Cookie Policy

What this site stores in your browser, why, and how to stop it. There is no advertising here, so there is nothing tracking you across other sites.

Analytics cookies

Google Analytics 4 sets two cookies. _ga holds a random identifier so that two page views in a row can be recognised as one visit rather than two strangers, and _ga_L6QS5YEX8P holds the state of the current session for this specific property. They are first-party cookies, they contain a random number rather than anything about you, and they are used to count readers and see which pages get read.

Something that is not a cookie

If you spend a minute on an article, the site marks it read and shows a tick beside it in the navigation tree, so you can tell at a glance what you have already read. That list is kept in your browser under moat_read using local storage. It never leaves your browser, is never sent anywhere, and clearing your browser data removes it.

What is not here

No advertising cookies. No cross-site tracking pixels. No embedded social widgets. No third-party scripts besides Google Analytics. The site has no login, so there is no session cookie either.

How to refuse them

Every browser can block or delete cookies for a single site, and doing that for this one costs you nothing except the read ticks. Google also publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics everywhere, and any of the common content blockers will stop the analytics script from loading at all. The site works identically either way.

In the interest of being straight with you: this site does not currently show a cookie banner, so the analytics cookies are set when you arrive rather than after you agree. That is a gap, it is known, and the options above are the ones that work in the meantime. Last updated 30 September 2026.