A hundred years ago, George Bernard Shaw did his best work in his rotating writing shed. There are some big advantages; he could turn it toward the sun when it was cool, away from it when it is hot. Lester Walker notes that "it could be manually turned to follow the arc of the sun. He worked alone and loved his privacy; he even adjusted his telephone for outgoing calls only." (More on Shaw's hut here)



Now, Portland Oregon's Path Architecture has built 359, a bigger shed that does much the same thing; it is 12 feet by 12 feet and has it all. Compared to the 8'-6" of your standard tiny house, it is really roomy inside.

There is an off-grid design with composting toilet and solar on the roof, shown on the model;

This built version is tied to city services with a flush toilet, the waste going through a rotating coupling used in the natural gas industry that is in the dead center of the turntable. Electricity and water connections are the reason it only turns 359 degrees, so that they don't get all twisted up, but Benjamin Kaiser tells TreeHugger that "for the next version, however, we have that licked too."

It’s nearly June, which means that not only is summer fast approaching, but so is LGBT Pride Month. Before we all make with the constant BBQs and dancing in the streets, though, we should probably clear out the ol’ Netflix queue. Given the occasion, a good handful of our expiring picks this month either have LGBT themes (Paris is Burning) or at gay icons (Madonna: Truth or Dare), while others are just here because—well, because Bill Murray’s in them. And really, that’s enough—unless you’re talking about Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, and really, would we do that to you?

http://www.wired.com/2016/05/10-must-watch-movies-leaving-netflix-next-month/

The SNCF, France’s national rail network, is a fine piece of infrastructure. But unlike the taxis of Mumbai or the long-haul trucks of Spain, French SNCF trains generally have an unremarkable décor that is more about efficiency than inspired design. But in 2012, the SNCF in collaboration with 3M launched Art in Transit, an ongoing project that has redecorated banal train car interiors with recreations of Impressionist art and stained glass from Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, a train station turned art museum. The latest installment features a second edition of Versailles-themed décor inside five cars on the RER C train line that runs between Paris and Versailles.

SNCF said in a press release that the new decorations—which feature details such as bookcases, sconces, decorative wall and ceiling panels, and scenes from the sumptuous gardens covered in a new high-tech plastic film, alongside brightly colored striped upholstery—are evocative of the “richness” of the Palace of Versailles and its grounds. “The scenic designs are adapted to the configuration of the train,” they write, “and are generally lightened to work with the light, colorful new train design.”

A city in northern India has shattered the national heat record, registering a searing 51C – the highest since records began – amid a nationwide heatwave.

The new record was set in Phalodi, a city in the desert state of Rajasthan, and is the equivalent of 123.8F.

It tops a previous record of 50.6C set in 1956.

“Yesterday (Thursday) was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country ... 51C in Phalodi,” said BP Yadav, a director of India’s meteorological department, on Friday.

Temperatures in northern India regularly hit the high 40s in May and June – the hottest months of the year – but topping 50C is unusual.

In June of 1864, as Sherman’s armies were moving toward Atlanta and Grant’s were recovering from a bloody loss at Cold Harbor, President Abraham Lincoln took a break from the grim, all-consuming war to sign a law protecting a slice of land “in the granite peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.” The act granted the area “known as the Yo-Semite Valley” to the state of California, to “be held for public use, resort, and recreation...inalienable for all time.” It was the federal government’s first act to preserve a part of nature for the common good—a precursor of the National Park Service, now enjoying its centennial—and it might not have happened but for an obscure 34-year-old named Carleton Watkins.

Born in a small town in New York, Watkins headed west in 1849 to seek his fortune in California’s gold rush, to no avail. After apprenticing to a pioneer daguerreotypist named Robert Vance, he made his money shooting mining estates. In the summer of 1861, Watkins set out to photograph Yosemite, carrying a literal ton of equipment on mules—tripods, dark tent, lenses and a novel invention for taking sharp photographs of landscapes on glass plates nearly two feet across.

