I am in the US and subscribed to P+, and I just checked: Paramount+ presents Farpoint as a single episode (noting in the title that it is Part 1 and 2) and includes the recap scene at 38 minutes into the episode.

Work out a lot, enough to be buff

Respectfully, I don’t think you necessarily have to be buff; you just have to be able to handle physical violence if it happens to come your way, and confident in your ability to do so. Because if you know that you “can take 'em” then you will have less reason to care about what they think of you, and less reason to fear that their bullying might ever go that far. Thus, IMHO, something like training in martial arts can be a very effective substitute for “becoming buff”. But “buff” without necessarily looking it can also be good enough, in some cases.

I was never “buff” in school. In fact, from all outward appearances, I looked every bit the scrawny nerd that everyone always assumed I was. And I was a nerd… but I was also strong. I carried a book bag around throughout middle school and high school that contained all of my schoolbooks. I didn’t go to my locker; as I saw it, there was no reason to. I literally tore through bookbag after bookbag over the years. By about my junior year or so, it was a sports bag that held twice as many books as any backpack – because it kind’a had to be, since that’s just how many books the school had issued to me that year – but I was nonetheless easily manhandling that bag like it was paper mâché.

I don’t recall the rest of the context of the conversation, but I remember this one football dude commenting about my sports bag, something along the lines of, “Yeah, whatever… it’s not that heavy.” So I called him out on his comment; I said, “Feel free to pick it up.” Having received the challenge, he certainly wasn’t going to back down – especially not from the scrawny nerd. He puffed himself up, walked down the aisle between the desks until he was towering right over me, and wrapped his big ol’ hand around the handle. He stood up with it by his side and paused in that position for a moment. He then very quietly put it back down on the floor and walked away without another word.

(Morgan Freeman voiceover) It was that heavy.

But you don’t even have to be “strong” necessarily; in some cases, what matters most is confidence. Later that same year, another bully – not another football player, just a rando dude who had decided he didn’t like me for some reason – told me to watch myself, because he was going to follow me home and (oh, so trite, reflecting upon it now) “beat me up.” Well, I knew who I was and I knew what I could do. Without even a hint of fear or hesitance, I responded to him, “Okay. When and where?”

He didn’t show.

Bullies are all talk and no show, especially when they’re alone and especially when you can confidently call them out on their crap. If they’re “just” making fun of you, do your best to ignore it; it’s not worth your time or energy to give them even the slightest bit of attention. But consider making an effort to get to a point where you’re confident in what you can do, if you should ever need to defend yourself… and then, never show them fear. They will usually back down and leave you alone when confidently confronted. And if they don’t back down… well, you’re confident for a reason. Defend yourself if you have to – but only if they start the fight. There’s never any point in picking a fight yourself.

You’re probably right – but let’s pick that apart for a bit. What you are basically describing is “doing what’s right when nobody is watching.” How is that not a “superior code of conduct,” as you put it?

This chart hits me hard, in so many ways.

There are certain traits common to neurotypicals which I have always considered to be detrimental to not only that person in whom I’ve observed the trait, but to society as a whole – but because I’m the one who is considered “different” I usually find that it’s easier to just keep my trap shut, rather than be browbeaten by NTs for my strong opinions.

As a very obvious example: “Highly developed morals” is tucked away in the corner of the Autism/Giftedness sub-quadrant. I’m going to make the obvious assumption that Ms. Higgins Lee clearly did not intend to imply that only neurodivergents hold that trait… but, anecdotally, I have nonetheless on more than one occasion observed that far too many people who are considered by the larger populace to be “normal” not only appear to lack that trait, but actively despise anyone who holds such high morals.

NTs so often derisively label us as “autistic” or “neurodivergent” or (my personal favorite) “nerds”… like these are all somehow bad things – but maybe society as a whole needs to reevaluate the entire notion of what constitutes “good” and “bad”.

Sorry… am I being too divergent? Should I shut my trap… yet again?

First, head to the Anomaly station and buy all of the blueprints, if you haven’t already. That is always the right way to start upgrading any of your tech.

Next, have you claimed a settlement yet? If not, do that. After working a few cycles through the settlement questline, you’ll get something interesting for your Minotaur.

And of course, always check the exocraft salesman on the stations; they don’t always have the same upgrades, but you should eventually find some good options that’ll make your Minotaur more useful. I personally recommend only buying S class upgrades, if you can afford it.

And if you haven’t already discovered this: there are two exocrafts that can navigate underwater… not just one.

