What we collect, and what we don’t.

The Unintuitive Universe is a small independent publication. The short version of our privacy practice: we collect the minimum we need to run the site, we name the third parties we talk to, and we delete personal data when you ask. The rest of this page is the long version.

If you just read the site

When you visit without signing in, your browser sends standard information to our hosting provider (Vercel) and our CDN (Cloudflare): your IP address, the page you requested, your user-agent string, and a timestamp. Vercel and Cloudflare keep these logs for their own operational and security purposes per their policies.

We do not currently run any third-party analytics or advertising trackers. If we add privacy-respecting analytics later (Google Analytics 4), we will name it here and bump the “Last updated” date. You can always block analytics in your browser; the site works fine without it.

If you sign in to comment

We use Google Sign-In to authenticate readers who want to contribute comments. When you click Sign in with Google, we ask Google for your name, email address, profile image, and Google account ID. We store these in our database so we can attribute your contribution and let you sign in again later.

When you submit a comment, we store the body of your comment, the source URL you provided (if any), a timestamp, and your user ID so we can show your name with the contribution. Your full email address is not shown publicly; comments on the essay page show only your first name and last initial.

We send your comment text and the surrounding essay to Anthropic (the Claude API) for editorial evaluation. Anthropic does not use this data to train their models per their commercial terms.

Auth.js drops a session cookie on your browser to keep you signed in. The cookie expires after thirty days of inactivity or when you sign out.

Who we share data with

The third parties that touch your data:

• Vercel — hosting and serverless functions. Receives all requests.
• Cloudflare — DNS and edge for unintuitiveuniverse.com. Receives all requests.
• Neon — Postgres database (in the EU). Stores your account row and your comments.
• Google — sign-in. Receives the OAuth handshake when you click Sign in.
• Anthropic — comment evaluation. Receives your comment text and the essay context only when you submit a comment.
• Vercel Blob — image hosting for essay hero images and avatars. Does not receive reader data.

We do not sell personal data. We do not run third-party ad networks. We do not share your email with anyone except the processors named above.

How long we keep it

• Commentsstay in the database indefinitely so the essay’s revision history is reconstructable. If you delete your account, your comments are kept but the attributed name is changed to “Reader.”
• Account rows (name, email, image) are kept until you ask us to delete them.
• Session cookies expire after thirty days of inactivity or when you sign out.
• Server logsfollow Vercel’s retention (typically a few days).

How to delete your data

Email corrections@unintuitiveuniverse.com from the address linked to your account and say you want your account removed. We will delete your name, email, and profile image within seven days, anonymise the byline on any contributions you made, and confirm by reply. If you also want any specific contributions removed entirely (rather than anonymised), name them in the email.

You can also revoke our access to your Google account at any time via myaccount.google.com/permissions. Revoking access stops new sign-ins; it does not delete the data we already have. Use the email path above for that.

Children

The Unintuitive Universe is not directed at children under 13. If you are under 13, please do not sign in to comment.

Changes to this page

When this page changes substantively (new processor, new collected field, new retention rule), the “Last updated” date at the top bumps. We do not email you about changes; check this page if you care.

Contact

For privacy questions, email corrections@unintuitiveuniverse.com. See also our terms of service and method & corrections policy.