Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cameron Dodd, PhD Student in Evolutionary Biology and Taxonomy, The University of Western Australia

Australia is home to more than 60 species of carnivorous marsupials in the family Dasyuridae. Almost a quarter of those have only been scientifically recognised in the past 25 years.

Other than the iconic Tasmanian devil, chances are most of these small, fascinating species have slipped under your radar. One of the rarest and most elusive is the kultarr (Antechinomys laniger), a feisty insect-eater found in very low numbers across much of the outback.

To the untrained eye, the kultarr looks very much like a hopping mouse, with long legs, a long tail and a tendency to rest on its hind legs. However, it runs much like a greyhound – but its tiny size and high speed makes it look like it’s hopping.

Kultarr or kultarrs?

Until now, the kultarr was thought to be a single widespread species, ranging from central New South Wales to the Carnarvon Basin on Australia’s west coast. However, a genetic study in 2023 suggested there could be more than one species.

With backing from the Australian Biological Resources Study, our team of researchers from the University of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum and Queensland University of Technology set out to investigate.

We travelled to museums in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth to look at every kultarr that had been collected by scientists over the past century. By combining detailed genetic data with body and skull measurements, we discovered the kultarr isn’t one widespread species, but three distinct species.

Three species of kultarrs

The eastern kultarr (A. laniger) is the smallest of the three, with an average body length of about 7.5cm. It’s darker in colour than its relatives, and while its ears are still big, they are nowhere near as big as those of the other two species.

The eastern kultarr is now found on hard clay soils around Cobar in central NSW and north to around Charleville in southern Queensland.

The gibber kultarr (A. spenceri) is the largest and stockiest, with an average body length of around 9cm. They are noticeably chunkier than the other two more dainty species, with big heads, thick legs and much longer hindfeet.

As its name suggests, the gibber kultarr is restricted to the extensive stony deserts or “gibber plains” in southwest Queensland and northeast South Australia.

The long-eared kultarr (A. auritus) is the middle child in terms of body size, but its ears set it apart. They’re nearly as long as its head.

It’s found in patchy populations in the central and western sandy deserts, living on isolated stony plains.

Are they threatened?

All three species of kultarr are hard to find, making it difficult to confidently estimate population sizes and evaluate extinction risk. The long-eared and gibber kultarrs don’t appear to be in immediate danger, but land clearing and invasive predators such as cats and foxes have likely affected their numbers.

The eastern kultarr, however, is more of a concern. By looking at museum specimens going back all the way to the 1890s, we found it was once much more widespread.

Historic records suggest the eastern kultarr used to occur across the entirety of arid NSW and even spread north through central Queensland and into the Northern Territory. We now think this species may be extinct in the NT and parts of northwest Queensland.

What’s next?

To protect kultarrs into the future, we need targeted surveys to confirm where each species still survives, especially the eastern kultarr, whose current range may be just a shadow of its former extent. With better knowledge, we can prioritise conservation actions where they’re most needed, and ensure these remarkable, long-legged hunters don’t disappear before we truly get to know them.

Australia still has many small mammal species that haven’t been formally described. Unless we identify and name them, they remain invisible in conservation policy.

Taxonomic research like this is essential – we can’t protect what we don’t yet know exists. And without action, some species may disappear before they’re ever officially recognised.

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The authors wish to acknowledge the important contributions of Adjunct Professor Mike Westerman at La Trobe University to the research discussed in this article.

Cameron Dodd receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study and Society of Australian Systematic Biologists.

Andrew M. Baker receives funding from the Federal Government, State Governments, Australian Biological Resources Study and various Industry sources.

Kenny Travouillon receives funding from Australian Biological Resources Study.

Linette Umbrello receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) National Taxonomy Research Grant Program (NTRGP)

Renee Catullo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Australia’s cutest mammal is now Australia’s cutest three mammals – https://theconversation.com/australias-cutest-mammal-is-now-australias-cutest-three-mammals-260006

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Andrew Merdith, DECRA Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide

Some 252 million years ago, almost all life on Earth disappeared.