I don’t know why this is, but I have always been able to raise my right eyebrow independently… but not my left one. It’s kinda funny, because one of my son’s friends just randomly asked me if I could do that earlier this evening. I did so, and he made like it was this really big deal.

I’m just glad I could amuse him.

One of the most frustrating thing about being “different” is that people don’t understand you… and you don’t understand them either. It doesn’t really matter whether we put labels on it like neurotypical vs. neurodivergent, or nerd vs. jock or liberal vs. conservative… the basic nature of the divide is still much the same. So at some point, you just have to learn to accept it, and stop trying to comprehend that which will never come naturally to you. Embrace who you are, and do what works best… for you. Live your life the best way you know how to, and don’t be afraid to tell others that, while you appreciate that they’re trying to help, their advice just isn’t what you need right now.

Life isn’t about conformity… it’s about growing as a person, and becoming a little bit better every day. So maybe, just give yourself a break… I mean, you’re expressing your problems in this forum and you’re interacting with people, even if it’s not in person. That means you did a lot better than you might have by just sitting there and stewing about those differences, right?

I think you’re doing alright.

Of course, nobody with two brain cells to rub together who reads that answer is sitting there thinking to themselves, “Huh… I guess I’ve had it wrong all this time, focusing so much on money.” Rather, they’re instinctively blurting out, “Yeah right – I call bull!”

But I’ll give them partial credit; frequently it’s about money. Sometimes, it’s just about a work environment that used to be great going to crap. And sometimes, it’s about the employee coming to an epiphany, and realizing that their work environment was actually crap all along.

That said, it may be true that not every job that I’ve ditched was entirely because of money… but it should go without saying that it’s always a factor in where I went for the next job. Also, it’s never the only factor – but it’s certainly one of the more significant ones.

I voted as “self-diagnosed” – but that’s really an inadequate description.

I’m an adult with multiple autistic kids who have themselves each been professionally diagnosed… and I share an overwhelming percentage of my personality and characteristics with them. But I’m clearly in the “high-functioning” category, and have managed to reach a certain level of stability and success in my own life; so even ignoring the obvious monetary cost of getting a professional eval, at this point there just isn’t much that such a diagnosis would do for me… whereas my kids benefit by having that official piece of paper in their school records; it provides concrete evidence to justify the requests for accommodations which we’ve submitted on each of their Individualized Education Programs (IEP).

Which is to say, I believe that there are certainly good reasons to go to a professional – but there are also circumstances which can significantly mitigate those good reasons.

Welcome to the fold. There are other resources worth exploring in the sidebar, if you haven’t already done so.

Dan’s final comment succinctly calls out the situations which irk me the most. You asked me how I’m doing. I answered honestly… and now you’re going to judge me for that? Yeah, nah. I’d rather just not answer at all, thanks, instead of dealing with that bullcrap.

Which, over the course of time, led me to the analytical conclusion that more often than not, most people don’t actually care how – or even if – I answer at all, unless I make the “mistake” of answering honestly when I’m not feeling perfectly peachy. That’s why I almost always answer with something vaguely nonsensical when asked how I’m doing by random strangers, such as, “Howdy, howdy!” Most of them are so locked into their autopilot that they only ever hear that first syllable, and immediately think I just asked them how they’re doing… so they reflexively toss back their obligatory, “Oh, I’m fine.” Once in a blue moon, one of them will skip a beat and realize what I actually said just after their reply, making the passing interaction vaguely uncomfortable for them. Which, you know… is actually just fine by me, since that’s how I feel almost all the time.

I’m a long time Trekkie; I wasn’t alive yet when TOS originally aired on TV, (I mean, that was the '60s – I’m old, but I’m not that old!) but I grew up watching it in syndication. I also watched TNG, DS9, Voyager and (ahem) most of Enterprise, back when these shows first aired on broadcast television. The notion of binge watching wasn’t even a thing, yet. That said… I’m somewhat in the same boat as you for some of the newer shows, simply because I haven’t taken the time to sit down and consume all of “NuTrek” quite yet, so I do get where you’re coming from. (The rest of “life” sometimes gets in the way of good entertainment, eh?)

But at some point you have to a acknowledge that you’re fighting a two-front war. You say that you don’t want to watch a series that is incomplete or at risk of an abrupt cancellation, which I certainly get… but at the same time, you say that you don’t want other people who have watched it to spoil it for you, while still having the option to discuss the shows you have watched with those same people. These are largely incompatible whims; you’re kind’a going to have to just choose a path and accept that there will occasionally be thorns in the bushes along that path, regardless of which one you choose.

