Privacy.

In plain English. Still short, because there's still not much to say.

What I collect

If you just read: nothing. No account is needed to read anything here, and reading a page stores nothing about you.

If you sign in: only what Google hands over. Signing in is optional and exists so you can like an article, save one to a private list, and leave a comment. When you sign in with Google, this site receives and stores:

• Your Google account ID — a meaningless-looking string that identifies you to this site and nowhere else
• Your email address
• Your display name
• The URL of your Google profile photo

Your name and photo appear next to any comment you post. Your email is never shown to anyone and never displayed on the site — it exists so I can tell two accounts apart, and so I can reach you if there's ever a problem with your account. I don't send newsletters and there's no mailing list to be added to.

I never receive your Google password. Signing in sends you to Google, you approve it there, and Google sends back only the four things listed above.

What you create

If you like, save or comment, the site stores that too:

• Likes — which articles you liked. The count is public; who liked what is not shown.
• Saved articles — your private reading list. Only you can see it, on your account page.
• Comments — public, with your name and photo, on the article you posted them to.

All of it lives in a Cloudflare D1 database attached to this site. It is not shared, sold, or sent anywhere else.

Deleting your account

Analytics

I use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count pageviews. It tells me which posts get read and roughly where readers are coming from (country level), but it does not:

• Set cookies
• Build a profile of you across visits
• Track you across other sites
• Record your IP address in a way that can identify you
• Send your data to advertisers

It's the cleanest analytics tool I'm aware of, and it doesn't know or care whether you're signed in.

Cookies

Two, and only if you sign in. Read this page signed out and you are given none at all.

em_session says "this browser is signed in as this person" and nothing else — no tracking ID, no browsing history, no advertising value to anyone. It's HttpOnly (scripts can't read it), Secure (HTTPS only), SameSite=Lax (other sites can't use it), and it expires after 90 days.

em_user holds your display name and the address of your Google profile picture, so the site can draw your avatar in the corner without asking the server who you are on every single page. That is its whole purpose: it saves a network request, and it is the reason signed-out readers cost this site nothing to serve. Unlike the one above, scripts on this site can read it — which is why it holds nothing but those two display fields. Your email address is not in it. It proves nothing and grants nothing: if you edited it, the only result would be a wrong name in your own browser.

Signing out deletes both. So does deleting your account.

There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to: both cookies exist only because you asked to sign in, and they do only those jobs.

If you toggle dark mode, that preference is stored in your browser's localStorage on your own device. It never leaves your machine.

Third parties

If you are not signed in and don't scroll to the comments, exactly one third party is involved:

• Cloudflare — hosts the site, serves the pages, and stores the database. They see incoming requests for security and performance purposes (DDoS protection, caching). Their privacy policy is here.

Google enters the picture in two narrow places, both tied to signing in:

• When you sign in — you're sent to Google, so Google knows you signed in to this site. There is no Google code running on these pages, so this only happens when you click the button.
• Commenter photos — profile pictures load from Google's image servers when a comment list renders. Requests are sent with no-referrer, so Google isn't told which article you're reading.

Google's privacy policy.

That's the entire list. The typefaces are served from this site itself, not from Google Fonts. No tracking pixels, no ad networks, no social media beacons, no chat widgets, no heatmap tools, no retargeting scripts.

If things change

Questions

If something on this page is unclear, or you want your data removed and the account page isn't working for you, please get in touch.