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14 April - 18 May 2025

May 18, 2025

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It’s time for another roundup of everything I have written or podcasted lately all across the internut. The internet is actually a kind of nut, once you crack it there is sweet delicious crunchiness inside. (Please do not try to eat the internet.)

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Little Red Radical Terf

Once upon a time, a perfectly innocent trans grandmother was living her best life in the woods when she encountered a terrible transphobe who was feared by all the forest creatures…

10 months ago · 5 likes

This post is available exclusively to premium subscribers of Polemology.net

Polemology Positions

The Drone War Is Our Current Military Revolution

During the first week of April, Ukrainian drones struck the only known fiber optics plant in Russia. Located at Saransk in Mordovia Oblast, PJSC Optical Fiber Systems is more than 430 miles (700 km) from Ukraine. A simultaneous strike on the Promsintez chemical plant in Chapaevsk Samara Oblast, located almost 550 miles (877 km) from Ukraine…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

Coach Linda Blade Is Embarrassed For You, John Oliver

Coach Linda Blade is the author of Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport. In this episode, she responds to John Oliver’s recent hit piece on SheWon.org, a website that crowdsources information on females who have been denied fair sports victories by male participation…

10 months ago · 10 likes · Matt Osborne

Trump's Tariff Guru Explains It All For You

Stephen Miran held his opinions about tariffs and trade deficits long before he became Donald Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. His 41-page paper on the topic, “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System,” drew a fair bit of attention from econ geeks when he published it last November following Trump’s election victory. However, his face has only become familiar to average Americans in recent days as he has been called upon to explain the administration’s tariff policy…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

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Polemology Positions

How To Invade Taiwan

It may look like some sort of mechanical narwhal, but it is assessed to be an invasion barge. Maritime experts have been watching Chinese developments very closely, and the construction of these unusual vessels could not go unseen. Three major variants have been identified by Tom Shugart. They have been photographed operating linked together as a single extended, deployable pier…

10 months ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

Inspecting Gender

Intellectual Dark Web: Reading the Cancelled History of a Prohibited Debate

Free debate has a way of establishing truth over time. For this reason, “I would prefer to live in a world that entertains false positives in its search for true positives, rather than one that necessarily produces false negatives to protect the false positives,” Jamie Q. Roberts writes in his history of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). “This is Joe Rog…

10 months ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

Kara Dansky Warned Democrats About The 'Gender Identity' Reckoning

Democrats have a serious problem understanding the opposition they face on issues related to ‘gender identity.’ Their mental model of the phenomenon is broken because it ascribes all opposition to the Republican Party and evil designs drawn up in prayer-filled backrooms. This caricature is false and misleading. It does not help Democrats to understand the real world, or to win elections…

10 months ago · 5 likes · Matt Osborne

UK Supreme Court: Trans Women Are Men

The Metro “is given out for free on buses and trains across the country,” Hazel Appleyard explains in a thread on X. “Everyone who travels on public transport will be seeing this headline today…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

Anders Puck Nielsen: 'NATO Has Missed The Drone Revolution'

Cap. Anders Puck Nielsen of the Royal Danish Defence College and Navy has a website called Logic of War. He also has a YouTube channel where he discusses grand strategy and current topics in military affairs…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

Trump DoJ Reopens Guilty Plea of Hunter Biden Perjurer Because Reasons

Federal prosecutors have allowed Alexander Smirnov, the man who pleaded guilty to lying to federal prosecutors about Hunter Biden and Burisma, to leave prison and see his eye doctor in California while they review his case, for some reason…

10 months ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

Trump's Ukraine Peace Plan Ends In Disappointment, Phony Putin Ceasfire

Easter is today, and there is no peace in Ukraine. Putin agreed to a ceasefire, broke it immediately, and then pretended he had never agreed to anything. Real estate mogul Steve Witkoff is exactly the wrong peace envoy for this Kremlin, for he conceives of Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine as a mere real estate dispute…

