This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
California v. CTRLPEW
[Complaint here]
There's a lot to be said, much of it morbid, about this case. The sticker price on each claim is already steep -- 50k+ USD per -- but the state seems to be arguing each download of each file is its own violation, and doing its own downloads; it's not just possible but likely that this is trying to slap glorified hobbyists with millions or tens of millions of dollars in fines. For even more fun, it likely passed a law specifically to make this suit more painful and with a harder standard to defend against. It's also hard to overstate what and how broad an impact banning merely making information available for someone to download is. The defense's countersuit spells out some of the more overt aspects: merely submitting evidence to a filing that ends up on PACER would run headfirst into this theory. And a malicious actor could do some absolutely hilarious stuff to violate the text of the law, excepting of course that the state will only bring charges against people it doesn't like.
A lot of other people in the 3d Printing world have, unsurprisingly, had to put together some geolocation-based blocks. It's not clear how well that would actually protect them, though.
On the upside, this is clearly protected speech. The normal slogan is about how Code Is Free Speech, and that's pretty well-established under standing precedent, but this isn't even 'just' code. The lawsuit here is overtly focusing on instructions, documentation, and image files. Whatever exceptions for crime-facilitating speech or speech integral to a crime exist, they can't possibly be stretched so far as to cover content that was lawful for a wide majority of the country to discuss or receive, right? Sure, we're talking the Ninth Circuit, so Ivan The Troll is going to have an expensive time finding lawyers, but surely cooler heads will prevail?
Well...
Code is <not> Free Speech
The Third Circuit has given an answer in Defense Distributed v. New Jersey:
There's a variety of technical frustration, here. This court case happened in the not-favorable Third Circuit at all because of some hilarious hijinks with intercircuit transfer. I'll gloss over most of the procedural ones, but if you want a dark chuckle, the official position of the Third Circuit is now that "While the complaint lists a variety of file types (e.g., (.igs), (.stl), (.skp) (.pdf) (.stp)), it is unclear which, if any, of those are CAD or CAM files." So you can take the entire concept of the educated elite and gives it the Ol' Yeller treatment. Three college-educated judges, all with the powers of their offices and modern technology and over a year to write this opinion, claim that they did not understand what a PDF was.
((For those interested and somehow browsing this site without internet access, "Initial Graphics Exchange Specification", "Stereolithography", "SketchUp", and "STEP" files are all CAD files. They show 3d-images of a firearm; they are not code that you would run on any 3d printer. Especially SketchUp, what the fuck.))
But the more damning one is that the points don't matter, the rules are all made up. This isn't an explanation of why Defense Distributed lost, just a story saying that they did. The judges are lying, they know they're lying, you know they're lying, the dog knows. Say what you will for the limits of judicial notice, but when the courts require PDFs in specific formats, judicial notice can tell what a PDF is when it wants, and this court does not want to do so. Bernstein, Junger, and Universal City Studios may well all have protected code as free speech, but the it's not that the Third Circuit has built a new standard here. After all, they refused to do that.
The Third Circuit's opinion holds that Defense Distributed did not adequately allege that their prohibited content was speech, because 3d images of a thing -- to the surprise of the Supreme Court -- could be something other than speech, and then shies away from actually distinguishing one from the other. How would you demonstrate that to the adequacy of an East Coast judge?
In theory, en banc or a SCOTUS appeal is potentially available, and either would give a more
honestfavorable draw. Were they to happen.Spoiler alert: it ain't going to happen.
Louisiana v. Pill Mills
The Guardian reports:
This is a messy case, without a lot of sympathetic actors.
Coeytaux is a prescribing doctor for Aid Access, an org that exists for the sole purpose of making abortion medications available, and while some of that reflects cases where people don't have the economic opportunity to purchase, more of it reflects cases where the law says no, and Coeytaux (or associates) filled out a package envelope for that specific address to no. Outside of the legal concerns or the moral objections to abortion, a lot of its economics depend on basically being a pill mill, and hasn't always been the most consistent about only using FDA-approved formulations, or checking out who the drugs are going to. The spectre of induced 'miscarriages' pushed by a boyfriend who doesn't want to become a father, to a mother who did, has long been a possibility anti-abortion advocates point toward, and there have been other cases that seem to have clear evidence of coercion by other family members. I'll instead point toward the lackluster available counseling about side effects or complications, a matter that's been far messier from other providers.
But a lot of those concerns are more imagined than demonstrated, in this case. The FDA's animosity for overseas generics sometimes reflects adequate skepticism, but mostly seems driven by provincialism. Like a previous case involving Coeytaux, it's unclear exactly how coercive the 'boyfriend' in question actually was. Actual serious side-effects can happen, but I'm not able to find any obvious cases where that happened involving AidAccess.
