Musings on tools for thought

Posted by satis
May 12, 2022 at 12:22 AM

Daly de Gagne wrote:
> Satis, I’m aware of Nathan Tardif’s politics, about which you and I
>would agree. However, I confess that I use Noodler’s inks, primarily the
>ones which are waterproof/eternal. Much as I love fountain pens, I am
>paranoid about damaging/losing notes due to water damage

I don’t know what colors you tend to use but for permanent black ink I enthusiastically recommend Platinum Carbon Black. It’s my primary black ink, permanent, and is not hard to clean out of my pens. At $25 for 60ml it’s not cheap but to me it’s about the best permanent black out there. YouTube’s AnInkGuy just reviewed it recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh9Bm_JpMU4

For a permanent dark-grey/black consider Monteverde Documental Black (they also make a Documental Blue). For other colors you might want to look at Platinum’s fairly recent line of Iron Gall inks, which are water resistant but not as permanent as the Carbon or Documental inks. I recently tried Platinum Cassis Black, which is actually a nice unsaturated Burgundy (which I successfully used for margin notes), and it worked well with the steel nib pen I put it in, and with my usual Rhodia and Kokuyo notepads. Nice overview here:

https://mountainofink.com/blog/platinum-cassis-black

FYI I just visited Reddit’s fountain pen forum and was shocked to learn that Tardif just put his foot in it again, this time raising such a row among our little community that he had to apologize for ink labels which put horns on Jewish people on his in bottles, like this one for Bernake Red!

https://i.redd.it/rkz509kffjy81.jpg

Seems he’d also made another ink whose label featured former Federal Reserve Chairs Volcker, Bernanke, and Greenspan, placing a halo over Volcker’s Christian head and horns on the other two Jewish men.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the antisemitic nature of the ‘horns of Moses’:

https://www.commentary.org/articles/norman-cohn/the-horns-of-mosesold-symbols-and-new-meanings/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42944790

I’d long ago given up on considering purchasing Noodlers so I hadn’t paid any attention to this until today. But apparently community displeasure had been brewing for months and Tardif made a public apology only after Brian Goulet announced earlier today that he’s “halted” sales of the 100+ Noodlers products he sells. (Given their personal and professional dealings I lamentably expect sales to resume once all ink bottles get relabeled.)