By using this site, you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy, and the terms of use outlined below.
Summary
Welcome to American Cyanide, and thank you for visiting. I do not have a team of lawyers to help draw up a fancy-shmancy terms of service, and I usually find these to be exceedingly dull and purposefully confusing. I will do my best to keep things simple. This document (ToS, term, terms, or agreement) serves as an agreement between American Cyanide (we, us, our, and ours, as well as I, me, my, and mine… for the moment) and visitors to this site… uhm, that would be you. The long and short of it: You are here at your own risk, and we take absolutely no responsibility for any damages to your psyche you may have perceived occurred. If you already cannot agree with that last statement, then leave now, leave quickly, and do not come back. We have no time for you.
Definitions
The use of first person pronouns, either single or collective (I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours) points to American Cyanide. The use of second and third person pronouns, either single or collective (you, your, yours, they, them, their, theirs) refers to you, individually, or as a group, if for some reason there are a bunch of you looking at the same monitor while on this site; this might include multiple personalities that reside within your mind, and if that is the case, hope you are having that looked at. Words like “this document,” “this agreement,” or “these terms” refers to this very document you are reading. Finally, “this site” means https://americancyanide.com.
Using this site
You are free to use this site and read the content made publicly available by us. We are not a news outlet. We are a blog/opinion site. Therefore, the posts you read here are not intended to be source material to support your own writings. We are looking at what is going on around us, and talking about it. If we are lucky enough to stumble upon some kind of truth while doing so, we will share it accordingly. Think of this site as some person at a party: sometimes we are the quiet wallflower, quietly doing the cabbage patch (badly) in the corner; sometimes we are the cool guy that talks to everyone and makes everyone laugh; sometimes we are the drunk obnoxious guy that is talking too loud about random bull crap, which can sometimes be entertaining, but most times it is not. With this in mind, your feelings might get hurt in the process: maybe we expressed an opinion you do not like; maybe we alluded to supporting some candidate over another; maybe the way we phrased a particular point reminded you of someone and it brought up bad memories. Who knows?
We are not responsible for your feelings, and we will not apologize for you granting us the power to hurt said feelings. That is on you.
You agree that you will not attempt to access parts of this site that are not intended for public use: i.e. the admin panel, user files, databases, etc. If you are one of them loser hacker folk who go around messing with peoples’ websites, we will report you and fully cooperate with legitimate law enforcement organizations, and we will seek compensation for any damages you inflicted upon our systems.
You can choose to browse our site as a visitor, or you can choose to become a registered user of our site. If you wish to become a registered user, we will do our best to keep the information you provide to us as secure as possible. Should we detect a security breach, we will attempt to contact you as soon as possible. We will not, however, assume liability for any damages you may incur from a breach to our security. I cannot guarantee my own safety, so how am I supposed to guarantee yours?
Registered users can also post comments on our articles. As time goes on, if we are blessed with a growing audience, perhaps there will be additional perks to registering, but for now, commenting on our posts is it. Woo-hoo!
If you do not agree, in whole or in part, with these terms, then you may not use our site, and should close your browser or enter a different web address in the location bar.
Registration
Registering for this site is free, for the moment. This may change in the future, though I am not going to be dick about it. You may opt-in, should that time come, to pay for a “membership,” or you may continue to use the site for free. There will obviously be perks for a paid vs. free membership, of course. But that is for a later time, so do not fret about it. If you choose to register, then you are agreeing to the entire ToS, and specifically to the items outlined in this section.
- You represent that you are a person of 18 years of age or older, and that you live in the United States as a citizen or legal resident. See the “International Visitors/Users” section as to why.
- You agree to provide us with a working email address to which we may, and are able to, contact you.
- You agree to not use an obnoxious user name on our site (i.e. big_dick_69). Should I come across such usernames, I will delete those accounts. I am not messing around on this. I am all for having fun with your screen name, but keep it tasteful, will ya? Why not just suspend the account until the username is changed? Because a) I can and I will, and 2) the system will not allow a username to be changed, so deletion is the only option.
- We will not sell your email address to anyone, and you agree to allow us to share your email when necessary to relevant third parties. An example would be Gravatar, which is an online avatar management system that uses your email address to display your desired avatar on sites that use their service. For details, check out our privacy policy.
- You agree to allow us to send messages to your email. These messages will not be spam in nature, and will usually be related to the registration process (email confirmation) or support (i.e. password reset).
- If you choose to use Gravatar to display a custom avatar on our site, you agree this avatar will have a rating of PG or below, and that you will not try to circumvent filters on our site to prevent the display of images we deem, in our sole discretion, to be inappropriate. Accounts found to be in violation of this will be suspended until their avatar is changed to a satisfactory rating.