We associate Yosemite with the photographs of Ansel Adams, who acknowledged Watkins as one of “the great Western photographers,” but it was Watkins who first turned Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks and El Capitan into unforgettable sights. Weston Naef, a photography curator and co-author of a book about Watkins, described him as “probably the greatest American artist of his era, and hardly anyone has heard of him.”

Sketches and awed descriptions of Yosemite’s grand views had reached the East in the mid-1800s, but nothing provoked public reaction like Watkins’ photos, which were exhibited at a gallery in New York in 1862. “The views of lofty mountains, of gigantic trees, of falls of water...are indescribably unique and beautiful,” the Times reported. The great landscape painter Albert Bierstadt promptly headed to Yosemite. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Watkins’ images of sequoias “are proud curiosities here to all eyes.”

Name: Dr. Ben Carson
Nom de guerre: Hammertime
Background: An honest to God real brain surgeon and a very close personal friend of Jesus.
Strengths: This former surgeon is well-trained in the knowledge of where all the major organs are located and where to — as they say in the medical journals — “cut a bitch.” Carson would be deadly with a blade. In fact. he has a history of violence, once attempting to stab a friend and another time going after his mom with a hammer. Yup, a hammer. His mom. Don’t let his sleepy demeanor disarm you. Dude is as cold and passionless as a hospital bill collector.
Weaknesses: Seems drugged most of the time. Could suffer from narcolepsy making him easy prey if you just wait around long enough — maybe read him a Robert Samuelson column to speed up the process. Likely to die of starvation while vainly searching for a long lost pyramid filled to the rafters with quinoa.

Name: Ted Cruz
Nom de guerre: Lucifer in the Flesh or Creepface or The Mancanadian Candidate
Background: Texas senator and alleged serial killer.
Strengths: Cold-blooded indifference to anyone not named “Ted Cruz” — including the wife and mother of his children. Described as being preternaturally smart at a very young age, there are some who say that he went on a murder spree in Northern California before he was born — which his wife all but admitted, saying: “Well, I’ve been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all. There’s a lot of garbage out there.” Nice non-denial denial, lady.
Weaknesses: Under most circumstances, Cruz would be the odds on favorite to come out on top, but no matter how many times he claims to have a close personal relationship with Jesus, it would appear that Jesus is just not that into Ted. Likely scenario has Cruz a victim or two away from claiming victory before he is beat senseless and to the ground by a rain of frogs from the sky, struck by lighting and then consumed by a plague of locusts. The Earth will then open up and his bones with plummet to the bowels of hell. Satan will not be pleased.

Name: Sarah Palin
Nom de guerre: The Killa from Wasilla
Background: Half-term governor of Alaska, reality star, post-structuralist motivational speaker with an emphasis on Jesus and the freedoms of America and, y’know, Founding Fathers’ thingamabobbies and whosits.
Strengths: This notoriously scrappy hockey mom/pitbull knows how to gut a fish and gun down a wolf from a small plane. Just like she has done to the moose of Alaska, Palin will mercilessly slaughter her victim and use their flesh to make her world famous chili (kitchen hint: a pinch of meth to give it some “kick”). While a formidable opponent when going Sarah-a-mano, Palin family wildlings are also likely to come swarming from out of nowhere to assist her –depending upon who is pregnant at the moment.
Weaknesses: Who are we kidding? She’ll quit. She’ll see something shiny — like a spot on Celebrity Rehab or a 70 percent off sale on bangle bracelets at Chico’s — and go wobbling away like a sugared-up toddler.

Barbie's latest doll is on point.

Ballerina Misty Copeland is the newest star to get her own Barbie, part of the company's "You Can Be Anything" campaign. Copeland's Mattel treatment comes almost a year after the dancer made history by becoming the first African American woman to be named a principal ballerina with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre.

The doll has been in the works for two years — a tough secret to keep but well worth the wait, Copeland tells Mashable.

"It's just so exciting for this generation of kids to be able to see a Barbie that has muscles and brown skin and a bust and thighs, and for her to be a ballerina," Copeland says.