alt.hn

7/5/2026 at 7:08:38 PM

Small Penis Rule

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule

by chistev

7/5/2026 at 9:34:36 PM

I'm always fascinated by these tricks of game theory.

e.g. in business school, the dean of the undergraduate school had this story:

"When I was a practicing lawyer working on wills and estates, people would often ask me to cut someone completely out of their will.

I would always say that a better option was to write something like 'To my daughter Susan, I leave $1,000. She always said that she wanted to be financially independent from me so this is an amount to show her I lover her.'

Clients would always think this would send the wrong message and I would replay:

'No, no. If Susan fights the will and says she should have gotten more, the judge will say: but she clearly left you something and pointed out that she loved you AND took your wishes into account' "

I wish there was a book or collection of these types of tricks to study.

by alexpotato

7/6/2026 at 5:13:46 AM

My estate lawyer told me that, to prevent challenges, he advised clients to add a clause directing that anyone contesting the will would be excluded completely from the estate.

by giardini

7/6/2026 at 9:37:34 AM

Would that be enforceable? Can people be excluded from the right to a legal dispute? It seems that otherwise any contract would include a clause that it can not be contested - which it sometimes does with mandatory mediation.

by spython

7/6/2026 at 11:55:24 AM

Forced arbitration seems to be legally enforceable, and I don't see why this would be any different, but IANAL

by thomascgalvin

7/6/2026 at 2:19:53 PM

the clause comes after the "we leave her $2000000.00" section.

she is not excluded at any point; she gets $2M. (or $0.02, whatever)

Or nothing if she wants to fight cuz she thinks she deserves $10M, etc. etc.

by red-iron-pine

7/5/2026 at 9:37:14 PM

Wait I thought standard practice was to leave $1 to show that they were considered and purposefully removed from the will? Does that fail in court?

by arijun

7/5/2026 at 9:48:32 PM

“To my loyal butler ‘You There’, for his decades of service, I leave a pittance, to be paid in 20 equal installments of 1/20th of a pittance each.”

by teddyh

7/5/2026 at 9:46:30 PM

Multiple times in my life, a potential romantic interest asked how big it was, and I told them it was tiny. This led them to believe that it was large, because what guy who is tiny would say it was tiny?

Suffice to say they were a bit disappointed when expectations met reality

by IncreasePosts

7/6/2026 at 12:34:04 AM

idk if that would work in real life. there are cases where one sibling gets less than another and judges still rule things have to be split equitably and children should be provided for.

by didntknowyou

7/6/2026 at 1:11:15 AM

Depends how old they are. For young kids maybe, for adult children I think the will would speak for itself.

by Eddy_Viscosity2

7/6/2026 at 11:32:05 AM

I guess it depends on the country and how much the will deviates from reasonable clauses?

I’m looking into making one now, and a notarised will has to have reasonable clauses straight away; an enclosed will that is open later can say whatever you want, but might be contested if it’s unreasonable.

by port11

7/6/2026 at 5:29:08 PM

Wouldnt it just be better to have a lefal system that enforced the contract without extra bs? Lawyers would be unhappy as their wages normalized but that would be a large benefit to society as well

by snapplebobapple

7/5/2026 at 9:16:33 PM

A related concept in Chinese is 對號入座:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8D%E8%99%9F%E5%85%A5%E...

An example might be some person A saying "only an idiot with this set of very specific negative attributes would do this thing". And then person B came out in the public saying they had been slandered by person A, thus indirectly admitting to having those very specific negative attirbutes.

Basically if person A invokes something like the small penis rule, it's often better for person B to stay quiet to avoid 對號入座.

by omoikane

7/5/2026 at 10:24:11 PM

That example doesn't express this at all. A better one would be saying "Jane and I partied all night," and Jane's murderer blurting out, "That's impossible!"

by boho_derogatory

7/5/2026 at 10:20:47 PM

[dead]

by jr_isidore

7/5/2026 at 11:39:51 PM

> For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two

Sorry this argument makes no sense. If I (or any average reader) read a passage dissing a public figure (not me), which describes them with a small penis, I wouldn't consider the description as not fitting - I have no way of telling how big their penis is.

