Now without tracking!

Google Analytics and Jetpack/Wordpress Stats — all gone!

I started this blog when I was a full-time scholar and found the constraints of academic writing were destroying my prose. I wanted a place where I could write without having to kill sentences with hedges and qualifications.

But then I started working in a marketing department. My problem there was writing fluffy BS, but that was not necessarily bad for my prose. It was bad for my mind in other ways, of course. But I also became sensitized to how aggressively we are tracked all over the web and have grown, frankly, to resent it. Also, in the same way that I wanted this to be a place where I could write and feel outside of the world of scholarship, now I want this to be a place where I can feel outside the world of A/B testing and conversion rate optimization.

I’m glad you’re here, but for the most part, I don’t know it. I still have some basic server stats, but to the extent that I can turn it off with WordPress, you are not tracked.

There is one exception (that I know of). I have it set up so that if you have made a comment in the past and gotten approved, then it knows that (based on a cookie, I assume) and approves your comment automatically. I could turn that off, but that just seems annoying and serves no purpose. If you don’t want to be tracked in that way, don’t leave any comments.

Be free!

3 Responses to “Now without tracking!”

  1. Hi Tom

    I landed on your blog when I was searching for some tips on Gmail. Thanks, BTW!

    When I read your ‘Improved Roads’ post, I was intrigued. I was born in (the Territory of) AK and grew up there. My father (RIP) drove long-haul trucks in AK from the ’40s to the ’80s. In the early ’70s, when I got a Teamster’s scholarship, I decided to attend UAF. Shortly after, I took a six-month break from UAF and worked on the slope as a Teamster. I drove the northern stretch of the haul road, from Franklin Bluffs to Atigun Pass. I can relate to some of what you shared… Anyway, several years after I finished at UAF, I did two backpacking/climbing trips in the arctic (ANWR, Gates of the Arctic). Before the Arctic is gone, I hope to return to do another backpacking trip. Since my pack weighed in at ~90 lbs on my earlier trips, however, I plan to recruit one/more of my adult children to carry some of our common gear ;-)

    Meanwhile, I still return to AK to visit family and friends. In my About page link that follows, I touch on my AK outdoor trips indirectly. In the near future, I plan to scan a bunch of my (vintage) 35mm AK backpacking/climbing slides and post them on my website. A retirement project.

    Finally, I’ve been an IT guy since the dinosaurs roamed (see LinkedIn), so it looks like we also have that in common. And I’m also an introvert.

    https://pnwphotowalks.com/more-about-mark-mcclure

    – Mark

  2. Hey Mark,

    Thanks for the comments. Funny that this post is about tracking (or lack thereof) and your add-on was about tracks (of the railroad variety).

    Anyway, I’m jealous of your ANWR experience. I drove the Dalton Highway a couple of times, but did not really have a lot of time to get far from the road. I’ve always had a desire to get back there for backpacking.