Journal / Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Plain-language version: this site logs some basic visit data for its own understanding, stores what you post in the comments, and doesn't sell anything about you to anyone. The details are below.
What Gets Collected
Visit logging. When you load a page, a small script records your IP address, browser user agent, referring page, browser language, and an approximate location derived from your IP (country, region, city — not GPS-precise). This is written to a private log file that isn't publicly accessible and isn't shared with advertisers or third parties. It's used only to understand which pages get read and roughly where from.
Comments. If you post a comment, the name you enter (or "Anonymous" if you leave it blank) and the comment text are stored in a database and shown publicly on the article you posted it under. Your IP address is not stored directly — it's converted into a one-way cryptographic hash before being saved, used only to detect spam and enforce a basic rate limit. That hash can't be reversed back into your IP address.
No accounts, no tracking cookies. There's no login system for readers, no ad-tracking cookie, and no cross-site tracking pixel on this site today.
Third Parties Involved
Page fonts load from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com / fonts.gstatic.com), which means your browser makes a direct request to Google's servers to fetch them — standard for most of the web, and Google's own privacy policy governs that request. The approximate-location lookup mentioned above is provided by a third-party IP geolocation API; only the derived location data is stored, not shared back with the requester beyond what a normal web request already exposes.
If this site adds display advertising in the future, that section will be updated first, and any ad network in use (along with what cookies or identifiers it sets) will be named here before it goes live — not after.
What This Site Doesn't Do
- Doesn't sell or rent visitor data to anyone.
- Doesn't require an account or email to read anything or comment.
- Doesn't use tracking pixels, cross-site ad identifiers, or session replay tools.
- Doesn't ask for more information than it needs — comments don't require a real name or an email address.
Your Choices
You can browse this entire site, including every journal article, without posting a comment or being identified in any way beyond the basic visit logging described above. If you've posted a comment and want it removed, email a link to the comment (or enough detail to find it) and it will be taken down — anonymous comments make this the only practical way to handle removal requests, since there's no account system to verify identity through.
Most browsers let you block third-party requests (including font and geolocation lookups) via privacy extensions or built-in tracking protection; doing so won't break the site's core reading experience.
Changes to This Policy
If what's collected or how it's used changes meaningfully — most likely if advertising is added — this page will be updated and the "last updated" date above will change. There's no mailing list to notify, so check back here if you want to know what's current.
That's it. That's the whole thing.