Known as the Permian–Triassic mass extinction – or the Great Dying – this was the most catastrophic of the five mass extinction events recognised in the past 539 million years of our planet’s history.

Up to 94% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate families were wiped out. Tropical forests – which served, as they do today, as important carbon sinks that helped regulate the planet’s temperature – also experienced massive declines.

Scientists have long agreed this event was triggered by a sudden surge in greenhouse gases which resulted in an intense and rapid warming of Earth. But what has remained a mystery is why these extremely hot conditions persisted for millions of years.

Our new paper, published today in Nature Communications, provides an answer. The decline of tropical forests locked Earth in a hothouse state, confirming scientists’ suspicion that when our planet’s climate crosses certain “tipping points”, truly catastrophic ecological collapse can follow.

A massive eruption

The trigger for the Permian–Triassic mass extinction event was the eruption of massive amounts of molten rock in modern day Siberia, named the Siberian Traps. This molten rock erupted in a sedimentary basin, rich in organic matter.

The molten rock was hot enough to melt the surrounding rocks and release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere over a period as short as 50,000 years but possibly as long as 500,000 years. This rapid increase in carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere and the resulting temperature increase is thought to be the primary kill mechanism for much of life at the time.

On land it is thought surface temperatures increased by as much as 6°C to 10°C – too rapid for many life forms to evolve and adapt. In other similar eruptions, the climate system usually returns to its previous state within 100,000 to a million years.

But these “super greenhouse” conditions, which resulted in equatorial average surface temperatures upwards of 34°C (roughly 8°C warmer than the current equatorial average temperature) persisted for roughly five million years. In our study we sought to answer why.

The forests die out

We looked at the fossil record of a wide range of land plant biomes, such as arid, tropical, subtropical, temperate and scrub. We analysed how the biomes changed from just before the mass extinction event, until about eight million years after.

We hypothesised that Earth warmed too rapidly, leading to the dying out of low- to mid-latitude vegetation, especially the rainforests. As a result the efficiency of the organic carbon cycle was greatly reduced immediately after the volcanic eruptions.

Plants, because they are unable to simply get up and move, were very strongly affected by the changing conditions.

Before the event, many peat bogs and tropical and subtropical forests existed around the equator and soaked up carbon

However, when we reconstructed plant fossils from fieldwork, records and databases around the event we saw that these biomes were completely wiped out from the tropical continents. This led to a multimillion year “coal gap” in the geological record.

These forests were replaced by tiny lycopods, only two to 20 centimetres in height.

Enclaves of larger plants remained towards the poles, in coastal and in slightly mountainous regions where the temperature was slightly cooler. After about five million years they had mostly recolonised Earth. However these types of plants were also less efficient at fixing carbon in the organic carbon cycle.

This is analogous in some ways to considering the impact of replacing all rainforests at present day with the mallee-scrub and spinifex flora that we might expect to see in the Australian outback.

Finally, the forests return

Using evidence from the present day, we estimated the rate at which plants take atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it as organic matter of each different biome (or its “net primary productivity”) that was suggested in the fossil record.

We then used a recently developed carbon cycle model called SCION to test our hypothesis numerically. When we analysed our model results we found that the initial increase in temperature from the Siberian Traps was preserved for five to six million years after the event because of the reduction in net primary productivity.

It was only as plants re-established themselves and the organic carbon cycle restarted that Earth slowly started to ease out of the super greenhouse conditions.

Maintaining a climate equilibrium

It’s always difficult to draw analogies between past climate change in the geological record and what we’re experiencing today. That’s because the extent of past changes is usually measured over tens to hundreds of thousands of years while at present day we are experiencing change over decades to centuries.

A key implication of our work, however, is that life on Earth, while resilient, is unable to respond to massive changes on short time scales without drastic rewirings of the biotic landscape.

