COPPA Compliance Notice
       #######################
       
       This is a website. This is also a gopher hole. This is also a site on the
       experimental Gemini platform.
       
       It may be unreasonable to expect kids to be using Gopher or Gemini when
       they could be using the Web. The exact same content is available on all
       three protocols, which is why you'll find this message available, too.
       
       =========================================
       Is this content directed toward children?
       =========================================
       
       Most definitely not.
       
       This location, regardless of the protocol used, is guaranteed to be both
       disturbing to some children as well as their parents. There's blood and
       guts everywhere. Cannibalism. Giant insects. Destruction of humanity.
       
       If humanity is *almost* destroyed, then the fact that it was left
       unfinished is sad, not joyous. Think 1950s SciFi where aliens arrive,
       but humans are the real monsters. 
       
       The fact that much of it is sung in a manner that anyone could sing
       along is immaterial. There's even a lullaby that's explicitly designed
       to be terrifying to children. There's no "bad" words in the song,
       and it's available to purchase as the C track on the "Bumblebees in
       Marshmallow Sauce" single without a parental advisory sticker.
       
       Then there's the small deities that crop up. This is a deeply polytheist
       site. Christians seem happy when their deities show up unannounced in
       products targeting kids, but tend to freak when others' deities show
       up.
       
       I don't want Christians targeting my kids. I don't target other people's
       kids.
       
       Let's dig in to some additional criteria:
       
       :Subject matter:
          Yes. (Probably.)
          Improvised songs and stories. The subject matter is derived from what I
          was doing when I was four years old. The core subject matter may qualify.
       
       :Visual content:
          No. (Clearly.)
          Generally, no visual content. The visual style is clearly not aimed at
          kids.
       
       :Animated characters:
          None. (Which means none target kids.)
       
       :Child-oriented activities:
          Yes. (Probably.)
          Like the subject matter, this may qualify.
       
       :Child-oriented incentives:
          No.
          There are no incentives here outside of lofi content.
       
       :Kind of music:
          No. (It would be a stretch.)
          Kids could do better, but clearly not targeting kids.
       
       :Age of models:
          Mostly, none. (Which means none target kids.)
          There's not a lot of visual content.
       
       :Kid-focused Celebrities:
          None.
          I am not a celebrity that particularly appeals to kids.
       
       :Other characteristics:
          Nope.
          I'll make a vague hand-gesture toward my earlier content statement.
          Almost no one would look at the site or content and think,
          "This is for kids."
       
       :Type of advertising used:
          N/A.
          There's no advertising, so it isn't targeting kids.
       
       :Empirical evidence about age of audience:
          N/A.
          No analytics are kept. There's no audience participation.
       
       If I look at the additional criteria, you would have to make the leap
       that anything improvised in the manner of a child is automatically made
       for kids, and empirical evidence of the history of improv theater would
       clearly indicate otherwise.
       
       
       
       ===================================
       Do we collect personal information?
       ===================================
       
       We don't use cookies. We don't have targeted ads.
       
       Considering that two of the protocols we host on don't support images,
       and none of them serve dynamic content, the only way we'd have ads
       is if they were text-based or baked in to media directly.
       
       Do we track your history on this site?
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
       
       This is a related question, and one that exists outside of "personal
       information" for legal purposes. It's a given for commercial websites,
       and the COPPA law doesn't consider it personal information.
       
       We only track your history as much as can be derived from standard
       access logs. Not all of our services even support such access logs.
       Even the ones that support it may have it turned off.
       
       We don't mine access logs for analytics data, so we have no reason to
       hold on to them. It's mostly a matter of, "did we remember to turn them
       off?"
       
       Regardless of how frequently we roll over those logs (or whether we keep
       them at all) we can not guarantee that intermediaries won't track the
       pages you visit on this site.
       
       In particular, the 'gopher' protocol is unencrypted, so any
       man-in-the-middle can monitor what you access.
       
       The 'gemini' protocol is light-weight -- similar to gopher -- but uses SSL.
       
       ======================================
       Are there age guidelines for anything?
       ======================================
       
       No.
       
       We may add support for POWDER at some point in the future, but it is not
       currently a priority.
       
       For the indefinite future: This site is not safe for kids. It isn't safe
       for some adults. It may or may not be safe-for-work on a page-by-page
       basis, so -- if you're worried about that -- you should just avoid it.
       
       ----
       
       Keywords:
 (DIR)    - COPPA
 (DIR)    - compliance
 (DIR)    - child-safety
       
 (DIR) Category: Essays and Thoughts
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