Rov_Scam
22hr ago
Having incorporated the rest of your comments to get an idea of what you are looking for, I think I may have a solution for you. A few preliminary items:
- I'm assuming that when you say "Colonial" you are referring to what is known as "Colonial Revival", which is a 20th century update of the Georgian and Federal styles that were popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Basically, I'm assuming you aren't referring to French Colonial, or Spanish Colonial, or Dutch Colonial, or any of the other "Colonial" styles which may exist in North America.
- As a 20th century American style, this type of house would have no need for a mudroom per se. Most of these were built in auto-centric suburbs beginning in the 1920s, meaning the front door would not be used much. Early examples of this style were mostly built in more upscale neighborhoods, and once it became more common after World War II most people would have had a car. Prewar suburbs with these houses would have likely had detached garages behind the house, and later examples would have had attached garages. In Pittsburgh, the terrain is hilly and the garage is usually integral and opens into the basement. What I'm getting at is that the home's occupant's wouldn't normally use the front door, so a mudroom would be built in the back, off the garage, or it would have an unfinished basement to use for that purpose.
- Despite the ever-ballooning American house size, the dimensions you've proposed aren't modest. I don't use foreign units without conversion so you'll have to bear with me here, but 100 sq. meters is about 1076 sq. feet. Since this is a two-story house, doubling that gets you to 2152 sq. ft., which is plenty big.
To give an example to tie it all together, this is a 5-bay Colonial Revival home in a suburb of Pittsburgh. It was built in 1968 by Bryan, who is a reputable local builder that mostly focuses on custom homes these days but was doing tract houses in the 1960s and 1970s (not to be confused with Ryan Homes, a national developer of tract houses that's been building junk since at least the 1970s). The total area is 1890 sq. ft., though the footprint is only 875 as the second story slightly overhangs on both sides. It has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. You will notice that the driveway goes down the hill behind the house and the garage is integrated into the basement. Ignore the assymetrical front layout. Here's a more upscale example from 1910. While it precedes the era of widespread automobile ownership, at 6900 square feet, it owner would have probably had a car, or at least a horse. [Note how the driveway leads to a carriage house in the rear [https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4513598,-79.9114955,3a,24.5y,311.56h,95.08t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s_vxsZmkSMf0FSWoXMHGrIw!2e0!5s20220901T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-5.0819782887585205%26panoid%3D_vxsZmkSMf0FSWoXMHGrIw%26yaw%3D311.55661009264486!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D]. The owner would not have entered through the front door.
I initially intended to tell you that your problem was hopeless if you wished to remain architecturally correct, so I consulted The Bible, namely Virginia Savage McAlester's indispensible A Field Guide to American Houses and consulted the sections on Colonial Revival, Georgian, and Federal houses. What I discovered was that, contrary to my mental image of a colonial house, there is a rare variation with a centered gable. While these gables are usually small, and may not protrude from the central mass at all, it would be possible to bump this out and create a large enough area for a mud room. Unfortunately, since, per the book, this occurs in fewer than 5% of Colonial Revival houses and 10% of Georgian and Federal houses, it's hard to find pictures, and bump-outs of sufficient size are less common still. But I don't see why it couldn't be done. This House only bumps out slightly, but you could extend this by 5 feet or so and get a small mud room out of it. Some people build small mudrooms on their houses and they always look tacked-on, but with a central gable running all the way up it would be an integral part of the house, and from there you could just use a standard floor plan.