In the case of the Permian–Triassic mass extinction, plants were unable to respond on as rapid a time scale as 1,000 to 10,000 years. This resulted in a large extinction event.

Overall, our results underline how important tropical and subtropical plant biomes and environments are to maintaining a climate equilibrium. In turn, they show how the loss of these biomes can contribute to additional climate warming – and serve as a devastating climate tipping point.

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Zhen Xu was the lead author of the study, which was part of her PhD work.

Andrew Merdith receives funding from the Australian Research Council as part of the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award.

Benjamin J. W. Mills receives funding from UK Research and Innovation.

Zhen Xu receives funding from UK Research and Innovation and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

– ref. Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now scientists know why – https://theconversation.com/around-250-million-years-ago-earth-was-near-lifeless-and-locked-in-a-hothouse-state-now-scientists-know-why-260203

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Darla Hatton MacDonald, Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Tasmania

The number of tourists heading to Antarctica has been skyrocketing. From fewer than 8,000 a year about three decades ago, nearly 125,000 tourists flocked to the icy continent in 2023–24. The trend is likely to continue in the long term.

Unchecked tourism growth in Antarctica risks undermining the very environment that draws visitors. This would be bad for operators and tourists. It would also be bad for Antarctica – and the planet.

Over the past two weeks, the nations that decide what human activities are permitted in Antarctica have convened in Italy. The meeting incorporates discussions by a special working group that aims to address tourism issues.

It’s not easy to manage tourist visitors to a continent beyond any one country’s control. So, how do we stop Antarctica being loved to death? The answer may lie in economics.

Future visitor trends

We recently modelled future visitor trends in Antarctica. A conservative scenario shows by 2033–34, visitor numbers could reach around 285,000. Under the least conservative scenario, numbers could reach 450,000 – however, this figure incorporates pent-up demand from COVID shutdowns that will likely diminish.

The vast majority of the Antarctic tourism industry comprises cruise-ship tourism in the Antarctic Peninsula. A small percentage of visitors travel to the Ross Sea region and parts of the continent’s interior.

Antarctic tourism is managed by an international set of agreements together known as the Antarctic Treaty System, as well as the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO).

The Treaty System is notoriously slow-moving and riven by geopolitics, and IAATO does not have the power to cap visitor numbers.

Pressure on a fragile continent

About two-thirds of Antarctic tourists land on the continent. The visitors can threaten fragile ecosystems by:

• compacting soils
• trampling fragile vegetation
• introducing non-native microbes and plant species
• disturbing breeding colonies of birds and seals.

Even when cruise ships don’t dock, they can cause problems such as air, water and noise pollution – as well as anchoring that can damage the seabed.

Then there’s carbon emissions. Each cruise ship traveller to Antarctica typically produces between 3.2 and 4.1 tonnes of carbon, not including travel to the port of departure. This is similar to the carbon emissions an average person produces in a year.

Global warming caused by carbon emissions is damaging Antarctica. At the Peninsula region, glaciers and ice shelves are retreating and sea ice is shrinking, affecting wildlife and vegetation.

Of course, Antarctic tourism represents only a tiny fraction of overall emissions. However, the industry has a moral obligation to protect the place that maintains it. And tourism in Antarctica can compound damage from climate change, tipping delicate ecosystems into decline.

Some operators use hybrid ships and less polluting fuels, and offset emissions to offer carbon-neutral travel.

IAATO has pledged to halve emissions by 2050 – a positive step, but far short of the net-zero targets set by the International Maritime Organization.

Can economics protect Antarctica?

Market-based tools – such as taxes, cap-and-trade schemes and certification – have been used in environmental management around the world. Research shows these tools could also prevent Antarctic tourist numbers from getting out of control.

One option is requiring visitors to pay a tourism tax. This would help raise revenue to support environmental monitoring and enforcement in Antarctica, as well as fund research.

