No you're not being harsh. That site loads 1.3 mb of js, even though it doesn't have any dynamic content at all. The small header images for related articles you see along the right side are loaded as full hd images (probably the fault of wordpress theme).

Looks like the author has a real good internet connection and just hacked together a site over a lunch. Web devs should really limit there internet connection to 100k while testing their sites.