[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (158): Is "keep updated" proper usage of those words? by tina on english.SE

@RegDwigнt But you've broken the ice now. The next one will not take 40 years. Besides, think of all the time you wasted during that first 40. QED

@Færd Thanks. That seems reasonable. I've also heard that some people in Labour (including Corbyn) have said things like "Jews in England are getting too powerful" which is pretty bad. I had always thought that people were misinterpreting being against oppression of Palestinians as being anti-Israel and also that anti-Israeli = anti-semitism, which has all sorts of wrong in it.

But there is supposedly actual talk on the left in the UK that is outright anti-semitic (and that's just not how the left works in the US).

@Gigili Sure, sometimes it is.

@Robusto Yeah that's a good question I've found myself pondering a lot in the last couple months.

How much of that time was wasted — or was any of it really.

Maybe something has just been ripening this whole time. It sure feels that way.

Is it advisable to start writing your Great American Novel at the age of three, gradually getting better and better till you write one sentence that is decent.

Or should you spend decades reading, before you even put pen to paper for the first time.

Should you get a PhD in English, or should you just travel the world, watch YouTube and play video games.

I don't know the answer. I don't know that there is one. But it's not a rhetorical question, either.

There's certainly ample examples for either end of the spectrum, and for every point in-between.

But you are only one person, and so can only find yourself at exactly one of them points. And so you're always left wondering, is that the best point you could have possibly picked for yourself.

I've not been sitting on my hands for forty years. I've been listening to music.

Must be worth something.

I've been haunting chatrooms

@RegDwigнt Of course. But understand that you're already too old to be the youngest anything.

@Mitch Oh sure. Antisemitism may well be a problem across the spectrum there. It's not peculiarly a Labour problem tho, and was unjustly blown up in Tories' attacks on Corbyn. If Corbyn said such a thing it's indeed terrible, but as far as I know religious, racial, or cultural antagonisms were far from central to Labour's campaign, in contrast to Tories'.

Anyway, it's over now. Labour was crumpled up like old paper and thrown away for now.

BTW, as to your comments on the confusion of antisemitism and criticism of Israel, I'd go further and say I don't see anything wrong with being anti Israel (as the nation-state of the Jewish people) either, just like I'm vocally anti Islamic Republic of Iran (for its religious prejudice).

I think, in principle, any inherently discriminatory constitution or way of government should be reformed or scrapped. But this principle should be put into practice as tactfully as possible, so as to reduce people's suffering, not increase it.

.

What do you call the fragile old-fashioned brown paper? We call it hay peper in Farsi.