Ink Sploshes, B'Goshes

27 December 2025 - 25 January 2026

Jan 25, 2026

This is another roundup of everything I have been writing and podcasting around the internet of late. I am integrating the podcast from The Distance into Osborne Ink during the new year and making some content changes to centralize everything through this website. These digest posts will stop appearing at some point in 2026.

Polemology Positions

Why America Gets Battleships For Christmas

We are used to thinking of ‘battleships’ as hulking metal monsters with great, huge guns because that is what battleships became in the 19th century. The western concept of a ship fighting mainly with broadside gunnery begins right around 1500 AD, when European carpenters first cut gun…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

Reviews Are In For 'Queen Of Coal' Starring Pedro Pascal's Transgender Sibling

”A trans woman dreams of working the coal mines — but in a town steeped in superstition and patriarchy, Carlita must fight to earn her place underground” reads the Netflix description of Queen of Coal. (Original title: Miss Carbon.) Put in plain language, the plot is that a man who works in a coal mine dreams of becoming a woman who works in a coal mine, only to be told that he must now take one of the jobs set aside for women outside the mine, so he raises the consciousness of the coal town until they let him be a “woman in the coal mine”, the very first, a breakthrough for gender justice…

a month ago · 6 likes · Matt Osborne

Dear Bari Weiss, Machiavelli Was Right. It Is Better To Be Feared Than Loved

Do you remember the time that 60 Minutes covered the Arkansas ban on pediatric sex lobotomies by interviewing someone from the conservative nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, leaving almost everything they said on the cutting room floor without interviewing any of the parents or clinicians they recommended, instead airing pro-trans advocacy and minimizing regret rates? Pepperidge Farms remembers, and…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

These Protests In Tehran Might Be Different

Several bazaars went on strike and carried out demonstrations in the center of Tehran yesterday, clashing with security forces. The proximate cause of the protests is a sudden drop in value of the rial. The governor of Iran’s central bank resigned today…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

On War And The Fermi Paradox

British astronomer and associate professor at Columbia University David Kipping, host of the Cool Worlds YouTube channel, published a speculative paper this month to propose what he calls the Eschatian Hypothesis: “that the first confirmed detection of an extraterrestrial technological civilization is most likely to be an atypical example, one that is u…

a month ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

Minnesota Vice: 'Everyone Who Calls Out My Obvious Scam Is Racist White Supremacy'

I began my ‘gender critical’ journey in 2018 when I walked out of a progressive conference room. I was quite sure I had just heard two women, both ostensibly in the reproductive rights space, describe a plan by multiple organizations to commit Medicaid and insurance fraud with pediatric gender medicine. By their own telling, this was effectively legal, …

24 days ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

A Tipping Point In Tehran?

No one can impose change on Iran from outside and no one should try. As I wrote earlier this week, the world must let the bazaaris, the urban retail business community that has always been the center of gravity in Pers…

24 days ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

Go Ahead, Be Jealous

Details of the operation are still sketchy, as one should expect, but the reign of Nicolás Maduro has come to a definitive end. We can be absolutely sure that the Venezuelan despot was taken into custody along with his wife Cilia because Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is demanding…

22 days ago · Matt Osborne

Every subscriber to The Distance has been added as a free subscriber to Osborne Ink. All future content posted here in 2026 will be mirrored there. If you are a premium subscriber to The Distance, you will continue to receive all the usual content here through the end of the year. If you switch to…

21 days ago · Matt Osborne

Tim Walz Is Leaving, But The Somali Fraud Scandal Is Spreading To Other States

Tim Walz has dropped out of the 2026 Minnesota governor’s race and a potential historic third term as governor. “Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences…

20 days ago · 4 likes · Matt Osborne

Transgender Ideology Shows Its True Colors

In 2016, the NBA could cancel North Carolina for a ‘bathroom bill’. In 2026, transgender advocacy can barely make it to the men’s room. The decade of cultural and political ascendancy for ‘gender identity’ is over. The decline of what we might call ‘gender imperialism’, the demand for newly-minted rights that collapse existing civil and human rights under the rubric of ‘gender identity’, is now evident. North Carolina Republicans ended 2025 by…

19 days ago · 7 likes · Matt Osborne

I Blame Democrats Entirely For This

I choose the evidence my eyeballs deliver. The bullet hole is in the front, perpendicular to the windshield, because th…

17 days ago · 21 likes · Matt Osborne

Let The Good Times Roll

14 days ago · 5 likes · Matt Osborne

This podcast will unlock on 3 February.

Standing On Faith At His Christian Post: Debriefing Brandon Showalter

My guest for this episode is Brandon Showalter, a journalist at The Christian Post and host of Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle, a documentary series on the impacts of gender ideology on family, society, and especially children. We looked back on his ten years of journalism, his five seasons as a podcaster, and his quiet success in coalition-building…

12 days ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

The 'ICE Floyd' Lynch Mob Is Already Wearing Out Its Welcome In Minnesota

7 days ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

'Moderate' Virginia Democrats Want To Legalize Immigrant Rape Gangs, Now

During her first 24 hours as the governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger announced that she will rejoin something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), imposing a regressive energy tax on Virginians. This is just one new expensive virtue signal coming from Richmond, where Democrats want new retail delivery taxes on every order from Uber Eats, investment taxes on everyone who owns stock in Uber Eats, higher sales taxes for everyone who buys their own food, and two new high income tax brackets for everyone who owns a business…

5 days ago · 10 likes · Matt Osborne

This content is exclusively available to premium subscribers of Polemology.net until 2027.

Polemology Positions

The Walls Of Cahokia And The Palisaded Communities Of The Middle Mississippian

Defensive walls are a universal technology. When Hernando de Soto landed in Florida in 1539 to explore the American southeast, he found “a well inhabited and a fat country” with “some great and walled towns, and many houses scattered all about the fields, to wit, a crossbow shot or two, the one from the other…

4 days ago · Matt Osborne

How Gavin Newsom Declared Victory In His 'Marshall Plan' For Homelessness

Gavin Newsom had a problem. The governor of California wanted to run for president in 2028, and hoped that the summer Olympics would showcase his leadership when the world came to visit, but the cities were st…

4 days ago · Matt Osborne

Elon Musk Helps Gender Fraud Whistleblower Sue Everyone Who Tried To Put Him In Jail

Dr. Eithan Haim, the Texas children’s gender clinic whistleblower subjected to malicious prosecution by the Biden Justice Department, is holding the people who tried to imprison him accountable for their lies…

3 days ago · Matt Osborne

Minnesota Man Faces Trial For Our Podcast On The Trans Grooming Of His Daughter

Minnesota man Brent Bowlby will face trial next week for allegedly harassing his ex-partner through a third party. The Distance is allegedly that third party and supposedly harassed Bowlby’s ex-partner through the mundane journalistic practice of contacting her for comment on the story…

What The Epstein Boomerang Tells Us About The Democratic Party Right Now

Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to respond to a US House committee subpoena this week, prompting nine Democrats to join their Republican colleagues and hold the power couple in contempt of Congress. It took less than a week for the Jeffrey Epstein ‘files’ to boomerang on the enemies of Donald Trump last November, and now the boomerang has struck the Cl…

a day ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

There Is No Limit To How Many Times A Law Enforcement Officer Can Shoot Your Stupid Ass

An armed man was shot while resisting ICE agents in Minneapolis today. I am not going to litigate the details of the incident here. Instead, I think we all need to collectively educate ourselves about a few very important points that apply to any violent interaction your stupid ass chooses to undertake with any American law enforcement officer…

a day ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

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