This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest
The quote It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good Paula Scher
ZNM opens RSN The Zayed National Museum will open its doors to the public on 3 December – more than 3,000 artefacts in the collection, 1,500 of them on display in the six themed permanent galleries. There will be “a varied programme of performances, workshops, tours and activities will provide visitors opportunities to explore the museum and take part in this milestone”; there’s also “first of its kind sensorial integration” – multisensory elements (soundscapes and music) that will amplify the visitor experience, and if you want to smell like the museum there’s a new scent for it by Casa de Oud too. Onsite F&B options include cafés and a fine dining Emirati restaurant. The museum will be open daily from 10am to 8pm; tickets are bookable for one-hour timeslots at AED 70, with the usual free admission options (eg Emiratis and UAE residents under 18 or over 60, and – hooray! – “journalists on assignment”) …
Top cities (and Dubai) Kearney’s annual Global Cities Report – which reckons to assess “the extent to which cities are able to attract, retain, and generate global flows of capital, people, and ideas” – has some movement for the Gulf cities, though maybe not as such as you might expect. The top 10 are the usual suspects (New York, London, Paris etc) and remain the same as last year, with a couple of position changes. Dubai – the only UAE city included – is at 23, one up from last year.
But in the accompanying Global Cities Outlook listing, which looks at how the world’s top cities are shaping up for future success, Dubai has leapt up from 44 last year to 25 in 2025. Read more here …
Plots uncovered Did you ever wonder what was going on in Inception and why it ended like that? Worry no more – here’s Plot Explained, which does exactly what it claims to: tells you what’s going in films so that you don’t have to sit through the whole 90 minutes again to find out for yourself …
Getting creative The third Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Forum runs this weekend at Al Khayat Avenue, aimed as always at “entrepreneurs, startups, investors, and professionals interested in the cultural and creative industries”. We’re a bit short on hard information about what happens when, as is the forum’s website, but the basic objective is to promote entrepreneurship in the creative sector – so there will be keynote speeches (well, ok), panel discussions (usually v good), practical workshops (esp good for nuts-and-bolts stuff like sources of finance and getting business licences), and the Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Competition – seven finalists from 120+ submissions pitch their ideas in public for a chance to win AED 160,000 (in prizes, not in cash). Registration is free – sign up here …
Collectable apartments Founded by French entrepreneurs Ilan Amar and Michael Cohen in partnership with Richard Orlinski, a French sculptor and neo-pop artist whose first career was in real estate, the brand new Orlinski Realty Group promises “a new era of art-driven hotels and branded residences … Each project signed by Richard Orlinski will transform living spaces into immersive works of art, where emotion becomes a way of life … Every hotel and residence is designed as a collectible masterpiece, authored, signed, and authenticated as part of Orlinski’s creative legacy”. In practice this seems to mean a distinctive design language and an “experiential lifestyle” realised through owner-only events, art exhibitions, and clubs. Naturally handovers will use NFT authentication. Seems there aren’t any live projects yet; but if this could work, it would only be in Dubai …
Phoning in “TELEPHONE is a game played by artists. It works like the children’s game of the same name. A message is whispered from person to person and changes and evolves as it is passed from player to player. In our case, we pass a secret message from art form to art form, so a message could become poetry and then painting and then music and then film, throughout all possible forms of art. We also assign each finished work of art to two or three other artists, so the game branches outward exponentially like a family tree …” This is the third iteration of the game, which stopped at 1,395 individual, interconnected and original works by artists from 930 cities in 65 countries (none in the Gulf). Fascinating stuff, great fun to wander around, and eminently borrowable …
Crispy Saturday 25 October is Crisp Sandwich Day, an annual celebration of the magic that happens when crisps are placed between two slices of bread. Best crisps to use: Walkers (aka Lay’s). Here’s Nigella Lawson’s take on it …
Fine parking Dubai Police and parking provider Parkin are connecting their systems “to manage traffic and parking more effectively”. The link between their systems should help in planning and managing traffic flow. The kicker: it will also identify vehicles with outstanding fines …
No surprises Dubai-based Telegram founder Pavel Durov said he is ready to buy the jewels stolen from the Louvre in Paris and donate them to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which he says is better protected against theft. The robbery, he reckons, is “another sad sign of the decline of a once-great country, where the government has perfected the art of distracting people with imaginary threats instead of facing real ones” – like those relating to his arrest in August 2024, when the French authorities detained him for four days over accusations about criminal activities facilitated through his messaging platform. Durov expressed disbelief at being held accountable for the actions of people who misuse a messaging service characterised by end-to-end encryption and self-destructing messages …
Last chance The rather wonderful Slava’s Snowshow is on the last few performances of its run at New Covent Garden Theatre. And the eye-opening World Stage Design comes to an end this weekend; catch the exhibition while you can …
Useful app of the week Leave Me Alone lists all of your newsletters in one place and lets you unsubscribe from them with a single click. The free version is good for just 10 unsubscribes, but for £15 you can have unlimited unsubs for seven days to get your mailboxes under control. Please don’t use it for this newsletter …
Something for the weekend Lunch Rush is an arcade-style puzzler where you rearrange the board to make the falling ingredients land where they’re needed to create burgers. Not as easy as it sounds … Try it here.
Things we didn’t know no.94 50 Cent adjusted for inflation would be 109 Cent …
Earworm of the week Lady Leshurr / Skunt : FUBU
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