This is not urgent. Don’t look at it while you’re at the family dinner table. Don’t glance at it from behind the wheel during your drive home from work. Even if you’re just sitting there doing nothing, there’s no rush. This can wait until later. Like most things on the internet, it can even wait until never. This is not breaking. But from what I can tell, it’s the only news that’s not. And so, after a year spent opening an unseemly number of browser tabs containing what felt like a nonstop onslaught of massive stories, this is my pick for the word of the year: Breaking.

+ A few weeks ago, the editorial team at Medium asked a bunch of impressive writers, deep thinkers, and public figures (and me) to choose 2017’s word of the year. There are lot of interesting takes in this collection of Words Thats Matter 2017. (Editor’s Note: Please don’t feel that you’re somehow obligated to read my piece first, give it several claps, and share it widely, just because I spend five or six hours a day collecting the day’s top news which I deliver to you with keen insights, pithy wit, and savage puns. That’s not what this is about.)