From James Bond movies to water spirits in mythology, the tales of attractive, dangerous female forms that distract the hero from his path or lure men to their deaths have been around for quite some time. A recent study revisits the familiar motif of the femme fatale, the archetypal dangerous woman, and finds that her presence is near-universal. The traits are consistent across cultures, a period of manipulation, and an ending that is rarely difficult to predict.
A tale as old as time: Young, attractive femme fatale lore appears in nearly every culture
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How are ordinary people drawn into extremist circles—and what role can artificial intelligence play in that process? This question is addressed by a new study which, for the first time, combines psychological theories of radicalization [...]
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Brexit sent waves of financial volatility through European markets, reshaping how risk traveled between countries and exposing how tightly connected the continent’s financial systems had become, according to new research from the University of Surrey [...]
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A new study of online communities suggests that their interaction dynamics can amplify small, local imbalances in opinions, rapidly turning initially mixed-opinion communities into highly-polarized ones—even without the algorithms and homogeneity-seeking behaviors typically blamed for [...]
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Many scholars have studied the effects of colonial management on terrestrial resources, but what about the effect of colonialism on bodies of water? A new article in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science [...]
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The global financial order has entered a new, shifting and disruptive era of nationalism and these changes lay bare the difference between the haves and have nots, according to a new study by Charles Darwin [...]
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“Mercy,” a film released in January 2026, depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in the near future: a city riddled with violence, homelessness, and civic disorder. California’s response is to set up the Mercy Capital Court, [...]
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A Florida law designed to prevent gun violence by temporarily removing firearms from people at risk of harming themselves or others is used unevenly across the state, according to a new study. The study, published [...]
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Eighty-one years after Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker, a viral video on TikTok shows an AI-generated vision of the Nazi dictator standing in Antarctica, shoulders broad and face smiling, [...]
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Hostage-taking by nation-states is emerging as an overlooked consequence of the more unstable and dangerous world that’s been created by the fracturing rules-based order. In an increasingly might-is-right system of international relations, malign actors have [...]
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Everyone on Earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue [...]
