What we collect, and how to leave.

The short version: if you join the waitlist we hold your email address. Traffic is counted two ways — by our own cookieless Counterscale, and by Google Analytics, which sets a cookie holding a random identifier. Nothing on this site ties your reading to your name or email, and there are no advertising trackers.

Your email, if you give it

When you join the waitlist, your email address is stored by Buttondown, our email provider, so we can send you the weekly memory cue and, later, early access. We use double opt-in: nothing is sent until you click the confirmation link, and if you never confirm, your address is not added to the list.

The waitlist form also carries a tag — the slug of the article you signed up from (for example, proust-effect) — so we can see which writing brings people in. The tag names an article; it is not linked to anything else about you.

Website analytics

Two tools count traffic on this site.

We run Counterscale ourselves on our Cloudflare account to understand traffic in aggregate — how many visits a page received, roughly where in the world they came from, and which pages sent readers onward. It uses no cookies, local storage, persistent identifiers, or cross-site profiles. We see totals, not people.

We also use Google Analytics. Unlike Counterscale, it is a third-party service: it sets cookies in your browser — chiefly _ga, which holds a random identifier so your repeat visits can be counted as one visitor rather than several — and sends usage data (pages viewed, browser and device type, approximate region) to Google, which processes it on our behalf. It never receives your name or email, and we do not use it for advertising or connect it to the waitlist. If you would rather not be counted, you can block its cookies in your browser or install Google’s opt-out add-on.

Anonymous prompt counters

Some articles end with a working memory cue that has “reveal another cue” and “copy this prompt” buttons. When a prompt scrolls into view, or you press one of those buttons, the page sends a single anonymous event — the event type and the article slug, nothing else — to our own counter. It carries no cookies, no identifiers, and no text you write; you are never asked to send us anything you remember. All it does is increment a per-day, per-article tally so we can tell whether the prompts are useful.

What we do not do

• No advertising cookies or ad networks. The only third-party cookies are the Google Analytics ones described above.
• No selling, renting, or sharing of your email address.
• No names, emails, or accounts attached to analytics or prompt counts.
• No reading, storing, or transmitting of anything you write in response to a prompt — that stays on your own screen.

How to leave

Every email we send includes a one-click unsubscribe link, which removes you from the list immediately. If you would also like your address fully deleted from our records rather than just unsubscribed, email [email protected] and we will remove it entirely. Counterscale and the prompt counters hold nothing tied to you, so there is nothing there to delete on your behalf. Google Analytics knows you only as a random cookie identifier; clearing this site’s cookies in your browser severs even that.

Questions

Write to [email protected]. If any of this changes, we will update this page and its date.