Let’s see if it has all the ingredients:

I first saw Laura Marling when she was opening for Devendra Banhart in Utrecht in 2007. It’s crazy to think that it has been five years already and now she is playing Paradiso in Amsterdam as the main act. Good for her. Give her album a listen when you can and see what you think.

No, no, I am not late on the Lana Del Ray train (I have watched her Saturday night Live performance AND Kristen Wiig’s version the week after. I prefer Wiig.) I have just something slightly (!) better, and that is the Amanda Palmer and Dot-AY cover of her song Video Games.

If you have seen Amanda Palmer before, it is impressive that she is wearing a pretty dress and singing (hands tied) calmly. Somehow, it’s weird when you know how she is on stage in general. But it doesn’t change that she is beautiful and so is the song and so is the 8bit music.

Enjoy:

In case you wonder, I am not sure of the number. But it’s somewhere around that.

But, then again, it happened.

And for the whole half an hour I wanted to punch Ricky Gervais’ character David and hug Martin Freeman’s character Tim. I suppose that is the average reaction anyways. But what I found most interesting is that the characters are the exaggerations of real-life office types, you can recognize yourself and your colleagues in them.

I will probably try to watch the rest of the UK version, but I definitely cannot take more than one episode a day. Also will be secretly developing a Turkish version of the office in my head. That would be a brilliant adaptation, so much material and stereotypes.

- Told you there would be more art markets related things. Here’s a great read from AdBusters on the 1%: the contemporary art patrons.

- Here is an excerpt from an essay written for Occupy Theory by Judith Butler, as part of the “Occupy as Form” session which was sponsored by The Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley.

- Egypt’s feminists prepare for a long battle – an important read from Al-Jazeera on Islamic feminism and the struggle in Egypt.

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer and abortion? Read this interview with Joss Whedon.

- Chloe over at Feministing has a piece on Jezebel about her dissertation. Which is about rom-coms. Which is a must-read.

- Here’s an interesting research: ARTsor looked at the correspondence between grammatical gender in language and personified gender in art, and found some interesting results. (Short version: there is high correspondence between grammatical gender and personified gender.)

- Have you seen the new Game of Thrones teaser art for season 2? War is coming. Indeed. While you are at it, check out the production video of Iceland. They look positively frozen.

And we leave on a positively fluffy note:

pugwash brought to you via cuteoverload.com

For more about St. Vincent, check these out:

www.ilovestvincent.com
St. Vincent Wiki

It manages to warm up your hard and make you shiver at the same time. But mostly makes you smile.

- Murakami has his first Qatar show, and it involves a blow up self-portrait.

- Wackiest musical instruments! Butterfly pianos, gameleste and fire organ. Wacky, indeed.

- But speaking of classical instruments, why are there so few female composers?

- Retronaut brings us radiation posters from 1947.

- You might have thought that the Occupy movement had disappeared, but Occupy Oakland has been making headlines again. Al-Jazeera seems to continue being one of the best news outlets around, and has a piece on it.

- For Hunger Games fans outthere, here’s an entertaining read and an attempt to map out Panem in North American territory.

- Here are two links on academic publishing; both very interesting. The Economist wrote about the pledge signed by 2700 researchers to not publish their work on any of the journals of the Netherlands based Elsevier due to their commercial practices (remember their profits from a few weeks ago?). In addition to this, scientific journals said they wanted to be paid whenever a copy of one of their articles is submitted to the patent office. To which the US Patent Office said “nope”.

- Are you worried or annoyed about/pissed off at the upcoming Valentines Day or just want it to go away? Join Occupy Valentines Day.

- And of course, I finish off with the 17 promo photos HBO released of Game of Thrones Season 2.

And on that note, I leave you with the Game Of Thrones board/drinking game, which is brilliant and probably very very dangerous:

I couldn’t possibly not post this.

A lovely song and video by Benjamin Francis Leftwich, recommended by my friend Coppe.