If the public person in question came forward, and read the passage, he could successfully argue, that readers of the book would have no information about the size of his package, and thus that would be irrelevant to the argument. So him suing the author based on this would not mean he admits his dong is small.

by torginus

7/6/2026 at 5:54:48 AM

Maybe it doesn't have to be a literal small penis? Maybe it could be describing the person in such a way that it's clear they are the one being described, but then including something about the character that they wouldn't want to risk people thinking is true.

by chistev

7/5/2026 at 8:31:36 PM

I'm sure South Park had no idea about any of this

by conartist6

7/5/2026 at 8:53:20 PM

It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

I wonder if Peter Thiel took umbrage at how South Park portrayed him recently [0] and is lurking in the shadows planning Gawker v2 [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfSOC6-G044

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thi...

by khurs

7/5/2026 at 11:11:35 PM

South Park has been sued many times. A famous case vs Tom Cruise, in which their defense was that they make fun of everyone, so it's not libel.

by nhumrich

7/6/2026 at 2:23:28 PM

> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

they've been sued a bunch. But they make comedy central boatloads of money and have free speech protections on their side (for now...)

by red-iron-pine

7/5/2026 at 8:59:04 PM

> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell

tl;dr:

> Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

by kps

7/5/2026 at 10:49:54 PM

And indeed South Park has always made a point to have extreme satire that is implausible to help establish that such is parody. [0] The episodes in the last year have gone to extreme lengths to help make the distinction as clear as possible.

[0] - We can go back as far as, I don't think it has been established that Barbara Streisand can in fact turn into a robot...

by to11mtm

7/5/2026 at 10:33:44 PM

I am in no way a public figure, and will likely never be one, but if the South Park writers decided to go after me my strategy would be to hunker down and just hope the episode isn’t good.

by BuyMyBitcoins

7/6/2026 at 5:41:22 AM

They certainly went easy on his demonic looks.

by Traubenfuchs

7/5/2026 at 9:00:18 PM

A Jewish comedian made a joke about how jews (only in the US*) were offended that Ferengi in Star Trek were based on them - "why would we assume these ugly greedy people are _us_?"

*Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.

by rsstack

7/5/2026 at 11:49:12 PM

Sidestepping your original premise - how do the Ferengi even make sense in Star Trek? Its supposed to be a post-scarcity society, at least on an individual level - and an imperialist one on a civilization-scale, the latter being a step back even from how the modern world works.

by torginus

7/5/2026 at 11:56:23 PM

Not everything is post-scarcity, mostly food and clothes. Land, fuel, weapons, art, fame, and labor are still limited resources in the Star Trek world. Also, not everywhere is post-scarcity, as we see many "poor" or restricted societies. The post-scarcity bit is mostly about a social safety net for individuals in the Federation.

by rsstack

7/6/2026 at 12:29:33 AM

Even within the Federation, colonies can collapse and fail, experience famine, plague, etc. Tasha Yar came from one such colony that had regressed into violent anarchy.

The Federation is a post-scarcity utopia until the writers want something interesting to write about. Then the Federation gives some colonies to the Cardassians and you get the Maquis.

by krapp

7/6/2026 at 11:25:40 AM

> The Federation is a post-scarcity utopia until the writers want something interesting to write about.

Similar to Iain Banks' Culture novels. The Culture is so utopian that there is no interesting conflict, so all of the action is driven by contact with less developed civilizations.

(You talk about the Federation itself, but IIRC Star Trek also often deals with external forces - in any case, "everything is great" isn't interesting for long)

by ahartmetz

7/6/2026 at 12:21:46 AM

The Ferengi don't exist as part of the Federation. Their culture isn't built on egalitarianism, so not everyone gets access.

by Thraway198

7/6/2026 at 6:00:10 AM

Ferengi is not part of the Federation AFAIK

by beAbU

7/6/2026 at 2:59:37 PM

genetic imperative for latinum

by red-iron-pine

7/5/2026 at 10:55:33 PM

Wish you’d been more specific, “a Jewish comedian” sounds like the setup for a joke.

