what is cat-v.org? (Obviously I visited that link, read the about page - I'm asking for your summary. it's still not clear to me after my initial visit.)

I'm sure there are better people to answer this question, but cat-v.org is the personal blog & collection of interesting stuff by former plan9 personality uriel (sadly no longer with us). It hosts random thoughts and lots of interesting stuff (including man pages) about plan9 and early unix systems, and miscellaneous other unix trivia.

It really is a treasure. Take the time to browse, it's well worth it if you're somewhat interested in unix history and not overly familiar with the subject already.

Thank you, I found your summary helpful and yes I will look through it.

Nostalgic Unix nerds hating on everything that (i) was not in original Unix, or (ii) in Plan9, or (iii) not implemented by authors of these.

Cynical and disingenuous.

Bitterly invidious Lisp nerd?

(They give off rays or something ... took a cursory look to see if I was being unfair, and booom - https://www.gkayaalp.com/blog/20170206_emacs-argument.html )

Yeah that's me :) At least the second part, because with Emacs I don't really need to be invidious.

TBH I do actually like Unix and Plan9, but having read a big part of cat-v website in the past, most of the views there are fanatical, and are more bitter, cynical and disingenuous than I can ever force myself to be. Especially the way incredibly useful and important OSS projects are denigrated and misrepresented is really annoying (see the harmful stuff section, for example).

Well, I apologize and withdraw the 'bitterly invidious', you aren't.

One part is a matter of taste, and having been around both styles, I like better the 'keep it simple' approach. Too many functions/options overload my simple brain ;-)