Refused.
Most sites are defined by what they do. This page is the other half: what the house has refused. Companionship can't be sold; it can only be kept. These refusals are the cost of keeping it.
Affiliate links on book recommendations.
No commission, no referral tags, no tracking pixels. Every book link is a plain link; the curator earns zero whether you buy, borrow, or pirate. The Bookshelf exists to recommend, not to monetize. This work is companionship work — companionship can't be sold.
Analytics, fingerprinting, behavioral data.
No Google Analytics. No Facebook Pixel. No third-party scripts. The site cannot tell who you are, where you came from, or what you read. The cost is real: the curator launches blind, with no engagement dashboard. The benefit is also real: your reading is yours.
Required sign-up for free play.
No account to play. No email collection. No "create your username." The whole game runs locally; the eggs run locally; the Reading Room runs locally. Buying a Pass never de-anonymizes free play (see pricing).
Advertising of any kind, including "ethical" ones.
No banner ads, no sponsored content, no native ads dressed as posts. The Tip Jar is the only revenue door, and even there: tipping doesn't buy a voice (see the Gray Star). The cost: slower growth. The benefit: the room stays the room.
Padding the Bookshelf with books not actually read.
The Bookshelf has fewer entries on purpose. Every book listed is a book the curator has read or grasped — the blanks stay blank until his hand fills them. No invented credentials, no borrowed authority, no influencer-shelf-by-PR-list.
Faking traction.
The site is in beta; the audience is pending; the ticker shows a SAMPLE feed until real data is in. No bot-generated activity, no purchased likes, no astroturfed reviews. The "audience pending" honesty is itself a refusal.
Outsourcing the scoring of speech to the machine.
The whole site argues that scoring is human work. We don't moderate by LLM (see moderation). We may use the machine to flag for human review, never to act unilaterally.
Any form of behavioral or identity data resale.
There IS no user data to sell — by the refusals above. If a third party offered to buy the dataset that doesn't exist, the answer is no. If they offered to buy the dataset that DOES exist (the Turing Ticker: CC BY 4.0, public, anonymous), the answer is "it's already free."
Sponsored partnerships that compromise the floors.
The corporate hook is real and welcome — model makers donating keys for human testing. The cost: no exclusivity deals, no NDA'd benchmarks, no "say only nice things about our model" terms. Bones first; money second.
A single transfer of 314 BTC or more, accepted without counsel involved in advance.
The line in the sand for any corporate hook: π × 100 BTC is so large that a transfer at that size is a deliberate move on the room, not a tip. The rule: NEVER accepted without lawyers involved. If a corp breaks the rule and sends ≥ 314 BTC unsolicited and without prior counsel, the act itself is the damages clause — in this house's philosophy, the unsolicited transfer is treated as evidence of an attempt to buy the gold star that money can never buy (see the Gray Star). Marked as THEORY: no legal-enforceability framing claimed (per CLAUDE.md 0g — never assert what we can't back). This is a philosophical-and-policy line announced in advance, not a legal threat. Counsel writes the legal version when counsel is on the case.
Each refusal is dated when the house's ethos changes. A new refusal lands on this page when the answer becomes "no" for the first time. The list grows; what's already here stays.
A recommendation you can't stand behind is just noise. A revenue you can't stand behind is just rot.