u/RyanHubscher

Imagine a space heater with an onboard computer. You just buy it at Walmart, plug in, set the temperature, and that's it. No configuring software, no wallet, and no plugging it to your home network. It just plugs in and works.

My idea is that the space heater would work directly with the power company. It connects to the Internet through a network that the power company provides via the 110v power service. Then it just mines crypto currency for the power company. They track how much is earned from your house and the deduct it from your electric bill. They keep a portion of the mining earnings to fund the network equipment that has to be added to the grid. And they keep a margin for profit.

I imagine that a person could make a more efficient crypto space heater by building a custom nerdy system, but some of us just want easy.

I feel like this idea should win me a Nobel prize.

Edit: The commenters convinced me that most of my conclusions are garbage. Also, English has words as vague as "Ganhar", or even more vague, like "get".

Original Post:

Ganhar can mean earn, win, or gain.

If you win $100 from a lucky lottery ticket, you say, "ganhei $100".

If you work hard and earn $100, you say, "ganhei $100".

If you randomly find a hundred dollar bill in the forest, you can say, "ganhei $100".

In English, you could certainly say, "I gained $100" in each of these scenarios, but it sounds more natural to say in English, "I won...", "I earned...", or "I found $100".

Sometimes, on payday, I tell my wife how much I "won" in my paycheck. I do this because I know Portuguese and I'm trying to be funny and suggest that I only get paid because of luck, not hard work.

Does the multipurpose use of ganhar diminish the distinction between hard work and luck for Portuguese speakers? Does this artifact of the language affect the way Portuguese speakers think? Is a Brazilian more likely to believe that wealth and poverty come from luck instead of hard work? Is there less accountability?

On the other hand, if someone is poor because of disability, and no fault of their own, is a Brazilian less likely to blame the poverty on laziness? Is the Brazilian more likely to have compassion, recognizing that disability is just unlucky?

This makes me wonder what other artifacts of Portuguese shape how people think, and what artifacts of English have shaped how I think.

Please share if you know other differences between English and Portuguese that lead to differences in our way of thinking.

Do not reply to me saying you want to do this service for me. Rule #5 of this subreddit is that we must not look for speaking partners here.

What I want is a recommendation of a service, like a website, where I can rent an online Brazilian friend. I know that there is italki, but I'm not really looking for an instructor. What I really want is a person with a good microphone and an Internet connection. I didn't want them to even speak English.

Any recommendations? Anything besides italki? Should I just use italki or similar?

O dicionário diz que malhar é mesmo que treinar ou fazer exercícios. Mas estou encontrando esta palavra em vários lugares, e parece que não faz o sentido de treinar.

Sei que tinha série infantil chamado de Malhação.

Que mais significa?

In the USA, accents come with strong stereotypes. So film producers use accents as a shortcut to quickly develop characters. I don't like this because it is often racist or intolerant, but it is what it is. Accents can be annoying, dangerous, gangsta, uneducated, underclasses, terrorist, peasantry, enlightened, intellectual, adorable, royal, etc.

I want to know if or how this is done in Brazilian films. What stereotypes are tied to native Portuguese accents within the Portuguese speaking world, and what stereotypes are tied to various foreign accents? Which accents have to be exaggerated to achieve the effect?

NOTE! I am asking about what stereotypes exist and how they are used in films. I am not asking anyone to validate stereotypes. Stereotypes and biases can be harmful, and all people deserve respect.

Most people hear a dialogue inside their head. I'm looking at an incredibly slow talker right now. Is his internal dialogue as painfully slow as his external speech?

Does anyone know of an air conditioner system that is designed to work with a lawn irrigation system? Where I live, I need air conditioning exactly at the same time of year that my lawn needs watering.

Some people spray water on the compressor unit with a sprinkler, but I'm not suggesting that. My water is very hard and would damage the compressor over time.

A conventional ac system compresses the refrigerant. It gets hot. Then the hot refrigerant passes through a coil, and a fan blows on the coil. This dumps the heat into the atmosphere. The compressor and fan system are a single unit just outside the house.

I'm imagining a system where the refrigerant passes through a coil inside a big water box/tank after being compressed and before going to the fan unit. Much of the heat will get passed to the water in the tank before going to the fan unit. The water in the tank would be used to irritate my lawn. If the refrigerant was still hot coming out of the tank, then the fan would finish the cooling before the refrigerant goes to the house.

The water box would get replenished with cold water every time the sprinklers go on. Water would flow from the well, which is just over 45F, to the tank, to the sprinklers. For max energy efficiency, the irrigation system and compressor would turn on at the same time. But it's best for water efficiency to water in the morning or evening, so I would not coordinate the ac calls with the sprinkler schedule.

Does anyone know if a system like this?

I have been campaigning for the US Congress to pass a law declaring that every penny coin is now worth 5 cents.

This is not a joke post. It costs almost 14 cents to mint a nickel, and we mint over a billion nickels per year. We have zillions of pennies in circulation. If every penny magically became worth 5 cents overnight, then the US government would not have to mint new nickels for many years. It would save taxpayers millions of dollars and increase my personal wealth by about $2.

When we have to start minting 5 cent coins again, the new nickels could use the cheaper penny form. Or maybe when we run out of pennies and nickels, by that time, we might be able to retire nickels and dimes.

Please write to your representatives in congress.

I know how I meet my CPD requirement, but I'm wondering what resources are most commonly used by everyone else? How much do you use the following?

* Webinars (live and/or recorded)

* In-person conferences

* Seminars like the Academy's Life and Health Qualifications Seminar

* ASOPS, USQS, the code, Valuation Manual, Practice Notes, state insurance laws, etc.

* Magazines & news letters from actuarial organizations

* Internet articles like from consultant websites, experts, Wikipedia, etc.

* Employer sponsored events, like if they hire an outside consultant to present

* Volunteer hours for the actuarial organizations

* Academic journals like NAAJ or Variance

* Structured courses like college classes, Coursera, DataCamp, etc.

* Free college classes without credit like MIT OpenCourseWare

* Other. Please explain.