Somehow, in spite of noting the unusual physicality of this approach, I was profoundly unprepared to see a physical ruler being used on a touchscreen. Nice.
jdboyd•Jul 12, 2026
What was your reaction to the CD then?
yjftsjthsd-h•Jul 12, 2026
After the ruler that's less jarring. Although the fact that it's an XP disc is hilarious.
indrora•Jul 12, 2026
I'm not sure what you expected.
yjftsjthsd-h•Jul 12, 2026
A digital/software line tool. They're drawing on a computer; I am very habituated to seeing things stay on the screen.
AdmiralAsshat•Jul 12, 2026
Is the Stanley Lieber referred to by the title someone other than the Stanley Lieber (a.k.a. "Stan Lee") of Marvel Comics fame?
calvinmorrison•Jul 12, 2026
Yes
Alien1Being•Jul 12, 2026
When mankind comes to the final judgement, the existence of 9front will be one of the three things keeping us from destruction....
Apropos Pirkei Avot Chapter 1, Verse 2...
stavros•Jul 12, 2026
What's this? What's 9front? Who's Stanley Lieber? This is so confusing.
xelxebar•Jul 12, 2026
9front is a fork of Plan 9, the operating system that runs Jurassic Park[0]. Stanley Leiber is a prominent contributor, albeit whose existence is humourously-but-seriously-maybe debated. The whole community has a post-ironic humor that is very GenZ but before GenZ was cool or even born.
The Plan 9 Foundation commissions local artists for it's swag at the annual workshops. I'm guessing this article is tangentially related.
As it reads more to me like it's Douglas Adams humour, i.e. 1980s humour.
British, post-Python absurdist humour or whatever you'd call it.
sznio•Jul 12, 2026
as a gen z - same thing
ButlerianJihad•Jul 12, 2026
You must be joking about Jurassic Park, right?
The systems in Jurassic Park are clearly and obviously running IRIX on SGI workstations, and the girl character says as much when she recognizes Unix. The file system navigator app is famous from its appearance there.
Plan 9 has never been portrayed as a running system in Hollywood, because it has never run any system of consequence in real life either.
cyber_kinetist•Jul 12, 2026
... it's a joke. A perfect example of how Plan 9 humor works.
ButlerianJihad•Jul 12, 2026
I am unclear what the joke is here. GP appeared to be sincere because there is a still image from the film embedded in the FAQ for no reason.
The “joke” is not part of the FAQ. So, what actually is the joke? Has the joke been made in public forums before today? We're unable to find prior art concerning this joke or meme. Does "plan9 humor" consist mostly of making shit up?
DOGMATICA•Jul 12, 2026
the joke is that plan 9’s not UNIX, and thus does not run Jurassic Park. the absurdity arises from the fact that using such a capable operating system for dinosaur husbandry (im told this is what jurassic park is about) would be, frankly, philistine in nature.
ButlerianJihad•Jul 12, 2026
So, falsehoods are jokes now? Hey guess what? I wrote xscreensaver! Haha, funny joke, right, philistine? Hilarious!
Yes. It says so in the AT&T SysV R4 User's Manual.
benj111•Jul 12, 2026
If you look at the image from the film you will note it has the cat(?) clock of plan 9 fame. So its fairly obvious that the image is doctored.
khazhoux•Jul 12, 2026
Also her screen is running Doom, which wasn’t out when Jurassic Park was released (1989).
tombert•Jul 12, 2026
I know I'm probably missing a joke, but Jurassic Park came out in 1993.
Still, Doom was released after the movie, so unlikely it would be in Jurassic Park.
wizzwizz4•Jul 12, 2026
I don't know about the film, but the Jurassic Park novel is set in 1989.
pjmlp•Jul 12, 2026
In fact, it was quickly superseded by Inferno and Limbo, in AT&T race to compete with JavaOS, which is why Dis also got initial support to convert between bytecode formats.
Overall, after the sale to Vita Nuova, one could assert Inferno has had much more real commercial use than Plan 9 has ever had outside Bell Labs.
Yet Plan 9 fans seldom acknowledge it was a transition between UNIX and Inferno.
dsign•Jul 12, 2026
Deeply disappointed to read it doesn't work for iconoclasts.
kvdveer•Jul 12, 2026
Or atheists for that matter.
I was a bit put off by the implied hostility there, even if it was in jest. It's a risky choice to jokingly discriminate based on religion, ethnicity or political affiliation, mostly because such a joke is hard to distinguish from almost identical contexts where it isn't a joke.
benj111•Jul 12, 2026
Would the world be a better place if no one told any jokes that 'might' upset others?
