Is Nikki Haley for real? And more curated picks from Vox.

The year 2024 is finally starting to feel real, and that’s not just because we’re halfway through January. The election year of it all is starting to take over the headlines, as some candidates hit the gas on the campaign trail and others drop out of the race. The New Year’s resolutions we made less than two weeks ago are either sticking or already broken. The economy is looking better and worse all at the same time, which isn’t necessarily a new vibe. There’s also a store for artificially intelligent chatbots, which is definitely new. 

The second week of January is an exciting, anxious time, when the holidays are finally over and we can all start living in the new year instead of just feeling surprised that it’s here. I personally love the complex sense of opportunity and inertia that’s in the air right now. It feels like we’re on the verge of — and I’m really sorry about the pun here — some resolution in the months to come. The people of the United States will elect their leaders, including a president. Some of us will stick to that new gym routine. The Fed will raise or lower rates, and maybe the specter of a recession will finally fade. I honestly don’t know what to think about what AI will do to us this year, but it’s probably safe to say an AI superintelligence will not rise up and destroy society in the near future.

So it’s with a mixture of hope and anticipation that I recommend these Vox articles, videos, and even a comic. They helped me not only get even more prepared to take on 2024 but also to feel a little smarter in general.

—Adam Clark Estes, technology editor

Is Nikki Haley for real?

It has long felt like a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, and Ron DeSantis’s steady collapse in the polls has only made that near certainty all the more certain. Then there’s Nikki Haley. As Vox senior correspondent Andrew Prokop explains, the former South Carolina governor is perhaps the best hope anti-Trump Republicans have for avoiding a 2020 do-over.

📹 How Michigan explains American politics

You probably already knew that Michigan would be a key state in this year’s elections. Exactly how we got here — and what that says about the nation’s political machine — is a complex story. As they always do, the Vox video team breaks down the complexity to explain Michigan’s peculiar past decade in elections, including its swings from blue to red and back again. And yes, there are lots of maps and charts involved.

My year of Dry January

Plenty of people have written personal essays about quitting drinking for a month in January and learning something about themselves. None have been quite as delightful as this comic by Aude White and Vox’s Alanna Okun. Obvious spoiler: Dry January doesn’t have to be only a month long.

Trump says a lot of stuff about the economy. What would he actually do?

It seems like it’s been years since anybody has really known whether the economy is doing well or poorly. To be more specific, the economy has recently been doing well, but everyone thinks it’s doing poorly. This is what inevitably makes the Bidenomics versus Trumpenomics rematch in this year’s election interesting. In this info-packed piece, Vox senior correspondent Emily Stewart explains what we know about Trump’s economic plans should he win this fall — and what we don’t.

The Stanley water bottle craze, explained

Did your grandfather have a greenish metal thermos made by the classic American tool company Stanley? Mine did, and along with his golden retriever Goldie and his Ford pickup truck, he went everywhere with it. Imagine my surprise when I learned from Vox senior correspondent Alex Abad-Santos that the 21st-century version of this portrait of the American dream involves a similar but more colorful Stanley tumbler, lots of TikTok influencers, and a Starbucks collaboration. 

Will OpenAI’s new chatbot store finally make AI useful?

In this engaging look at the latest buzz-worthy technology coasting on the AI craze, Vox contributing writer Pranav Dixit breaks down his year of testing out chatbots and what he thinks about OpenAI’s new GPT Store, which is basically an app store for chatbots. I recognize the irony when I admit that I just can’t figure out how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can make my everyday life better. Then again, in 2007, I just couldn’t figure out what I would do with an iPhone when my flip phone worked just fine.

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