Automated for the people

[dolorosa_12]

Today's sunshine_challenge prompt is 'blue,' and I am going to use this prompt as an excuse to talk about some of my favourite accounts over on the blue hellsite, Twitter. I can only take Twitter in small doses, but one of the bright spots over there is the proliferation of bot accounts. By this I do not mean 'vectors of political disinformation,' but rather Twitter accounts focused on one specific thing (photos of animals, poetry quotations, etc), automated and tweeting out batches of content at specific intervals. My favourites of these include:

BirdPerHour: bird photos, every hour
sapphobot: quotes from fragments of Sappho's poetry
boschbot: fragments of images from Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights painting
bitsofjupiter and bitsofsaturn: fragments of photos of these two planets
midsomerplots: a hilarious Midsomer Murders plot generator
BestiaryBot: mashups taken from medieval bestiaries
arnarleir: a Skaldic poetry bot

Do any of you have comparable Twitter accounts that you enjoy?

*

In other, non-Sunshine Challenge news, goodbyebird has set up a comm on Dreamwidth for The Old Guard. It's the_old_guard — go over and join/subscribe if you're interested!

I have just spent the past half-hour writing an absolute wall of text at morbane in relation to Galax Arena — it's as if writing fic for that fandom after so long unlocked the torrent of feelings I have about that book, and specifically those two characters. It's nice to return to fandoms-of-the-heart, that's for sure.

I hope all of you have lovely weekends!

Comments

[ursula]

The planet links look fun!

I like the Medieval Death Bot (DeathMedieval), though this might not be the right year for it.

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, I like the sound of the Medieval Death Bot!

[syntheid]

Oh neat, I'll have to check out some of yours later. I'm following:

ctrlcreep: not a bot, but only writes short sci-fi/dystopian story bits/prompts
mythologybot: generated excerpts from fake archives-- sometimes pretty much exactly what you'd see in an actual museum on an info card, sometimes kind of wild
yearonearth: live tweeting the history of the earth compressed into a year-- sparse tweeting right now as we're still in Huronian glaciation
oewordhord: Old English Word of the Day

ETA: also if you like bird photo bots, a friend of mine retweets from _everybird_ a lot, it's just going through every (known) bird on the planet with a photo.

[dolorosa_12]

Ooh, I like the sound of all of these!

*follows*

[kore]

I love sapphobot!

[dolorosa_12]

It's such a great account!

[bemused_writer]

Those all look like great Twitter accounts. ^^ I enjoy ratseveryhour for all the cute pictures of rats, but other than that I mostly use Twitter to follow the crew from Invader ZIM, several art blogs, and a few manga authors, such as Jun Mochizuki (jun_mdesu) and Kamome Shirahama (shirahamakamome). ^^

[dolorosa_12]

Glad you like them — the rat pictures account sounds great as well!

💙

[oldtoadwoman]

I still haven't seen The Old Guard but you're at least the third person to mention it recently. So I guess I should check it out?

Re: 💙

[dolorosa_12]

I really enjoyed it, and from the sound of things, so did half of my circle here on Dreamwidth!

[nerakrose]

I too love bots! Thanks for the recs - I didn't know these. off to follow a few...

I like deathmedieval, which tweets out ways of death as recorded in medieval coroner scrolls (and if you @ it, it tells you how you died. and I also love romancetwitbot which, full disclosure, I made. it tweets out historical romance plots and if you @ it, it tells you which romance plot you're in.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh yes, you're second person to recommend deathmedieval — it definitely sounds like my kind of thing! I also love the sound of romancetwitbot. The bestiary bot and skaldic poetry bot are both the work of a friend of mine — I'm always super impressed by people who make things like that, so well done to you for creating the romance bot.

[shipperslist]

Thanks for the hellsite links! I mostly use Twitter for following audiodrama creators so these were a nice addition.

Edit:
I came back to rec some accounts anyway
dog_feelings : exactly as it sounds
qikipedia : twitter feed from the team behind BBC's QI
SarahCAndersen : cartoonist
CryptoNature : this is a scripted fiction podcast feed but the tweets are eerily beautiful and thoughtful (and I highly recommend the podcast too)

[dolorosa_12]

These all sound great! Thanks for the recommendations!

[bloodydemonic]

I rather think I need to go and follow both the bosch and bestiary accounts - thank you for the recommendation!

[dolorosa_12]

You're very welcome! The bestiary bot is made by a friend of mine from university — she made the skaldic poetry bot as well.

[bloodydemonic]

And from the bosch one, I found a Van Gogh bot account which makes me ridiculously happy. I've also followed the medieval death one a few other people have mentioned!