Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I’m sorry this entry is a day late. I’ve been busy traveling for Naypyidaw Fashion Week.

For new students: this is Grapevine’s Atlas, a yearly recap of the articles I’ve written. This year: the world’s four most important stories. What I lack in quantity, I make up for in braggadocio. For old students: your homework was due yesterday and I will not be accepting late submissions. Better luck next time.

• One of Us Has to Change – The vexillological rumor I can’t get out of my head: did Haiti and Liechtenstein show up to Hitler’s Olympics with the same flag?
• Counting Counties – Beneath America’s patchwork grid of fifty states is an atomic-level microgrid of thousands of counties (and boroughs, parishes, and county-equivalents). Every state has them, but the variation between states, and even between counties within a state, can be jarring. Some counties are tiny, others are massive. Some have dozens of residents, others have millions. Some are older than the constitution, others newer than the Internet. So what is it that makes a county a county?
• The Robot is the Bad Guy – A rogue opinion piece makes it out of More Ben and onto the front page. This time, a decades-old Russian project to domesticate the fox and how it relates to the social media algorithms that increasingly dominate our lives.
• Our Words are Backed with Nuclear Weapons – A year that starts with one rumor ends with another one: Did a video game glitch really turn Mahatma Gandhi into a murderous, nuclear bomb-loving menace?