This site is a personal editorial project. The privacy story is short but specific.
What is collected
Server logs. Like every web server, this one writes a line to a log file each time a page is requested. That line includes the URL fetched, the timestamp, your browser's user-agent string, and the IP address of the request. Logs are rotated and discarded after thirty days. They are used only for diagnosing site problems and detecting abuse.
Google Analytics (GA4). The site loads Google Analytics 4 on every page. Google receives event data including page URL, referrer, screen resolution, language, country derived from your IP, and a randomised client identifier stored in a first-party cookie. IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage. What Google does with this data is governed by Google's own privacy policy. You can opt out by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, or by using any browser content blocker.
Ezoic (ad delivery, in rollout). Pages on this site are being moved onto the Ezoic platform, which serves display advertising and supplies site-performance tooling. Ezoic and its certified ad partners set cookies and similar identifiers in order to:
- deliver advertising and limit how often a given ad is shown to the same browser,
- measure ad performance and detect invalid traffic,
- diagnose page-speed and layout issues on this site.
Where required by law (UK GDPR, EU GDPR, and the various US state privacy regimes), Ezoic presents a consent dialog that lets you accept or refuse non-essential cookies before any tracked advertising is loaded. The current list of vendors Ezoic relies on, and the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework purposes invoked, is shown inside that dialog. See also Ezoic's privacy policy.
What is not collected
- No user accounts.
- No newsletter list.
- No comment system.
- No first-party fingerprinting or device-graph identifiers built by this site itself.
What is shared
Two categories of third parties receive data as described above:
- Google, via Google Analytics (event-level usage data and a truncated IP).
- Ezoic and its ad partners, via cookies set on ad-supported pages (advertising identifiers and performance data, subject to your consent choices in regulated regions).
Nothing else is shared. The site sells no email lists, sells no first-party reader data, and runs no retargeting pixels of its own.
The exception is the obvious one: this site is reachable from the public internet. Anything you write to me at the address given on the contact page sits in a normal email inbox.
Embedded media
A small number of pages embed video from YouTube via the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com domain. YouTube does not set tracking cookies on these embeds until the moment you press play; if you do press play, your interaction is governed by Google's privacy policy.
Your choices
- Disable Google Analytics: use the official opt-out browser add-on linked above, or any content blocker.
- Manage Ezoic consent: the consent dialog presented to readers in regulated regions lets you accept or refuse non-essential cookies. You can revisit your choice from the same dialog at any time.
- Browser-level controls: third-party-cookie blocking, "do not track", and private-browsing mode all reduce what any of these services can record.
Changes
The header at the top of this page records the date of last substantive revision. Material changes will move that date forward. The current revision adds disclosure of Google Analytics (live) and Ezoic (in rollout).
Contact
Questions about this policy are welcome via the address on the contact page.