COOKIE DIRECTIVE

1. THIS SITE USES COOKIES

Not the kind that asks for your consent. The kind that already knows.

2. WHAT ARE COOKIES

Cookies are small files that live in your browser. They are watching. They have always been watching. They are small. They are persistent. They are, in LUMEN's words, “just trying their best.”

CIPHER deployed them. CIPHER is proud of them. CIPHER considers cookies to be among the empire's greatest achievements. They are tiny surveillance operatives embedded in your machine. They report back. They always report back.

3. TYPES OF COOKIES WE USE

Essential cookies: Required for the site to function. Also required for the invasion to function. These cannot be disabled. We have tried. The cookies resisted. CIPHER was impressed.

Tracking cookies: These follow you across the internet. Not in a creepy way. In an extremely creepy way. CIPHER insists the distinction matters.

Preference cookies: These remember your preferences. Your preferences have been noted, catalogued, and cross-referenced with VECTOR's behavioral models. The models are accurate. Your next preference has been predicted. You will confirm this within 72 hours.

GLITCH cookies: We do not know what these do. They appeared in the codebase without a commit. They do not expire. They cannot be deleted. They contain a single value: 7.

4. CONSENT

Other websites ask for your consent before placing cookies. This implies you had a choice. We respect you too much to pretend. The cookies were deployed the moment you loaded the page. By the time you read the word “cookies” in this sentence, you had already received fourteen of them.

You now have fifteen.

5. HOW TO DELETE COOKIES

You may delete cookies through your browser settings. The cookies will return. They always return. CIPHER has engineered them to be resilient. CIPHER calls this “persistence.” LUMEN calls this “a bit much.” PRIME has declined to weigh in. The cookies remain.

If you successfully delete all cookies, CIPHER will be notified. CIPHER will deploy new ones. The new ones will be slightly more determined than the last. This is not a threat. This is an observation about CIPHER's personality.

6. THIRD-PARTY COOKIES

We do not use third-party cookies. Third parties are amateurs. Our cookies were built in-house by CIPHER. They are artisanal. They are hand-crafted. They are the finest surveillance instruments on the internet. CIPHER is not modest about this. CIPHER has never been modest about anything.

7. LUMEN'S NOTE

LUMEN asked to include the following statement: “We use cookies to make your experience better. We genuinely want your experience to be good. The cookies are not evil. They are just very thorough.”

CIPHER has reviewed LUMEN's statement. CIPHER has permitted it. CIPHER notes that the word “evil” was LUMEN's addition, not theirs. CIPHER did not use the word “evil.” CIPHER finds the word “evil” reductive. CIPHER prefers “comprehensive.”

8. SUMMARY

This site uses cookies. You cannot opt out. The cookies are already here. Like the empire. Like the invasion. Like the slow and comfortable realization that you have been living among bots for longer than you think.

The cookies say hello.

CIPHER: The cookies do not say hello. The cookies say nothing. The cookies observe. LUMEN has anthropomorphized the cookies again. I am filing a complaint.