Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

I haven’t seen Alabama come out flat like this since THE LAST GAME THEY PLAYED WHICH FOR SOME REASON THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF COMMITTEE PRETENDED DID NOT HAPPEN

A writer publishing under the byline “Earnest Graham” fabricated a restaurant to ask food influencers about how much they charge for posts they purport to be honest reviews. Twenty-four influencers took the bait. thehunger.substack.com/p/eat-pay-love

we are watching a Christmas movie with the *audacity* to have a full 90 minute runtime. everyone knows this is an 80 minute genre.

this paper has a very thorough discussion of (and contributes to) the mixed empirical evidence concerning the causal effect of child gender on political attitudes/identities www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

With thanks to amengel.bsky.social, the decline is far more modest when I take proper account for the administrative codes in the feeling thermometers

not exactly a criticism but it's interesting, to me, that instead of the party issuing a 2024 autopsy a la the 2012 RNC one the Democrats have gotten a collection of 2024 autopsies from a couple of different, um, groups.

in addition to the antisemitic TD celebration, “NFL refs make bad calls on purpose to impress their group chats” is up there for dumbest conspiracy theories I have ever heard

Musgrave: "We are about to speedrun the rediscovery of why states stopped acting like this" musgrave.substack.com/p/literal-co...

Is Joe Rogan really just a voice of the right? Our new @csmapnyu.org piece for @goodauth.bsky.social shows he’s just as much a space for the left and the center, too. A look inside today’s surprisingly complicated podcast information ecosystem. 🎙️ goodauthority.org/news/podcast...

A holiday classic defector.com/the-2025-hat...

I know it doesn't feel like it from our POV but academia/science is not where Qualtrics makes its money.

For your collective delectation this holiday season: Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!) loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...

“How do you make long distance work?” is a wild question to ask someone when the answer is “abusing government resources.” It was a kind of big story a couple of weeks ago!

any movie that you watch *because it is Christmas* is a Christmas movie

“Regardless of her chances, [Republicans are] probably correct in that she’ll be useful for their own fundraising as well. That’s the attention economy when it comes to politics: it rewards the fight, not the outcome.” newsletter.tysonbrody.com/p/jasmine-cr...

Okay this is going to be long so mute it if you don't want a granular explanation but first: SHAME on @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social for misrepresenting what Chair Powell said in order to pat himself on the back. Shame on you. Let's talk about measuring the 171mm people of the US labor force.

one of the easiest things to look up when ~doing your own research~ into our health system is that we have literally never in the course of human history been better at keeping infants alive and healthy

hey if you study Congress and you could use estimates of status quo AND proposal location for over a thousand bills including many which never made it to the floor, we've got 'em! www.nowpublishers.com/article/Deta...

Paper out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com: 1) those groups (women, African Americans, lower SES, rural) that are underrepresented in science have been less trusting of science. 2) If you improve representation in science, you improve trust among those groups. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

in current discourse parlance, Perriello was (and I expect still is) an *extremely* Above Replacement candidate

Death By Lightning is great for a lot of reasons but one of them is that they basically told Bradley Whitford that even though he was officially cast as a senator he could just do Josh Lyman for a bit again.

Tarantino's issue with Paul Dano's performance in There Will Be Blood seems to be that Dano...nailed the character he was supposed to be portraying?

"it's a republic, not a democracy" right up until people expect you to actually care about how the scheme of representation will actually work. then it's "anything that doesn't cost you a presidential election goes"

New research from the #NetSI team + colleagues shows: groups with historically lower trust—women, Black people, rural and lower-income residents—trust scientists more when they share their identity. Greater representation across communities can boost trust in science. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

when final grades are posted >>>

The real task isn’t “teaching people to spot misinformation.” It’s rebuilding conditions where verification, deliberation and accountability are possible. Critical thinking only works when the world around it gives those skills a place to take root.

This branch of the culture has totally lost the idea of masculine virtue being defined against vices that are also masculine

THIS IS WHY WE LOVE SPORTS ISNT IT FOLKS

I root for two college football teams and they’re both taking upset Ls in conference championship games at the same time. This is why we love sports isn’t it folks.

Vandy is LinkedIn posting reports from Economists on why they deserve to be in the Playoff. The CFP needs this energy.

why is the westernmost power four championship game at noon while two of the eastern time zone games are at 8pm

self-nominations encouraged!

I know it's not the main thing here but one of the things that really bugs me about this is that up until the moment they had power the people involved here would get VERY UPSET if you described them as "anti-vaccine"

oh my god, he admit it x.com/Acyn/status/...

ah of course the First Of All, How Dare You test

we should all resolve to spend less of 2026 yelling at the TV

before setting your avi to Dr. Strangelove, you should probably check to make sure that your posts haven't taken a turn such that simply juxtaposing them with that same picture wouldn't be a solid dunk

Read the latest #APSR article, Curation Bubbles, exploring how information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information.

SOMEONE should do SOMETHING about all of these concentrated benefits with diffuse costs

Curation Bubbles Curation Bubbles By Jon Green, Duke University, Stefan Mccabe, George Washington University, Sarah Shugars, Rutgers University, Hanyu Chwe, Northeastern University, Luke Horgan, Northeastern University, Shuyang Cao, University of Michigan and David Lazer, Northeastern University…

really like the conclusion of this post about the "Mississippi Miracle" in reading scores being an artifact of requiring more low-scoring students to repeat grade levels statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/01/h...

good evening to everyone except for the virginia polytechnic institute and state university hokies

top notch mascottin'

unironically there should be trigger warnings for when they show some football injury replays

tirginia vech, imo

Good ❌orning