Privacy

This site counts visits. There's no account to create, no login, no ad network, and nothing here is sold to anyone. Below is every piece of software that runs when you load a page, and what each one sees.

Before you agree to anything

Two things run on every page, and neither stores anything on your device.

Vercel hosts the site. Like any web server it logs the request: your IP address, the page you asked for, your browser's user-agent string, and the time. That log is how a host tells a reader from a bot hammering the site.

Vercel Web Analytics counts page views in aggregate. It uses no cookies and sets no device identifier, so it can't connect one visit to the next. I can see that forty people read a Field Note, not which forty.

The fonts, the stylesheet, and the images all come from this site's own server. Nothing on the page is fetched from anyone else until you press play on a video.

Only if you accept

Google Analytics stays off until you press Accept on the banner. Google's Consent Mode denies analytics storage before the Analytics script loads, so nothing is written to your device and no event is sent.

Press Accept and Google Analytics starts, with IP anonymization on. It sets two cookies, _ga and _ga_VYH2Y37WNV, which last two years and tell Google Analytics you've been here before. Press Decline and it stays off.

Either way your answer is saved in your browser's local storage under the key brg-consent. That's not a cookie. It never leaves your machine, and it exists so the banner stops asking.

The contact form

The application form on the contact page posts to Formspree, which emails me what you wrote: your name, your email, and your answers. Nobody else reads them.

Video

The Operator's Guides and some Field Notes embed YouTube players through youtube-nocookie.com, which holds YouTube's tracking cookies back until you press play. Press play and Google's privacy policy takes over from there.

Changing your mind

Clear this site's data in your browser and both the consent choice and the Google Analytics cookies go with it. The banner returns on your next visit.

Questions

Write to dave@baserealitygroup.com. If you want to know what this site has on you: a line in a server log, plus one number inside an aggregate report if you accepted. There's no profile to send.

Last updated 11 September 2026.