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Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

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Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#31

Post by FredPret »

sgu999 wrote: post #21
walterbell wrote: post #3

> From 2005, Leuchtturm.. took on Moleskine, matching them for quality.. older companies like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, and Paperblanks refreshed their offerings. Western hipsters, always alert to high-end Japanese design, started to import notebooks from companies like Midori, Hobonichi, and Stalogy, which bested any of the European brands with their exquisite papers and bindings (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mai…

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) 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.

That cannot be true:

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.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#32

Post by walterbell »

FredPret wrote: post #31
sgu999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) 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.

That cannot be true: 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 elsewhe…

> their behavior is shaped by the reality facing them

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.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#33

Post by walterbell »

austinl wrote: post #30

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere. 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…

They are not mutually exclusive, in the era of ubiquitous cameras and handwriting recognition.

Paper and physical notebooks offer motor memory and time delay before data ingestion by cloud analytics.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#35

Post by _aavaa_ »

FredPret wrote: post #31
sgu999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) 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.

That cannot be true: 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 elsewhe…

> “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.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#36

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

FredPret wrote: post #31
sgu999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper) 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.

That cannot be true: 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 elsewhe…

1) True.

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.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#37

Post by gk1 »

austinl wrote: post #30

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere. 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…

For me the benefit is avoiding distractions while writing. I can’t cmd+f to search my notes but I also can’t cmd+tab to switch to my email tab.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#38

Post by reaperducer »

austinl wrote: post #30

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere. 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…

I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere.

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.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#39

Post by memset »

sgu999 wrote: post #26
memset wrote: post #12

Fascinating! I myself am partial to the Muji lay flat notebooks. 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 spi…

Mind sharing more about your business? How did you end up doing that? Are you competitive at all on prices or are you mostly benefit from the fact that it's a local product for your niche market?

themusiciansnotebook.com

I’d paused it for the past couple of years but am bringing it back! Just scratching my own itch.

Re: Business Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era

#40

Post by siquick »

reaperducer wrote: post #38
austinl wrote: post #30

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere. 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…

I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere. 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 automatic…

What’s the name of this pen? Sounds incredibly useful
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