Beyond this, I don't see why there would be a problem with the stairs. Every house like this I've been in (and I can almost guarantee the layout of the first example) has the stairwell in the center of the house. Basically you'd walk in and there would be an entryway with a foyer leading down the center of the house to the kitchen in the back, with the stairwell running parallel on whichever side you want. To the right there's a family room, and to the left a living room and dining room. You can sacrifice some family room space for a half bath or hide one under the stairs. These houses almost always have four bedrooms.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
As an architecture fan I'd be interested if you could find any pictures of what you're describing, and if you're really generous letting me feel free to use those terms if I find them apt. Especially since I'm guessing the "Wright Style" has only the most superficial resemblance to anything actually designed by Wright.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I think it's more that the tech industry feels that normal growth is unacceptable and that the massive growth of the 80s and 90s is what's to be expected. They can't come to grips with being a mature, boring industry that makes incremental advancements; there aren't any 25-year-old multimillionaires who made their fortune starting a construction machinery company out of their bedroom. So when the industry starts contracting, it can't be because their growth projections were overoptimistic, but because they're actually doing a lot better! Their products are so advanced that they don't need employees anymore, and your job is next, even if they don't know what that job is. I don't think it's a coincidence that LLM hype coincides with tech employment peaking.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I'm talking about realistic configurations, not theoretical ones where you use office furniture in the living room and people always keep doors closed.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
which, being immovable, needlessly constrain the rearrangement of furniture
And yet you design floor plans that only allow for one reasonable arrangement of furniture, if that
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Since you've evidently blocked me for some reason, you won't see this, but your framing of the matter is rather boo-outgroup. Nonetheless, I don't think this is going to have much of an effect on anything. There's literally nothing this report could have contained that would have stopped critics of the party cold, so everyone sees what they want to see. Critics of the party were certain that it said bad things about Biden's senility and Kamala's incompetence and that they didn't want the report to get out because it would be too devastating. Instead it turns out that the report wasn't released because it was so poorly done the guy who wrote it got fired. It will make Ken Martin look bad to both people who know who Ken Martin is for about 2 days until Trump audibly farts on camera and the nation's attention moves elsewhere. By the time people start announcing their candidacies it will have about as much relevance as that time Amy Klobuchar allegedly threw a salad at an aide.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The issue that led to the Jones awards being so high was his refusal to participate in the process in good faith. He ignored the suit rather than defend it and got a default judgment against him, and when the case went to trial for damages he played games with regard to discovery. If the jury thinks you aren't taking things seriously and are trying to hide assets, they're going to punish you for it, and there's nothing you can do about it, because the time to do something about it was before you got soaked.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The county isn't paying these settlements out of the treasury; they have insurance for that. I don't know the exact dynamics between the carriers and the government regarding how much caution they can make them exercise, but if they keep engaging in similar behavior rates will go up. These settlements are rare though even in the worst municipalities, so I don't see it being that much of an issue.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I think we just have different conceptions of what counts as escalation. The point of such a suit isn't to punish people for supporting Trump, but to make the United States whole. It's my opinion that this collusion has perpetrated a massive fraud on the United States, and that condoning this behavior will be more escalatory, because it acts as an implicit license for anyone to do it. So there are three options. The first is the one that I would consider the most escalatory, which is that the government would cede the legality of Trump's actions. Then, when they can't get an appropriation from congress, the president will just sue the government and instruct the attorney general to settle for however much money he's asking for. Then he can establish his own execitive agencies or NGOs to act as a shadow bureaucracy that distribute the benefits for purely political reasons. I don't think either one of us believe that this would be perfectly legal or constitutional for any administration to do, regardless of whether or not you can find some caselaw that specifically prohibits it. The second option is closer to what I think you would consider the deescalatory option which would be to let Trump off the hook, and then get congress to pass a law specifically prohibiting it.
The problem with this approach is that it suggests that Trump's above the law. Consider the following example: Suppose I come up with a novel fraudulent scheme, the result of which is that you lose a significant sum of money. You approach the district attorney, who tells you that based on the general principles of fraud what I did was probably illegal, and he has good arguments, but since there's nothing on-point regarding this specific scheme, he's not going to prosecute. He recommends that you write your congressman. This is especially bad in Trump's case because you're effectively saying that a government that will claw back an extra $50 bucks they overpaid Uncle Milt in his SS check will let 1.8 billion in theft slide because Donald Trump is a political figure and they don't want to escalate. The third option is that you litigate under the theory that what Trump did was illegal and you're simply restoring the status quo. Trump is certainly wealthy enough to cover the legal defenses of everyone involved, but we all know the chances of that happening.