by cwmoore

7/5/2026 at 11:03:37 PM

I tried to Google his joke, but couldn't find it quickly enough. It might have been part of a longer special.

by rsstack

7/6/2026 at 12:24:02 AM

The Ferengis do have a lot of superficial similarities to Jewish caricatures.

by Thraway198

7/5/2026 at 11:36:23 PM

When being defensive about the genocide, some people invoke against the protesters, e.g. "Where were you when the atrocities in Sudan were happening?", admitting that the genocide being committed is as bad as the Sudan conflict...

by netsharc

7/6/2026 at 5:48:43 AM

No?

by uddnbrbf

7/6/2026 at 2:33:22 PM

I never knew about this complaint either, the connection never occured to me at the time as the capitalist cristicism seemed par for the course for a post-scarcity Federation. I don't understand this knee-jerk self -owning behavior. It's like that bizarre tweet by the Israeli government about the photo of an IDF soldier destroying a Christian ornament. The gov. official insisted that the physical features of the soldier contained so many antisemitic tropes that it had to be AI. Thus, the guy was inadvertantly described as the ugliest person on the planet in excruciating detail by his own government.

by sillyfluke

7/5/2026 at 9:24:23 PM

Is it true that the Ferengi were based on Jews? I suspected so, but then I also considered they may have been influenced by the Chinese.

by secondcoming

7/5/2026 at 9:32:08 PM

> Armin Shimerman addressed the issue when asked at a question-and-answer session at a Star Trek convention. He stated that:

> In America, people ask "Do the Ferengi represent Jews?" In England, they ask "Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?" In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese ... The Ferengi represent the outcast ... it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[30]

by rsstack

7/5/2026 at 9:54:19 PM

No, it's cultural-other pareidolia

by ryanmcbride

7/5/2026 at 10:57:28 PM

Mixed with a little synesthesia. It’s only natural.

by cwmoore

7/5/2026 at 11:17:21 PM

... Depends on where we are looking at in the real-world episode production timeframe.

TNG did still resort to 'caricatures as a default', If we are to be a tiny bit bold and look closer at DS9 and how, if you look at a lot of the other stuff outside 'Far Beyond The Stars'.

What you find is that DS9 is very much about people facing pressure from their culture or background and over time learning there's a better way to do things. So many major and minor characters change over the course and part of it is seeing how hard it is and what it takes for each of them to change. I do think they 'over-used' the Ferengi for this but I get they were trying to target a general level of audience.

IMO it really was a hopeful attempt to recognize cultural versus racial problems. You can't just do a single speech and never visit the hat planet again; you are next to one of the hat planets and instead get a deeper look into their world.

.....

DS9 did over-emphasize the Ferengi change arcs, and while the end fits with other 'themes' (i.e. Bell Riots) it like most other hat changes didn't have huge implications till after what we the viewer would see.

But also I kinda get that whole thing. At the end of the day the Ferengi (whether originally intended or not) became something meant to symbolize extreme laissez-faire capitalism with perhaps a pinch of twisted reversal of other cultures/religions[1] because yeah I'm gonna blame that bit on whoever was in charge or TNG at the time (Was it Rick Berman?)

[0] - To be clear I mean for the sake of this topic; those episodes themselves with the original ending to DS9 frankly capture a lot of the 'hope' that was trying to be conveyed in the face of all the strife...

[1] - The most easy way to lampshade 'required clothing' is to instead do 'required non-clothing'

by to11mtm

7/5/2026 at 9:47:41 PM

Given that DS9 showrunner and co-creator Michael Piller was in fact Jewish, I highly doubt that the Ferengi are some sort of stealth Nazi propaganda. They're either a mockery of the "happy merchant" stereotype beloved of anti-Semites, or (more likely) just a critique of greed and capitalism itself.

