What this site does not do
- No analytics of any kind — no page-view tracking, no session recording, no heatmaps.
- No cookies are set by this site.
- No advertising, and no advertising networks.
- No third-party scripts, fonts, or embedded widgets. Everything loads from this site alone.
- No accounts, no logins, and no mailing list.
- No social media buttons or share pixels.
The pages are plain HTML and CSS with one small local JavaScript file that handles the mobile menu, the reading-progress bar, and the year in the footer. It sends nothing anywhere. The site works with JavaScript disabled.
What happens anyway
Two things are outside the site's control and worth stating plainly.
Server logs
Whoever hosts these files will, like every web server, record ordinary request information: IP address, timestamp, the page requested, the referring page, and browser user-agent string. This is standard operational logging used for security and troubleshooting. It is not read for analytics purposes here, is not combined with anything else, and is not shared. Retention is whatever the host's default is.
Your browser
Your browser may cache pages and images locally so they load faster next time. That storage is on your own device and under your control — clearing your browser cache removes it. The site does not use local storage, session storage, or any other client-side database.
The contact form
The form on the contact page has no server behind it. Submitting it does not transmit anything; the page simply displays a message asking you to copy your text into an email. Nothing typed into it is stored or sent.
If you write to the address on the contact page, that message is received in an ordinary mailbox. It is used only to read and reply. It is not added to any list, not shared with anyone, and not published. Messages are deleted once the matter is resolved, other than correspondence about corrections, which may be kept as a record of why a page was changed.
Links to other sites
Where the essays refer to other resources they do so in words rather than links wherever possible. Any external site you reach from here has its own privacy practices, over which this project has no influence.
Children
This site is suitable for general audiences and collects nothing from anyone, including children. There is no age gate because there is nothing to gate.
Your rights
Data protection law gives people rights of access, correction, and erasure over personal data held about them. Since the only personal data this project ever holds is an email you chose to send, exercising those rights is straightforward: write and ask, and the correspondence will be deleted.
Changes to this page
If the site's technical arrangements change — for instance if privacy-respecting analytics were ever added — this page would be updated first and the change described here plainly. The date at the top records the last review.
Why so little?
Not principle alone, though there is some of that. A reading site does not need to know who its readers are, and every measurement system added is a system that can leak, be subpoenaed, or be sold along with a domain. The simplest way to protect readers is not to collect anything.