BTW, I apologize for not answering your question the previous times you ask it, but if I get busy and don't look at it a while I'll forget what I was talking about and it will take an inordinate amount of time to retrace my steps. To answer your question, no, there is no precedent saying that, and there is actually precedent saying the opposite. But part of the point I am trying to make about the law, that non-litigators don't always understand, is that there are requirements and then there are requirements. Legally speaking, no, the case will not be dismissed. But just because a case survives dismissal doesn't mean that it's good enough to take to a jury, and for a fraud case such as this you will realistically need to show a victim. The cases that say you don't need a victim are ones where the defendants were so obviously involved in a fraudulent scheme that there was no question that they were trying to mislead people. The SPLC fraud allegations are so remote that it's harder to make that argument. To give you an example from what I do, I represent defendants. Theoretically, I don't have to prove anything, just show that the plaintiff didn't prove his case. But realistically I am not going to win if I don't present evidence. Even if a witness doesn't say something in his deposition, I'm going to ask about it anyway, because counsel will take the stance that since he didn't specifically deny it he's going to assume it's true, and I'm more worried about convincing counsel than convincing a jury.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Any schmuck can vote for uncontroversial things.
Any schmuck can vote for them, sure. But actually trying to accomplish uncontroversial things takes work, and the people you describe as fighters seem to have an allergy to doing anything that doesn't get their name in the newspaper. It takes actual work to prepare draft legislation and work with other lawmakers to get it passed. It takes actual work to drive out to a constituent's house to look at a road that he says is collapsing, and then drive to the PennDOT office and get up someone's ass about getting it fixed. Instead you want someone who will go down to Charleroi and tell all the fentanyl addicts that they're the Real Americans and that you want all the dirty jigs with the chutzpah to show up to their jobs every day, pay taxes, and open up businesses in a town without a lot going on out of there for good, even though, as State Senator, your power to actually effect such an outcome is close to zero.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Yeah but Scott engaged in a healthy amount of Medicaid fraud too. A white guy who manages to run what looks like a legitimate hospital network is always going to get the benefit of the doubt over a black immigrant whose entire operation can be portrayed as fraudulent.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
There were no ballot measures. This is Pennsylvania and when we do get ballot measures, they're usually pretty boring. (Do you support the ability of the Bubb County Joint Authority to reduce the hearing notice period from 30 days to 20 days provided the notice is advertised in both print and digital media?)
Rov_Scam
3d ago
As I said earlier, you're putting too much credence in the idea that the presence or absence of a case that fits some exact criteria is going to be some kind of showstopper for one side or the other. The entire issue is incredibly complicated and I'm not claiming that this is a slam dunk, just that there's a credible enough argument that this isn't going to get dismissed outright and that anyone who accepts money from this organization needs to be on alert that litigation is likely and they may end up getting tied up in it and eventually forced to pay the money back. What we have here is a settlement that seems to violate various basic ethical canons and raises significant constitutional questions, and the policy implications of this going forward could be wide ranging. So while I'm not necessarily saying the people who receive the money won't eventually win, you can certainly expect that a future administration will protect its interests, and their arguments won't be unreasonable.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
We don't have any numbers from yesterday yet, but one of the underreported stories about this primary cycle is how low Republican turnout has been. This isn't always a great metric, since it's dependent on whether there are any competitive races, but the numbers from Texas are illustrative. About 7% more Democrats voted in the Senate primary than Republicans, despite both parties having competitive elections. The last time Democrat turnout was higher in a Texas primary was 2020, but the Republicans weren't running any competitive statewide elections that year, while Democrats had Senate and President. I don't want to read too much into this, since local elections can skew the statewide totals, but there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm among Republican voters as compared to Democrats. One thing I've noticed in the races in my neck of the woods is that the Republicans have all been trying to out-MAGA each other.
