Tech

Unseen Tennessee Williams radio play published in literary magazine

The Strangers, a horror tale written during the playwright’s college days, appeared in the Strand magazine this week

The age of AI is here

Big Tech leaders have increasingly aligned themselves with the government on adopting a centralized framework to regulate artificial intelligence, even as experts remain divided on whether consolidating federal power would minimize or accelerate the technology‘s risks.

How Sinners became the most culturally important film of 2025

Ryan Coogler’s critically acclaimed horror blockbuster had people talking all year, proving industry naysayers wrong and breaking various records

Le Carré with a cocktail, not a cuppa: the glamour and escapism of The Night Manager

The second series of the Tom Hiddleston-fronted drama is first le Carré adaptation not based on author’s own work

Each year, word of the year gets darker. ‘Six-seven’ may be annoying – but it’s bucked that trend

Some might regard it as ‘brain rot’, but the first word of the year just for tweens and teenagers could be the most hopeful development of 2025

Directional Burkeanism

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‘From her pen sprang unforgettable females’: 16th-century Spanish author’s knight’s tale given reboot

Beatriz Bernal’s pioneering novel features brave, chivalrous women who ride dragons and her adapter wants his illustrated version to reach young readers

Data center stocks can get on track if OpenAI raises money, Jim Cramer says

CNBC's Jim Cramer on Friday explained how he thinks the data center sector can regain its footing on the market.

Want to work in AI? Here are the skills to master, economist says

Updated on: December 19, 2025 / 5:51 PM EST / CBS News

What Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Understand About Lolita

One of the minor annoyances of being an incorrigible pervert is that you risk having your own bookshelf testify against you. Some spines are better turned inward. A pederast might hide away Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, in which a middle-aged German author ogles a lithe young Polish boy. A hyper-literate rapist should camouflage his copy of A Clockwork Orange with a more consensual dust jacket. It is therefore curious that the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors—flaunted his supposed love of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. The book, first published in France in 1955, is so closely identified with pedophilia that it spawned not one but two words, Lolita and nymphet, for girls whom grown men find sexually tempting. Rather than take the obvious advice—Under no circumstances advertise your obsession with Lolita—Epstein apparently did the opposite.

Review: Avatar Fire and Ash is a spectacle of CGI that signifies nothing

There is no mistaking that Avatar: Fire and Ash is the work of a talented filmmaker. Pandora remains a lavishly imagined, technically immersive world, rendered with a level of craft few directors can rival. But to borrow a phrase, it is ultimately full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.