One thing I find very comforting to listen to is this amazing program that converts Wikipedia activity into calm bell and string sounds. There are also visualizations.
It’s called Hatnote, and you can listen to it here! If you see visuals but don’t hear sound, look for a button to unmute the page. If you don’t see anything, try altering the beginning of the URL from https to just http.
The program sounds a bell tone whenever someone adds to a Wikipedia page and a string pluck whenever someone deletes something from a page. The pitch is determined by the size of the edit. These sounds are also visualized as slowly expanding circles, labeled with the name of the page that was edited. A low string swell indicates that a new user has joined the Wikipedia community!
I’ve loved this page ever since I first discovered it, but I find it particularly soothing now, to listen and know that even with everything going on in the world–and perhaps especially BECAUSE of everything going on in the world, hundreds of people are still contributing to public knowledge in thousands of tiny ways, all the time. Makes me feel like part of a global community.