10 months ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

The American University Deserves This

Writing at the Liberal Patriot, John Halpin calls on the American university to recognize it has lost, and must regain, the public trust. “There are three primary reasons for declining confidence in higher education — political agendas, colleges not teaching relevant skills, and cost,” Halpin says…

10 months ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

Modernity: A Motte-and-Bailey Argument

Originally posted in September 2023. My subscriber base has doubled since then…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers at The Distance

Mismarginalized: Courts Coddling Violent Criminals With Preferred Pronouns

Jaia Cruz, the transgender-identified man who stabbed a postal worker to death over a cut line at a deli counter in Harlem, has received a special plea deal from the office of progressive Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg…

10 months ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Matt Osborne

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Polemology Positions

Corinth: The Mississippi Crossroads Where The Confederate Cause Was Lost

“To the policy architects of either side, the intersection of these tracks in Corinth constituted the most strategic three feet of dirt in the entire Western Theater,” historian Steven Nathaniel Dossman writes of the railroad crossroads in the above photo…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

It's Hard To Say Who You Are These Days

If everything has gone according to plan today, then I am already on a plane right now, with my cat chilling out in a carrier under the seat in front of me, as we relocate our lives to a whole new state. This change has been long in the planning. It was set in motion by an u…

10 months ago · 7 likes · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers to The Distance

'Trans' Must Change Or Else Lose Everything

It’s all over but the shouting. There has already been a great deal of shouting about last week’s decision by the UK supreme court that so-called ‘trans women’ are men. The shouting has not stopped, nor will it stop soon, but it is going to change. It will have to change, because this outsanding legal defeat by a unanimous court was entirely self-inflicted by the transgender lobby on itself…

10 months ago · 15 likes · 2 comments · Matt Osborne

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Polemology Positions

The Politics Of Peace

Good meeting. We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results. Thank you POTUS. — Volodymyrr Zelenskyy…

10 months ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

Doc Roberts Says The 'Gender Critics' Are Part Of The Intellectual Dark Web

Dr Jamie Q. Roberts is a lecturer at the University of Sydney, a musician, a “quest master,” and the author of The Intellectual Dark Web: A History (And Possible Future). Roberts writes that the intellectual dark web was a reaction by liberals against the wokening of the academy and cancel culture. His book was canceled by Routledge for reasons that were never made clear…

10 months ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne and Jamie Q Roberts

This essay will unlock for one week on 20 May 2025.

How The Trump Trade War Is Going

Like most Americans, I had worried that Donald Trump had no actual plan behind his tariff drama. But then I looked into Stephen Miran, Trump’s tariffs guru, and was relieved to learn that a novel, but sound, theory of money and trade underlies the seemingly-frenetic tariff announcements…

10 months ago · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers of The Distance

Resistance To Gender Ideology Started On The Left, Matt Walsh. Get Over It.

“Social conservatives have to reckon somehow with the fact that it wasn’t us who struck the decisive blows against gender ideology — but uncompromising, biology-first feminists,” Sohrab Ahmari, the editor of UnHerd, wrote on X recently…

10 months ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

This essay will unlock for one week on 22 May 2025.

Epics In Gaming Journalism

I am not a video gamer. Video game culture was never interesting to me at all until the #Gamergate hashtag trended on Twitter in 2014, and even then it held little interest for me. I was therefore unable to interpret the phenomenon until the venture capital funding inevitably ran out and market forces made the truth plain…

10 months ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

This essay will unlock for one week on 25 May.

This essay is exclusively available to premium subscribers of Polemology.net

Polemology Positions

The State Of Russia's War In Ukraine

Donald Trump seems to have made up his mind about whether Ukraine has a future. At the time I am writing this, he still thinks that Vladimir Putin wants peace. “I think he does, yes,” the U.S. president answered. But: “I think… his dream was to take over the whole country” of Ukraine. “I think because of me, he’s not gonna do that,” Trump told Terry Moran of ABC News on Wednesday. The Trump administration also agreed to a ‘minerals deal’ with Ukraine with more…

9 months ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers of The Distance

Trump HHS Explodes The 'Trans Kids' Fad

Imagine the mental anguish that a progressive person would experience if they were forced to admit that Donald Trump was right about this while they were wrong the whole time. Of course the denial continues. They think of themselves as the good people…

9 months ago · 5 likes · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

US Supreme Court Lets The Trump Transgender Service Ban Proceed

History will record that the downfall of the ‘trans rights’ agenda derived from the tension between the necessity for medical diagnosis on the one hand and a countervailing demand for de-stigmatization on the other. Being ‘transgender’ supposedly requires life-saving medical interventions, but also carries the stigma of a mental health diagnosis. Activi…

9 months ago · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers of The Distance.

