This page is collection of legal, moral, and ethical disclaimers associated with The Argothald Journal.
Purpose
This blog contains essays on topics that I found interesting at the time. There are reviews of genre stuff, descriptions of Passover seders, pictures of my hobbies, and incessant whining about my #FirstWorldProblems. If you like it, great! If you don’t, there’s a big wide world of the Internet out there for you to explore. Why not visit Whatever? It’s written by people who write better than I do and on more interesting topics.
Comment policy
The first amendment does not apply here. Read the amendment again. It applies to the government. It does not apply to privately-owned web sites such as this blog. If you feel you have no free speech here, you’re right.
With that said, if you choose to comment on any of these posts, I’m likely to allow it, even if it disagrees with my opinion or worldviews. What I won’t tolerate is bigotry (religious, racial, gender, or otherwise). I also take a dim view of comments that are off-topic from the original post. That doesn’t mean I won’t allow topic drift, but that’s at my sole discretion.
As a corollary to the above paragraph: The presence of a comment on this site, meaning that I approved it, does not imply that I agree with that comment. The words of the commenters are their own. It might very well be that I’ll approve a comment, and later be informed that its words were in fact discriminatory or offensive even though I did not recognize it as such. I’ll then “unapprove” the comment so it no longer appears.
On the other hand, if I display signs of discrimination or hurtful ignorance, please feel free to correct me. I will listen. The tone of the correction matters; I may listen and learn from a comment, but I’m still under no obligation to approve it if the tone is abusive. If I make you angry, even with justification, learn to control your anger; I, in turn, will make every effort to control mine.
With all that said, I get very few comments on this blog. The reason is obvious: It’s not popular, and I rarely write anything that worth commenting on. That’s fine by me.
Copyrights and such
When quoting or excerpting brief material from written works, movie stills, and game screenshots, I usually try to include the appropriate legal reference (©, ®, ™, etc.). However, due to ignorance or neglect, I may omit the appropriate symbol. The omission of such a symbol should never be interpreted as a challenge to the rightful holder of these properties.
Amazon Associates links
Many of my posts include Amazon Associates purchasing links to products on amazon.com. This means that if you click on one of those links and order something through Amazon, I might someday get store credit. In the twenty years or so that I’ve put links like these on my various web sites, I may have gotten a small amount of store credit twice.
The primary reason I use these links is that they’re shorter than the full links; e.g., https://amzn.to/2QdkAkA is easier to copy-and-paste than https://smile.amazon.com/?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&link_code=hom&tag=argothald even though they both point to the same page.
If you’re concerned that a given link might give recompense to me or to Amazon (and I accept that you might not want to do so), look for the characters amzn.to near the start of the link, or argothald or ArgothaldA near the end. If you normally don’t hover over a link and look at it before you click, start now. It may help you judge whether a link leads to a malicious site.
In order to include such links on this site, Amazon requires me to include the following:
Amazon.com is pleased to have Argothald in the family of Amazon.com associates. We’ve agreed to ship books and provide customer service for orders we receive through special links on Argothald.
Amazon.com associates list selected books in an editorial context that helps you choose the right books. We encourage you to visit Argothald often to see what new books they’ve selected for you.
Thank you for shopping with an Amazon.com associate.
Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos
President
Amazon.com BooksP.S. We guarantee you the same high level of customer service you would receive at Amazon.com. If you have a question about an order you’ve placed, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Privacy
If you write a comment, I’m going to learn the IP address of the device from which you sent it. I’ll also see the email address you entered to identify yourself. I have no interest in your personal information and won’t use it for any purpose… provided the contents of your comment aren’t criminal, abusive, or illegal. If you confess that you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die and threaten to do the same to someone else, the appropriate authorities will be informed.