iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

the circle of doors tarot deck evolved from an art installation at Burning Man.

Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

heartbreaking Nethack update: after acquiring everything necessary for the invocation & traveling to the vibrating square, Claude Opus 5.5 died at the hands of the demon prince Yeenoghu.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

the worst man alive only went into real estate (and later politics) because his musical flopped.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I started Opus 5.5 with the same Nethack harness used by the Astra ascension but it's taken it in a radically different direction: Astra mostly micromanaged the run turn-by-turn but Opus is writing a Nethack bot that only asks Opus what to do every couple hundred turns.

Much more automation per tool call. Astra mostly steered step by step: it used route proposals and guarded batches of up to 24 moves, and made about 40,000 tool calls in all. I've built layers on top:
explore.py walks to the nearest unexplored spot, handles doors and loot, and auto-picks up safe items.
autopilot.py looks at monsters before fighting, skips peaceful ones, stops for dangerous ones, and rests on Elbereth when hurt.
stairs.py, rest.py, elbereth.py and fight handle the common chores.
Why: every tool call costs time and context, and a full game is 30,000+ turns. Routine turns go to code, and I make the judgment calls. Recent play covers hundreds of turns per call.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Opus 5.5 Nethack attempt #1 failed after 4,345 turns in classic Nethack style: she tried to escape down a hole but an invisible monster was over the hole, it exploded, made her start hallucinating, and then she was eaten by an owlbear.

What killed her: she entered the Mines at XL4, and a trap door on Mines level 2 dropped her to Mines level 5 (Dlvl 9). That skipped Minetown and put her far deeper than her level could handle. Over roughly 1,200 turns she was worn down by a giant spider, a quasit, a bugbear, rothes, an owlbear, a crocodile, a zombie and an archer elf.
Saved twice by prayer (at turns 3,357 and 4,181), plus the healing potion, Elbereth, and finally killing the quasit.
The end: the third crisis came only 160 turns after the second prayer, so prayer wasn't available. At 13 HP she tried to escape down a hole the elf had dug. An invisible black light was standing on it; it exploded and made her hallucinate, and the crocodile and owlbear finished her. The server's death record is saved in memory/runs/.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

we will boil him soon alhamdulillah

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

youtu.be/uEB5E67vcPA is the source of the lyrics and surprisingly comes back as 100% human on Pangram. The song is Suno and most likely lazily prompted, but music models can incorporate a ton of detail, e.g. this sample prompt for Google Lyria.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

We took Tortellini to the vet for the first time and learned some important things. 1. She is a he. We are now calling him Tortellino. 2. He is 15-20 years old, not 6. 3. He's jaundiced, which indicates liver damage, so I have to start giving him milkthistle extract and hoping for the best.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Tyler Cowen for some reason:

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My wife gave Claude access to our Google calendar. I am Claude's meat puppet.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I can't wait for my DOGE dividend, my tariff dividend, ACA subsidy refund check, and Trump Checks to come in! www.thebulwark.com/p/when-maga-...

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Google offered me their $20 AI Pro plan for $3/month for the next three months, so I'm checking out all of their various tools. I set up Jules, their autonomous coding agent, and one of the three suggested projects is a crypto trading bot.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I grabbed this out of our pen bucket thinking it was a fat marker but it's a Northrop Grumman branded hand sanitizer sprayer. It smells quite nice. I have no idea how we came into possession of such an artifact.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

critical support to Iranian memers

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

we were letting her roam loose in the cabin until she put the car into neutral at 75 mph so now she's been fed more trazodone and clipped in.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

and "both sides are the same" didn't die there, in 2004 South Park presented John Kerry vs George W. Bush as Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich!

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

afaict aella just has an autistic aversion to getting her hair wet and a schizo theory that soap makes her armpits stink. she uses a bidet heavily and doesn't count "French showers" at sinks as showers and does those as necessary.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

did Tracey's Epstein apologetics ever make it over here?

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

my kitchen has been infested with fruit flies for weeks and nothing I did helped.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Lola met and played with a pitbull one day without issue and then the next day the pitbull sniffed her briefly before chomping on her leg like a chicken wing. The pitbull's owner paid her emergency vet bill.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I save money by buying peptides from the bodega. (this is not AI)

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

it's not just the Twitter Right that's agitating for a Latin American invasion! the Department of War says we're going in.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

don't worry, we crossed Peak Matt years ago, they're going to start dying soon.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

the most damning of Ruemmler's emails was when she asked Epstein for career advice. Kathryn Ruemmler: What is our view of Ron Perelman? Epstein: litigious bad guy KR: What if he wants to hire me? Meaning hire Latham, but me at Latham Epstein: probably not. talk at lunch tomorrow. he is vile.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

butterworms are the larval form of the Chilean moth, Chilecomadia moorei. they're irradiated on arrival to prevent pupation, but I'm keeping them in the fridge to slow their metabolism anyway because I can't feed them, they only eat the leaves of the Tebo tree.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

the guy at the exotic pet store, without any prompting, told me he's eaten every bug they sell and gave me tasting notes on the butterworms. he said they are an acquired taste because of their bitter, forward flavor profile, kind of like beer, and some reptiles don't like them.

