Creating an automated Twitter bot about gun violence

The school shooting in Uvalde last week was horrible. As a parent, I feel so powerless to protect my kids from something like that. Taking them to school the next day was extremely emotional.

It’s clear that we, as a country, are going to continue to do nothing about guns and gun violence. I channeled some of my emotion into building an automated bot for Twitter. I call it SABSStochastic Analysis for Ballistics Superfans (alternative title is “Second Amendment Bullshit”).

If you’re so technically inclined, you can download and run it yourself. Powered by Node and a fun little experiment into Twitter’s API.

It automatically replies to any congressional member who tweets.

Which of course includes unhinged Republicans.

So, AT&T won’t stop texting me…

I have a little problem.

AT&T won’t stop texting me.

They periodically (multiple times a week) send out these tips and reminders via text message. I’m not charged for them, but it’s just annoying to receive them.

Their solution is to simply text “STOP” back to them. I’ve done that.

It didn’t work.

So, I escalated this war. I replied to stop, with a rage face.

Stop texting

They replied with, “Thanks! We’ll unsubscribe you soon!”

Only they didn’t.

Today, I received this helpful tip for reporting SMS / MMS spam and other abuse. Awesome!

Text 1

AT&T Free Tip: To report unwanted text or picture/video messages, simply forward the message at no charge to 7726 from your wireless phone. AT&T will investigate the situation and take appropriate action.

Hey! That *is* pretty informative.

Let’s do it.

Step 1: Select text message.

Text 2

Step 2: Forward message.

Text 3

Step 3: Report number that text spam is originating from.

Text 4

Here’s to hoping that AT&T stops spamming me and they properly deal with the people abusing text messages!

The 7 Degrees of Retweeting

Earlier this evening, Sony announced (via Twitter) that they would be at the gdgt event this week and show off a demo of a new game.

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Sweet! From there, it kept being retweeted by members of team gdgt, just to see how far we could push it.

Two degrees:

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Three degrees:

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Four degrees:

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Five degrees:

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Six degrees (what?!):

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Seven degrees (now we’re just getting ridiculous!):

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It’s like a good old fashioned game of telephone.