Such a tax already exists in the small South Asian nation of Bhutan, where each tourist pays a tax of US$100 (A$152) a night. But while a tax might deter the budget-conscious, it probably wouldn’t deter high income, experience-driven tourists.

Alternatively, a cap-and-trade system would create a limited number of Antarctica visitor permits for a fixed period. The initial distribution of permits could be among tourism operators or countries, via negotiation, auction or lottery. Unused permits could then be sold, making them quite valuable.

Caps have been successful at managing tourism impacts elsewhere, such as Lord Howe Island, although there are no trades allowed in that system.

Any cap on tourist numbers in Antarctica, and rules for trading, must be based on evidence about what the environment can handle. But there is a lack of precise data on Antarctica’s carrying capacity. And permit allocations amongst the operators and nations would need to be fair and inclusive.

Alternatively, existing industry standards could be augmented with independent schemes certifying particular practices – for example, reducing carbon footprints. This could be backed by robust monitoring and enforcement to avoid greenwashing.

Looking ahead

Given the complexities of Antarctic governance, our research finds that the most workable solution is a combination of these market-based options, alongside other regulatory measures.

So far, parties to the Antarctic treaty have made very few binding rules for the tourism industry. And some market-based levers will be more acceptable to the parties than others. But doing nothing is not a solution.

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The authors would like to acknowledge Valeria Senigaglia, Natalie Stoeckl and Jing Tian and the rest of the team for their contributions to the research upon which this article was based.

Darla Hatton MacDonald receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Forest and Wood Innovations Centre, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and the Soils CRC. She has received in-kind support from Antarctic tour operator HX.

Elizabeth Leane receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Dutch Research Council, and DFAT. She also receives in-kind support and occasional funding from Antarctic tourism operator HX and in-kind support from other tour operators.

– ref. More and more tourists are flocking to Antarctica. Let’s stop it from being loved to death – https://theconversation.com/more-and-more-tourists-are-flocking-to-antarctica-lets-stop-it-from-being-loved-to-death-258294

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Brittany Ferdinands, Lecturer in Digital Content Creation, Discipline of Media and Communications, University of Sydney

Emojis, as well as memes and other forms of short-form content, have become central to how we express ourselves and connect online. Yet as meanings shift across different contexts, so too does the potential for misunderstanding.

A senior colleague of mine recently encountered some commentary about the “slightly smiling” face emoji: 🙂

They approached me, asking whether it represented joy, as they had assumed, or if it had a more ominous meaning.

As a chronically-online millennial, who unironically identifies as a gen Z, I bore the news that I, along with most younger internet users, only ever use it sarcastically.

“It doesn’t actually signify happiness – more so fake happiness, or dry humour,” I explained.

I also told them how the thumbs up emoji is often interpreted as passive aggressive, and that the only time I’d use the laughing-crying (“face with tears of joy”) emoji is under duress.

Despite seeming like a universal language – and sometimes they do function that way – emojis can be at once more vague, and more specific, than words. That’s because you can’t separate the meaning of a smiley from the person who sent it, nor from the person receiving it.

Markers of age and identity

While emojis were originally developed in the late 1990s by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita to add emotional nuance to text-based messaging, their function has since evolved.

Today, emojis are not just emotional cues; they also operate as cultural symbols and markers of identity.

Research published last year highlights how these symbols can create subtle communication barriers across age groups. For instance, a study of Chinese-speaking WeChat users found younger and older people differed not only in how frequently they used emojis, but in how they interpreted and aesthetically preferred them.

One emoji that’s increasingly becoming a distinct marker of age is the previously mentioned laughing-crying emoji (😂). Despite being named Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 word of the year, and frequently topping the most-used emoji charts, this smiley is on the decline among gen Z – who decided in 2020 that it wasn’t cool anymore.

Instead, they prefer the skull emoji (💀), which is shorthand for the gen Z catch phrase “I’m dead”. This means something is funny (not that they’re literally deceased).

