The short, honest version

Who runs this

Damien Herlihy. Questions or requests: damienmunchip@gmail.com.

TownSquare

The homepage includes TownSquare, a small live space hosted by Cauê Napier. Loading it connects your browser to townsquare.cauenapier.com, as any embedded service must, and lets other visitors see an anonymous character representing your visit.

If you choose a display name or send a message, that information goes to TownSquare and is visible to other people in the square. Recent messages are held in memory for the live conversation. There are no TownSquare accounts, and you can leave simply by closing the page.

What this site collects

Your email address — only if you type it into the newsletter form. It goes to Audienceful, the service that sends the newsletter, and nowhere else.

One footnote: the newsletter form's script comes from Audienceful's CDN, and its bot protection (Cloudflare) sets one short-lived cookie (__cf_bm, about 30 minutes) on Audienceful's own domain. It tells humans from bots; it doesn't track you across sites.

The contact form doesn't send anything to a server at all — it opens your own email app with a pre-filled draft, and nothing leaves your machine until you press send.

Analytics, without the creepy part

The site uses PostHog, running on EU servers, to count page views and a few clicks (like which essays get read). It's configured cookieless and stores a random browser identifier in local storage so page visits and return visits can be understood as one journey. Analytics events do not include your name, email address, form contents or payment details, and there is no session recording or automatic click-tracking.

No advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, no selling data — ever.

Fonts

Typefaces load from Google Fonts, so that request reaches a Google server — which, like any web request, sees your IP address. No cookies are involved.

How long, and how to leave

Your email stays on the newsletter list until you unsubscribe — there's a link in every email. Want it deleted entirely? Email me and it's gone.