iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It tells me a lot. But not what you think. (Truth is not measured by popularity)

Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Only if it upsets everybody. There are people that are unreachable and in this context these are the people that are the loudest.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Is discussing my spine "consideration and evenhandedness"? If i missed an earlier comment from you that didn't talk about my spine, I apologize. I can't read every response.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

You never once think to yourself "what if I'm the one with confirmation bias?"

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This was not my point, and twisting my words this way is hateful, and an attempt at emotionally reframing me so that others will ignore my actual arguments. Do my actual arguments threaten your world view somehow?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

But then Judaism is more than just "a religion", and maybe you didn't understand that this is what many Jews believe. It is a union in shared history, which is ethnic, as well as religious.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Sorry I assumed that when you said "ethnostate" you meant a state that self-organized around specific historic AND cultural differences from other nearby groups. Because that is clearly what happens. Israeli culture and self-identity springs in large part, but not entirely, from Judaism.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

But you're asking to cleanse this region of Jews. Because "ehtnostates are bad". This is a deep and obvious logical fallacy.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Counterargument. If the only responses to my take are to call me names, or misunderstand me willfully, then my take was valid and no one found any real actual points of disagreement.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"I hold no I'll will against Jews, but Israel as a concept is just morally wrong." Is Vatican City morally wrong? Greece? Denmark? Afghanistan? Tons of nations have state religions. Tons of nations have ethnic character. Many natoins have both. But THIS ONE is morally wrong?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The Czechs and the Slovaks split up for this reason. The Croats and the Serbs. Older traditional nations like Fance and Italy and Spain and Germany are "ethnostates". So the lesson seems to be, "ehtnostates we accept, but no Jews" at which point I have a problem.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As for your claims of an "ethnostate", nearly every nation on Earth is an "ethnostate". While the platonic ideal should be we all live together and have freedom of movement anywhere, the nation state system exists to self-segregate to reduce conflicts.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Or you could actually study history instead of blindly repeating the myths and slogans from a movement. The Balfour declaration didn't come out of a vacuum. It came out of decades of organic, and later, organized Zionism.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I spent time and effort explaining a point of view that others have not considered and instead of consideration I got mockery and hate.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As for his politics over all, he is farther left than I am in principle (i.e. what he says), but so far is more pragmatic in his implementations. Also, I don't live in NYC so it's all academic at that point.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As for Mamdani, he is the latest Golden Boy who is above all criticism, which I find annoying on both sides of the aisle. No politician is perfect, and no politician is above all criticism. And like other Golden Boys, he accepts praise for things others accomplished. Also annoying.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Many US politicians criticize our response after 9/11. That's fine. Much of those criticisms are valid. Our response went on too long and didn't actually make us much safer. But let me be clear that I do not believe that this makes America evil or primarily responsible.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My take is good. The response has been to willfully ignore my very clearn and obvious points in order to mock and spread hate. This is an observation not victim mentality. But also "victim mentality" is a great way to belittle the concerns of a minority with the old "oversensitive" claim.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

If the root cause is that radicals want to use Palestinians as pawns in order to delegitimize Israel then your support of their effort is ensuring that Palestinians suffering remains in place. By far, the most consistent model for driving humans to war is "oppress your people, blame your neighbor".

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It is utterly inconceivable to you that you might have this wrong. That you have misdiagnosed the root cause. That's the problem. Activists have, for four decades or more, loudly blamed Israel for defending themselves and it has done nothing to reduce Palestinian suffering. Quite the opposite.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

But for one day, people ought to be able to acknowledge the deaths on 9/11 without dragging in politics on to people's person al tragedies. And thankfully (in my opinion) that is the norm for one single day. If that is the piety you refer to, I say it is good to turn on our empathy for one day.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Then see that's a discussion point we can actually discuss. I disagree with your premise. How would I so easily be able to summarize criticisms of our response if there was a taboo about discussing it Criticisms are everywhere and widespread.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I'm an optimist. I was HOPING it was trolls. It is worse if this is an entirely organic response. Because it means that bigotry and hate are now so widespread that civil discourse on a critical issue is now literally impossible. People here are ONLY capable of spreading hate.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And yes, i limited replies and turned off quotes because there was no utility in wading through that sea of hate, because I have a life.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