Such shifts may understandably be perplexing for older generations who are unfamiliar with evolving norms and slang.

A digital body language

Emojis can also take on distinct meanings on different platforms. They are embedded within “platform vernaculars”: the ever-evolving styles of communication that are unique to specific digital spaces.

For example, a thumbs up emoji (👍) from your boss at work is seemingly more acceptable, and less anxiety inducing, than from a romantic interest you’ve just sent a risky text to.

This dilemma was echoed in a recent viral TikTok by user @kaitlynghull, which prompted thousands to comment about their shared confusion over emoji use in the workplace.

This reaction highlights a deeper communication issue.

A survey of 10,000 workers across the US, France, Germany, India and Australia, conducted by YouGov and software company Atlassian, found 65% of workers used emojis to convey tone in the workplace. But while 88% of gen Z workers thought emojis were helpful, this dropped to 49% for baby boomers and gen X.

The survey concluded some emojis can be interpreted in multiple ways, and these double meanings aren’t always safe for work.

In with the ‘it’ crowd

Another example of platform-specific emoji use comes from social media content creators who deploy emojis to curate a certain aesthetic.

Under the Tiktok tag #emojicombo, you’ll find thousands of videos showcasing emoji combinations that provide aesthetic “inspo”. These combinations are used to represent different online identities or subcultures, such as “that girl”, “clean girl” or “old money”.

Users may include the combinations in their captions or videos to signal their personal style, or to express the mood or vibe of their online persona. In this way, the emojis help shape how they present themselves on the platform.

This example of emoji use is also a display of symbolic capital. It signals social alignment, in an environment where a user’s visibility (and popularity) is determined by their platform fluency.

Emojis, then, aren’t just tools for expression. They are badges of identity that index where a user stands in the online cultural hierarchy.

There’s a fragmentation in how we relate

A single emoji might communicate irony, sincerity or sarcasm, depending on who is using it, what platform they’re using it on, and what generation they belong to.

This gap points to deeper questions around online access and participation, and the systems that shape online cultures.

And when the meaning of an emoji is platform-dependent and socially stratified, it can become as much about fitting in with a cultural in-group than conveying emotion.

Brittany Ferdinands does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Thumbs up: good or passive aggressive? How emojis became the most confusing kind of online language – https://theconversation.com/thumbs-up-good-or-passive-aggressive-how-emojis-became-the-most-confusing-kind-of-online-language-259151

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lucia McCallum, Senior Scientist in Geodesy, University of Tasmania

The scientists who precisely measure the position of Earth are in a bit of trouble. Their measurements are essential for the satellites we use for navigation, communication and Earth observation every day.

But you might be surprised to learn that making these measurements – using the science of geodesy – depends on tracking the locations of black holes in distant galaxies.

The problem is, the scientists need to use specific frequency lanes on the radio spectrum highway to track those black holes.

And with the rise of wifi, mobile phones and satellite internet, travel on that highway is starting to look like a traffic jam.

Why we need black holes

Satellites and the services they provide have become essential for modern life. From precision navigation in our pockets to measuring climate change, running global supply chains and making power grids and online banking possible, our civilisation cannot function without its orbiting companions.

To use satellites, we need to know exactly where they are at any given time. Precise satellite positioning relies on the so-called “global geodesy supply chain”.

This supply chain starts by establishing a reliable reference frame as a basis for all other measurements. Because satellites are constantly moving around Earth, Earth is constantly moving around the Sun, and the Sun is constantly moving through the galaxy, this reference frame needs to be carefully calibrated via some relatively fixed external objects.

As it turns out, the best anchor points for the system are the black holes at the hearts of distant galaxies, which spew out streams of radiation as they devour stars and gas.

These black holes are the most distant and stable objects we know. Using a technique called very long baseline interferometry, we can use a network of radio telescopes to lock onto the black hole signals and disentangle Earth’s own rotation and wobble in space from the satellites’ movement.