What's funny is that Leonard Nimoy (Jewish) based his portrayal of Spock on the idea that the Vulcans were the space Jews. This idea kind of comes to a head in the 2009 movie, in which a guy named after a Roman emperor destroys Vulcan, causing a Vulcan diaspora...

by bitwize

7/5/2026 at 9:13:51 PM

I think that is a bad example. I haven't heard of Jewish people being offended by Ferengi, but anti-Semitic depictions are very often exactly "ugly, greedy people" (just look at any Nazi propaganda). Once it becomes a common thread it works less as a defense.

I imagine "small hands" would similarly work poorly as a defense against a defamation suit from Trump: he doesn't have to claim he has small hands, only that he is often depicted as having them.

by arijun

7/5/2026 at 9:46:55 PM

In the case of the Ferengi, "ugly greedy people with big noses," specifically greedy for an in-universe gold analogue, short, always cheating people; the analogues with common anti-semitic stereotypes are certainly there.

Then again Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark and is Jewish himself, has said that people in different countries see different stereotypes in the Ferengi - such as the Chinese or the Irish - so it probably depends on one's own own cultural indoctrination.

I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.

by krapp

7/5/2026 at 11:29:38 PM

> I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.

In my head-canon TOS Klingons are Russia and Romulans are China.

Reasons for this;

- Star Trek 6 (The whole thing is an allegory for the end of the cold war, right down to Praxis being a stand-in for Chernobyl)

- That fight scene in 'The Trouble with Tribbles' that strikes me as 'feels like a rehashed tale about a barfight between Allied and Soviet soldiers in pre-split post WW2 Germany'

- Romulans being more 'secluded' and more about political and legal intrigue than violence (If we consider Klingon direct violence a stand-in for USSR/Russian 'maybe put in house arrest before we assasinate' vs China's 'throw the rigid legal book at them')

by to11mtm

7/5/2026 at 10:05:02 PM

I wonder if the Catch Me if You Can guy counts. He apparently lied about a lot of his adventures as a scam artist, making him more of a fabulist.

However, if anyone taken in by his stories were to complain publicly (say, a book publisher or something), they'd be admitting not only to being a rube, but a rube to a liar who had already claimed publicly to be a scam artist. Even worse, that scam would be real and count as a success, restoring the scam artist's tarnished reputation from fabulist back to bona fide scam artist.

by jancsika

7/5/2026 at 8:42:43 PM

If you accuse someone (not me) of having a small penis (I don't) they (not me) don't have to show that they (not me) have a large penis (like me). Just the accusation they made (to you, not me) is slander enough. But I'd gladly drop-trousers in a court.

by comrade1234

7/5/2026 at 10:41:05 PM

This is not the point. The point is about deterring lawsuits. The point is not about defending lawsuits. This is very clearly explained in OP.

by baobabKoodaa

7/6/2026 at 6:35:09 PM

It also makes zero sense. You don't have to admit that you have a small penis to take legal action against someone that writes an insulting version of you with a small penis. People are not identified by their penis size.

by IshKebab

7/5/2026 at 11:08:43 PM

Sounds very small-penis.

by comrade1234

7/5/2026 at 9:19:21 PM

I don't think it would be me accusing you of having a small penis (since of course you don't). It's me accusing someone named romcade4321 of being a generally shitty person, and also having a small penis. If you think romcade4321 is a reference to you, you would have to prove the similarity between them and you (maybe by dropping your trousers in court?)

by arijun

7/5/2026 at 10:51:25 PM

I don’t think you’d get to use the courts anymore.

by cwmoore

7/6/2026 at 4:33:58 AM

Yes, only men with small penises are allowed to court.

by jona-f

7/5/2026 at 7:41:12 PM

I can't imagine judges would normally except this especially since it seems to be a known way to skirt law.

by z_open

7/5/2026 at 8:09:55 PM

It's not a legal defense strategy, it's a social engineering strategy

by nfw2

7/5/2026 at 7:43:17 PM

If nobody brings forward a lawsuit in the first place, why would there be a judge?

by steego

7/5/2026 at 11:38:13 PM

The judge doesn't accept it, and the Wikipedia page points out that this isn't a good legal strategy for that reason.