Illustrative of this is a PA Senate race for a district in the southwestern corner of the state. Camera Bartolotta has been representing the district since 2014, and she's always come across as a moderate who was good at constituent service. In 2024 she responded to Trump's comments about Hatians in Charleroi by saying that she was disheartened because they were constituents and taxpayers. This was enough to get her a vote of no confidence from the Washington County Republican Committee, which vote was later voided by the state committee as the rules prohibit them from disparaging a sitting officeholder. Al Buchtan seized on this by mounting a primary challenge based on her alleged disloyalty to Trump. Bartolotta decided to head this off at the pass by running a series of early attack ads questioning Buchtan's credentials and his own loyalty to Trump. Buchtan didn't start running ads until later in the race, but yesterday was the first time in a while that you could watch television in the Pittsburgh area without seeing multiple commercials per ad break.
Bartolotta ended up winning, but that's not the real story. What I find more interesting is that in a district that favors Republicans by a 3 to 2 margin, a race this hard-fought didn't drive turnout at all. I can't offer any previous elections for turnout comparisons, since this is the first primary challenge Bartolotta faced, but one only needs to compare the Republican votes to the Democratic votes. A total of 17,000 and change voted in the GOP primary; 15,00 and change voted in the Democratic primary. That they managed fewer that 15% more votes despite a 25 point registration advantage would be enough of a story, but the Democratic candidate was running unopposed. This isn't due to other races, either; Democrats had one other competitive primary compared to three for the Republicans. A greater percentage of Democrats turned out to participate in a box-checking exercise than Republicans showed up to vote in at least two elections that actually mattered.
I don't want to read too much into this, but one explanation is that more moderate GOP voters simply aren't showing up to primaries. And it makes sense that they wouldn't, because these primaries offer the voter nothing. You have races where the candidates argue over who will be more loyal to Trump, and you have outliers like the Massey race where a contrarian offers a referendum on Trump. To nearly half of Republican voters in her district, the fact that Bartolotta had an impeccable record of ruthless effectiveness in doing uncontroversial things that benefited the district was irrelevant in the light of the comments she made defending her constituents. So who is left voting in these primaries? The dyed-in-the wool Trump supporters who would still consider him to be one of the greatest human beings who ever lived and for whom adherence to MAGA principles (as defined by him) are paramount above all else. The question may not be whether he has an iron grip on the Republican Party so much as whether he has one over what's left of it.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Suburbanites comprise a large portion of my social circle, ranging in age from 20s to 70s, and I can assure you that none of these things is true.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
It's my genuine viewpoint. I get the impression that most Republicans are stuck in a bubble where they don't pay attention to what rank and file Democrats actually do, or who they actually vote for. There were a few woke reps who managed to get elected in 2020, and a couple more from earlier, but a lot of them were primaried out before the Biden administration ended. The 2020 primary showed that beyond certain limited areas, there was no national appetite for woke politics. Black church ladies aren't woke. Neither are Hispanics, by and large. Suburban Democrats aren't. Rural granola types aren't. Wokeism only ever appealed to a certain segment of urban voter, who Republicans try to paint as being representative of the party, precisely because they're an easy target.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Woke ended in 2019 after the presidential campaigns of Beto O'Rourke and Kirsten Gillebrand fizzled out before the primary season even started. The final nail was put in the coffin when the Democrats nominated Joe Biden, possibly the least woke candidate in the race apart from possibly Michael Bennett. After that, woke was no longer an identifiable phenomenon and a boogeyman that stood for whatever conservatives were opposing at the moment.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
They're called collusive suits, where the parties aren't actually in opposition and are using the court to achieve some objective other than redressing a legitimate wrong. They may be permitted at the state level in certain circumstances to achieve various policy objectives, but they're prohibited at the Federal level due to the case and controversy requirement, and are considered a form of fraud.
