issue 26// vol 45

White noise to
wind you down

» Websites offering ambient noise

Brittney MacDonald
Business Manager

 

elaxing can be tough when you're a

busy student. Between essays and
studying for your next exam, you might be
at your wit’s end. However, just tuning out
when there are so many distracting things
around you can also be a feat unto itself. As
someone who finds it hard to concentrate,
I feel your pain. One thing that has helped
me through the years is white noise.

Now, I know the reservations. How
can something that makes noise help me
not get distracted by noise? Granted, it
may not work for everyone—but for some
people, it’s a lifesaver! If you want to test
out your own reaction, but don’t want to
invest in a machine, there are plenty of free
sites on the internet to help you out. Here
are just a few.

White Noise & Co.

Colored Noise Generator

This is probably your most basic form of
white noise. This generator will create a
static sound that you can fine-tune using
coloured knobs on a slider bar. The knobs
themselves control the levels of treble,
bass, and other audio components—but
the sound itself never advances to any
sort of real-world simulator. As such, if
static isn’t the type of background noise
you're looking for, stay clear of this one
and move on to one of the other options.
However, if it is, then this site is great for its
customization options.

It can be found at mynoise.net.

Noisli

This website is one of my favourites for
basic environmental noise simulation. It’s
fairly easy to use and offers many different
options when it comes to what type of
noise you can use. You can play these tracks

 

Illustration by Cara Seccafien

simultaneously, individually, or in any
form of combination with one another,
The site also offers three preset modes:
“random,” “productivity, and “relax.” All of
these modes randomize which tracks play
but selecting “productivity” or “relax” will
limit the selection pool to only sounds that
coincide with those feelings. As someone
who prefers environmental noise to static,
for me this is a great website to get started
with,

Noisli also has an option to create a
profile, I assume to save whatever tracks
you create that work for you. However, I
have never bothered since the website isn’t
overly complicated to just load up and run
on its own.

Noisli is available at noisli.com.

A Soft Murmur

If you're unsure what sort of white noise
may work for you, A Soft Murmur offers

a bit of everything. It is a little more
complicated than Noisli, but it does have
more options. You can also select the
frequency levels for a certain noise, so you
can better customize if you want more of
one sound and less of another. Its “singing
bowl” option is great for self-guided
meditation.

If you're just trying white noise out, I
would advise moving to this one only when
the other two have failed—just because its
large library can be a bit intimidating, with
a lot to cycle through and test. That being
said, A Soft Murmur is probably the best
out of the three I have listed for creating
sound combos. It remembers your previous
combo if you close your window and then
return to it, and unlike Noisli, the interface
doesn't change colour—which can be
distracting. You can leave this site on and
kind of forget about it.

You can find A Soft Murmur at
asoftmurmur.com.

life & style // no. 9

Twitter-tantrum:
Eva Kiryakos

» Alberta politician plays the victim after
racist and transphobic tweet backlash

Brittney MacDonald
Business Manager

 

Uns Conservative Party (UCP)
candidate Eva Kiryakos has announced
she will be stepping down and out of
Alberta’s upcoming election as of March 25.
The reason? Someone has dug up her racist
and transphobic tweets.

Kiryakos was the UCP representative
running for Calgary-South East. Politically,
the area has a history of voting very right-
wing, From 1971 to 2015 the provincial
government was led by the Progressive
Conservative Association of Alberta (PC
Alberta). In 2017 PC Alberta merged with
the Wildrose Party to form the UCP. The
UCP is the current Official Opposition
within the Legislative Assembly.

So why would someone with such a
distinguished political pedigree step down?
Ina series of now deleted tweets, Kiryakos
propagated the idea that Muslim refugees
were responsible fora current “rape crisis”
when she retweeted several articles. One
Catholic Herald opinions article she shared
outlines a supposed Christian genocide
in Syria and Iraq via “forced breeding”;
another article by the Creeping Sharia
conspiracy theory blog spouts claims about
a “Muslim rape jihad” in Germany.

In another deleted tweet, Kiryakos
directly accused another user posting
about gay-straight alliances within public
education as attempting to “convert”
children. In addition to that, Kiryakos
has made it more than clear she does not
support transgender rights. In her video
announcing she would be stepping down,

 

Kiryakos stated, “The possibility of a grown
man sharing a washroom with a little girl,
to me, is a perversion. I used the words
‘alternative lifestyle’ because the people I
engaged with on Twitter were using those
words, so I repeated them back. I voiced
my honest opinion and, YES, I asked if
the NDP had an agenda.” This statement
comes in response to backlash regarding
comments made by her in response to the
Alberta Teachers’ Association guidelines
around the use of school washrooms.

In light of all of this information
surfacing, Kiryakos decided to play the
victim—claiming that criticism of her past
comments is an attempt to “silence” her. In
her video, she said, “We teach our girls to
stop being silent, to speak their mind, and
yet [am here feeling silenced and cornered
because I voiced my opinion and spoke up
for what I believed in.” She went on to add,
“This culture of bullying people who have
different opinions, backgrounds, faiths,
cultures, genders, and identities needs to
stop.”

Oddly enough, I don’t think Kiryakos’
right to voice her opinion is the problem
here. Though I do not agree with the
attempts at blackmail she claims occurred
regarding her Twitter past—I must say
that the UCP is not looking good right
now because of it. Earlier in March Caylan
Ford, another former UCP candidate,
also dropped out of the race after several
private messages where she repeated white
nationalist rhetoric were released to media.
The cases of both Kiryakos and Ford have
brought up a lot of questions regarding the
UCP quality control process with regards to
its members.

Photo of Eva Kiryakos by René Michaud at Bliss Photography via Facebook