This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest
The quote: What I like about Christmas is that you can make people forget the past with the present Don Marquis …
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas … It’s the gifting season, apparently, but if you want an alternative to the mall madness consider giving an arts membership to someone – Louvre Abu Dhabi and the NYUAD Arts Center are two that we’d like, please. Or buy a Voucher for Good, an Ithara/Gulf for Good digital voucher that turns gifting into genuine, measurable impact for children and adults with disabilities in Madagascar: there are four available, from Gift of Learning (AED 50 – funds classroom materials for one class of 20 kids) to Gift of Nourishment(AED 200 – pays for a month of school meals for 30 children) …
… Everywhere You Go Lots of destination festivities for Christmas: Yas Island, Bluewaters, Al Seef (that’s some Christmas tree!), Festival City. But we particularly like City Walk Unplugged, back for a fourth season with open-air live music at weekends from now to 11 January (plus the usual retail and F&B promotions, and “special shows on festive dates including Christmas and New Year’s Eve”. Info here …
Travel well … The UAE’s passport is the best you can have, at least in terms of visa-free access to the rest of the world (129 visa-free destinations, 45 visa-on-arrival countries, eight requiring an ETA). The UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all slipped down the Powerful Passports list; Singapore and Malaysia are zooming up the rankings. Browse and compare passports from around the world here …
…Travel wisely Tell this website where you are, or where you’re going, and it will check local weather data to tell you whether you ought to bring a jacket (and how thick it should be). Admittedly, for the UAE the answer is almost always super-predictable; but it’s handy for travellers …
What billionaires want The Billionaire Ambitions Report from Swiss bank UBS isn’t about people whose ambition is to have a load of money so much as the intentions of those who already do fit the description. The number of billionaires is nearing 3,000 and their wealth hit an all-time high in 2025, reaching $15.8 trillion. They have to do something with all that money; and while equity investments are overwhelmingly their preferred option, 27% said they intended to increase ‘exposure’ to art and antiques either “slightly” or “significantly”, with 65% keeping about the same. Hooray …
Buy art with confidence First Abu Dhabi Bank’s FAB Art Platform is a partnership with Opera Gallery Group, enabling FAB clients to invest in fine art as part of a wealth strategy – or “lifting the barriers that once separated discerning collectors from the world’s most exceptional artworks” as the press release put it. This kind of thing is hardly radical, but it’s interesting to see a UAE retail bank in this space with a product that combines ‘white-glove’ concierge services (Opera’s contribution), direct ownership of artworks, and “lending solutions that unlock liquidity while preserving collections” (ie you can borrow against the art if it’s been acquired via the FAB Art Platform) …
Bad bunnies Spotify’s harvesting of your personal data and then somehow convincing you to do free marketing for them under the name ‘Spotify Unwrapped’ is pretty impressive. Less impressive is the way the most popular artists this year were the same as in 2024 – worldwide it was Bad Bunny again, for the UAE it was Drake. Proof that algorithmic playlists homogenise listening and cripple new artists’ chances? Plus: Spotify pays artists a pittance. For list fans, there’s more on the most-streamed music, podcasts and audiobooks of 2025 on Spotify’s For the Record blog. For an alternative view, go here …
Where’s the news Newsmap is not quite a map of the news, more a blocky grid: but it is a clever and potentially useful one-stop overview of the news right now – colour-coded by topic, sized by significance, varied according to language preference (though not Arabic). Click the headline in the tile to go to the story …
Useful app of the week Another collection of free online tools, 100+ of them. They’re better organised than in some other packages; and nearly all are genuinely useful (quick background remover for images, pretty formatting for CSS and HTML, text difference checker, etc). While they are the kind of thing you’d like on a right-click context menu, the fact that they all run in your browser (though with no data ever leaving your computer) makes them available anywhere. Check ’em out here …
Something for the weekend Level Devil is a devilishly clever game pushing your reflexes, patience, and determination to the limit. You play as a tiny pixel hero on a simple mission: to reach the door on the other side of the stage and get out. Sounds easy, right? Think again. Try it here …
Something else One of the oddest vids you’ll see this year. Great fun, though; stick with it to the end …
Things we didn’t know no.94 In 2023, US goods exports totalled $2,045bn. About $14bn of that (0.6867%, to be specific) was made up of human blood or blood products …
And that’s a wrap This will be the last magpie Weekly of 2025. Thank you for reading, clicking, and commenting. And surely things can only get better, so everyone in the nest wishes you the very best for the festive season and the clear-eyed bushy-tailed year that hopefully will follow it …
Earworm of the week Low : Just Like Christmas
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