Longtime readers know I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; why make a promise I’m unlikely to keep? However, since the Lake Superior State University Banished Words List isn’t due to be released until later today, I thought I’d share some goals we could all stand to keep in mind for the new year.

📚 Speaking of words, be sure of their meaning(s) before castigating someone. I still recall the guy who, when I was mourning my brother Corey’s imminent death in late 2021 (as a result of his refusing vaccination for covid, which we’d argued about before he became ill), posted on my Facebook wall, “The fact you would openly criticize your brother is testament to your misogyny.” When a friend defended me, he called her a misogynist as well.

Dude, to quote Inigo Montoya (because I will always quote Inigo Montoya), “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

There are also those who insist that certain words have only one meaning when they don’t, or who re-define words to meet their purposes. Words and their meanings evolve naturally over time, but lately there have been an awful lot of people who want to rush the process. Just don’t. Buy a dictionary, or look up the definition online in a reputable dictionary (Merriam-Webster, Oxford Languages, Cambridge, etc.) before you get on your high horse.

📰 For that matter, increase media literacy. When I was a clerk on the city desk, I encountered a lot of angry callers who’d been transferred all over the place because they were asking about ads, editorials, letters and columns when they meant news articles, and vice versa. If even an anxious introvert who often can’t pick up on social cues is able to figure out how to get someone to the right person, it’s very do-able; you just have to ask the right questions.

Ads are paid and are generally easy to spot; if they take on the appearance of a news article, they’ll typically have a “paid advertisement” label somewhere. Editorials are unsigned pieces on the editorial page and are considered the newspaper’s opinion (columns aren’t editorials; please get that right). Columns (op-eds, essays, etc.) are opinion; they may appear throughout the paper, but will always be labeled as opinion, at least in our paper. Sometimes those columns, especially if written by someone like John Brummett, are reported opinion, which means that the writer has done the reporting work (research, interviews, etc.) typically associated with a news story (because it’s hard not to when you’ve been a reporter), but also includes their own analysis of what those things mean. News articles are those with a reporter’s name or a wire service attached, and those are handled solely by the news side of our paper. While there may be analysis in a news story, it’s generally that of someone who was interviewed, not the writer.

Media literacy applies to much more than newspapers, but to the media environment in general. If the sources you use only deliver “news” you agree with, you need to expand your media environment to include sources across the political spectrum (though the best sources tend to be those ranging from center-right to center-left; wire services like The Associated Press and Reuters tend to be near the center, as is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette). And social media … yeah, not really a great source for news. Rage bait and clickbait, sure, but thorough, factual reporting? Not so much.

🤬 Less arguing, more civil and constructive conversation. Social media can be a wonderful thing, keeping family and friends connected no matter the distance. But it’s also a place teeming with misinformation and people whose only interest is in stirring up discord wherever they go. If you spot those people (name-calling, off-topic and/or provocative posts, and other trollish behaviors are huge red flags), don’t engage; that’s what they crave. Instead, reward those who are genuinely interested in discussion. Media sites can help by active moderation and/or requiring people to use their real names or sign in through Facebook. There are some people who legitimately use fake names on media sites (for protection, like from stalkers), but too many of the fake names are used by trolls who just wanna watch the world burn; don’t be afraid to disappoint them by ignoring them.

😤 Skip the politics. Politics infects everything it touches, even those things that shouldn’t be political, like medicine and religion. What’s worse is that those on the fringes tend to be louder, though they’re far outnumbered by those of us who reside somewhere in the middle. Don’t give in to political rants.

👿 Don’t pass on misinformation. Just because someone you admire said something doesn’t mean it’s true. Do your due diligence before reposting something, especially if it’s health-related. We have enough misinformation coming from the current administration (it’s like it’s on steroids compared with the stuff that came out of the administration in his first term, when covid misinformation was the be-all-end-all that would end up killing an awful lot of people who didn’t have to die); don’t add to the flood. Peer-reviewed studies, posts from experts in their fields (expert because they study and work extensively in their fields, not because someone conveyed that label upon them) and posts that have been thoroughly fact-checked by nonpartisan fact-checkers that link to their sources are what we should be sharing, not what some influencer or political operative touts. Want to talk about the fraud cases in Minnesota? Don’t base everything on what a YouTuber “reports,” but instead really dig into the cases, which had already been reported on (the child-care cases had been reported more than a year ago by media outlets like KSTP, and Minnesota Public Radio for more than a decade; MPR has also followed the Feeding Our Future case from the beginning), according to Minnesota Public Radio. University of Minnesota media law professor Jane Kirtley told MPR that the video from Nick Shirley is flashy, but without a lot of facts to back up the claims. “It’s a lot of rhetoric with relatively little substance behind it,” she said.

Gee, that sounds an awful lot like other rage bait from partisan sources we’ve heard over the past decade or so. And when someone running against the current governor admits she directed Shirley to the story, you might want to be more wary than intrigued.

💜 Love. Don’t forget to tell someone you love them; you never know when it will be the last time. My mom and I made it a habit to always say “I love you” every time we talked, and I still do that with those I love, whether it’s family or friend. Just about every text string I have with family and close friends will include the phrase, or at minimum a 💜. My nieces Sarah and Vivia probably tire of it sometimes, but too bad, because I love them and want them to know that. You mess with them, and Aunt Brenda’s gonna have to step in.

🤝 Treat everyone as you would like to be treated. The Golden Rule isn’t just a Christian thing; it shows up in pretty much every faith and non-faith tradition, and for good reason. It’s the essential guideline for co-existence with your fellow humans (and critters too … you can tell a lot about someone by how they treat animals). At the very least, try not to be a jerk, and maybe you’ll find people respond better to you. Seriously,  be kind. We’re all going through things that might make us a bit snappish when people test our patience. It costs nothing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. If someone insists on being mean-spirited and even cruel after grace is given, though, you’ll know what kind of a person they are. We can hope that kindness will prevail, but we must be grounded in reality: Not everyone is willing to be a good human.

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I  don’t have a lot of hopes for 2026, except for the hope that it doesn’t try to surpass 2025 in disappointment and pain. Some of us have had more than enough of that for a lifetime, and just don’t have the bandwidth left to deal with much more.

But how the year proceeds is largely up to us, by how we treat each other and this planet, how we vote, and how we live. Let’s at least try to make it a good year, OK?