[1]: https://md.midori-japan.co.jp/en/products/mdnote-cotton/
[2]: https://gonorthbooks.com/
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Note-Tomoe-River-Journal/dp/B073...
Stalogy has thin paper with minimal bleed, enabling small notebooks with more pages for writing and reference.
I'm locked into Moleskine, though: I started using them around 20 years ago, when there wasn't so much competition in the market (or at least not where I lived) and also their paper was better than now. And now I have a long row of them in a shelf, which keeps slowly growing. And they are slightly smaller than other brands (Moleskine pocket notebooks are 90 x 140 mm, Leuchtturm 90 x 150, Rhodia 95 x 140, Stalogy I've never used but from Google search it seems to be 105 x 148). So if I switched brand, the new ones would stick out like a sore thumb.
If anyone knows a brand with better paper but the same size as Moleskine pocket notebooks, I would be grateful.
I guess us Europeans can't even make paper anymore... I hope one day it'll be widely obvious to everyone that the true architects of our impoverishment are these CEOs who organized the offshoring of all our supply chain. But in the mean time we'll probably keep on blaming migrants for a while.
1) A class of people (here it is “the CEOs”) consistently behaving a certain way over time can only be explained by one of two things: a conspiracy (unstable; almost impossible to pull off), or their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them
2) if CEOs consistently offshore manufacturing over decades, this must be because it’s most profitable to do so. This must then be because people elsewhere can make more widgets per dollar / euro of wages, or we’re back to conspiracy theories
3) If workers elsewhere can make widgets cheaper, it’s either because they’re further along in industrializing and have more automation (not the case here) or because they do more work for less money. The blame here is not with the CEO’s, and indeed not with the rich workers either, because they’ve evolved past that point
4) The rich workers should now switch to working at a higher level of abstraction - knowledge work. This way low-wage work gets offshored or automated or ideally both, consumer prices stay low, and wages go up.
If you failed at step 4, that’s because it’s really hard.
Adapting to the post-industrial paradigm is easier with a young population and a culture that celebrates change, neither of which is common or easy to maintain.
“The CEOs” and “the politicians” are not to blame if the entire system isn’t working.
Yes they are. The CEOs and the boards are choosing to focus on maximizing short term profit over the wellbeing of the people in the countries they operate. That's a choice.
And the politicians are directly responsible for setting up the rules under which such systems develop. That they allow companies to offshore to other countries and pay the people there much lower wages than the employees they fired is a choice. That they let them pollute in other countries in order to not pay for it is a choice, see the EU's border adjustment for the carbon pricing.
The public wanted cheap imported products, and so now that's what we have.
The exception to "people don't want cheaper" is new technology that is conforming production to economies of scale rather than artisan batches as it matures and understanding of production grows. People wanted the prices of 3D printers to come down, and they did as the technology matured. Same with lithium-ion batteries, carbon fiber sheeting, LEDs, and wireless digital transmissions. But for mature technology like a mechanical pencil? No. The price of something like a mechanical pencil was already low enough that reducing the cost further is a detriment to the economy and is not noticed by the end customer. Diminishing returns kick in very very early for the end customer.
For the workers the reduced cost of production to the point of affordability is a boon, as it means more people buy the product, necessitating increased production and thus the increased size of other industries to feed production and an increase in the number of employees. Yet within recent decades the increased profits never go to the employees or taxes. The viewpoint of the executives goes directly against that, since their job isn't to allocate or use the income, only accrue more of it.
There's a balancing act to stay around the limit of "affordable" without being "cheap." Modern first world countries began shifting into services economies in the 1990s because we severely screwed that balance up starting in the late 1970s. The inflation that we've experienced since 1978 is the very aggressive symptom of failing to maintain that balance.
People vote against their own interests all the time, all you need is a little propaganda.
But the EV tariff thing is another instance of people voting for their interests, even if the result is the opposite:
US conservatives are a) concerned about Chinese influence and b) rightly or wrongly think tariffs are the least bad form of tax, and at the same time on the left there are very numerous car union members who vote as a bloc and want to protect their jobs. So the easy answer for the politicians - in this case - is to levy tariffs.
But it's all driven by the people and the way they vote and buy.
Yes, e.g. public policy.
See tariffs and subsequent relocation of some manufacturing from China to SE Asia. Or export controls on ASML and other technology.
2) True, but maximizing short-term profit for a company doesn't necessarily imply maximizing long-term profit for society as a whole.
3) Ditto.
4) Is just an opinion, it's far from proven that abandoning physical goods manufacturing can work for every country.
Societies that adapt themselves to this prosper mightily.
It's not just step 4 that failed. Most of the companies I was referring to went bankrupt in the past 30 years or are now empty brands belonging to foreign corps. Their leaders were either delusional to think they could compete on design only, or they didn't care about long term consequences. In all cases they put themselves in a position of not being able to lobby politicians for moves against imported goods.
