In non-2026 news, here’s what else happened this week: Mickey Rapkin reported from Playa Zipolite, Mexico’s clothing-optional beach, which became a haven for nudists and hippies in the ‘70s and subsequently an LGBTQ+ enclave and is now becoming, uh, something different, thanks to (twist!) Elon Musk, whose satellite internet provider Starlink has brought cheap and reliable connectivity to Zipolite—along with an influx of the same remote-working Zoom-screen yammerers that have swamped places like Tulum since the pandemic.
Speaking of the pandemic: Jesse Hassenger weighed in on Ari Aster’s Eddington, in which Aster re-teams with his Beau is Afraid co-conspirator Joaquin Phoenix for a modern Western about a small town roiled by violence, protests and conspiracy madness during the early months of COVID. (If you missed Esther Zuckerman’s conversation with Aster about the movies that inspired Eddington, check that out here.) It’s the first big period-piece movie about a deranged chapter of American history that we’re all still kinda living in—we really enjoyed it while we were watching it, and when it was over we were really happy to return to 2025, where America is still a simmering powderkeg of misinformed resentment and SARS-CoV-2 spike-proteins but at least now we have Labubus and Dubai chocolate. No wonder these poor Eddingtonians seem so un-delighted by their lives; they don’t know what a Labubu even is.
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