Oh yes definitely The Little Prince is a must-read.

The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren is one of my childhood favourites. Originally Swedish but has been translated into English.

The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt another childhood fav., it has been translated from Dutch. Actually, anything by Dragt I loved, but not sure which have translations or not.

In terms of adult fiction, I was hooked on Stig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (he only wrote the first 3 though).

Someone mentioned Kurt Vonnegut; I recommend the one I've read of his: Slaughterhouse 5.

The Circle still gives me pause more than 5 years later. It's by Dave Eggers.

Like I said to someone else here already:

False. The Clinton emails were first released under FOIA by the State Department, not by WikiLeaks. You're mixing it up with the Podesta and DNC email archives, which incidentally contained dirt on Trump as well.

Over the next several months, the State Department completed production of 30,068 emails, which were released in 14 batches, with the final batch released on February 29, 2016. Both the Wall Street Journal and WikiLeaks independently set up search engines for anyone who would like to search through the Clinton emails released by the State Department.

False. The Clinton emails were first released under FOIA by the State Department, not by WikiLeaks. You're mixing it up with the Podesta and DNC email archives, which incidentally contained dirt on Trump as well.

Over the next several months, the State Department completed production of 30,068 emails, which were released in 14 batches, with the final batch released on February 29, 2016. Both the Wall Street Journal and WikiLeaks independently set up search engines for anyone who would like to search through the Clinton emails released by the State Department.

i haven’t needed one for years because i use their app on my phone and i can see their announcements as a notification and i can also kill off most of its tracking by DNS. unfortunately my parents don’t understand this

Sounds like you have a reasonable, compatible alternative on your phone already. Will they even notice if you continue using this and never plug the new alexa in?

That teacher is a sore looser.

Signal does the same

Someone recently told me this anecdote:

I overheard on the train home two middle aged ladies talking about their kids mobilephones.

One was saying how they dragged their teen and their mobile phone to the iphone store so they could setup the location tracker and "quiet mode" (parent phone can completly disable the teens phone), and how their child was upset but they are glad it was done.

The other lady was asking how she to can do the same.

the feeling of not being spied on 24-7

"They started it." "We are the real victims here." "Antisemitic terrorists"

This is a case brought by 4 US citizens against the CIA. They are attorneys Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass. They all visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the relevant time period ~2017 and claim their 4th amendment rights have been violated. I can't wait to see this trial unfold! The evidence that will come out of this could well mean the end of the DOJ's pursuit of Assange.

Remember Julian Assange is in a high security prison without conviction awaiting extradition to the US where the conditions he will be incarcerated in will be even worse. He will be burried in the prison with no contact to his friends or family while being tried in the 'espionage court' where he is charged. The long-term threat of these conditions have amounted to psychological torture, resulting in a medical state that could end his life at any moment. Julian is literally hanging by a thread. His limited contact with his wife and 2 young children are literally his life line. He won't have that in US prison. This is a matter of life and death. Torturers torture to intimidate. In Julian's case it is to intimidate everyone else and in particular the press, so they won't do what he did and expose serious state criminality to the world. The purpose is to avoid accountability and avoid facing justice.