Different lanes on the radio highway

We use radio telescopes because we want to detect the radio waves coming from the black holes. Radio waves pass cleanly through the atmosphere and we can receive them during day and night and in all weather conditions.

Radio waves are also used for communication on Earth – including things such as wifi and mobile phones. The use of different radio frequencies – different lanes on the radio highway – is closely regulated, and a few narrow lanes are reserved for radio astronomy.

However, in previous decades the radio highway had relatively little traffic. Scientists commonly strayed from the radio astronomy lanes to receive the black hole signals.

To reach the very high precision needed for modern technology, geodesy today relies on more than just the lanes exclusively reserved for astronomy.

Radio traffic on the rise

In recent years, human-made electromagnetic pollution has vastly increased. When wifi and mobile phone services emerged, scientists reacted by moving to higher frequencies.

However, they are running out of lanes. Six generations of mobile phone services (each occupying a new lane) are crowding the spectrum, not to mention internet connections directly sent by a fleet of thousands of satellites.

Today, the multitude of signals are often too strong for geodetic observatories to see through them to the very weak signals emitted by black holes. This puts many satellite services at risk.

What can be done?

To keep working into the future – to maintain the services on which we all depend – geodesy needs some more lanes on the radio highway. When the spectrum is divided up via international treaties at world radio conferences, geodesists need a seat at the table.

Other potential fixes might include radio quiet zones around our essential radio telescopes. Work is also underway with satellite providers to avoid pointing radio emissions directly at radio telescopes.

Any solution has to be global. For our geodetic measurements, we link radio telescopes together from all over the world, allowing us to mimic a telescope the size of Earth. The radio spectrum is primarily regulated by each nation individually, making this a huge challenge.

But perhaps the first step is increasing awareness. If we want satellite navigation to work, our supermarkets to be stocked and our online money transfers arriving safely, we need to make sure we have a clear view of those black holes in distant galaxies – and that means clearing up the radio highway.

Lucia McCallum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Scientists look to black holes to know exactly where we are in the Universe. But phones and wifi are blocking the view – https://theconversation.com/scientists-look-to-black-holes-to-know-exactly-where-we-are-in-the-universe-but-phones-and-wifi-are-blocking-the-view-259977

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rosemary Overell, Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies, University of Otago

“✏️Describe the vibe” goes the demand to commenters underneath the YouTube video for Lorde’s latest single, “Hammer”. Fans form a flow; a “vibe check” in Zillenial parlance:

The pure rawness … (@lynmariegm)

A more raw true-to-self form … (@m3lodr4matic)

This is pure art … (@anishm-g1r)

Lorde’s 2013 debut album was titled Pure Heroine. But, she tells us – and fans and critics agree – Virgin is the first album which “does not lie”. Pure pop. Not lying is not necessarily synonymous with truth, however. Rather, not lying in the present cultural moment is more akin to the careful articulation of a whole vibe.

For women in particular, truth, authenticity – dare I say realness – mean modulating their feelings, but also a particular calibration and presentation of their bodies in media.

Such a balancing act is captured in that YouTube imperative which moves between the pencil (“✏️”) – the demand to describe – and the “vibe”, the very thing we often find too hard to write down or put into words.

Pop music is often at the nexus of these two seemingly opposite moves. Think about going to a gig and afterwards being asked “how was it?”, and all you can say is “you had to be there”.

Of course it is not so simple. We are always putting our feeling into words – describing all manner of bodily responses. Lorde herself sings in “Broken Glass” about how her eating disordered body was marked by language: the “arithmetic” of calorie counting. Elsewhere, she lists other social signifiers in which she is enmeshed: daughter (“Favourite Daughter”), siren, saint (“Shapeshifter”).

Words and the body

Nonetheless, the repeated theme in press interviews is that Virgin moves beyond language, towards a pure woman’s body, free of the mark of sexuality. At the same time, the album is also “ravenously horny” according to one review. She is both as pure as a newborn (a “Virgin”), but marked by her sexuality.

