@pandora_parrot one could also use a #bot to #automate ically #spam this #form using #automation, maybe someone involved with #infosec, #dataScience, #hacking, #computers, #networking, #computerScience etc would know how to do this after seeing the above #post from my #gratuitous use of #hashtags

A new-ish thing I like to do is to toot about a topic and then add a couple questionably #adjacent and perhaps even #gratuitous #hashtags just to see if Masto already has some related content. THEN I go back and click on those hashtags and #boost the interesting content. Does anyone else here have interesting strategies you use to #discover #content?

#AnnieDillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: #Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another #mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as #beauty, a #grace wholly #gratuitous.

Here's some #writingadvice: No detail about your character is off-limits, so long as it advances the story and is not #gratuitous.

We are all biological entities with all the ick that implies—human—and in ways we won't admit to others, a psychological mess. Beyond us being #writers, by definition neurotic, our readers are no different in these aspects; they vary only in degree.

Detail the noisome everyday facts of peoples' lives, particularly if it helps describe living in foreign cultures, doing unique jobs often avoided, or living in places uncomfortable for anyone. Poverty has a smell, as does a fish market.

Relating these sensation lets the character feel out of place, and by extension, it lets your #reader feel out of place and empathize. Empathizing with a coal miner may be easier if you show her running to the equivalent of a bathroom through a dank, dark, claustrophobic tunnel, then feeling the dehumanization of doing her business a mile underground. Common details raise #verisimilitude, if applicable to your story.

For this reason, if your character picks his nose when no one is looking, if in his internal thoughts he admires guys while truly loving his wife, or if she has a sensitive nose and classifies everyone by how the stink... include the ick. Bathing, eating, dealing with sickness, controlling attraction to others, violating personal ethics when in trouble—doing things everyone does or has experienced is relatable. It feels... truthful. Don't leave these things out!

Just avoid making this stuff gratuitous. You don't want that reputation.