That is to say, as I see it, you have three basic options:

• Either watch things according to your preferences at whatever pace suits you, and accept that the occasional spoiler is going to be inevitable,
• Or binge everything that’s ever been released as quickly as you can, and accept that you’re going to end up watching and investing in some shows that may not last as long as you’d like,
• Or simply pull out of the discussions as soon as you realize that a spoiler is coming… or maybe even isolate yourself from those discussions entirely, until such time as you’re comfortable with your level of Trek knowledge.

Some combination of those options is probably going to be more or less palatable to you. (Personally, I go through spurts of all three modes at different times.)

As an aside: shows being cancelled prematurely is by no means unique to the Age of Streaming. The original Star Trek series is a prime example… but more modern examples exist as well, including non-Trek franchises, like Firefly.

Welcome to the fold! Be warned: coders tend to be a weird bunch of folks.

The most important lesson I ever learned as I was starting out in software engineering came from my Design Principles teacher, during my short stint at a community college. That was a class which was technically not associated with a specific programming language, though the same teacher also taught various programming classes in different languages. She also wrote her own textbook for that Design class, actually… I still have my prepublication copy of it somewhere, that she had handed out to the entire class for free that semester. To this day, I still have a great deal of respect for that teacher. But I digress.

The lesson I learned from her was this: Programming languages are just tools like any other. Tools come and go over the years. The skills that you learn which will last beyond whatever language you’re learning and using right now are going to be things like how to construct good logic and how to structure a meaningfully intuitive user interface. These are the things that you should focus on perfecting first and foremost, rather than the syntactical nuances of any given language. If you have a good design at the outset, everything else should fall into place much more easily.

Minecraft and No Man’s Sky. (But then, I repeat myself.)

Also, to a lesser extent, Lemmy. That one is still more of a growing fixation, rather than a hyper-fixation.

Lol. I think Lemmy would benefit from “categories” of up-votes/down-votes. This comment got my up-vote entirely because I found it amusing.

I can’t really say from personal experience – mostly because I’m quite certain that I would offend someone in-so-doing – but I have an idea that might offer some insights:

There’s a link in the right hand sidebar of this community to helpful resources; from there is a link to Autism tests. Click on the AQ-10 test, and take it. After you finish, look back over your answers, see if you can guess which questions would have made your score lower, and change those answers accordingly. Play around with it a bit, and maybe even think of it as a game. If you get your score down to zero… that’s roughly how the most “neurotypical” person would have answered. That’s not to say that all NTs will answer that way, but it gives you an idea of the traits that suggest neurotypicality, with the opposing answer obviously suggesting neurodivergent traits. Analytically, this also means that the more strongly you gravitate towards the ND trait answers, the less “typical” is your natural behavior.

You could also do this with the 50 question version of the test, but I imagine that would take a lot more time and effort with a much more limited return on investment, as compared to just doing the 10… but even as I’m writing this, I’m finding myself tempted to go do it anyway. That’s probably one of the ND traits in me.

(Alternatively, if you’re familiar with the structure of HTML, you can easily figure out all of the answers from the page source.)

There are a few different types of base part limits – but the specific limit which obviously matters the most is the upload part limit. (Uploading is what you do to share your base with the rest of the NMS community.)

The “I don’t know how to…” questions are mostly answered by doing exactly what you’re already doing… playing through those main questlines at the top of the list. But don’t hesitate to explore the secondary quests; there can be some good stuff there, too.

One of the things I like the most about NMS is that there’s no real sense of urgency to any of it, other than what you imbue it with yourself… so picking and choosing whichever quest strikes your fancy at the moment can be quite satisfying.

Also, I suggest that you don’t stress too much about units; if you can’t afford something right now, just look into it later. Even if you never read a single spoiler, in time you will no doubt discover a few methods on your own to obtain an overabundance of units.

As spoiler free as I can make this, (in deference to Dinodicchellathicc) while still kind’a answering your question: Start looking into Quicksilver tasks on the Anomaly.

A while back I started a Permadeath save specifically for the purpose of finishing off that last Steam task… so lately, I’ve mostly just been beefing up that save. Got a crap-ton of upgrades to my primary ship and Multitool, started a settlement, upgraded my Minotaur and got an S-class freighter – which I don’t even have on my original save with >500 hours!

So now, I’m actually finding it next to impossible to repeat the process, and find an S-class freighter for my other saves.