I'm an atheist too. I just gave a middle finger to the author and carried on reading.
I haven't really delved that much onto 9front but they do have an interesting style, see for example https://9front.org/propaganda/ yes it's probably going to rub people up the wrong way, but at least it isn't more corporate bs.
kvdveer•Jul 12, 2026
It feels different if someone has recently been discriminated against. Jokes land differently when they are too similar to reality.
That said, making edgy joking is definitely acceptable, you'll just alienate part of your audience. That's why the hollow corporate bs doesn't do it.
jhbadger•Jul 12, 2026
Do realize that the author is Czech. While being religious is the default and atheists face (mild) discrimination in places like the US, at least until the 1990s and the fall of Communism, things were reversed in (then) Czechoslovakia, with state supported atheism and religious people viewed as suspected dissidents.
oxonia•Jul 12, 2026
Oy vey.
ori_b•Jul 12, 2026
It sounds like it didn't appeal to at least one atheist. Truth in advertising.
polotics•Jul 12, 2026
this doesn't actually teach anything about how to draw. there is one thing about using a layer for drafting, but apart from that it is how to use this very specific piece of software if you already have some skills and techniques
2b3a51•Jul 12, 2026
I think 'to draw' is ambiguous here. You took the phrase to mean 'some strategies and techniques for making good drawings' and the author possibly meant 'how to make marks like you would with normal painting software but working around the foibles of 9front's paint'.
But then the whole thing has to be seen as whimsical.
rakel_rakel•Jul 12, 2026
People creating things that didn't exist before is so refreshing, and Prahou is such an amazing artist.
Making it look easy (or for the untrained eye like silly scribbles on old thinkpads) he created a whole world around his characters, and the talent and rigor is super impressing.
I would recommend anyone to dive into it!
olivierestsage•Jul 12, 2026
I’ve never used 9front but I love the whole culture around it in posts like these.
minusLik•Jul 12, 2026
> Wacomized laptops with pens.
> Crack the screen open and draw on it.
I don't think "crack the screen open" is the best choice of words here …
Y_Y•Jul 12, 2026
The author of this, pmjv, is also the champion of unix surrealism, which some of you may recognize and others may enjoy.
I cannot help but feel like these drawing methods are more hassle than carrying around an actual sketchbook and a few pens/pencils. Whatever makes you happy, I guess; at least you're not typing shit into an image generator and saying this makes you a great artist.
11 Comments
> Use a ruler.
Somehow, in spite of noting the unusual physicality of this approach, I was profoundly unprepared to see a physical ruler being used on a touchscreen. Nice.
Apropos Pirkei Avot Chapter 1, Verse 2...
The Plan 9 Foundation commissions local artists for it's swag at the annual workshops. I'm guessing this article is tangentially related.
I daily drive 9front, so I might be biased.
[0]:https://fqa.9front.org/fqa0.html#0.1.1
As it reads more to me like it's Douglas Adams humour, i.e. 1980s humour.
British, post-Python absurdist humour or whatever you'd call it.
The systems in Jurassic Park are clearly and obviously running IRIX on SGI workstations, and the girl character says as much when she recognizes Unix. The file system navigator app is famous from its appearance there.
Plan 9 has never been portrayed as a running system in Hollywood, because it has never run any system of consequence in real life either.
The “joke” is not part of the FAQ. So, what actually is the joke? Has the joke been made in public forums before today? We're unable to find prior art concerning this joke or meme. Does "plan9 humor" consist mostly of making shit up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistinism
Yes. It says so in the AT&T SysV R4 User's Manual.
Still, Doom was released after the movie, so unlikely it would be in Jurassic Park.
Overall, after the sale to Vita Nuova, one could assert Inferno has had much more real commercial use than Plan 9 has ever had outside Bell Labs.
Yet Plan 9 fans seldom acknowledge it was a transition between UNIX and Inferno.
I was a bit put off by the implied hostility there, even if it was in jest. It's a risky choice to jokingly discriminate based on religion, ethnicity or political affiliation, mostly because such a joke is hard to distinguish from almost identical contexts where it isn't a joke.
I'm an atheist too. I just gave a middle finger to the author and carried on reading.
I haven't really delved that much onto 9front but they do have an interesting style, see for example https://9front.org/propaganda/ yes it's probably going to rub people up the wrong way, but at least it isn't more corporate bs.
That said, making edgy joking is definitely acceptable, you'll just alienate part of your audience. That's why the hollow corporate bs doesn't do it.
But then the whole thing has to be seen as whimsical.
I would recommend anyone to dive into it!
I don't think "crack the screen open" is the best choice of words here …
https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/unix_surrealism