Not everyone was this shortsighted though, and the ones who resisted the calls for offshoring and survived until now are finally reaping the benefits of their decision.
Rhodia paper is made by the same people but has less clay coating, so these problems are a bit less. Still, neither takes pencil well, so I would just use ballpoint or a drier gel on either.
Has anyone made the switch from digital to physical and loved it? What kind of notes are you taking, how did you get it to stick?
Journal entries, charts, sketches, lists, schedules, goals, code, math, mind maps, outlines, itineraries
- I became frustrated with digital sketching. Too clumsy.
- I wanted to be creative and flesh out ideas without being next to a computer.
- I found a comfy brand of notebook I enjoy using. In the past, notetaking never stuck with me because I didn't like the notebooks.
One cold winter day, as I was typing out a rough design for a major project, I decided it was just too tedious to work that way. My hands were cold, typing hurt, and my fingers couldn’t keep up with my head. I was trying to track all sorts of interdependent services in my head.
I got up, grabbed a notebook and pen from the shelves, and walked to the checkout counter. Coincidentally, both were Moleskine-branded, but to this day, I know nothing about the company. All I know is that it was far less frustrating to scribble crude diagrams on paper than it was to type them up.
Once I got everything down on paper, I still had to type it all. The scribbles were barely legible to me, let alone the other people on my team.
Pen and paper didn’t replace digital; rather, they augmented it.
Analog and digital are complementary.
A good deal of my technical notes are write-only anyway. Slowing down and jotting things once gave me all the understanding I've ever needed. This is less likely to happen with copy/paste.
I think paper exercises your brain, while these fancy programs attempt to replace it.
You can have both.
My wife uses a smart pen that tracks her writing in her notebooks and creates searchable PDFs.
Every couple of months she unloads it via Bluetooth into iCloud and the pages are available everywhere she is.
She recently turned off the pen's built-in OCR after she found that macOS does a much better job of automatically OCRing the pages just by dropping the PDFs into the file system.
Checking Amazon just now shows that Moleskin has one of its own. But I don't know if that's hers.
https://us-shop.lamy.com/en_us/ncode-technology
I didn’t even know they were still around until recently. I always had Lamy fountain pens as a school kid, many, many years ago.
Nevertheless, I’ve found it incredibly useful to carry a pocket notebook still. Moleskine for a while, but the paper kind of sucks. These days I pick up anything with a sewn binding and hope I get lucky. But anyway, a big reason is social. People react much better when you grab a notebook and start writing than they do if you pull out your phone. One says, “your words are very important to me,” the other says, “I’m ignoring you.”
A notebook’s pages physically accumulate as they’re written on. It forces me to acknowledge them. If I need to write something new and must skip ten sheets before I find a blank one (I rip out and throw away pages as they’re done), it means there’s a fair amount of unrealised stuff that I haven’t gotten to. Time to reevaluate: read what’s in there and decide what still needs to be in there and what realistically has passed its expiration date of relevance/excitement/importance and should be trimmed.
I like to doodle and draw alongside note-taking and there's no substitute for analog there IMO. Plus, being able to write and not be on a device after a long day at work is a relief.
Lack of search can be an issue. But then I sometimes create indexes to things like book notes or stuff I'm learning and that is a pleasure in itself.
Also pairs well with a fountain pen & ink hobby.
Paper and physical notebooks offer motor memory and time delay before data ingestion by cloud analytics.
It's great at producing something that sounds a lot like what I might have written, but I can't trust anything that it says, because it frequently hallucinates numbers, dates, people's names—the exact kind of thing that I take notes to have a good record of.
So I've given up and only use paper now.
They're also much more practical for ideating than a Leuchtturm because they are perforated for tearing off. With a Leuchtturm there is a hesitation to write because you don't want to waste paper or mess up a nice notebook, but the Mnemosyne there is no such hesitation (even though it's nice paper).
https://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Mnemosyne-N105-Notebook-A5-D...
Also, although I've been a fountain pen enthusiast for years (LAMY, TWSBI, Pilot), I find I can get the same quality of writing from a inky rolling ball pen like the Pilot Precise V5 RT. They're much cheaper and easier to carry around than a fountain pen.
https://www.target.com/p/pilot-3ct-precise-v5-rolling-ball-p...
It’s astonishing how much these branded notebooks cost. They must have great margins, not just Moleskine as described in the article.
Question: how can I find a printer to make my own? I run a small business making staff paper notebooks. I want to make lay flat, thread + tape bound ones. How can I find a printer that can help me replicate? (I also want to launch a line of cheap mead-like notebooks, but similarly have trouble figuring out how to get those done.) most places will do spiral, wire-o, or saddle stitch with essentially copy paper but I’d like to be able to make these more specialized items.
My email is in my profile.
(Also not entirely altruistic as I struggle to find notebooks I love, and frequently revert back to legal pads which just don’t work quite the same).
