Privacy Policy

This is my website

I’m Jim Ratliff and this is my website. The URL (i.e., address) of this website is: https://nuanceabounds.org.

This site exists, essentially, to give information away (i.e., for free). I have no interest in monetizing this site in any way. In particular, there are no advertisements on this site.

Moreover, I don’t sell or barter your data to anyone. Further, I don’t share your information with any third party beyond what is disclosed below.

What personal data are collected when you visit this site and why

Your IP address and what kind of browser you use

The server that hosts this site logs (i.e., records) your IP address and the user agent string your browser reports. Every web server I’ve ever heard of does that. That’s how the web works. Because I control the server, I have access to that logged information.

The site uses your IP address to automatically try to figure out whether you’re located in the European Union, in which case the site might show you a possibly irritating cookie warning.1Read about the EU’s ePrivacy Directive, aka the “Cookie Law,” for what motivates me to provide the irritating notice to those visitors from EU countries. (In particular, see paragraph (25): “[C]ookies… should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information… about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using.… Access to specific website content may still be made conditional on the well-informed acceptance of a cookie or similar device, if it is used for a legitimate purpose.”) See also generally the section Cookies below. If this site thinks that you’re not in the EU, it avoids disturbing you with that warning.

The web-server log files pile up until they take up so much disk space that I’ll have to prune them. As of right now, AFAICT, I don’t have a super-easy way of automating the process of deleting log files after a specified period of time. So, effectively, these files are retained indefinitely.

See, relatedly, the section Google Analytics, because Google may also use your IP address.

Comments

If you leave a comment on this site, the site collects the text you type into the “Comment,” “Name,” “Email,” and “Website” fields.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. Really, that’s the point, right? You leave a comment so that other people visiting this site can read your comment.

Remembering that you submitted a legitimate comment also helps the site recognize and then automatically approve any subsequent comments by you (instead of delaying them by holding them in a moderation queue). [If you’ve submitted a legit comment in the past, that’s a good sign you’re a good person (😇), not a spammer (👿🤖).]

If, in addition, you choose to check (✓) the box next to “Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment,” that will offer corresponding cookies to your browser. (See “Cookies” below.)

This site uses Akismet to detect whether your submitted comment is spam (👎) or legit (😍). You can read the applicable Akismet private policy and even dig deeper by reading their page “Akismet and the GDPR.”

An anonymized string (also called a hash) created from the text you entered into the “Email” field may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you have created a “Gravatar”—an image you would have deliberately chosen for precisely the purpose of visually representing yourself on the web. You can read Gravatar’s privacy policy. If the comment you submit is published, that image may be displayed visibly to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact form

There’s a contact form on this site. If you enter text into that form, this site will send that text to me, and I’ll keep it indefinitely.

Cookies

In at least some circumstances this site offers to your browser “cookies” (small text files that, if accepted by your browser, would be stored locally on your computer, tablet, or smart phone).

In addition to the specific purposes outlined immediately below and elsewhere on this page, cookies help (a) identify unique visitors and/or devices, (b)  assess usage patterns, (c) perform traffic analysis, and, at least theoretically, (d) diagnose problems with the server.2I’ve never encountered this use case, but I’ve heard of it.

If you leave a comment on this site you may choose to opt in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies—by checking (✓) the box next to “Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.” Doing so—which is completely optional—will cause this site to offer these cookies to your browser. That’s for your convenience so that you don’t have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.3See the section on comments for more on comments.

See, relatedly, the section Google Analytics, because Google may also offer cookies to your browser.

Whether your browser accepts any such offered cookie from this site, though, is out of my control but within yours. How? You might start with Managing Cookies at All About Cookies.org, which offers guidance for all modern browsers. (Not only can you block cookies before your browser accepts them, you can also clear out any cookies your browser has already accepted.)

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor had visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Google Analytics

This site uses Google Analytics, a web-analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google provides to me, at no cost to me, data that help me see how this web site is performing, what viewers are being reached, what countries they’re from, how long they spend on the site, and how many (or few) of the pages they visit. This is ultimately helpful and interesting to me.

To find out how Google uses information it receives as a result, see “How Google Uses Information from Sites or Apps That Use Our Services.”

In particular, your web browser will automatically send certain information to Google, including the URL of the page you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there.

Many, many, many websites use Google Analytics. If you’d like to opt out from Google Analytics using your data, Google makes it easy for you: See Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

What rights you have over your data

What your rights over any data you share with this site might be could well depend at least on what country you’re a citizen of, where you are, and the date. I can’t possibly address all the possibilities here. (And besides, you can use Google as well as I can.😉)

I offer the following links on a FWIW basis as starting points in case they’re helpful: