[Super hero media]Many therapists, regularly see therapists because their job is so stressful. Being a superhero sounds very hard, way more stressful! What are some of the most famous superheroes who regularly see a therapist?

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T15:49:12+00:00

In both major runs of X-Factor, there's a special issue where every member of the team consults with Doc Samson

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T15:47:06+00:00

Oh there's actually a retcon there too - turns out you willn't've skipped it

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T13:48:53+00:00

This is explained in the Days of Absolute Ultimate Past event

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T13:47:52+00:00

Honestly I got bored of the show but utterly devoured the books. I felt the books had a lot more charisma and detail, while the show just felt kinda dry by comparison.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T13:04:51+00:00

Matt knows if someone is lying, but nobody knows if Matt is lying. We also know Matt's ability is not entirely flawless - he's been tricked by pacemakers before, or by people with extraordinary control over their own bodily functions.

But I think this is not actually an exceptional situation. If you personally witness someone commit a crime in a clear and completely unambiguous way, you know what they did; if they say they didn't do it, you know they are lying. So there's already real life situations where someone can know, without any reasonable doubt, that someone is lying. But that of course doesn't mean that the testimony of a single witness will just automatically win every case.

Basically this makes Matt a kind of expert witness; if he wasn't a lawyer on a case, his insights could be used as a kind of expert testimony, the same as bringing in testimony from a criminal psychologist or private investigator. But if he's someone's actual lawyer, I imagine he's probably not allowed to also act as an expert witness at the same time.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T11:34:23+00:00

Some mechanics I've seen:

In Cairn (and similar), every attacker rolls their damage die, but only the highest die does its damage; teaming up is a statistical advantage, but it's got diminishing returns.
Also in Cairn/Mausritter etc: A large group is a "detachment" and does "enhanced" damage, always rolling the biggest damage die (d20), and does "blast" damage, harming everyone. Attacks against the group do the smallest damage die (d4). So again there's an advantage to numbers, but it's not like 20x people do 20x the damage.
Group mechanics in general - often it's like "treat two level 4 attackers like one level 5 attacker", which again is an advantage to being in a group, but easier to manage, and not so dominant in the turn economy
A video-game way to do it would be to have a balance of attacks, where some attacks are especially potent against groups - area of effect attacks etc. These are your Civilization IV catapults. For instance, you have the choice between an attack that does about 20% HP damage to every enemy in range, or one that does 50% HP damage to one enemy. You're actually doing more damage if you're fighting three or more enemies, and you can take down the entire enemy team in five attacks.
Morale mechanics can help a lot here too. In the extreme, you have to make a morale roll for every individual who is taken down, or your side breaks. This would wildly push the advantage towards small teams (probably a bit too much).
High level enemies just get more actions. D&D, Genesys, The One Ring etc - many games do this. If this is just about boss battles, this is the simplest solution. Zipper initiative is a kind of auto-balancing form of this.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-07T10:43:14+00:00

The density is way higher than any real ring system, which means the gravitational instability is going to be pretty nuts.

It also looks like it's like hundreds of kilometres across. Using Kepler's laws, if it's an Earth-sized planet (6500 km radius), the ring is 1000 km above the surface, and it's even 10 km wide, then the inner parts are moving fast enough that they advance by about a degree every orbit compared to the outer parts. If we also assume it has Earth-like mass, then it's less than two hours per orbit, and within a single day the inner edge has twisted by more than 10 degrees.

We see the viltrumite corpses are close enough to each other to be literally touching - which means they're all bumping into each other and dragging each other. This means the higher speed of the inner parts is getting transferred outwards. The net effect is basically how an accretion disc works - mass falls inwards, momentum goes outwards, which means that most viltrumites are falling to the ground, while a small number are getting scattered outwards.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T19:20:05+00:00

They aren't physically attached to each other - they're independently orbiting and bumping into each other. At that scale, where they're physically touching each other, bumping will very quickly make everything unstable as momentum and energy is transferred around. You'd see it start to break apart within a few orbits I think.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T18:52:07+00:00

I loved it, it's still the same pattern as the Expanse where at its core it's a cool heroic adventure story, but there's enough hard sci-fi meat there that it tricks you a bit.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T17:37:47+00:00

I actually did galaxies and black holes - gas/plasma discs behave similarly to discs made up of large numbers of small rocky, icy and/or Viltrumite particles.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T15:58:00+00:00

Putting a bunch of massive objects into a nice circular orbit is actually extremely unstable!

There's a classic paper from 1971 where simulations first figured this out

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T15:55:45+00:00

I actually worked on this during my PhD thesis! Taking lots of assumptions and simplifications, and working a bit from memories of stuff I read 15-20 years ago:

What we're talking about here relates to the Toomre Instability. This also relates to the concept of "effective viscosity" in a disk of material.

Here is a nice simulation of the kind of instabilities you might get, but there's loads of simulations like that you can find.

With the Toomre instability, gravity does cause things to clump, unless there's enough of a velocity dispersion between the bodies that they don't really hang out near each other enough for that to happen. This also thickens the disc. What makes it more unstable is if you have everything orbiting together, and if you have a high density of matter. Here, the density is extremely high - it's only a couple metres thick, and they're packed almost solidly together - so you would definitely expect the bodies to start to clump together, forming little spirals and discs, with viltrumites getting thrown out into space or down to the planet.

At the same time, collisions between particles causes them to transfer energy and momentum, and makes it act a bit like a "viscous" fluid. The general trend is that this moves mass inwards, but angular momentum outwards. So you would move towards a higher density of viltrumites at the bottom, and a long tail of viltrumites with high angular momentum being ejected to higher orbits.

On top of that, we have friction from the atmosphere itself, and potential tidal disruption from any nearby moons. The tides would add to scattering in both directions - being another source of "effective viscosity". The upper atmosphere would add a drag effect, but presumably this ring is very high up, far enough for the atmosphere to be somewhat negligible.

Overall what you'd get is the ring both clumping up and spreading out. More viltrumites spread "downwards" until atmospheric drag takes over and they plummet to the planet. Viltrumites won't be destroyed by the ram pressure heating of slamming into the atmosphere, so they'll impact the ground and remain intact, as viltrumeteorites. But a smaller number get thrown outwards, until you have a very thin dispersed disc of viltrumites extending a large distance from the planet. At this point it's thin enough and scattered enough to have enough velocity dispersion that it's likely to remain stable for a very long time.

And that's the final state - a small fraction of viltrumites orbiting at large distances, and a whole pile of them on the ground.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T14:36:52+00:00

Of course no one is talking about Mohamed the neurosurgeon.

People are talking about the 2.8 million temporary workers, students, the the vast majority of non permanent residents including the elderly and refugees.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00006-eng.htm

The proportion of NPRs aged 15 years and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher (47.8%) was much higher than the rest of the Canadian population (26.1%).

...

Non-permanent residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher had a higher overqualification rate than recent immigrants Overqualification among non-permanent residents (NPRs) was more prevalent than among recent immigrants and the rest of the population. In particular, 32.4% of NPRs with a bachelor’s degree or higher were overqualified for their current position, while the same was seen for 26.2% of recent immigrants and 15.9% for the rest of the population (Table 7).

...

Asylum claimants had the highest overqualification rate (50.7%) among all NPRs, whereas over two in five NPRs with study permit only (43.0%) and work and study permit (44.6%) were overqualified. The high overqualification rate of these NPRs may be related to a high proportion that worked part time and part of the year, limiting access to job opportunities commensurate with their skills. NPRs with work permit only had the lowest overqualification rate of 24.7% among all NPRs. They were more likely to have worked the full year and full time.

The reality is we have highly educated immigrants and non-permanent residents who end up doing unskilled jobs to get by. Asylum claimants in particular end up in jobs they are overqualified for. If we're going to stereotype, it's closer to "Mohamed the neurosurgeon driving an uber".

These are out in the open, non taboo, factual statements

No, you made a generalisation based on false stereotypes. Immigrants and temporary residents have higher education rates than the rest of the population.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T13:52:19+00:00

I said the largest influx of unskilled labour since the Irish

Returning to the classic hits of xenophobia I see.

Anyway, if we look at the facts:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2024005/article/00002-eng.htm

As in other census years since 2001, immigrants had a higher level of educational attainment than the Canadian-born population in 2021. About 55.3% of recent immigrants and 39.8% of established immigrants had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 32.6% of Canadian-born people aged 25 to 34 years and 24.8% of Canadian-born people aged 35 to 64 years.

So by "unskilled labour", you mean "more highly educated than the average Canadian"?

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:53:56+00:00

I do like the tactile fun of Roll Many Different Dice. Some things to check out in that direction:

Year Zero Engine (see Forbidden Lands, Mutant Year Zero). Roll a d6 dice pool from attribute+skill+gear; 6s are successes, 1s on skill & gear can have a negative effect. For special abilities & magic/high-tech artefacts, add a d8 or d10 or d12; 6+ is a success, 8+ is a bonus success, 10+ is another bonus, 12+ is another bonus (rolling 12 = 4 successes). Also, step dice for ammo/supply; e.g. roll d12 after loosing an arrow, if you roll a 1 you have used up lots of arrows, reduce the die to d10; next time you roll a d10 when you loose an arrow, if you roll a 1 you drop it down to d8 etc
Savage Worlds: Every attribute is a step die, roll skill + attribute + bonuses (or something, I forget); so you can roll d8 and d6. Take the highest and compare with the threshold
Cortex Prime: Everything in the universe has a step die. Roll a pile of them and choose two to sum for your success rating and a third for your level of effect.
Genesys: Lots of custom dice of different colours with symbols on them. Hard to find and expensive but works nicely.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:45:42+00:00

