This month I began working in a little place called Atelier Überall, which pretty close to my concept of the ideal place to live and work. I’m writing this as people gradually arrive for a video/dance/performance-art party that’s promising to multiply nervous influxes to over-saturate and over-load me. i.e. just about the right level of creative shamelessness* for me.

The rest of the week there’s also almost always _something_ else happening: gatherings of VJs, flamenco classes, video filming, artists using it as a studio, musicians practising in basement, in addition to the Berlin-standard assemblage of designers, writers, illustrators and the occasional geek. It’s possibly the

busiest

place I’ve ever worked — but somehow in a non-distracting way. It’s pretty wonderful being able to spent a couple of hours focussed on work, and know that when you look up _somehing_ interesting will be happening. Doesn’t hurt that, by and large, they’re

good

at what they do, or at least seriously dedicated to it, which all works together to make it a place I totally trust.

* I’m tempted to write ‘pretentiousness’, because that’s the only word I can think of in the vicinity. But I hate the implications of dishonesty or social climbing. What I really mean is people being sufficiently self-confident and true-to-themselves to create things regardless of the likelihood that some people will snigger. There doesn’t seem to be a word for that.

WTF:

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

The Guardian don’t really explain their reasoning on this, but apparently an “Unemployed lorry driver living with his wife and three children in inner London, paying £320 a week rent” stands to lose

7,136

from the cuts.

Great article about the lifetracking movement — finding the call to arms buried unconsciously deep within the movement.

Eric Boyd, for example, cobbled together a buzzing compass that attaches to his ankle and vibrates when he faces north. Tracking his orientation has translated into an intrinsic sense of direction, he says.

The Alien Tort Statute provided a roundabout method by which US corporations could be sued for their actions abroad, including by non-US citizens.

The US courts have just closed that loophole, in their usual style of walking backwards into significant legal changes. The Second Circuit court of appeals has ruled that the Alien Tort Statute applies only to individuals, not to corporations.

[This](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/business/24muslim.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1285704334-T8gPa8hwgZaRAu/kL5IIwg) is a goodish article on anti-Muslim discrimination in the US. One aspect I find particularly incomprehensible:

>”In America right now, there are intense concerns about many issues — immigration, the faltering economy, the interminable wars” and

the erroneous belief, held by many Americans, that the first nonwhite president is Muslim

, said Akbar Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University.

Do people really feel increased hatred of a group when a (supposed) member is in a position of authority? Why? Wouldn’t it make equal sense to believe that, if a Muslim is running the country, they can’t be all bad? Or is Obama evidence that a vast Islamic conspiracy is poised to overrun the US, enslaving Christians and probably eating their babies?

Mark Morford: I love you, but your tantrism is not my tantrism

The ancient Tantric masters, however, tell a different kind of story. They say it’s all a bit of a sham, this extremism, a grand and ongoing tragedy, that such behavior is what happens when you get so far away from Self, from calm and self-reflective center, to the extent that only the most extreme experience and loudest screaming will keep you awake and interested in going on living.

That is to say, it’s a sign of severe spiritual lack, of the most tormented, enraged and furiously demanding ego that only the most painful, excessive human experience — bizarre sex, excessive drugs, physical brutality, body torment, violent religious belief, rage, gross-out food, you name it — will make you feel, well, anything at all. The relationship is inverse, downward spiraling: The further away you are from true Self, the more extreme experience is required just to feel a pulse.

Brief moment of despair at the

British

media*

Mr Miliband’s intellectual ability is widely admired but his presentational skills were questioned when he allowed himself to be photographed – at the height of the speculation over a potential coup – grinning and holding a banana.

* OK, I guess the media elsewhere can be just as bad (often in different ways); I’ve just had more exposure to the British bits

It might constantly be getting easier for newspapers to doctor photos, but it’s also getting easier for blgogers to call them on it. Latest victim, [Al-Ahram](http://ahram.org.eg/), found [photoshopping a picture of Middle-East negotiations in Washington](http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://waelk.net/node/25&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhj9v4K7pAKH1jk53WiZke3_auTJJw) to place Egyptian president Mubarak more prominently. And since the only thing the internet loves more than a picture is an established institution getting egg on its face, news of the photoshop has reached corners of the internet which would otherwise have had not the faintest interest in Egypt.

[via [drugoi](http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3363794.html)]