Terms of Service

Agreeing to these terms

Caruso's Conjecture is a personal website and interactive blog run by me, Chris Caruso. By visiting the site or using its features, you agree to these Terms of Service. If you don't agree with them, please don't use the site.

These Terms work alongside the Privacy Policy, which explains how your data is handled.

What this is

The site is a personal project: essays and a narrated series, interactive code projects, photography, an optional community layer, and a voluntary way to support the work through Stripe.

It's offered free of charge and as-is. I may add, change, pause, or retire any part of it at any time, and I make no promise that it will always be available.

Your account

You don't need an account to read. To react, comment, sign the guestbook, reply, or fork, you sign in through GitHub or Google. A few expectations come with that:

• You're responsible for activity that happens under your account.
• Be yourself. Don't impersonate anyone or misrepresent who you are.
• You should be old enough to form a binding agreement where you live, and at least 13.
• I may suspend or close accounts that break these Terms or put the site or its readers at risk.

What you post

You keep ownership of what you write. Nothing here takes your reactions, comments, guestbook signatures or replies, mentions, forks, or optional public support name away from you.

To actually show your content on the site, I need your permission. By posting, you grant me a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, display, format, adapt, and, where necessary, moderate or remove your content as part of operating the site. This license exists only so the site can function, and it ends when you delete your content, except for reasonable backups and anything others have already built on.

You're responsible for what you post, and by posting you confirm you have the right to share it and that it doesn't break these Terms or the law. Remember that comments, published forks, guestbook signatures, replies, their mentions, and a support name you explicitly publish are public.

You may maintain one active public guestbook signature. Deleting a signature or reply removes its content, but a bodyless tombstone may remain when other readers' replies depend on it.

Community conduct

This is a small, personal corner of the internet. Keep it a good place to be. Don't post or do any of the following:

• Anything unlawful, hateful, harassing, threatening, or that targets people for who they are.
• Spam, scams, or repetitive promotional junk.
• Content that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights.
• Malware, or attempts to break, overload, probe, or scrape the site or its infrastructure.
• Efforts to bypass moderation, rate limits, or other protections.

I moderate at my discretion. Content that looks off may be automatically held for review and hidden from others in the meantime, and I may edit visibility, remove content, throttle, or suspend accounts to keep things healthy. I try to be fair about it, but this is my call to make.

My work

The writing (including The Fortunate Fall), the photography, the illustrations, and the design of the site are mine, copyright Chris Caruso, all rights reserved. Please don't republish substantial parts of them, or use them to train commercial models, without my permission.

Two friendly exceptions. You're welcome to quote briefly with attribution and a link back. And source code released in my public repositories is governed by whatever open-source license that repository states, not by this section.

Voluntary support

The site is free to read. If you choose to buy me some tokens, you are making a voluntary one-time tip to support my independent writing and experiments. It does not buy goods, services, access, membership, influence, or a charitable tax deduction.

You choose a U.S.-dollar amount before leaving for Stripe's hosted Checkout page. The token number shown here is a good-faith estimate based on typical card processing and a configurable blended model cost. It is a metaphor for funded model capacity, not currency, stored value, a financial instrument, or a promise that any exact number of tokens will be used.

Voluntary tips may be refunded in full on request within 30 days. Email hello@chriscaruso.devwith the receipt email address so I can locate the payment. Stripe's receipt is the authoritative payment record.

Public thanks is optional and off by default. If you opt in, only the public name you choose, a coarse date, and the estimated token value appear. I may hold or remove a public name under the same moderation rules as the rest of the site, and refunded support is removed from the public ledger.

Third-party services and links

Signing in relies on GitHub and Google. Voluntary support relies on Stripe's hosted Checkout. The site also links out to other places around the web. Those services and sites have their own terms and privacy practices; using them is between you and them.

No warranties

The site is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. I don't guarantee that it will be accurate, uninterrupted, secure, or error-free.

The essays here are personal writing, opinion, and speculation. They're meant to make you think, not to serve as professional, legal, financial, or technical advice.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, I won't be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, arising from your use of the site. Access to this personal project remains free, and my total liability for any claim relating to the site is limited to one hundred U.S. dollars. Some places don't allow certain limitations, so parts of this may not apply to you.

Changes to these terms

I may update these Terms from time to time. When I do, I'll change the effective date at the top. If you keep using the site after an update, that means you accept the revised Terms.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington in the United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute will be handled by the state or federal courts located there. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

Questions

Questions about these Terms? Email me at hello@chriscaruso.dev, or use the contact page. Happy to talk it through.