To give an example, suppose I'm the sole director of a nonprofit, and there's an elderly volunteer who is going through some hard times and I want to help him out. The law says that I can't just give him the money, since it has to be used for legitimate business, and I don't want to hire him as a full time employee because that opens up all kinds of bullshit with insurance, taxes, and the like.
He injures himself while volunteering. The injuries aren't serious, but there's a legitimate claim worth about a thousand dollars . I tell him to sue the nonprofit, and I agree to settle the case for ten thousand dollars. As far as the accounts are concerned, it just looks like a settlement for a lawsuit, nothing to see here. But if the State AG finds out, you're in trouble.
There are other kinds of collusive suits, some of which are entirely fraudulent, and if you're expecting something exactly on point, keep in mind that in most knotty legal issues, there isn't going to be one. I rarely do legal research in my practice, but when I do I don't expect to find some showstopper, because if one existed I wouldn't be arguing in the first place. All we can go by is general principles.
The Social Security Administration discovers nearly 2 million instances of overpayment per year, about 30% of which are administrative errors. While you may argue that they weren't entitled to the money, the point I'm trying to make is that these people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, yet they are still required to repay the money.
When a court vacates a settlement due to fraud, what they're saying is that the recipient wasn't entitled to the money. It's as simple as that. The settlement never existed, legally speaking. It was illegal. It's not as if Congress came back and passed a law that retroactively invalidated the settlement. Realistically, my scenario isn't going to happen, because I don't see any money being distributed. Somebody will file a suit, a judge will issue an injunction preventing the funds from being distributed, and the issue will be tied up in litigation until the sun expands into a red giant and swallows the earth.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Those two cases are class actions and subject to strict court supervision before settlement can be finalized. The Trump ban only applied in cases where the government was plaintiff, and would have no applicability here.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Perhaps, but most of them aren't interviewed by respectable journalists or profiled on NPR. That's a media phenomenon.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
J.J. McCullough put out a video a few weeks ago where he talks about a "Freak of the Year" phenomenon he's observed this decade. Since at least 2022, there has been someone who becomes famous out of nowhere for reasons that range from irrelevant to reprehensible, before dropping off the face of the earth. During their brief period of celebrity, the public will gawk at them while various smart people try to argue that they're representative of some larger trend. If you're on the left, Clavicular is representative of toxic masculinity. If you're on the right, he's representative of the insane lengths men feel the need to go to to be attractive to women in our emasculated age. Since nobody actually likes the freaks, you can feel free to use them as punching bags because nobody will come to their defense when push comes to shove, except maybe their online followers, whom the smart people all believe are morons. Clavicular is Freak of the Year 2026; previous freaks have included Nick Fuentes, Hawk Tua Girl, and Andrew Tate. If I were king of this forum, my policy would be to ignore the freaks, because anything that can be said about them is ultimately irrelevant and only feeds into the dumb media narratives that sustain the freaks' existence. Ignore them.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
This is about the fiftieth time I've seen this brought up in this thread alone and my head is about to explode because people evidently don't understand the difference between a plaintiff and a defendant in litigation. These aren't just arbitrary labels we give the parties, but important distinctions. They indicate who initiated the litigation and delineate various burdens and obligations. The plaintiff is the person who initiates the suit, alleging that they have been wronged by the defendant. The plaintiff has the obligation of producing evidence to support their claim and to meet the burden that the law requires. If the case involves money damages, a jury decides if the defendant is liable and if so, how much he owes. But juries can be unpredictable, and in most cases, the parties involved have a good idea of what the case is worth, so usually they'll agree to settle the case before it gets that far.
In the cases you're referring to, the government was the plaintiff. They thought certain companies had broken the law, and sued them to collect money damages. the government did not control these companies, and the only way they could get them to pay anything is if they either got a judgment against them or the threat of a judgment induced them to settle. In these cases, the companies had the option of either settling or letting a jury decide how much they would pay, and they decided that they were better off settling. In the Trump case, the government was the defendant. Full disclosure: I am an attorney who represents defendants in civil suits. We almost always settle these suits before trial. I can confidently say that, at no time in my firm's history have we ever settled a case for several thousand times the previous highest settlement for the same cause of action, let alone without seeing any of the evidence.