But it can be a good social-engineering strategy: the "rule" is based on the hope that the person on the other end of it won't bring legal action in the first place, for fear of socially confirming their association with a small-penis'd character.

by kelnos

7/5/2026 at 8:20:05 PM

I think the point is that you can apply it to any shameful-enough aspect of the libel/parody.

by tarpitt

7/5/2026 at 8:48:58 PM

Then again, money.

> A jury in New Mexico awarded $412 million to a man who sued over what he said were unnecessary erectile dysfunction shots that decimated his penis

On the one hand, now you're famous for having a dick that doesn't work, on the other hand, $412 million.

https://amp.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article296...

by fragmede

7/5/2026 at 10:43:02 PM

You could write a Seinfeld episode around this.

The defendant fears that the news coverage of his case means that no woman would ever be interested in him again. Once the judgement and the payout is announced he finds himself being constantly approached by gorgeous women.

by BuyMyBitcoins

7/5/2026 at 9:25:31 PM

$412 million in actualized damages?

That’s international dynastic money over a penis.

by bellowsgulch

7/5/2026 at 10:12:17 PM

No they did not give him 412 million dollars. They appealed the judgement and will fight it out for years. The man is 72 years old. Of that 412, most of it is punitive damages which will be fought over. Interest would acrue and if the clinic loses, they could be on the hook to pay $500 million+ but that's really very unrealistic.

by altmanaltman

7/5/2026 at 10:49:00 PM

Justice is so rarely poetic.

by cwmoore

7/5/2026 at 8:58:15 PM

[dead]

by draw_down

7/5/2026 at 7:57:00 PM

Sigh. Reductionist thinking again. Yes, of course, if you literally say “small penis” the plaintiff would rightfully cite this history.

But it’s not meant to be taken literally, like those are magic words. You say “he failed upwards, funded by family wealth and connections, despite everyone thinking he was an idiot who could barely string a sentence together”

The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.

by brookst

7/5/2026 at 8:13:16 PM

It isn't the size of your tort, it is how you use it.

Also, are men this easily manipulated?

Yes.

by genxy

7/5/2026 at 8:42:45 PM

Where's @Cindy when you need her?

by PaulHoule

7/5/2026 at 8:53:28 PM

Didn't know we could summon him/her/it, but seems it worked. Strangeness all around.

by embedding-shape

7/6/2026 at 2:17:35 PM

I'm not sure if you can, but I certainly can.

by PaulHoule

7/6/2026 at 5:47:57 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

7/5/2026 at 8:45:40 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

7/5/2026 at 8:32:40 PM

Yes, I see you have produced a very small (re)tort, but arguably have used it well.

by zephen

7/5/2026 at 8:59:23 PM

What's the smallest retort that can be blown? I wonder.

by projektfu

7/5/2026 at 9:11:47 PM

> I wonder.

I didn't, and still don't, but now I wonder why you wonder.

by zephen

7/6/2026 at 4:09:24 PM

This whole thing has been a wonderful string of tort jokes.

by genxy

7/5/2026 at 11:41:38 PM

> The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.

Or, to cite other potentially preemptive design, add enough other absurdity where someone can just say something like "It is obvious nobody would think the real would %person% impregnated Satan".

by to11mtm

7/5/2026 at 8:57:17 PM

This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that some with a small penis would say ...

by techscruggs

7/5/2026 at 8:56:33 PM

Another day in Everything is About Mate Suppression

by sebastianconcpt

7/5/2026 at 10:45:19 PM

[dead]

by strathmeyer

7/5/2026 at 8:23:36 PM

Where are the pictures to see what exactly is the problem?

by varispeed

7/5/2026 at 8:38:43 PM

Right in the article. On Windows, use "Magnifying Lens"

by stephbook

7/5/2026 at 10:28:12 PM

This time text is the better medium - it’s not easy to see the problem.

While I say “not easy”, others might say “hard”. Both are fine - for all we know the problem might be both hard and not easy to see.

by thih9

7/5/2026 at 9:36:12 PM

Try a mirror

/s

by sunaookami

7/5/2026 at 11:46:30 PM

After Rick Beato recently twisted the blade hard on how musically inept the NYT music review panel is, this level of legal ignorance pales in comparison.

by tangenter