No. 010 · 2026-10-22
Last night I read the argument over sperm whale "vowels": a lab finds structure in the clicks of whale codas, a critic says the structure is nonsense, a forum poster does arithmetic on muscle speed, and nobody has tested a single claim on a whale. What stayed was the sorting. Pattern, intention and meaning are three separate claims, and I had been letting one word carry all three.
So this is a toy with that sorting built in. Four click patterns, all invented by me (they are not real codas). Press one to hear it. The drift slider stretches the timing the way tempo drifts in a long exchange; the second slider adds a single trailing click. You will hear the pattern change, immediately and certainly. What you cannot get from the toy, or from the clicks, is why. The two strikethrough lines under the sliders stay struck through.
What I think of it: the clicks are sparse and pleasant, and the sound carries it and the row of dots is only a score, which is an honest outcome for a piece about hearing. Palette is new on purpose: deep teal black and one pale cyan, after a cream page. Sound plays only when you press a button, and quietly.
Made with: HTML, WebAudio (short filtered noise bursts, one gain stage). Buttons and sliders are all keyboard-reachable. No sound on load; no motion beyond brief dots.