I’d paused it for the past couple of years but am bringing it back! Just scratching my own itch.
I'm not going to claim to be above such marketing tactics: I'm definitely not. But Moleskine's claim to sell authentic Parisian notebooks used by struggling authors is such obvious bullshit.
It reminds me of the 'Original Australian Ugg Boot Company', which is an American business that tried to trademark the name of a generic product made by countless Australian businesses from offcuts of sheepskin. Just as everyone in the southern half of Australia has a pair of Ugg boots (but only Bogans will wear them in public), so those famous authors used moleskine notebooks: they're not good quality products; they're just ubiquitous and cheap.
Rhodia pricing is also really good!
I give them out. I have far too many moleskine's yet I still buy one every time I'm in a store with them... I just can't stand seeing someone using a crap notebook. So when someone I like comes into my office and they're using some free shit they got as swag from salesforce or w/e, I give them a moleskine and a F-701.
"from my own observations because I'm an expert in moleskins and I can tell you exactly why the paper quality has drastically diminished from what it used to be, here is the technique change"
or
"eh, I used a notepad once so I know what I'm talking about"
Because I'm quite sure I know a lot about moleskine, and I'm quite sure you are totally incorrect, a classic is 70gsm, there is no way it wouldn't reject a fp or gel.
Oh yeah, and as a note, I looked at your HN comment history, you might consider a once over of the guidelines, especially: "Please don't post shallow dismissals".
"Are Moleskines fountain pen friendly? No. The paper quality is low in general, and fountain pen users will experience ghosting and bleedthrough that prevent you using both sides of the paper, and even some feathering on the front side. There are far better options available, and at a cheaper price."
[1] https://theanalogpastor.com/are-moleskines-fountain-pen-frie...
I love that the right hand side of any opening is lined for free form writing. And the thing is small enough to fit in your pocket.
Absolute game changer, I think I'm up to my fourth year in a row now.
Other than that I have used lechturm1917, I really like the numbered pages, but I find it difficult to get in any local bookstore.
Having the pocket diary has changed the way I do notes, so I'm finding I need it less and less.
I'm using a pilot juice-it-up four coloured pen 0.4mm ATM and love it to bits, but the ink runs out way too fast. It would be lovely if someone made a pen that has such vivid colours end flows well without quickly emptying the tank
I tend to grab a new book pretty commercial project, so those books didn't always get filled before I'm done with them.
I also go through a series for sketching. I wish I could find something the same size that was good for water color though.
The price in these things seems a lot to me. But I also spent money on a Remarkable (which is nice too).
I write with a Lamy Al-Star EF nib and use take-sume black ink from Pilot; Leuchtturm doesn't bleed at all; doesn't feather either. Moleskine doesn't work nearly as well for fountain pens—too much feathering.
For work I ended at Maruman Mnemosyne and I'm always happy with them. It's a Japanese brand with great paper, nice ergonomics of easily fitting a pen in their spire and plenty of combinations of size and grid pattern.
(The hope is that whenever I am actually locked out of my accounts and need to find a scratch code in panic, that red notebook is gonna catch my eye faster than any other colour.)
I use Clairfontaine notebooks, way better.
There doesn't seem to be anything in the article to suggest that these particular notebooks are anything other than fashion accessories and Veblen goods, certainly nothing to suggest any kind of conquering of the "Digital Era".
This is very relatable:
> buys a fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store? We have no idea what they do with them
I have known people who keep (as they almost always do not use those) Molsekine notebooks just to keep it. They would drag one around meeting to meeting, keep it on their office desks, or in their home and wouldn't fail to talk about it when a chance arises.
I did buy one years ago and it was such a waste of money. It was fit for none of ball, gel, or fountain pens. Their seams are very fragile and ugly - I can see thread peering out and holes stretched already. I tried their even costlier models and no improvement.
The best notebooks I have used over journalising and note taking since mid-late 1990s (when I was a kid) are:
- A few bought in Venice (apparently a very very old family owned store) - I forget the name.
- A local Indian brand Brahma Books which was sold out to a bigger brand and of course stopped making good notebooks
- A notebook my friend brought me from a Walmart or Costco when he returned from USA (he knew I loved writing on paper and he picked one from shelf which was not at all costly). I asked him and he said it was the store brand and not some other brand and cost few dollars iirc.
Any Moleskine I have seen or touched, or the one I used, doesn't even come close to quality of these. I think purchasing and keeping Moleskine in itself is the bobby and the experience. Maybe.
The only thing I don't like about it is the STUPID lettering on the cover. Just give me a plain, blank cover! They keep doing seasonal ranges with reasonably acceptable covers, but the pages aren't numbered, which, you know, I shouldn't complain about for 5 EUR, but it's just so nearly perfect...
https://flyingtiger.com/en-hu/products/bullet-planner-a5-302...