CONSENT BRO

Ian Tolino stands in the fraternity basement in College Park, Md., facing 57 brothers. They sit in a half-oval around him, shoulders hunched, fiddling with phones. He recognizes this posture, the collective eye-roll: "Why do I have to be here?" He felt the same way, three years ago, when some guy visited his fraternity to talk about rape.

BREAKING AWAY

An elite marathon is a competition, but it is also a collaboration. For much of the race, the runners work together, drafting behind each other as they move through the streets as a pack. Eventually someone breaks away, but that usually doesn’t happen until the last quarter of the race. Those who try earlier tend to get swallowed up by the main pack, and are never heard from in the race again.

THERE WAS A HUGE HOLE IN THIS THEORY

Back in 1818, some 500 heads of state, scientific societies, and universities got what could generously be called one of the more singular letters they’d ever received. The immediate giveaway, perhaps, was the attached document proving the sanity of the sender, an American eccentric named John Symmes.

THIS GUY 'COULD EVEN.' OUR APOLOGIES

While we always strive to bring you factual and accurate blogs, videos, and listicles, sometimes errors slip by us. In our “13 Hedgehogs Who Need A Vacation” piece we published last week, there were eight mistakes that we would like to now correct. We apologize to our readers, and we promise more stringent oversight in the future.

WIDOW BACH WAS THE MOTHER OF HARMONY

Anna Magdalena led a strenuous and stressful life. A gifted singer and musician, she married an egotistical and obstinate genius who believed the world should revolve around him, and complained when it didn’t; she worked constantly and loyally to advance the family’s business, which was music; she was pregnant every year from 1723 to 1737, bearing 13 children, seven of whom died in youth. She may have also done some of her husband's best work.

SO MUCH CHICKENSHIT IN THIS ARTICLE

Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.) But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.”

APPLE IS AN ENABLER

In truth, I didn’t pay a tremendous amount of attention to iOS 8 until a post scrolled by on my Tumblr feed, which disturbed me a good deal: The new iteration of Apple’s OS included Health, an app that — among many other things — contains a weight tracker and a calorie counter. And it can’t be deleted.

SMOOTH CRIMINALS

Although the media often describes the performers as breakdancers, most of the kids who dance on the trains today are actually disciples of litefeet, a form that originated about a decade ago in some of the same playgrounds of the Bronx and Harlem where an older generation invented hip-hop itself. Now, they're being called criminals.