Another important thing is that, in the cases you're referring to, no one in the Justice Department who was involved in the litigation was also working for the companies who were sued in a position where they could sign off on the settlement. When that happens it's called a conflict of interest. If, for instance, the attorney handling the Volkswagen case was also on the board of directors for Volkswagen, that would be very bad. You see, government lawyers work for the American people, and as much as we may disagree with the current administration's priorities, most of us agree that that it would be very bad if he let Volkswagen off easy because he didn't want it to affect the stock price too much. On the other hand, he also has a duty to Volkswagen shareholders, who wouldn't want him to make a bad deal so that he can curry favor with his politician bosses. For this reason, governments and companies have policies in place that discuss what to do if one of these conflicts exists. Generally speaking, you want to be as up-front about a conflict as you can, and there are very strict ethical guidelines that must be followed.
For example, I used to represent a company that my dad worked for. That's not a conflict in itself, but if my dad sued the company, I wouldn't be allowed to defend them, because I might not be fair. In a similar vein, even though I don't represent the company anymore, I can't represent someone who is suing them for certain things, because I was entrusted with certain knowledge of their legal strategy that wouldn't be fair for the plaintiff to have. If I represent the company in my dad's suit, and we settled, and the company were to find out about it, that would be grounds for them to vacate the settlement agreement. I would also get sued for malpractice and find myself in front of an ethics panel, but that's another story. Luckily, as far as I know, nobody who was involved in the cases you refer to had a conflict of interest. We can thus assume that these settlements were made at arm's length, which means that both sides were negotiating in good faith and not trying to sandbag their cases.
In the Trump IRS case, Trump was the plaintiff, meaning that he was trying to get as much money as possible. He was also the defendant, in the sense that he was the immediate supervisor of the person authorized to spend the defendant's money. But that money wasn't his to spend however he wanted; he owed a duty to the people to spend it in accordance with the law and not simply take it for himself. When politicians take public money for themselves, that's called corruption. We usually don't have to worry about corruption in these cases because most of the attorneys who work for the government have traditionally taken their jobs very seriously and tried to make sure that the money was only spent if absolutely necessary. When Todd Blanche announced a deal where Trump would be paid approximately 500 times the largest tax disclosure settlement in IRS history despite not seeing any evidence that it was warranted, that's called the appearance of impropriety. When Obama, or Eric Holder, or whoever, wanted to make their deals, they had to persuade their adversaries that they would lose in court and were better off agreeing to a deal. They didn't have the luxury of simply instructing the CEO of Volkswagen or whoever to make the payments. The fact that Trump did have that kind of power is why this case is more concerning than anything Obama did.
I apologize for the condescending tone, but I get frustrated when I see an understanding of civil procedure below that of the average People's Court viewer and an understanding of ethics that would get them fired from any normal job.
I understand what you're saying, but that feeds into my point: If an industry is going gangbusters companies can't be too picky about who they hire. I saw it myself when I was doing oil and gas titles; some attorneys would be the kind who would go into excruciating detail about every possible title defect and track down every piece of supporting documentation. Others would slap something together that vaguely resembled a title report and required substantial modification to turn into anything we could submit to a client. Everyone starts off in the second category, but when the industry is hot, we were willing to tolerate a lot more people like that because it was cheaper to correct their work and hope they got better than it was to turn down business due to lack of staff. When the industry's in a slump, even the first type of employee will have a hard time finding work. The difference is that the energy industry has no problem admitting when it's in a slump, and will openly state that as a reason they had to lay a bunch of people off. They don't try to bullshit investors to make them think it's about efficiency, because anyone can look at the price of oil. Tech companies can't seem to admit that demand for their products may be declining. Or that advertising and data harvesting for free products aren't as valuable as they thought.
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