That is, as often highlighted, a series of questions for the jury. Which seems unlikely to ever happen. Louisiana issued an extradition request for Coeytaux, who resides in California. The governor has given a precise and formal response:
In theory, this is settled law: since 1987, there are extremely limited grounds to refuse extradition, and 'don't like the public policy of the state in question' isn't one of them. In practice, the New York doctor from the case where a pregnant minor was alleged forced to abort a pregnancy she wanted to keep wasn't extradited, either.
Somewhat counterintuitively, this is probably a better defense as an individual in a criminal case than a civil one. For civil trials, not showing up just gets you a default judgment. The confrontation clause strictly limits American criminal trials in absentia; there are a few rare exceptions if someone stops showing up (or needs to be removed from court) once the trial has started with them present, but none before then. Of course, that just kicks the can down the road one step: I don't think anyone would be happier if Louisiana just gave abortion providers civil liability that requires Knuth's Up-Arrow Notation to write down, then arrested them when they showed up for their day in court for the criminal trial.
SCOTUS has original jurisdiction over lawsuits between two states. There is not, as far as I can tell, a Louisiana v. New York or Louisiana v. California docket on this question.
Trans vs. Detrans
The Atlantic reports:
Sorry, that's as close to left-leaning coverage as I can find without getting unmoored from the facts (compare the New York Times tries to reframe it as mere miscommunication). Most coverage in serious detail seems to be from right-wing sources speaking to right-wing readers, including the reporter that The Atlantic is highlighting here.
As do the facts of the case. Varian's situation does seem to have been on the harder end -- both in terms of what procedures happened when, and in the rhetoric from medical professionals justifying them. When WPATH advocates think you need to slow things down a notch, and are willing to testify so in court, you're gonna have a bad time. Benjamin Ryan has a list of other detransitioner (or -adjacent) cases, and it's a single page, and most of them are either more complicated or much less clear-cut.
But, at the same time, the facts are not that extreme. The psychologist in question denies telling Varian's parents that delaying transition might result in suicide risk, but it's... hard to believe that, given its prevalence as a topic of discussion. WPATH's advocate says that the doctors in question were pushing too hard and too fast, but the process here didn't actually breaking any explicit rules from the most recent WPATH SoC. It's hard to get numbers on how many trans people get a masectomy or orchidectomy before the age of 18 -- most eyepopping numbers of 'surgeries' include laser hair removal -- but Varian near-certainly isn't the only one.
And those distinctions matter, because a lot of trans-skeptical people have been pointed to this lawsuit as the first pebble in an avalanche. Whether people who aren't already trans-skeptical even hear about it, and whether there are other pebbles, control some part of that avalanche.
Because ultimately, to medical insurers, a couple million here and there only starts being 'real money' in plural. Successful lawsuits against psychologists are rare, but medical lawsuits are not, and doctors don't stop offering a procedure because of a single misuse or serious side effect, even far worse ones. Moreover, there's an opposing force: depending on who's in charge of the government, it can violate federal law to not act, with a bunch of fun questions when those regulations change after the action or inaction happens. Failure to treat or medical discrimination lawsuits are harder to bring as an individual, but they're not implausible concerns, either.
More broadly, because of how market forces work, I'm skeptical that the trans-skeptical position clears the board even of the specific matter of minors undergoing large-scale surgery, without using either regulatory force, persuading the other side, or completely delisting trans-related care from medical assistance. At the same time, they're likely to consider it a major victory every marginal clinic that drops the service, and every person they dissuade. And, on the flip side, there's some obvious countermanuevers that are going to come down the beltway soon enough.
That might run into eighth-amendment issues....
More options
Context Copy link
It's funny. I was looking into 3D printing again, just because I'm in one of my periodic gun obsessions. They usually don't last too long, but they're fierce.
Home manufacture of firearms is already illegal in Illinois, but the march for progress never stops. It is not enough that it is illegal. The movement must be struck until it stops breathing. There are a lot of things I criticize about my political opponents, but one thing that I must admire is the unending struggle they put up. It's pretty obvious to me that Blue Team is going to win to the extent that their position is winnable solely because they really want to win, and no one else does. Everyone else just wants to not lose.