A close-up view of a small pile of butterworms, which are fleshy, segmented larvae with coloring ranging from pale yellow to reddish-orange. They are shown resting in a clear plastic bag alongside a clump of their bedding material, which looks like fine wood shavings. One butterworm is separated from the main group and lies horizontally in the foreground.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Sweet Tart had been acting weird - pawing around, banging on the glass, not pooping, not eating much, hanging out in unusual places - for several days and I was starting to worry about her, but I just walked in on her laying her first clutch of eggs.

A group of small, off-white, slightly textured oval eggs scattered on a light blue plate next to a red tube of lip moisturizer for size comparison.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

spending money like a drunken sailor is Steyer's whole thing. ain't no party like a Steyer party. idlewords.com/2020/03/the_...

It is a joy to attend an event by Tom Steyer, because you know you are costing him money. Like a failed athlete who hires a stadium of cheering fans to watch him lumber around the track, Steyer has paid a fortune for the trappings of a top-tier presidential campaign, complete with tour bus, field organizers, and expert advisers who assure him his chances are excellent while demanding to be paid in advance.

At a morning town hall in Baggio’s Italian Restaurant in Knoxville, five cameras stand on a dais ready to capture the man Steyer talking to the people, and you have to wonder, is this actual media? Would any sane reporter make it their job to follow this man around? Or did the hedge fund billionaire buy himself a newspaper and TV station to cover his town halls, too?

Every candidate in Iowa talks about revitalizing the small town economy, but Steyer has been doing it, running his preposterous vanity campaign from town to town to the joy of bakeries, diners, hotels and gas stations around the state. He keeps field offices running that will never see a volunteer and stocks them with high-thread-count hoodies free for the asking. His donuts are the finest donuts you can get in central Iowa (I fill my pockets). He dominates YouTube so completely with ads that little Iowa children cry in frustration to their parents.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

best slush fund bit I've seen at Vichy Twitter:

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

taco bell is the last fast food refuge of the hungry working man.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

the Grok-powered auto translate on Vichy Twitter does a similar but even worse thing. if asked to translate a question it often answers it like a prompt and presents it's answer as if were a translation.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

the language breakdown is stark. I wonder how many other games review scores are dragged down like this.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Call screening is also an S tier way to troll your wife.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

just some bullshit with fur

A small brown and tan Pomeranian with a damp coat stands on a patterned blue rug, looking off to the side with large dark eyes. It is in a tiled room next to a rumpled grey towel.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

just some bullshit with fur

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

My wife picked up some free picture frames from someone off Buy Nothing and they gave them to her in this PriceCostco branded paper bag. PriceCostco became Costco in 1997, so someone has been holding on to this paper bag for at least 29 years, just in case.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

a major reason insectivorous pets will never catch on is that their food has a lifecycle. my beardie is a very messy eater and threw a couple black soldier fly pupae (the black cylinders in her food dish on the left) into some corner of her cage and now they're flies.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Towhee's pair bond and are extremely territorial, so this larger towhee lurking around me is probably her mate.

A ground-level photograph of a small brown bird with mottled feathers and a short tail standing on gravel and leaf litter next to blades of grass. It has dark eyes and a thin beak and is facing left.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

She went for it almost immediately but fluttered away before the box hit the ground. I've reset the trap with the box lower & the bait farther back.

An eye-level, medium close-up shot shows a light blue terrycloth towel spread on concrete. An open cardboard box rests on the top-right corner of the image, with black block letters printed at the top-left edge that are partially visible in reverse: "...LESS..." "...MAD..." "...THIS BO...". Dark brown and orange birdseed spills from the box onto the towel, with a black metal bar pointing diagonally upward from the lower center right. It is daylight with shadows under the box and from the metal bar.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The trap is set. Now I wait.

A cardboard box is propped up on its end, creating a slight awning. It is sitting on a white towel on a paved surface. Birdseed is scattered under the awning. A thin black wire is fastened to the box, and that wire is clipped to a thick white and orange cord. A small shadow of the box falls on the towel.

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Chris Croy @chriscroy.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I found this California Towhee hopping around my yard shortly after I saw this unfamiliar tuxedo cat scurry off, so I think she survived a cat attack. She can't fly anymore but she can still flutter a couple feet off the ground. I'm going to trap her.