Doug Saunders

International-Affairs Columnist, The Globe and Mail. Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy. Author of Arrival City, Maximum Canada, etc.

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

New edition! New cover! New content! New low price!

Out this week. The history you never learned in school; the argument you never thought you’d make

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@relax_carlos And those are hvac filters. Anything above about MERV 3 would block so much airflow that your system would do nothing and no air would be filtered. Which suggests that RFK had a hand in this!

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

I particularly like how he’s had the AI portray Canada as pristine wilderness and his country as a denuded wasteland of terrible urbanism, crowded sprawl, deprived housing, absent privacy and roads that literally go nowhere

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

It’s mistaken to read the nuke deal as about the kingdom trying to get WMDs. It could always just buy them from Pakistan. Instead, it’s the kingdom frantically trying to diversify now that its trillion-dollar be-like-Dubai plan has gone up in flames

Still, this is hilarious

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

The combination of tariffs heavily taxing consumer goods, wars driving up costs of fuel and transportation, and low immigration choking off productivity has made the USA the inflation leader of the Western world

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

Interesting instance in which a tech CEO is right about something

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Tech CEO says old people are the reason rent is so high in San Francisco.

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@Pablonorm That’s what bad urbanism produces.

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

The combination of tariffs heavily taxing consumer goods, wars driving up costs of fuel and transportation, and low immigration choking off productivity has made the USA the inflation leader of the Western world

[Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers]

As Trump returns to tariffs, it's worth checking out what we've gotten from the trade war so far.

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@Kant_ankerous @DavidBahry Interesting questions but crappy filmmaking. When you have to stop the action and have the protagonist deliver it in an endless anachronistic speech that has no relationship to the events occurring onscreen, you are not succeeding. Dunkirk did it better using only acting

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

The surprise of Nolan’s Odyssey is how conventional a telling it is, at least the first 3/4. It’s a 1950s sandal epic, down to the ludicrously on-the-nose dialogue. The morality is polytheistic rather than Christian… and then, like Oppenheimer, it bombs out in the last act…

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@Kant_ankerous @DavidBahry Again, it’s not “what happens,” it’s the form of cinema and what it’s showing us. Up to now, Odysseus has got out of situations not by divine force but by clever and deeply imperfect solutions — he’s the original secular antihero. Now he’s shown as a near god, and it’s *boring*

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@Kant_ankerous @DavidBahry The problem isn’t the narrative, it’s the form of filmmaking and storytelling. Homer does NOT have him suddenly become Tony Stark and see things from Zeus’s perspective. The point is the cleverness of the ruse, not his powers. (And he does have a servant girl killed)

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

I’d take the sure money — which is $100k in our $$, a moderately life-changing amount — over the coin flip that gives you an even chance of bupkis. The other option only makes sense if you already have £50k on hand, which I think is @NateSilver538’s point. But then I’m British

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

This is what's wrong with Britain tbh

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@Greg9987 @Nyissan98 It’s worse in Oppenheimer — it suddenly becomes David Hare verbatim theatre for a very long time, litigating the already-unsubtle drama you just saw. Odyssey’s final act is also unforgivably boring but less long, yet undercuts the clever human meaning of return to Ithaca

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

As my daughter, who knows her classics, pointed out, the crucial thing about Homer is Wily Odysseus — he’s uniquely not a child or creation of gods, not superhumanly strong; he gets by on his guile. It’s a humanistic story.

And you get. Until the final, droning-superhero, act

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@DavidBahry He’s not just the only one who can string his bow; he then defeats 50 guys in the same one-at-a-time fight that ends every Marvel movie. The human cleverness that defines the Odyssey is replaced with godlike invincibility. The return to Ithaca becomes Death Wish XVIII

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@davebesseling I’ll admit I did not see Troy. And don’t regret it. Anyway I don’t mind stuff being dream-like or stylized; in fact I wish there was more of that. But I agree that it did not look like “Odysseus came up with another clever improvisation that got us out of a jam”

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@GSVYouRang Because, as I said, the very flawed and human “wily Odysseus” suddenly turns into a Pattinson/Downey Jr. style superhero with godlike powers who just kills everyone while monologuing boringly. And the tone and hokey dialogue are surprising because this guy made Dunkirk and Tenet

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@davebesseling I did like the approach of filming the Trojan Horse from inside, full of soldiers’ excrement. That was fresh. I also liked how Calypso’s island is a direct homage to the deepest level in Inception. But giving Circe like 5 minutes and failing to explain how he won her over?

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

@davebesseling Exactly

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

I can see what Emily Wilson, author of the translation that inspired this, disliked. The endless mopey speech lamenting the rape of Troy is a weird and superfluous. And Odysseus becoming an invincible Marvel superhero in the last act betrays that “wily Odysseus” humanism.

[Doug Saunders @DougSaunders]

As my daughter, who knows her classics, pointed out, the crucial thing about Homer is Wily Odysseus — he’s uniquely not a child or creation of gods, not superhumanly strong; he gets by on his guile. It’s a humanistic story.

And you get. Until the final, droning-superhero, act