A Brief Look at One 3D Printed Gun
If you're plugged into the 2nd Amendment Bro space at all, you've probably heard of the FGC-9. It's famous because it appears to be semi-decent, and it can be manufactured without any commercial gun parts at all. It's interesting in design and as a cool looking scientific curiosity; hobbyists have figured out how to electrochemically machine barrels so that they are rifled, which is extremely cool. Many notes have been made about its uptake in Myanmar, which is a dirt-poor nation that's currently engaged in some kind of civil war that I'd really like some other Mottizen to post about in detail someday.
But it's 2026 and there have been a lot of designs since then. I don't follow that space very closely, but Google Gemini actually has no qualms about telling you everything it knows about firearms, firearm parts, and firearm laws, and it knows a fair bit about 3D printed hobbyist-designed weapons, too. It told me that the Urutau is the easiest complete gun you can make without any commercial gun parts. Unlike the FGC-9, you don't have to do any welding, which means it's simpler and cheaper to get started. Like the FGC-9, and like the Luty SMG from ages ago, it's another pistol caliber carbine in 9mm. Closed bolt, bullpup, kinda looks like a P90. It takes CZ Scorpion magazines, stepping away from the Glock magazine meta. It looks awesome, actually. Or terrifying, if you're of the other political persuasion and have a working imagination. Here's a video of a dude shooting it. If you're in a country that doesn't arrest you for it, you can find the files and associated documentation in the references for that Wikipedia page. The documentation is very detailed, with many images and explanations.
The Urutau can be almost entirely homemade, but certain parts can be substituted; for instance, a lazy American might just buy a CZ Scorpion magazine instead of printing one and buying a Glock magazine spring to make it functional. In particular, you can substitute the homemade barrel with an AR-9 barrel. If you don't have an AR-15 hammer spring available to you, you can undertake the great joy of making one yourself. You need at least $400 in tools; first, a 3D printer that you know how to use (no, it's not as simple as just pressing "print", and the fancy easier-to-use printers cost a lot more), a bench vise, a handheld drill or a drill press (second one preferred), you need a chop saw or miter saw or hacksaw for cutting and squaring steel, you should probably have a dremel, a caliper, a soldering iron, hex key set, drill bits of various sizes, a flat file for steel, a 2.5mm hex screwdriver, an M6 tap of certain pitch and a tap driver, and a whole additional set of equipment for the ECM process for the barrel. You can print most of the parts, but the bolt carrier assembly is a 36-step process in this documentation, with many opportunities to screw up requiring you to try again, or opportunities to screw up that you don't catch until you notice that your gun sometimes goes off randomly. The lower receiver assembly is 30 steps, rear cap assembly is 7 steps, upper assembly is 17 steps.
What I am hoping to get at here is not to encourage you to start making homemade guns right now, it's actually to tell you that it's a massive pain in the ass, with a lot of measuring, cutting, twisting, screwing, filing, pumping, and it's no certainty that you'll have something usable at the end, but in either case, it will be worse and probably more expensive than a commercial gun. It's not intended for window shoppers and dabblers and gawkers like me, though the movement does create very cool looking concepts that are fun to think about. This is a significant time and money investment for diehard hobbyists.
I think, however, these guns are being designed for times and places that are not 21st century America. The designer of the Urutau is Brazilian. Since the FGC-9 was designed by a European, it's safe to say the 3D printed gun movement is properly global. It's not difficult to imagine a Pakistan-like manufacturing cell churning these out by the hundred. Perhaps one garage gets really good at making bolt carrier groups, one group gets really good at making barrels... This situation could not exist in almost any affluent European nation. Possibly it could exist in America, if someone in the cell got an FFL and dedicated themselves to selling this one thing. Hey, I'd buy it, support local businesses. But really, it's a lot easier to see it happening in a place like Myanmar or Brazil, where powerful factions have need of homemade guns that might be pretty good. Perhaps in 50 years, we'll see how many of these designs have endured, how many have been taken up by the timeless mountain-dwelling gunsmiths of Pakistan.
Pivot to Culture War Angles
I just watched this video of this dorky Vice reporter consensually infiltrating a Ghost Gun Rally. I say he consensually infiltrated because he needed a lot of help to make his own ghost gun so that he could actually participate. He got this help from the apparent organizer of the entire rally. The right wing in America has some of the friendliest extremist sects, if you ask me. Every time he inserts some casual gun control framing, he is pushed back upon by his helper. They get it built; it's just a Glock frame he printed, along with a parts kit he bought. He had to do some filing and drilling to get the frame to take the parts. After creation, it becomes clear that his gun does not work very well. It jams after each shot, even when he's not limp-wristing it. The situation is not very resolved when the rally rolls around.
