Jerry's Map
275 points
4 hours ago
| 16 comments
| jerrysmap.com
| HN
https://www.openculture.com/2026/06/this-man-has-been-drawin...
Fraterkes
1 hour ago
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archermarks
4 hours ago
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There's a good People Make Games video about this from a few days ago

https://youtu.be/Is8N7B9b0GQ

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lynguist
2 hours ago
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It's funny that I watched this less than an hour ago, and I click on hackernews and bam it's #1 on the front page.

Probably someone else must've also watched this in the past few hours or days.

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runj__
2 hours ago
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The world is increeeeeeedibly small with likeminded people (sometimes at least, which is most of the times).
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mproud
1 hour ago
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I remember seeing a video on Jerry’s Map from nearly 20 years ago.
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dylan604
3 hours ago
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You know, it'd have been amazing if TFA has not opened with that video. So instead of clicking the link to view TFA, you went off and dug up the exact same link in TFA???
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falcor84
2 hours ago
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Oh, I see that there's two TFAs. The one in the description has the video, but this main one doesn't - http://www.jerrysmap.com/the-map
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tarvaina
2 hours ago
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The main linked article actually does not have that video; the article linked from in the description does have it. Not surprising that someone missed it.
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Tepix
2 hours ago
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For me it doesn't. Perhaps it's a cookie setting? Anyway, lovely video.
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rode1974
43 minutes ago
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The card deck procedure is the most interesting part to me. It makes the map feel less like a drawing and more like a system Jerry is observing over decades. Maybe i need to follow his rules for a map of my own.
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paperterminal
18 minutes ago
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The rules make it feel oddly real
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dhosek
2 hours ago
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I used to do things like this when I was a kid (less extreme, never more than a single sheet of paper), where I would create some natural features: a lake shore or river, maybe a freeway or two or a railroad and then start platting out a subdivision in the open spaces. It was a delightfully meditative practice and maybe I should start doing it again.
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FarmerPotato
42 minutes ago
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Whoa.

In my grade school years, I made many maps of my imaginary world. By high school, I was putting them into my computer, one 16x16 grid at a time. Had to make sure the edges matched up. Then I wrote code to print them on the Epson MX-80 dot matrix. The poster-board I tiled them on was still in the basement, though many of the squares were falling off.

It was easier after I coded a moving 64x64 buffer.

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macintux
1 hour ago
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Reminds me a bit of the truck driver who's been building a scale model of NYC for 20 years. That crossed HN 3 months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657268

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wxw
1 hour ago
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> The entire process is driven by instructions on a card drawn from a special deck created by the artist.

I like this. I like that his system pushes the creative process forward without relinquishing the actual creative part of it (making the map tile).

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mdtrooper
2 hours ago
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I know Jerry Map (I hope that someday will be a exposition in Spain) because I love it, I love the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art. The people who maybe mad and they built a world with own rules.

I remember the book of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress or Cataclysm DDA .

And weird games as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic .

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drivers99
1 hour ago
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It's a weird coincidence to me I just remembered Henry Darger again today, within the last hour actually. I had watched "In the Realms of the Unreal" (2004 documentary) in the theater when it came out. (I know it's only a coincidence because it's something I'm interested in thinking about, but it feels meaningful anyway.)
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wanderer2323
4 hours ago
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The most Borgesian thing to ever be posted on HN.
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oniony
1 hour ago
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Reminds me of _Journeys Into the Outside_ by Jarvis Cocker.

And that reminds me of the time when I saw him in passing in a corridor at King's Cross Thameslink and my hand was halfway up into a wave before I realised that he wouldn't know who am.

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klondike_klive
38 minutes ago
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I had the same experience when I ran into him at a bar backstage at a Blur gig in the mid 90s. My dad was friends with his dad in 1960s Sheffield, but since the bloke walked out on his family when Jarvis was 7, it wouldn't have been much of a conversation starter.
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jihadjihad
4 hours ago
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From the first sentence and image on jerrysmap.com I seriously thought it was Jerry Garcia's doing for a second.
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vannfreed
4 hours ago
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Looks like the OG fortnite map to me
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ralusek
56 minutes ago
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My favorite part about this/what blows my mind is that his system has him editing singular tiles at any given time. He seemingly only gets to see what it actually looks like at intervals like 15 years apart. There are probably entire epochs of his system that he'll never actually see laid out because they've since been overridden.
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spencerflem
4 hours ago
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People Make Games just did a terrific documentary on this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8N7B9b0GQ&pp=0gcJCUECo7VqN5t...
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lanerobertlane
3 hours ago
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It's literally at the top of the post.
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randallsquared
3 hours ago
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Well, in the secondary link, at least.
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spencerflem
2 hours ago
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I didn’t notice there was a secondary link, sorry. For everyone else, consider this comment a recommendation to click through and watch it then :)
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deadbabe
1 hour ago
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In high school I remember entertaining myself in class by using grid paper to draw little tile based maps. It’s like playing Minecraft by hand. I imagine the concept is lost to a lot of Gen Z or Gen Alpha by now. Too much imagination required.
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RobKohr
4 hours ago
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It would make an interesting map generation algorithm that could feed the card data and specified map tiles into an image gen AI system that would have to take the map tiles and try to follow the rules.
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dabinat
3 hours ago
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As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more how bad instant gratification is. There’s value and mental health benefits in doing things that are slow and take time and effort.
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latexr
3 hours ago
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As I was coming back to the thread, I was dreading someone might be making this submission about AI. I miss HN from before it became AIN and other types of intellectual curiosity were drained out.

What’s marvellous about this work is the antithesis of AI and computers, the artist and the process are what’s fascinating about it. Generative map and art programs are a dime a dozen. Those have value in their own way, but it’s different from this. There’s no need to conflate the two, most things do not need or benefit from AI.

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otto-riz
56 minutes ago
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Despite the negative reactions, I think this demonstrates how "make up some rules and follow them" is no longer intrinsically valuable. Likewise with coffee table books with a strong visual theme like, I dunno, cats wearing different hats. I can do that myself now.

For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.

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brm
4 hours ago
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Can't feed Jerry to the ai though
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foobarian
4 hours ago
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If he's been blogging as long as it says, he's already part of the collective
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criddell
3 hours ago
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When articles like this are published along with photos and videos, in a way it is feeding Jerry to the AI.
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dmd
3 hours ago
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Does every single thing need to be about AI? Really?
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NBJack
3 hours ago
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I mean, to be fair, some "super resolution" solutions for image generation do subdivide things into tiles to be re-done at a higher fidelity.
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