In several hundred responses, I hoped there would be SOME legitimate discourse. I never found any. (To be fair I may have missed it, i could'nt keep up with all the hate.) Discourse is dead. The ability to hear people who hold different ideas is dead. Bigotry rules. Bluesky is no better than X.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Because real people died and regardless of opinions over our response, people with empathy should acknowledge that for just one day. But instead, clueless fascist got in line to ignore that point and repeatedly call me a clueless fascist.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The tragic or funny thing is the vast numbers of quotes and replies unable (or more likely unwilling) to see my point so that they could mock me for "cluelessly" listing out valid criticisms. To be clear, ON 9/11, the focus should be about the victims, not the political fallout.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Once you fall for that level of whacked out conspiracy nonsense you're beyond my help, sorry.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

So humans don't have a right to go live where their cousins live are you serious? How exactly do you think indigeneity works? Anyway Jews didn't take land. They bought land from other people and moved into the land they bought. Isn't that just freedom of movement?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

And let's make it clear that defending your citizens against an external threat is not simply a matter of killing the same number of people that the external threat successfully killed. It's literally a matter of doing your best to remove the threat.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I know that complex real-world facts are much harder than simple facts, but I prefer the complex facts because they tend to actually be true. Did you know that under international law nations are required to defend their citizens against external threats? A lot of people don't seem to know this.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

No but it does say you have to prove intent. And one of the world's top armies killing so few people per day shows intent. The intent to limit civilian casualties. Which is literally by definition not genocide.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Because from a social justice point of view the lies told about Israel and Jews are far far more widespread and broadly accepted than the lies told by Russia about ukrainians.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"I don't see teenagers shooting at soldiers as combatants"... same thing. Except that the larger point is that under international law, Hamas is wrong to use child combatants, while Israel is not wrong to shoot back at any combatant shooting at them.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Jews are literally indigenous to this land and have lived there continuously for over 3000 years. How can anyone be a colonizer of their indigenous land?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes. Someone did. Why else would my post make it into your timeline?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

In which "children" include teenaged combatants.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I will admit I have not read every response. There's been hundreds. Another typical tactic of troll armies, to just try to drown me and get me to give up. I've seen it all before.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That was literally the first response. And frankly, I'd love to see ANY thoughtful response that came in today. Send a link?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

No. I'm saying that buildings are not people, therefore blowing them up while empty is not genocide. It may well be terrible for other reasons, but it isn't genocide. So stop lying with the genocide thing. It's a blood libel.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

On the one side, you have Hamas, supposedly the actual government, literally calling for the death or removal of all Jews. On the other side, you have people quoting random asshats who do NOT speak for Israel or its policy, saying bad shit, because yes, every population has bad eggs.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Where did they expand into? Did they make like a giant Tardis that makes Israel bigger on the inside than the outside? How do you expand territory while giving it up? Or are you just brainwashed by that pure fiction nonsense propaganda four panel Palestine map that's posted ad nauseum?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Wait. You're part of the pro-Palestinian movement and your saying _I'm_ the attention whore? Your movement sucking all the air out of the room is why nobody talks about Ukraine (more dead) or Sudan (also more dead). We don't hear about those so that we can hear your false claims of genocide.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

They dropped leaflets. They called people. They texted them. They literally told them where the bombs would come and when. This is super well-documented. Not. A. Genocide.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

No, Israel destroyed buildings for tactical reasons. And for humanitarian reasons they worked really hard to make sure those buildings are as empty as possible. Not. A. Genocide.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ummm buildings aren't people? Are you trying to make my point for me?

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes. And don't you notice that this is a problem??? With all the massive coverage of the war in Gaza, the coverage of its root cause in Western corporate media was pathetic. Because corporate media is complicit in its own way. (They push stories that SELL, and antisemitic stories always sell.)

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It was not my argument. My argument was that the impact on a culture is related to the proportions. For the basic reason of likelihood of any random person directly knowing a victim. Which any rational non-troll would undestand had they read what i wrote.

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Thomas A. Fine @thomasafine.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Because it is 100% obvious that they were intentionally trying to miss people. For that number alone, and for many many other objective and factual reasons.

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