- Should we suspect you are below the age of 18, or it is reported to us that you are a minor, we will immediately suspend your account. We will notify you at the email address listed in your profile with steps to verify your age. If you cannot provide satisfactory age verification, then your account will be deleted and the IP address used to register may be blocked if you try to setup another account.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time by clicking on the “Delete My Account” button in your profile and following the instructions.
WARNING: This is irreversible. If you delete your account, we cannot recover any lost data, including pictures, comments, and posts. Make absolutely sure you want to do this!
We reserve the right to delete your account at any time, for any reason, and without warning.
Comments
As you must be a registered user to leave comments on our site, if you have not yet registered, this part may not apply to you, except for perhaps rule #2. I am all for the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and I do not have many rules governing the comment section.
- Content you post in our comments section cannot be pornographic in nature. You may also not post language that violates United States law. One example, inciting violence against an individual or group(e.g. “let’s go kill ____” or “I’m going set an explosive at ___”); another example, soliciting sex from minors. We will immediately forward messages that violate US law, along with the email address, username, and IP address of the individual(s) who posted the comment(s), to the relevant legitimate law enforcement agencies. These messages will be removed from display, but may be retained for evidentiary purposes.
- The comments left on our site by you or others may not or do not reflect the opinions or views of myself or anyone else at American Cyanide. The views or opinions belong solely to the person who posted the comment.
- Be an adult. I believe in robust debate, but try to keep it respectful. I am not responsible for your feelings, just as you are not responsible for mine. We are not your mommy or daddy. Unless a comment is in violation of Rule 1 of the Comment Section (“Rule#1”) above, crying to us about someone being mean to you (or someone you know) in the comments will fall on deaf ears.
- No one can define hate speech, and I will not attempt to do so here. If you want to be a distasteful, racist prick, that is your choice. Again, Rule#1 applies. At the same time, not every comment made about a race is racist in nature, so do not be an over-sensitive prick because someone posts a stat about a particular racial group. This holds true for gender, religion, orientation, and all other matters of discussion.
- SPAM! I hate SPAM! SPAM messages and the account(s) that posted them will be deleted and the IP addresses will be entered into our host’s black list. If you wish to advertise on our site, please go here. Otherwise, go to hell, you scummy spammers!
- The ability to post comments on this site is a privilege, one which we reserve the right to revoke at any time, for any reason, and without warning.
International Visitors/Users
Hello there. Thanks for coming. I understand that the idea of the importance of free speech is known throughout the world. So, tell me, why are comedians being sent to jail over jokes in Canada? Why are people being arrested in jolly-ol’ England for reposting a meme critical of the alphabet mafia? It seems to me that, outside of the United States, freedom of speech is not taken very seriously. Hell, freedom of speech is under attack here in the United States as well.
I also understand that non-democratic governance groups like the European Union have passed “laws” that infringe upon freedom of speech, and that websites that serve EU member nations must comport to these laws.
Uhm… no. I will not. I am an American citizen, and my site’s server is in the United States. While you can access this site from outside of the U.S., I do not have the time, nor the inclination, to “watch what I say.” The way I see it, my website is my home in the virtual world, my own little piece of virtual real estate. And why not? I am paying for space to build something upon, no? What I do in my own home is up to me. While you are free to visit my home, you do not get to tell me whether or not I can walk around naked in my own home. If you do not wish to see me walking around naked in my home, do not come to my home. So here is what I am doing to “protect you,” keep you from “seeing me naked in my own home:”
If your IP comes from outside of the United States, you should have seen a landing page with a warning that you may be exposed to freedom. If you cannot handle it, then you are to hit the “Take me back to my safe space” button. If you clicked on the “I can handle it” button, then you are agreeing to all the terms in this document, and will be given temporary access to our site; however, you will not be able to register for an account, free or otherwise. Again, I have neither the time nor inclination to waste my time monitoring comments that may violate German law, or British law, or EU law. Screw that! It’s just me right now, and I will be having a difficult enough time ensuring US law is not being violated on my own.
If you are using a VPN to circumvent this check, and then proceed to create an account, then we hold that you have chosen to set aside whatever “protections” your nation may provide to you against “hate speech,” that you are trying to pass yourself off as a United States citizen in order to exercise rights your own nation may not allow you to exercise, and that you, and you alone, are responsible for comments you leave on our site. You also agree that you will not hold us liable for any damages (real or perceived) or emotional trauma a comment or article may have “inflicted” on you.
We get the basic location data (COUNTRY ONLY!) using the IP2Location LITE data available from https://lite.ip2location.com.
Changing these terms
You agree that we reserve the right to change these terms of service at any time, and that we are not required to notify you that these terms have changed. As a matter of courtesy, we will attempt to contact our registered users of any changes to these terms, but not doing so does not make us liable for any losses, damages or inconveniences (real or perceived) you may experience from these changes.