The gun rally - well, actually a 3D printed gun shooting competition hosted by AWCY (Are We Cool Yet?) - looked like it would be really fun if you're not a Vice reporter. It looked exceptionally friendly for something in the gun sphere, which is plagued by elitists, mall ninjas, and dipshits. Many people came with weapons that they had designed themselves. Many of those weapons also functioned horribly, much like Vice Reporter's gun. Malfunctions did not seem to be the faux pas you'd expect, though. When Hostile Interviewer's turn came up, the gun jammed on every shot, as before. Another member lended him a different slide to attach, which allowed him to shoot perfectly, letting him take 3rd place.
What I was struck by is how so many of the participants willingly spoke to Hostile Dorky Reporter Guy. They talked to him at length, countering his narrative with their own, as respectfully as they could manage, even though his company edited the video to tell them how the creator of the Liberator is a sex offender who had sex with a 16 year old and got a suspended sentence of 7 years. The host was unfazed even as Vice Guy decided to performatively burn his own Glock frame and put harmful plastic fumes in the air right in front of him. I wonder what the participants thought when they saw that Vice Man had showed photos of all their designs to a slightly amused ATF agent, who was a little concerned that some of the guns could be mistaken for toys, but otherwise totally uncaring about this section of the populace.
What I'd like to compare this to is Will Stancil's treatment by the organized leftists in Minneapolis. They abruptly kicked him out, told him he couldn't record anymore and wasn't allowed to help them anymore, and treated him like absolute garbage over on Bluesky every time he posted anything about it. This is in spite of the fact that Will Stancil was almost entirely on their side, with positive media framing guaranteed. In comparison, these right wingers didn't take Vice Will Stancil seriously at all. It doesn't seem like they take much of anyone seriously at all; Vice Will Stancil (VWS for short) was just another amusing part of the gathering. They knew he would frame them badly and they didn't care.
I think the leftists are able to see a much fuller picture of how serious their own movement is, and they have a much easier time coordinating with other leftist aligned spheres. On the other hand, these particular right wingers are hyper-focused on exactly this one aspect of Red Tribe, and nothing else. There's no telling what other beliefs they have. They'd probably be actively hostile to coordinating with other red tribers on anything. What could the other red tribers offer them, anyway? Any politicking would probably just get in the way of the hobby.
On the other hand, they are pretty good at pushing the boundaries of the gun rights movement. The end of the Urutau documentation reads:
This is the same unending willingness to fight that I admired in Blue Tribe at the start of this post. Good or bad, the gun guys are gonna be around for a while.
More options
Context Copy link
I think that the 3d printing thing is a stupid moral panic.
First, 3d printing is not a favorable technique to produce guns from the scratch. Nor would I even want a 3d-printed modification device to turn a reliable semiautomatic AR-15 into a burst-capable AR-15 of dubious reliability.
The fact that a competent craftsman with a machine shop can build a decent firearm has been true for as long as the US has been around. Today, I guess you can partly replace the technical expertise by just using a CNC milling machine. (Of course, it helps tremendously that semi firearms are legal. If I tried to mill my own AK-47 in Europe, the hard part would be building a rifled barrel. In the US, I could just buy one.)
I do not see hordes of 15yo school shooters using the CNCs they got for their birthdays to build automatic weapons. Probably because CNCs are well outside the birthday present price range for most Americans, and getting from them to a working gun is still a long process, while semi firearms are easily sourced from the glove compartments of cars.
If I was running a criminal gang, I might well decide that automatic firearms are not worth the trouble. Routinely carrying them will just give the state the license to imprison you for long times whenever they catch you, which seems a bad trade-off. If I decided that I needed auto guns for gang warfare or the like, I would certainly procure them (or conversion kits) through trusted criminal channels instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Nevertheless, if I ever felt the need to download some 3d files related to firearms I plan to commit crimes with, I would be sure to use Tor over some public Wifi instead of going to myillegalfirearms dot com or whatever, which will be monitored by the feds.
I also think that LLMs might just render what little point the DAs might have had here moot.
A technical drawing of the parts of an assault rifle seems pretty clearly protected speech, it is instructions aimed at a human. Possibly, the US patent office is hosting such drawings (though they might not be in sufficient detail). Soon, any idiot will just be able to take such technical drawings and ask an LLM to turn it into a 3d file suitable for milling. And the guardrails will only work on models which have them, sooner or later I will be able to download a DeepSeek model capable of working with 3d files which lacks them.
I was under the impression that to avoid a default judgement in a civil matter, it was sufficient to have an authorized lawyer show up to the court date to represent your side. This is how legal persons like corporations can survive.
