In October of last year, skincare brand The Ordinary launched an ad campaign across social media and television. The video ad promoted a graphic full of beauty product myths called the ‘periodic fable’. But is The Ordinary really so blameless, or are they another pocket for Big Serum?

Looming above my head was a picture of a woman’s pregnant belly, and the outline of a child’s foot can be seen pressing outwards. The text on the advertisement read: “The unborn are not “potential human beings,” they are human beings with great potential.”

Banter does not just entertain, it creates a slow-burning tension, reveals personality without a long backstory, and slips subtext into the simplest lines. Most importantly, it makes characters feel like real people.

Over the course of the last month, Canada has undergone a sharp pivot in foreign affairs: between a summit with China and then the World Economic Forum assembled in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Mark Carney has firmly moved Canada away from the United States. In a speech outlining the state of world affairs in Davos, the prime minister declared that the rules-based international order as we know it is functionally dead, in what many are calling a major inflection point not only for Canada, but the world.