StrangeSox

We built a shed without a permit because I didn't have a plat at the time. This included tearing down our old shed and disposing of it in a roll-off dumpster that sat on our driveway for a week. I was nervous because when we got a plat done several years later to have our driveway resurfaced, it turns out I had built the shed right over the utility easement! The village ultimately didn't care even when I submitted the plat with the survey showing the encroachment later on, nor did the people who bought my house ever question it. Still, had I gotten the plat done correctly and pulled the permits, it never would have been a potential issue. The city would *probably* want an updated plat, not something 8-9 years old, and that'd cost you $300-500. Odds are you won't get caught, and I don't think a small garden shed like what you're describing would even impact your tax assessment anyway. Out-buildings, garages, etc. would though, so they might care. My father-in-law also built a shed and a deck without a permit years and years ago. Then he had a crazy neighbor move in next door who developed a personal hatred of him and eventually figured out the shed and deck weren't permitted. So he called the county office and b****ed until they sent an inspector out. He got fined and had to fix a number of things that weren't to modern code. He couldn't be grandfathered in because they were never properly permitted in the first place. Whatever you decide to do, at least look up the local code and follow it, remembering that code is the *minimum* for a safe structure and you can always go one better. If you buy a shed-in-a-box from somewhere like Home Depot, you might want to plan on upgrading the base platform from what it comes with. IIRC the one we built at our old house had some flimsy looking 2x6's or 2x8's and the base for our old shed was still in good shape and was 2x10.

apparently we're just going to get multiple "good lord look how corrupt this guy is" stories every week

bad news for solar: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-solar-insight/billions-in-u-s-solar-projects-shelved-after-trump-panel-tariff-idUSKCN1J30CT Billions in U.S. solar projects shelved after Trump panel tariff (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels has led U.S. renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of more than $2.5 billion in large installation projects, along with thousands of jobs, the developers told Reuters. That’s more than double the about $1 billion in new spending plans announced by firms building or expanding U.S. solar panel factories to take advantage of the tax on imports. The tariff’s bifurcated impact on the solar industry underscores how protectionist trade measures almost invariably hurt one or more domestic industries for every one they shield from foreign competition. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, for instance, have hurt manufacturers of U.S. farm equipment made with steel, such as tractors and grain bins, along with the farmers buying them at higher prices.

no mention of the 4600+ Americans dead in Puerto Rico due to his administration's completely inept response to Maria last year

Hannity was also on TV last night encouraging witnesses or potential witnesses to destroy evidence before Mueller can subpoena it from them.

Trump and Bolton spurn top-level North Korea planning After two months on the job, Trump’s new national security adviser has not called a single top-level National Security Council meeting on North Korea. National Security Adviser John Bolton has yet to convene a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with North Korea next week, a striking break from past practice that suggests the Trump White House is largely improvising its approach to the unprecedented nuclear talks. For decades, top presidential advisers have used a methodical process to hash out national security issues before offering the president a menu of options for key decisions. On an issue like North Korea, that would mean White House Situation Room gatherings of the secretaries of state and defense along with top intelligence officials, the United Nations ambassador, and even the treasury secretary, who oversees economic sanctions. But since Trump agreed on a whim to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on March 8, the White House’s summit planning has been unstructured, according to a half-dozen administration officials. Trump himself has driven the preparation almost exclusively on his own, consulting little with his national security team outside of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Senior officials from both the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations called the absence of a formal interagency process before such a consequential meeting troubling. Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council (NSC) official in the George W. Bush White House, said his colleagues would likely have held "quite a few" meetings of the so-called Principals Committee of Cabinet-level NSC members in a comparable situation. A former top Obama White House official echoed that point, calling the lack of top-level NSC meetings “shocking.” mroe: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/07/trump-bolton-north-korea-630362

Breckenridge Brewery has good food and beer. If you're interested in hiking or mountain biking, there are lots of good places right in the area. You can ride the gondola up to the top of the mountains for some great views, too.

Well, that's a different argument than "he wasn't discriminating because he still offered them different services." I disagree that he has a good argument and that 'religious belief' should be a 'get-out-of-legal-compliance-free' card, but as you noted the court didn't address that here. I think this will come back around to them again, though. It's a classic Kennedy word salad of a ruling that avoids the big issue, so someone somewhere will find another test case after plaintiff-seeking for a bit on one side or another. Whether they grant cert in the future will depend on what the court's makeup looks like at that time because they obviously don't have 5 votes on the free speech/religion ruling right now.

He would be well within his rights to say no if he categorically refused to make cakes that said "congrats on the abortion!" for anyone. He would not be within his rights if he, say, would make those cakes for black women but not for white women. That's where a lot of these hypotheticals responses you see go off the rails--public accomodations laws don't mean you have to offer people in a protected class whatever service they can demand. It means you can't deny services you otherwise regularly offer based on their protected class. He offers a service to make wedding cakes that he refused to provide to that couple on account of the sexuality. That he offered other, different services doesn't change that any more than saying "well I offered that black couple a meal but I wouldn't rent them a room" gets around the discrimination. I don't think the baker was making a legal argument along the lines you're putting forth at all, anyway. His was a 1st amendment free speech/religious freedom claim that he is allowed to refuse to provide a service because of their orientation. That's why we got Thomas's weird digression into "what even is a cake?" territory in his concurring opinion. e: I guess the underlying idea is that a "wedding" and a "gay wedding" are not different things, so he can't refuse to offer a wedding cake to a gay couple because they are a gay couple.

Because he offered to bake cakes for weddings for non-gay couples. The complaint was also not a Constitutional one but one about Colorado state law. LGBT rights aren't protected federally. If the court could get 5 votes for the ruling that "it's not anti-gay discrimination to refuse to bake a cake for their wedding," they'd have issued it yesterday imo. Rosa Parks was a "set up," too. Good. Challenge bigots breaking the law. These people faced actual illegal discrimination. The Court gets tons of petitions a year and there's a broader claim that they were at least considering addressing far beyond the individual couples' complaint, so I'm not sure saying "someone else had to continue facing discrimination" makes much sense here. Since they ended up punting anyway, I'd have agreed that the court shouldn't have bothered taking it up.

It's still discriminatory. They refused to write the words "congratulations," a service they've offered numerous times before and since to hetero couples, simply due to sexual orientation. According to Colorado state law, that isn't legal.

In Colorado, it is illegal to discriminate based on someone's sexuality. You may as well be asking "couldn't that black couple just have gone to a different bakery?" as far as public accommodations civil rights law goes. Per the court, the commission was wrong for mocking the baker's beliefs and that's why the court ruled the way it did. The Court made no ruling on the underlying issue.

You really don't see much residential solar in Illinois, so I'm guessing the incentives/rebates don't really work out yet. I can't find the link I used to have bookmarked of a dozens-of-pages-long forums post from this guy detailing his whole design and process, but a few years back this guy built his own battery wall out of torn-down Teslas. I think this was before they offered a version for sale, but thought you might find it cool/interesting. It was thoroughly engineered and everything, not just some garage shop hack-work.

Check out the Metcalf attack from 2013. Kicked off a big regulatory change from NERC throughout the industry.

Democrats won a state Senate seat in Missouri by 20 points last night. Trump had won the district by 4 points in 2016 as did Romney in 2012. That's gotta be a positive sign for McCaskill's chances in November. Read that it was the first judicial recall in California since the 1930's.

I think that was zinke, who also funneled some critical Puerto Rico contracts to his small town buddy. Carson has the expensive dining room set paid for by tax payers.

reddy I remember you getting hyped about this guy at one point

I think we know why he cancelled the eagles invite