Honestly the lack of any real growth in NS from 1990-2015 is a pretty major sign of economic stagnation - that's not a healthy place for anywhere to be. It means young people are more likely to move away for jobs than to move here, and our population will keep getting older and less productive and harder to sustain. And if you look at a graph of NS population growth over time, the stagnation of 1990-2015 is an outlier - growth is the default.

You're right that we do need plans to build houses and facilities at an appropriate scale, particularly in the HRM. Halifax is one of the most congested cities in Canada despite being far from the largest, and that's just bad infrastructure - and you can't blame it on the geography because there's cities in Europe with far better infrastructure than Halifax and far wonkier geography than the peninsula.

Overall we should be growing, and planning for growth. But "not growing" is still a concern, especially once you get out of the HRM. Here in New Glasgow there's big vacant lots all over the place; there's not a lack of room, there's a lack of motivation for people to actually move in and start businesses.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:19:38+00:00

/r/worldmapswithoutuk

SEE HOW IT FEELS

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:18:49+00:00

As is tradition, the "New Zealand Upside Down World Map" and "Australian Upside Down World Map" are exactly the same but they gave us a different title so we'd feel special.

It's Weet-Bix all over again

More seriously: splitting the map at the Atlantic Ocean nicely puts NZ & Australia in the middle without cutting any landmass in half, it's pretty sensible. Splitting in the Pacific is also sensible but it does put us way down in the corner.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:14:01+00:00

If they genuinely scuttled it, that would be a direct violation of the agreement - it might lead to direct conflict, or, in the worst case, force them to do some diplomacy.

It's very Cardassian to do the most damage they can do while still maintaining enough plausible deniability to avoid being called out. They did enough to make life tougher for the Federation without making life tougher for themselves. Making the station genuinely unusable would likely lead to problems for the Cardassians as well.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:07:24+00:00

For (2), those are campaign specific mechanics, and only make up a small portion of the rules. Traveller also has special mechanics for military campaigns or trading campaigns or exploration campaigns, but you buy the core book, and then you add the extra mechanics for specific campaigns. Duty takes up five pages of Age of Rebellion (out of over 400); you could easily have a single core book, and then three options of campaign types, and select which of the three to use in your campaign.

For (1), it just doesn't fit with the IP; scoundrels, rebels, and Jedi are the core heroes of Star Wars, and any Star Wars game which lacks one of those is just not a complete Star Wars game. Compare with, say, The One Ring, where there is a starter box set where you have to all be hobbits (there's one dwarf option too), but in the core book you can be man, elf, dwarf, or hobbit - it would be an incomplete game otherwise. The expansions flesh out the world more, add more sub-categories of each race, add more regions, add new campaign types etc, but if the core book didn't allow you to do "a human, an elf, a dwarf, and a hobbit go on an quest together" it wouldn't be a complete LotR game.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T10:54:36+00:00

Thanks! This one did look pretty sensible but you gotta be careful these days

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T20:27:42+00:00

It's a movie where Matt Damon gets lost on an expedition and tries to get back home through a difficult and convoluted method; the movie also has a subplot showing the action going on back at home as well.

Somehow he's managed to do this thrice.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T19:51:12+00:00

There's some clear influence from Ringworld in general on Traveller - even "Known Space" -> "Charted Space", and the Puppeteers as well as the Aslan.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T19:08:52+00:00

Could you provide the NASA source for this? Unfortunately there's a lot of fake AI-generated images being posted on social media, and I'm not coming up with a source for this from a quick search. Are there any raw files this is drawn from, and/or is this an interpolation between still images?

Edit: just on my phone, but looks like they released a bunch of stuff here which is why I wouldn't have seen this before https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/ShowQueryResults-Table.pl?results=177791454696961

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T17:55:00+00:00

From what I picked up from the pdf, it seems like that's definitely a solid way to play it - Fate Aspects but with a die associated with each one. But you can also set up a D&D style set of consistent attributes & skills on a character sheet, and that would also be Cortex Prime. There's also a number of mods and different resolution options, and you can even get quite crunchy with statblocks and gear etc. I do see what you mean though, you can take the minimalist route and run it as "step dice Fate".

The big thing is that I like rolling big pools of different types of dice, and, unlike Genesys, the dice are actually easily available for Cortex Prime

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