Inky Bits

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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The Distance

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…

a month 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…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

The Distance

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…

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a month ago · 10 likes · Matt Osborne

Osborne Ink

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…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

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

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…

a month 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…

a month ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

Osborne Ink

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…

a month ago · 5 likes · Matt Osborne

The Distance

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…

a month 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…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

Osborne Ink

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…

a month 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…

a month ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

Osborne Ink

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…

a month 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…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers at The Distance

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…

a month ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Matt Osborne

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

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…

a month ago · Matt Osborne

Osborne Ink

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…

25 days ago · 7 likes · Matt Osborne

Skeptic Spirit

Hidden Mysteries Under The Pyramids Are A Classic Trope Of New Age Religion

Matt Osborne

Apr 24

Hidden Mysteries Under The Pyramids Are A Classic Trope Of New Age Religion

Recently, the online conspiracy world produced dubious ‘science’ purporting to show ancient megastructures under the pyramids of Giza. These claims by Italian researchers were a viral sensation thanks to the use of striking AI imagery. However, the scientific validity of their claims has

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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…

20 days ago · 15 likes · 2 comments · Matt Osborne

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

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…

20 days ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

The Distance

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…

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19 days ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne and Jamie Q Roberts

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

Osborne Ink

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…

19 days ago · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers of The Distance

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…

18 days ago · 3 likes · Matt Osborne

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

Osborne Ink

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…

16 days ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

This essay will unlock for one week on 25 May.

Overpass Country

Matt Osborne

May 4

Life in my new apartment is like a hotel stay. My daily life has never included an elevator on the way in or out of my building unless I was staying at a hotel. I use an RFID key fob to reach my floor and there is an Amazon locker for packages that scans barcodes from emails in my phone. My first day home, I accepted a grocery delivery for the first time in my life. There is a lap pool, a small gym, a staff. I am the country mouse in a city house.

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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…

12 days ago · 2 likes · Matt Osborne

This essay is available exclusively to premium subscribers of The Distance

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…

11 days ago · 5 likes · Matt Osborne

Polemology Positions