Vox Sentences - Your guide to Gen Alpha

What a few weeks it has been! 

Every presidential election I’ve covered has been both historic and unusual — in 2016 because of the candidates, in 2020 because of a global pandemic, and this time because of … too many factors to list. We’ve been doing our best here at Vox to break this election down for you, and I hope our work has been helpful to you and your community. I’ll tell you: It’s been useful for me. 

I was struck, for instance, by just how much American views on immigration have shifted over the past few years. I’ve heard comments in my conversations with people that sounded a bit more anti-immigrant than what I’d heard in the past. But seeing the country’s rightward turn on the issue in hard data was clarifying, and I appreciate my colleague Nicole Narea for collecting that information and creating clear charts that helped me really digest the numbers.

Another piece that helped me out came from Ian Millhiser. I’d followed this week’s news on Georgia electoral officials’ new rules on counting votes — but still had questions about how the new rules would work, and whether this was legal. Ian succinctly answered those questions for me (well, not just for me, you can — and should! — read his piece too). 

Vice President Kamala Harris did her first big interview this week, and perhaps like me, you’ve heard complaints that she hasn’t been accessible enough to the press, and that we don’t know enough about who she is and what she actually thinks. Jonquilyn Hill came up with an apt analogy that gave me a new way of thinking about Harris’s aura of mystery: that she is a political Beyoncé. That is, she’s managed to create a persona on which anyone can credibly project their own beliefs. 

From the above, it’s pretty clear my mind has been on politics these past few weeks. But other things have been happening too, and my Vox colleagues have been on it. Let me walk you through some of my favorite non-politics stories from the past week.

—Sean Collins, news editor

What the heck is “corn sweat” and is it making the Midwest more dangerous?

Two things stood out to me right away about Benji’s headline: the words “corn” and “Midwest.” As a proud Chicagoan with many a memory of driving through my home state’s cornfields, he had me. I also wanted to know more about corn sweat, which I was completely unfamiliar with. 

It turns out that corn (and other crops) release moisture when it’s really hot, and that moisture can make temperatures feel even warmer than they actually are. And like many weather-related things, this phenomenon is getting worse (and growing more harmful to humans) due to climate change. 

The piece is well worth your time. I’d take issue with just one thing … while it can definitely be dangerous, corn sweat is not “gross,” despite what Benji might say. Midwestern corn is perfect in every way. 

What to know about the new FAFSA

Federal forms can be scary. But they don’t have to be. Take the FAFSA — that’s the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, AKA, the form you have to fill out to get money for college from the government. Allie Volpe published a handy guide this week on how to fill it out. If you’re wondering what info you need to have on hand before getting started, she’s got you. If you want to procrastinate, but not so much you miss the deadline, she’s got you. If you don’t know where to even find the form, she’s got you. Check it out, and send it to everyone you know who’s applying to college this year.

SpaceX’s risky mission will go farther into space than we’ve been in 50 years

Vox science editor Paige Vega and I have been talking for a while about SpaceX’s plan to send four civilians into the Van Allen belt (a field of radiation that encases the Earth). Depending on your tolerance for risk, it’s either one of the boldest space missions humans have ever attempted, or one of the scariest. (I’ve always wanted to go to space, but I’m firmly in the latter camp.)

Ellen Ioanes breaks it down, but basically, four people — none of whom are professional astronauts (though the team’s leader has gone to space one time before) — are planning to go further into space than any human’s gone since the ’70s, and to expose themselves (and the inside of their spaceship) to high levels of radiation, while wearing brand new spacesuits that were designed in just two and a half years. Oh, and two team members plan on going for a spacewalk using a method that hasn’t been tried before.

Your guide to the confusing, exciting, and utterly new world of Gen Alpha

You may have heard this already, but Vox has a lot of new, exciting newsletters coming your way. 

Our latest release: Kids Today, written by the great Anna North. The idea is this — Anna will bring the perspective of Generation Alpha straight to your inbox. She’ll explore what kids think about serious topics, and fun topics, too. Next week’s newsletter will be a little meta: It’s going to be about what Generation Alpha thinks about Generation Alpha. 

Though she’s the proud parent of two very cool-seeming kids, she’s always on the lookout for more young sources. So if you know of any parents who might like to have their children chat with Anna, I’m sure she’d love for you to pass her info along: She can be reached at anna.north@vox.com. And you can sign up for Kids Today here.

🎧  Black women on Kamala Harris and their party’s future

I know I said we were done talking about politics, but I can’t help myself. So let’s end with this. Our friends at Today, Explained spent a whole week in one of the greatest cities on Earth during the Democratic National Convention, and they sent us back incredible missives. One that especially resonated with me was their episode on what Black women Democrats think about Harris, and where they want to see their party go in the future. 

We always hear that Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party (and the data does support that idea), but we don’t always get a chance to hear directly from Black Democratic women in their own words. Noel King and the Today, Explained team did a great job assembling a panel of Black women with diverse histories, from different parts of the country, of varied ages, each of whom had fascinating insights to share — about what’s going well with their party, about what Harris’s strategy should be, and even about what Democrats need to be doing better.

That’s it from me this week — please keep an eye on Vox for more news in the week to come. Have a great weekend everyone! 

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