Who writes these notes, and on what terms

A ledger in the yard records what came in, what went out and who signed for it. This page does the same for the section you have been reading.

Who signs

TECNOBLOCO ARTEFATOS DE CONCRETO LTDA, a concrete products company registered in Brazil under tax ID (CNPJ) 14.810.934/0002-84, at R. Maximiliano Magagnin, 401, Cara-Cara, Ponta Grossa, state of Paraná, postcode 84043-751. The same company whose yard page is at velouraer.com/velouraer-en.

Reaching the shed

contato@velouraer.com, the only published address, used for orders and for anything about these notes alike.

The readers

Men outside Brazil, mostly in the United States, whose forties are behind them and whose working days have started to thin out in the afternoon. The notes are written for them, in English, by the people who run the yard.

Why a concrete yard in Paraná writes in English

Because the yard's experience of a working day turned out to translate. The men who open our gate are the same age as the men who write to us from abroad, with the same mornings and the same afternoons, and the trade gave us a vocabulary, curing, courses, pallets, that says plainly what the health pages tend to say in jargon. The section exists to put that vocabulary to use for readers who will never buy a block from us.

How the company may be paid

The notes themselves sell nothing and contain no product. The company does, from time to time, point readers to something made by a partner, a maker of goods for everyday use, through a page or a video kept apart from these notes and marked as advertising wherever it appears. When a reader follows such a pointer and buys from the maker's own shop, the maker pays the company a fee. That fee is the only way this section earns anything. It does not change the maker's price, and it does not change what the notes say, which were written before any partner existed and will outlast them.

What the notes are not

No physician wrote them, nothing in them is medical guidance, and no treatment for any condition is described. Where a note mentions research, it mentions the direction the research points, not a figure to hold anyone to, and it says so. A reader whose tiredness has lasted for weeks, or comes with pain, breathlessness, changes in weight or sleep that frighten him, should see a doctor who knows his history. The notes are a yard's observations, not a substitute for that appointment.

What we keep about readers

Almost nothing. No cookie is placed by the section's pages and no counter script runs on them. The server that hosts them keeps the usual technical log of visits, address, browser, page, which is read only when something breaks. Typefaces are loaded from Google's font service, which registers the request under its own rules. If a reader writes to the shed, the message and the sender's address remain in the mailbox while the exchange is open. The full policy, with the rights a reader has under Brazil's data law and the address of the national authority, is at the data policy page.

Terms of reading

The text and the drawings in this section belong to the company; a quoted sentence that links here is fine; a lifted page is not. Any note may be revised or taken down when the company sees fit, and the version online is the one that stands. Nothing here creates an obligation on either side: reading is free, writing to us is voluntary, and the company owes a reader no more than an honest page.