Pride, Defunded: The Summer Of Gender Love Is Over

April was a bad month for Pride organizers all over America. Last week, Taylor Telford reported at the Washington Post that corporate sponsors are eliminating or cutting back support, with many of the remaining sponsors asking to be “silent partners.” The budget hits to Pride happened right when “most are anticipating higher turnout, as well as facing heightened safety and logistical challenges” at Pride events because of Donald Trump…

9 months ago · 4 likes · Matt Osborne

This essay is exclusively available to premium subscribers of Polemology.net until 7 June.

Polemology Positions

Truth Is The First Casualty Of Peace

I generally avoid giving hot takes on hot wars. Fog of war is one problem, propaganda and wishful thinking posing as official reporting are two more problems. Important nuances also get lost in translation. Reports prove false, or half-true, so that it is not safe to form a solid opinion from the outside…

9 months ago · Matt Osborne

This podcast is exclusively available to premium subscribers of The Distance until 25 May.

Democrats Must Face Their Reckoning With Kara Dansky

My guest today is Kara Dansky, a former ACLU attorney and full time radical feminist activist. She is the author of two books, The Abolition of Sex and The Reckoning, warning Democrats that they faced blowback over their party’s embrace of ‘gender identity’ ideology. Dansky was president of the US chapter of Women’s Declaration International from 2021-2024 and she is the host of their monthly webinar, Feminist Question Time…

9 months ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Matt Osborne and Kara Dansky

This essay is available exclusively for premium subscribers until 7 June.

Everyone Has Had Enough Pedro Pascal. Please, We Do Not Want Any More

Like most Americans, I was unaware that Pedro Pascal existed until he oozed onto the small screen as the omnisexual Oberyn Martell in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Spoiler alert: Martell’s gigantic dueling opponent catches him gloating, mid-monologue, and crushes his head with bare hands. The book series shall never be finished because George R.R. Martin is a postmodern leftist, and therefore unable to complete a heroic journey of any kind. With producers forced to make up their own ending, the final Season 8 also disappointed fans of the show. Likewise, the Chilean-born Pascal has ceased to smoke up scenes. Now 50, he is being typecast as a disappointment, a career which tracks with his breakthrough role…

9 months ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions

How Cassava Conquered The Americas

When Sir Walter Raleigh sacked the isle of Trinidad in the Spanish Caribbean during 1595, he took inventory of the edible plants and animals that future sailors would find there. Along with other flora and fauna, the island “hath also for bread sufficient maize, cassavi, and of those roots and fruits which are common everywhere in the West Indies…

9 months ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne and John Harris

This review will unlock on 27 May.

What It's Like To Be A Non-Affirming Parent

Parents have been forced into an underground resistance lifestyle. At times, there are coded conversations. “It’s frightening that, in small town Canada, a mother of an obviously troubled teenager and her conceivably concerned teacher are being strong-armed by a government-backed ideology into conversing as if sitting in front of a Telescreen,” writes one exhausted parent of a gender-identifying child…

9 months ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

MSNBC Viewers Seem To Distrust Jen Psaki For Some Reason

Former White House spokesunit Jen Psaki premiered in Rachel Maddow’s old 9 pm time slot at MSNBC last week. Viewership declined over the course of the week. According to AdWeek, Psaki’s show, “The Briefing,” had 1.074 million total viewers for MSNBC at 9 pm by Friday, with just 66,000 in the key 25-54 demographic prized by advertisers…

9 months ago · Matt Osborne

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