The Off Topic Topic

[Barrister]

Yeah, from what I know Brazil can be quite bad. Smaller  and northern cities, I'm told, are safer. With exceptions, like Salvador is super unsafe and rivals rio.

I enjoyed Brazil a lot. But I would note that I've a female friend who has traveled all over Latin America and says Brazil is by some distance the country she feels least safe in.

So I think I've told this story before, but anyways - went to Brazil in 2013 for my brother's wedding.  His wife is from Brazil.  Her parents live in Dias D'Avila, kind of a suburb of Salvador.  We stayed at her parents place, which was quite large.  We were going to rent a car, but were told "no, there will be people to drive you around".  Well there weren't, so for the first several days we felt kind of stuck at the house.  Eventually we moved to a rented house right on the beach where the wedding was held which was more touristy and quite nice.

But anyways, one day in Dias D'Avila me, my brother, and my dad were bored so we walked into town to buy some Brazilian beer.  Did not seem like a big deal at all, absolutely nothing happened.

But when we got back my brother's mother-in-law was very cross with us that it wasn't safe to just go walking around like that, even in the middle of the day.


So I can't draw any specific conclusions about Salvador.  We did make one trip into the city itself, but of course we were with my brothers in-laws who were locals (and the F-I-L was retired military police).  I didn't specifically see anything unsafe (although the favelas, from the highway, looked gnarly).  So I'm not sure if they were just being overly cautious of us gringos who were their guests, or it was that dangerous.

[HVC]

I knew you went to Brazil, but didn't realize it was Salvador. I too have in-laws from there, married to my cousin. I've heard stories . But they're definitely not a suburban type family. Apparently it's gotten even worse in the last 10 years with a spike in murder and crimes.


*edit* wiki

Salvador is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. The number of homicides increased 418% from 2000 to 2010. From 1998 to 2008, the number of homicides of youths between the ages of 15 and 24 increased 435.1%. Gun violence in the state of Bahia more than doubled in the period from 2004 to 2014, and the city is in the top ten for gun violence of the 26 state capitals of Brazil. In 2014 the state of Bahia had the most murders in the country. At the same time, Salvador has one of the lowest rates of suicide in the nation.

[Sheilbh]

Jeez, what happened in Paraguay

I feel bad now - it was fine. And it was my fault. I basically jabbed into Paraguay near the border at the Paraguayan equivalent of Calais where Brazilians and Argentines go for cheap goods and duty free. So it was just a bit crap and the food I had was dreadful - especially compared with Argentina and Uruguay and (as a feijoada fan) Brazil.

[celedhring]

Yesterday I was reading on gravity (I'm working on a sci-fi thing), and I was reminded how as a kid for a long time I thought gravity was caused by the Earth rotation - and that if it ever stopped we'd all float away. The reason was how in "serious" sci-fi movies you'd see rotation often used as a way to generate artificial gravity.

At school we didn't really do physics until like age 12-13 (before that it was all natural sciences), so this stuck with me for  long time.

Did you have similarly "wrong" science beliefs as a kid?

[Josquius]

Thinking about it logically, the rotation of the earth should actually work counter to gravity since we are on the outside. Negliable of course next to actual gravity but I wonder if its been measured at all

No doubt I had loads of these...
I remember I had a old book of 'facts' from the 70s or such. Stuff like the Bermuda Triangle I took at face value that it was this area of the sea where if you accidentally sail into it you're doomed- I wondered how that worked from the beach, like touch the water and death?
And there was a place called Spook Hill in the US where gravity worked backwards. Actually an optical illusion I know now but I just took it as a unknown mystery, as those definitely existed in the world.

[celedhring]

Thinking about it logically, the rotation of the earth should actually work counter to gravity since we are on the outside. Negliable of course next to actual gravity but I wonder if its been measured at all

No doubt I had loads of these...
I remember I had a old book of 'facts' from the 70s or such. Stuff like the Bermuda Triangle I took at face value that it was this area of the sea where if you accidentally sail into it you're doomed- I wondered how that worked from the beach, like touch the water and death?
And there was a place called Spook Hill in the US where gravity worked backwards. Actually an optical illusion I know now but I just took it as a unknown mystery, as those definitely existed in the world.

I think that I also probably heard/read somewhere that a moving charge generates a magnetic field and thought that gravity worked the same way.

And yeah, when I was a kid I thought the Bermuda Triangle was a total no-go zone avoided by all air traffic, because if you went there you were DOOMED.

[HVC]

When I was little I misunderstood the one twin on the spaceship analogy of the time aspect of relativity. Instead of time moving slower the faster you went I thought you time travelled into the future if you moved fast enough, and if you could somehow move slow enough you'd move backwards in time. where I heard the analogy I don't know, probably tv, but I was too young to get it

[celedhring]

When I was little I misunderstood the one twin on the spaceship analogy of the time aspect of relativity. Instead of time moving slower the faster you went I thought you time travelled into the future if you moved fast enough, and if you could somehow move slow enough you'd move backwards in time. where I heard the analogy I don't know, probably tv, but I was too young to get it

Tbf a lot of stuff around relativity still blows my non-STEM brain even today.

[HVC]

Oh yeah, definitely. I just remember thinking how cool it would be to see the dinosaurs if they made a way for people to go real slow

[HVC]

Jeez, what happened in Paraguay

I feel bad now - it was fine. And it was my fault. I basically jabbed into Paraguay near the border at the Paraguayan equivalent of Calais where Brazilians and Argentines go for cheap goods and duty free. So it was just a bit crap and the food I had was dreadful - especially compared with Argentina and Uruguay and (as a feijoada fan) Brazil.

Bad food puts on on the shit list, good to know

If you like hearty food then lusophone is the way to go. Also diabetes

[Duque de Bragança]

Yeah, from what I know Brazil can be quite bad. Smaller  and northern cities, I'm told, are safer. With exceptions, like Salvador is super unsafe and rivals rio.

I enjoyed Brazil a lot. But I would note that I've a female friend who has traveled all over Latin America and says Brazil is by some distance the country she feels least safe in.

That's cool. Not the friend feeling uncomfortable part hah. Where did you visit? I'm personally too scared to ever go I've heard too many stories. Plus i can't understand Brazilian portuguese.

Should be close to your Anglo-Canadian-Azorean pidgin. 
With so many dialects of Brazuca you got unlucky I guess.  Hell, even the self-styled Brazuca standard is seen as alien in in other parts of the country. 

[HVC]

Mixture of 1960s lisboeta and nazarean, thank you very much

I can sort of understand posh educated Brazilian... well some dialects thereof Calão though, forget it.

[Duque de Bragança]

Hardly surprising you don't get the local slang.
As for Lisboete, its influence can be still heard in Rio; not in São Paulo, however.
And yes, college educated Brazilians are easier to understand, the vagabundos from Tropa de Elite no so much. 

[HVC]

Hardly surprising you don't get the local slang.
As for Lisboete, its influence can be still heard in Rio; not in São Paulo, however.
And yes, college educated Brazilians are easier to understand, the vagabundos from Tropa de Elite no so much. 

It's not even just the slang part. The accent and even cadence is so odd to my ears. I have no problem with say, azorean, or alentejo dialects (which some people from lisbon do, for context for our non portuguese members). Hell i can even understand (most) angolans.

[Josquius]

Brazilians actually sound like they're speaking a Romance language right?