The song “Current Affairs” most clearly demonstrates proximity between the sexed body and its description in lyrics. Lorde collapses into her lover’s body (“He spit in my mouth”). But when he breaks her heart, she cannot put into language the hurt. Rather she blames her anguish on the news: “current affairs”.

Pop music and pop culture thrives off the market exchange and saleability of sex, particularly young women’s sex. When I first wrote about Lorde 11 years ago, I pitted her against Miley Cyrus, noting the outrage at Miley’s “growing up” (from Hannah Montana to adulthood), which mapped onto her perceived new working class, tasteless identity.

Against the crass vulgarity of Miley, I argued then, we had the middle-class intellectualism of Lorde. The argument stands. Virgin certainly adds a heightened sexiness to Lorde, but it is far from crude. She is branded, not just by the market (the cost of tour tickets and merchandise), but also by her identity as a tasteful and hip woman.

More fleshy (“wide hips/soft lips” she sings in “GRWM”) than the teen “Royal” of 2012, but still on Universal Music Group’s repertoire and still circulated as an “alt” option for pop fans.

We can also think of Lorde’s collaboration with her current working class alter, and last year’s popstar commodity, Charli XCX. In Lorde’s verse in “Girl, so confusing” she notes Charli is, essentially, a “Chav” – “still a young girl from Essex”. But in the same verse, Lorde shows her awareness of both women’s function on the market:

People say we’re alike

They say we’ve got the same hair

It’s you and me on the coin

The industry loves to spend

This knowing wink to how women move within the pop-culture marketplace produces a different kind of purity, one based on an intimacy between the popstar and her listeners. We all know Lorde’s difference from Charli is about image: the “poet” versus the party girl.

Intimacy as purity is part of what cultural theorist Anna Kornbluh recently dubbed the pressure of “immediacy”, characterised by an apparently ceaseless flow and demand to constantly share images and video of our bodies, afforded by the scroll of social media.

While the depiction of our bodies and selves on screens is fundamental to this moment, according to Kornbluh, we contradictorily lose sight of this screening. Feeling as though we are #NoFilter – present and real. Key to this is the exhibition of our feelings and emotions.

For all women, but particularly those in the public eye, the sharing of these feelings materialise into “coin”. Vulnerability, pleasure, all-the-feels-all-the-time – especially for women – make “bank”.

Intimacy and knowingness

Vulnerability has been a catch-cry in media characterisations of Virgin. Critics and fans equate Lorde’s lyrical confessions and press tour patter with a market-valuable “purity”, equated with immediate access (to quote the YouTube fan above) to a “true-to-self” Lorde.

One of her more amusing (but fitting) press engagements was on Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast. On the couch, we hear Lorde, wearing a Yohji Yamamoto blazer, musing about vulnerability, gender and her mother – with the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud.

While the Charli XCX track shows Lorde’s intimacy through her knowingness about her role as “coin” for the music industry, the music videos from Virgin offer a more embodied intimacy. The clip for the album’s first single, “What Was That?”, features an extreme closeup inside her mouth. The album cover itself is an X-ray showing her hips and her IUD.

Kornbluh suggests this emphasis on often literal bodily interiors – people’s “insides” – produces an ersatz sense of closeness and sociality, as our relationships become more and more beholden to the alienating circuits of “social” media.

Virgin does not lie. It traces a truth of our times – a paradoxical truth – that we are at our most intimate, our most pure, when we are unmediated, all the while bearing out the imperative to “✏️Describe the vibe” – to mediate and expose ourselves onscreen.

My own vibe check? I love the album. It is pop at its purest – performative, playful and certainly worth paying attention to.

Rosemary Overell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. On her new album, Lorde creates pop at its purest – performative, playful and alive to paradox – https://theconversation.com/on-her-new-album-lorde-creates-pop-at-its-purest-performative-playful-and-alive-to-paradox-259994