I mostly type "google translate" into the address bar of my browser, because its easier to do that than it is for me to remember (and correctly type) translate.google.com

I believe Quebec has very good insulation regulations.

I'm not sure where you read that, but I don't believe it. I know a guy who bought a brand new house in Quebec about 3-4 years back. The windows were all single pane and there was very little insulation in that house. Perhaps the builder didn't follow code, and hoped nobody would notice, but I didn't give me a very good impression on new homes. Often they are built worse than the old ones, or at least old ones that were reasonably maintained. It should be illegal to even sell single pane windows in a northern climate, let alone install them on new houses.

I bought a 50 inch TV last year, and it actually took a fair amount of searching to find one with wired Ethernet. Very few TVs had that feature. Then I had to cut the TVs that had fewer than 3 (2 or less) HDMI ports on them. That cut down my options even further. I guess some people have a receiver with HDMI, so you don't need many directly on the TV, but the whole idea of having only 2 HDMI ports on a TV is ridiculous. The one I chose only had a single combined Composite/Component input, where the green wire is used for the Composite video input if you put the TV in that mode. I still have a few old devices that don't have HDMI that I want to use with my new TV. So I have to have an external switch box to operate those devices. It's kind of sad how limited the newer TVs are in certain areas. All these smart TV features and apps, but we can't get a decent set of wiring going to them.

No, I'm not punishing anyone. The parents are the ones doing the punishing.

Unless of course you're suggesting it's up to everyone to watch out for everyone else in which case I get to yank cigarettes out of people's mouths since I'm footing their medical bills, get to post their faces at bars and liquor stores so the alcoholics can't but more and tie drug users down until they detox since, again, I'm the one footing their insurance and medical bills.

Or are you saying people should be forced to pay for the stupidity of others rather than making the people more responsible for their own actions? In essence, completely abandoning personal responsibility in favor of socialism.

Where is the tin foil?

Please read what you're replying to. The crime is NOT "doing things with his own property that are not illegal". The crime is lying to the police.

Did you read what I wrote? The fact that he tried to hide what he did with his money is not a crime. Your pointing this out means nothing as I made the exact same comment. But it is a simple fact that making suspicious financial transactions triggers investigations, as they should. The police can and should investigate when it looks like people are trying to launder money. And then he made false statements to the police during the investigation, which is a crime. You never have the right to lie to the police, even if you feel you've done nothing wrong.

It's his bed that he's made and he has to lie in it.

The stupid thing is all he had to do was plead the fifth. Which any lawyer would have advised him to do. But he was so concerned with trying to sweep this thing under the rug that he didn't want to do anything that might make it look like he had something to hide and decided that lying to the police was the best option.

And there you go. The "outrage" is only from developers that really suck at what they do and are hoping they can continue half assing everything.

Be careful with water. Don't get me wrong, I plan to incorporate water features into my house. But humidity has profoundly negative effects on many aspects of housing, from the walls to your furniture to your books and so forth, and a water feature with inadequate circulation is a good recipe for high humidity. In a bad case (as a plant nut I've had this happen), in a cold winter it can make its way through the ceiling and the insulation and freeze out on the roof, and then when it warms up melt back into your house.

Water can be nice, but don't skimp on the ventilation! :)

Like actually having long eaves, thick walls, real designs like a central solid brick or concrete wall for heat storage. Things that the idiot architects today seem to not do.

the new stuff will be home run all electrical to a lighting control panel from Vantage, Lutron, or Crestron (technically old tech as it's been around for 30 years)
Conduit to all low voltage locations that all home run to a set of inset wall panels for easy infrastructure upgrades. (Again old 30 year old tech)

The only new-new tech would be fiberoptic lighting from solar light collectors on the roof. The light tube skylights are horrible at insulation and are just holes in the ceiling. The fiber optic stuff does not impact the roof insulation value. Plus it is a lot easier to run.

The last thing I would love that is a new-new thing. Aero-Gel as the wall and ceiling insulation.

Everything else is easy. Home theater, a real one not the lame tv in the living room "home theater" is simply a spare room set up with only a few grand of gear. Even good 4K projectors are only $3000 now. If your house is set up for easy upgrade, the tech can slide in and be upgraded regularly.

I saw a somewhat related concept that was sort of cool for the kitchen where there were large drawers with outlets. The concept was that instead of having to choose between too many appliances on the countertops, or having to get out and plug in your appliances on the countertop everytime you want to use them, you could just leave your appliances plugged in and pull them out just by opening the drawer, all ready to use.

You'll eventually run out of ammo. If you really want to zombie-proof your house you need automatic steel shutters.

If you want to go full-on nerdy, a pneumatic tube system can't go awry... ;) Bonus points if it connects to your mailbox. Extra bonus points if there's an outlet on your roof that you can fire things from.

| It may be that the statute of limitation on the original crime has expired and these follow on crimes are what is still possible to prosecute. Obviously I don't know what the prosecutors are planning but I'm pretty sure there is a good reason. I doubt they would be worrying about these lesser charges if statutory rape were a charge they could use.

That would be a state crime, not a federal crime. The state would have to prosecute him for that one unless there was some kidnapping/sex trafficking crime involved.

The problem with that is the supposed victim would have to testify, and then be open to charges of blackmail himself.

If Hastert's lobbying career is over, he may find it worthwhile to sue the blackmailer to get his money back.