The "dishonest read" is a strange accusation. I think I was about 11 or 12 when I read the book and my reaction was - "err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly? Well thats a bit dumb". I did like the story though and reread the book later several times, but the suicide bits felt always so weird.
Dishonest as in - it requires ignoring 99% of the book and focusing on the last couple pages, ignoring the entire struggle, bravery and sacrifice that lead to that moment.
>>err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly
Well so your 12 year old self I guess missed the part where Johnathan was mortally wounded and about to die. The fact that Karl decides to join him in death is not a glorification of suicide, and I don't know how it could possibly be read that way. There's literally nothing willy-nilly about it - again, it doesn't appear to be some well known fact or even a fact at all that there is another "level" beyond that one - it's a guess, a hope at best. And Karl decides to jump with his dearest brother because(as made incredibly explicit multiple times throughout the entire book) - he loves him more than anything in the world and cannot imagine parting with him again. You make it sound like a video game where characters go "meh, let's try again" - it's absolutely not so. Before he died the first time, Karl wasn't sure if Johnathan was telling the truth about afterlife or if he wanted to just make him feel better in his ilness - and now that Johnathan was mortally wounded, Karl knew that only bravery and hope and love for the people you care about is worth living(and dying) for. That's what the book is about.
In my first comment I even made this explicit - I said that as an adult, this book makes me appreciate the finality of death - and you might ask, how is that so, given that in this world it looks like you can just keep dying over and over again only to go to higher planes of existence. And the answer is simple - with every death, you lose everything except for hope. Hope that you are going to wake up again in a better world and that the people you love will still be there. But you don't know. In my personal life I don't believe in it - but for children, this is the greatest gift - hope. Especially struggling ones that see no bright path anywhere - hope is all they have. And as you can tell, for majority of the book the hope was "we can win persevere against hardship and evil" and not "we can kill ourselves and hope the next world is better".
For the life of me, I am unable to add an account to Vivaldi Mail. I am not 100% sure, but I am guessing that the error is "ReferenceError document is not defined".
Edit: after restarting, the message is "Mail client startup failed. Error: Not yet support for changing primary key".
I agree, and I'll go further. Jan Tschischold didn't think we should use serifs unless text is justified. That convention was one of Wikipedia's main reasons for settling on sans-serif for body text.
The page's creator should be giving reasons why his "great" example defies a basic typographical convention. This webpage seems to be all headline.
Russians have had 20 odd years to do something about their government.
I would argue that if you are a citizen of Russia, you are the Putin ally here by letting things go so bad.
I understand that NOW it is a lot harder to reform the system or bring about any positive changes. This ship has probably sailed.
The Russian people are now reaping what they perhaps not sowed, but have ALLOWED to grow.
You are really not the victim nor others the idiots. The world just is having a bit courage to show what they feel about Russia. To put it nicely - Russia has so far been tolerated.
I'm slightly puzzled by the phrase "Estonian company, no less" (I am an Estonian myself).
I think that instead of condemning Russians for allowing Putin's regime to grow, an Estonian like you should be a little grateful that there were enough democracy-leaning Russians in 1980s who had weakened the soviet empire so that the other republics could slip away and have their chance of freedom. Some took it, like Baltic states, some turned into classical sultanates, some remain a battleground. The Russians, however, had to bear with all the KGB apparatus which remained firm in its place, and after enduring economic hardships of the 90s were feeling they were cheated by everyone. So no wonder that an upsurge in oil prices in the early 00s helped to create a calm and positive atmosphere, where the gradual deterioration of the democracy institutions went almost unnoticed. And actually it was unnoticed not only by Russians, but by everyone else: President Buss was Putin's 'friend', Germany chancellor ended up on a Gazprom board, the Queen was visiting Russia, etc., all was nice and fluffy. And let's not forget that the real funders of Putin's aggression are buyers of his energy exports, and they do this to this very moment, on the 30 odd day of the war, even having an exemption from Swift cutoff just to pay for it! But of course UI designers can no longer have their Figma access, that would be supporting Putin's regime.
Regarding the estonian company - I don't even know why exactly Ionos sent me a discontinuation of service notice. I operate my business with a company based in Estonia - mostly to NOT pay taxes to Putin's criminal regime - and hosting was invoiced to that company, and paid with that company's funds. So how they even arrived to a conclusion that I'm a customer from russia is rather interesting.
In the cultural context where I come from (Estonia), using ones name while NOT being friends is a sure way to sound very passive aggressive.
Doing this in a formal dialogue pretty much guarantees that the person on the receiving end will consider the other party to be very much a dick.
I am pretty sure that it's not just Estonia, but Finland too.
Yep, I'm from Finland and to me, using a person's name in a potential conflict situation just feels like trying to make the problem personal. In the article's examples, like "I’m not entirely sure we can do that, Liam", I hear an unspoken "you fool" at the end.
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