The practical failure of these laws to actually block bad people from getting guns is a little overdetermined. There's even been pretty major advances on those lines: benchtop CNC machines are obviously more available, but electrochemical machining has also made manufacturing accurate rifle barrels susprisingly accessible. There's no real serious way to claw back the files themselves, universally.
But I think the purpose of these laws is more social. It's given carte blanch to push this stuff off the open internet, and make it such that even in fairly pro-gun communities there's a ton of bad or old information going around. Cody Wilson's original bet was not just that he'd make gun control obsolete, but that he'd demonstrate that it was doomed, or that it would require massive and invasive censorship to still end up doomed. For all he won the former bet, the latter is what actually drives public policy and what he expected to drive public policy, and it's been a very unpleasant wakeup call.
Yes, there's a bunch of downstream epicycles around depositions, so on. It may be navigable; it may be navigable until a sufficiently malicious plaintiff/prosecutor and mendacious judge work together.
More options
Context Copy link
Depends on location.
In North America, Middle East and similar parts of the world filled with guns up the wazoo, yes, in these cases it would be desperate attempt of closing doors of barn that went empty long time ago.
In heavily gun controlled regions of the world, if you want the plebs stay disarmed, you should be very very worried about this new development.
The fact that machine shop is big and noisy, while 3D printer is shoebox sized device you can run in your bedroom without even people in the next room knowing anything makes lots of difference.
Not any more, look for electrochemical machining. It is slow, but needs only bucket and is completely silent and discrete.
I would have imagined that the problems are not "our citizens are armed and can now overthrow us" but rather "some idiot 3D printed a gun and blew his hand off when he tried to shoot it, now we're looking at a bunch of hysterical screaming on social media about 'why didn't the government prevent this' and some opportunist lawyer persuading the family to sue us for zillions".
Or worse, "some idiot 3D printed a gun then went on a shooting spree in town, now there is hysterical screaming online about 'why didn't the government prevent this'".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's absurd to me that, post-Bruen, this case was not immediately yeeted on 2A grounds. There is no historical tradition in the United States of regulating firearms manufacture by banning the distribution of blueprints for firearms. The fact that the Supreme Court can lay down very clear precedent and lower courts are free to plug their ears and say "lalala I can't hear you" is bordering on a constitutional crisis.
It's only a crisis if the Supreme Court does not yield, and they have.
It just means the Second Amendment has been replaced with the anti-Second Amendment: "None of your other rights apply when guns are involved".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Am I wrong in thinking that someone could easily pull the Phil Zimmerman PGP gambit here [1] : find a print-to-order publisher (Amazon?), and upload the G code (text!) for your CNC or 3D printer, and buy a nice hard-back book (with ISBN!) to carry over the California border.
Amazon specifically will delist you. You might be able to sneak through another PoD service, and bookbinding tools are sub-100 USD now.
But you’ll just get arrested and be stuck trying to bring a free speech gun case in the Ninth or Third Circuit. Good luck with that
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem with that idea is that by forcing the doctors to provide treatment, politicians will be taking ownership of the entire scandal. Which can be fine if the treatment is actually good for people, and the odd malcontent is just a result of occasional incompetence or weird allergies. If, on the other hand, it's bad, politicians will have tied their own rope.
The idea reminds me of some Reddit post I saw, where transgenders were gloating that their doctor got around some red state ban by using the ICD code for an endocrine disorder, instead of gender dysphoria. Good for them, I guess. I totally can't imagine how this could come back and bite the doctor in the ass.
To an extent, but the law and regulation dates back over a decade, and even a lot of anti-trans people aren't aware of it or the history. I think the progressive movement's found a successful hack to that particular problem -- and that this isn't even the most high-stakes or high-visibility version of it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To my eyes, far bigger than this case itself was the announcement that came a few days later, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended against carrying out gender-affirming procedures on people under the age of 19.
With the exception of hormone therapy which falls under the domain of endocrinology, almost everything we call "gender-affirming care" falls under plastic surgery. When the body in charge of that discipline is recommending against gender-affirming care for minors, that does indeed suggest we've hit an inflection point. And it's not just the US, with the UK and several Scandinavian countries also hitting pause on this prolonged experiment.
I'll caveat that the Position Statement specifically constrained to:
This would still leave some 'surgeries' (like laser hair removal) or surgeries on the table, and the median 16-18-year-old trans person is afaict going to be focused more on them. And there's definitely a lot of the endocrinology stuff that's Controversial. But it might not stop there, and yes, that's likely to have a larger impact in the short term.
I mean, I don't think even the TERFiest TERFs really have any objection to 16-year-olds undergoing laser hair removal, even if it's nominally under the auspices of "gender-affirming care".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link