August 2, 2019

Trump’s Signature Looks Like an Audio Waveform. So We Synthesized Sound From It.

“The only thing to do with Donald Trump that has ever ended on a high note.”

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President Trump’s signature has been scrawled across 8×10 glossies, MAGA hats, and controversial executive orders. It’s been analyzed by handwriting experts and parodied by meme experts. But one thing stands out most about his signature: it looks like an audio waveform.

Through the miracle of science, researchers have been able to convert images into signals, and then signals into audio. Why not create sound from an image of the president’s signature?

Alas, the Mother Jones Forensic Audio Reconstruction Team was out of the office. So I sufficed by plugging in an image of Trump’s signature into a site called PIXELSYNTH, a project by computer programmer and media artist Olivia Jack, for an entirely non-scientific representation of the staccato slopes and peaks of one of the most powerful signatures in the world.

After a bit of tweaking, I got the following results:

Listen and let us know what you think it sounds like.

As one Twitter user suggested, it’s the “only thing to do with Donald Trump that has ever ended on a high note.”

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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