As we round the corner into autumn in the northern hemisphere, the air is a little crisper, the days are shorter, and the leaves are changing... and looking for some new inks to try out. Do you have favorite inks for the season?

I occasionally have to read & critique manuscripts for work and I find it much easier to do with a printed page. But the computer paper that we have in the office is not ideal for fountain pens - tons of bleeding and feathering.

Does anybody have experience with computer printer paper that is relatively FP friendly?

I thought I might keep a ream or two at my desk and swap out some sheets when I'm about to print something that I'll be writing on. (Something relatively budget friendly would be great too... Not planning on putting Tomoe River through the office printer!)

That 2023 line does not look ideal...

Source: The Economist

Each point represents a five day moving average. The x-axis is in terms of historical standard deviations, i.e each day is compared to the standard deviation of historical values for that year. So we are at -6 SD from the historical average for this point in time.

Other excellent visualizations are in the article!

I was riding with a Wing Sung 3009 today (a pretty nice, super cheap piston filler BTW) when I noticed this gunk on the inside of the cap. I'm pretty sure that I filled the pen up with Noodler's Air Corps Blue/Black a few months ago and then let the pen sit. It wrote pretty much right away.

But I noticed this brownish / tan / black residue on the inside of a cap, at the very bottom. I'm not sure if it was there before and I just didn't notice, or if it is new. It almost looks like burned plastic? Or maybe it's mold? But it seems like a weird place for mold to develop since there's no ink there. Has anybody seen anything like this before? I'm probably going to throw the pen away anyway (it's about $3.50) but was curious 🧐.

New pen came today: a Jinhao 82. This is Jinhao's "homage" to the Sailor Pro Gear Slim, released late 2022 I think. I got a medium nib, transparent blue body. Takes a #5 nib, available in EF, F, and M.

Overall the pen seems great. Inked it up with Waterman Mysterious Blue and it writes like a treat. Very smooth nib (I don't have a PGS but they have a reputation for having a good amount of feedback; there is none of that with this nib).

The slight translucency and rich dark blue body combine nicely with the gold trim to make this a really attractive pen. I like slightly smaller pens, and got this one to see if I might like the size of a PGS at some point - this is a great fit for me.

Converter included. There's also an O ring - wondering if this might be amenable to eyedroppering?

For $9 this pen is a terrific deal, and it comes in a ton of different color options. This is definitely going to be in my heavy rotation!

From Propublica: the Repatriation Project

In 1990, Congress passed a law recognizing the unequal treatment of Native American remains and set up a process for tribes to request their return from museums and other institutions that had them. The law, known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA, sought to address this human rights issue by giving Indigenous peoples a way to reclaim their dead.

But 33 years after the law’s passage, about half of the remains of more than 210,000 Native Americans have yet to be returned. Tribes have struggled to reclaim them in part because of a lack of federal funding for repatriation and because institutions face little to no consequences for violating the law or dragging their feet.

This database allows you to search for information on the roughly 600 federally funded institutions that reported having such remains to the Department of the Interior. While the data is self-reported, it is a starting point for understanding the damage done by generations of Americans who stole, collected and displayed the remains and possessions of the continent’s Indigenous peoples — and the work done by tribes and institutions to repatriate those Native ancestors since.

The flapjack boss of the Bronx faces off against a coalition of archeologists and revolutionary war buffs over a patch of land in upstate New York.

Domenic Broccoli, the IHOP kingpin of the Bronx, lives a good life. He drives a nice car, spends time with his six grandkids, and golfs often enough to have a tan for most of the year. He owns a four-bedroom home in Pelham Manor, a house upstate, and IHOPs throughout the borough where he grew up, each of which runs smoothly enough to give Broccoli the time and resources to devote himself, at the age of 66, to the animating force in his life: destroying his enemies. This mission came as a surprise to Broccoli, who had little reason to expect that trying to expand his pancake empire into upstate New York — and to build his grandest IHOP yet — would lead to such conflict. But sometimes that’s what happens when you find a dead body.

I tend to gravitate to cheaper pens including a lot of Chinese-manufactured versions of more famous pens (clones / knockoffs), and thought it might be interesting to post some of them?

This one is one of my favorites: the Wing Sung 601. This pen comes in a variety of different plastic-body colors, which are also great - I have a burgundy version of this pen which works beautifully. The style and hooded nib are clearly an "homage" (read:clone) to the Parker 51. The history between Parker and Wing Sung is interesting and complex, and has been described in detail elsewhere with respect to Hero (which owns Wing Sung.

There is a great review of this pen at The Gentleman Stationer. The version that I have is a "Flighter" all steel body (around $25 on eBay, a bit more expensive than the plastic body version but not by too much).

The pen's big highlight is the vacumatic filling system, which works beautifully. The body of the pen acts as the reservoir allowing it to hold a ton of ink for a pen this small. I find that the pen writes very well and is tremendously reliable - never a hard start, and the construction of the pen and hooded nib have meant that there are no problems whatsoever with drying out. I've picked this pen up after a few months of no use and it writes immediately. The steel body adds a little heft, which I like, and the pen is extremely durable. The hooded nib also makes for a good "stealth FP" experience, if you're in a setting where you don't want to draw too much attention to the pen.

All in all, it's a great pickup for not a huge amount of cash, and has found it's way into heavy rotation for me.

Inspired by this Hunter S Thompson classic posted by @Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works, what articles do you consider to be "Longreads Classics"?

A few of my favorites:

• Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold", Esquire (1966). The article that has spawned a whole host of long reads about the article, as well as an episode of This American Life
• David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster", Gourmet (1994) and "Roger Federer as Religious Experience", New York Times (2006)
• Ron Rosenbaum, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box", Esquire (1971)
• John Krakauer, "Death of an Innocent", Outside (1993), and "Into Thin Air", Outside (1996)
• Sheri Fink, "The Deadly Choices at Memorial", Propublica (2009)

Just a small sample to get a conversation started. What are your all-time classics / faves?

Also, Kevin Kelly's list is great! https://kk.org/cooltools/best-magazine-articles-ever/

Hi all, I picked up a Parker 45 at an antiques store last year and wondering if anybody has ideas about the era / any other distinguishing features.

I am guessing it's pre-1970s because it has the inverted conical clip screw: image. It's unclear to me, though, if they made these sorts of steel cap / gold clip / plastic body hybrids (e.g. as a variant of the 45 Classic), or if I bought a franken45 with a flighter cap.

In any case, I don't really care because the pen works great! Medium nib, smooth as butter, and I like how it looks. But this is my first vintage pen foray and I'd be interested to know more about it's history!

More images here if helpful (edit:figured out how to get them to display in line!)

With the end of Reddit third party apps, I'm looking for ways to fill the r/fountainpens void. (And this community is a great start!)

I use Feedly as an aggregator and am looking for some fountain pen blogs to follow. So far, I've got:

• Mountain of Ink
• Goulet Pens Blog
• Pen Addict
• The Well Appointed Desk

Other recommendations? Thanks!