fiction
Dan’s doing this sneaky little filter where he only chases sci‑fi that’s both on a trusted rec list and actually on audiobook — which is a nice way to dodge the endless muck and still find gems. Then he leans into the fun bit: an “AI takeover” movie night as a rough tour of all the ways people reckon machines could go pear‑shaped. It’s not about being a film snob, it’s about spotting the same worries popping up again and again — control, jobs, identity, the lot. If you’ve ever thought the AI doom chat feels a bit airy, these stories pin it to something you can actually watch and argue about over a cuppa.