Luigi Mozzillo on mzll

The Gratitude Subscriptions, February 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In February, my gratitude subscription was expressed with a donation ($10) to Johan Sanneblad, lead developer of Notebook Navigator.

Notebook Navigator is an excellent plugin from Obsidian that made me fall in love with Obsidian all over again.

I wrote that Bear was definitive, and in fact he was for a long time. This was primarily for two reasons: because it’s beautiful to use, and because its nested tag system, rather than folders, has always made managing my notes faster, quicker, and more personalized.

Notebook Navigator, among many other things, allows you to manage notes with nested tags, add icons to them, change their colors, add a calendar and customize many other aspects of the daily use of the application and its two-panel interface that, not like Bear but almost, I would even lick Obsidian, right now.

I’ve replaced many plugins with this one, reducing the complexity of my vault. And it’s fast. Both the plugin itself is fast, and Johan’s development is incredibly fast. It has many features, and releases are consistent and rapid. It was one of the most downloaded plugins of 2025, and it deserves my full compliments. It’s also worth a try if you use Obsidian. But even if you don’t.

In short, thanks to Notebook Navigator, I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of using Obsidian again (though I no longer sync it to iCloud) and have significantly reduced its complexity.

All my gratitude to you, Johan.

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7HE INB0X

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In my professional experience, I’ve often dealt with corporate communication. Many users don’t know what an email is, don’t know how to write, don’t know how to reply, or – even worse – sometimes don’t even realize they need to reply. The inability to communicate within an organization, both internally and, above all, externally, is a hurdle that absolutely must be overcome.

Over time, I’ve gathered a lot of tips and rules that I’ve jotted down in documents and training presentations. I frequently find myself having to go back over them because, unfortunately, there’s always someone who has no clue what the skill of “managing email properly” actually means.

So, over the last few weeks, I’ve decided to organize everything I’ve gathered and, as I rewrite it, I’m posting it on a new blog.

It’s called The Inbox, it’s spelled 7HE INB0X, and it’s at https://inb0x.it.

It’s in Italian, and I haven’t planned an English version yet. I’m still thinking about it.

These are short, blunt, direct posts, with no frills or flourishes – a bit harsh, a bit philosophical, and not very practical. A minimalist blog: minimal in concept, aesthetics, and content. The goal is to manage to write at least a hundred of them and gather a whole series of topics, tips, and common practices for using email (in general), along with small insights on personal productivity, to eventually produce a small publication.

The nerdiest thing about this whole story is that it’s built with Astro, a static site framework that uses the same logic as Hugo but offers way more possibilities and customization. My blogs are built with the latter, so this was the perfect chance to try it out – I’d been stalking it for quite a while – and learn something new. And I’m glad I did.

That’s all, I hope you like it.

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G pleasure

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 01:22:23 +0100

One thing about AI is that I use it. I use it for work, but also for personal stuff¹. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I also wrote about it here (in Italian): I don’t remember how to do some things that I now do with a calculator, and sooner or later I’ll probably forget how to do things that I now do with an LLM. All in all, it’s not a big deal. The serious thing is that I had distanced myself from Google.

By paying for a more beefed-up version of Google One to also get Gemini, I went back to using the services included in the subscription and, as a result, fell head over heels back into the arms of Big G. Something I didn’t expect to happen.

My privacy is probably suffering as a result, and I’m disappointed about that. But it’s fucking awesome to use web services that work so well.

I apologize. I promise I’ll think about it again.

I use Google Gemini APIs to summarize or translate content from feeds, for example, but also to build AI-powered automations, or to help me improve the aesthetics of this or other blogs. ↩︎

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The Gratitude Subscriptions, Jenuary 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

Over the past two years, I’ve started this my virtual subscription to projects for which I express deep gratitude. Projects related to applications I use, or blogs I follow, or podcasts I listen to, and so on. I wrote about them for 2024 and 2025.

This year too I decided to continue with this habit, but unlike other years I decided to write about it (more or less) monthly, so as to be able to dedicate more space to individual projects.

Let’s start in January, albeit a bit late. And in January, I donated my monthly subscription (€10) to Alexandre Alapetite, aka Alkarex on GitHub. Alexandre is the lead developer of freshRSS, which I’ve already written about extensively and which I’m hosting on my self-hosted server.

For those who don’t know it yet and don’t want to click around the blog, FreshRSS is a simple, lightweight, open-source RSS feed aggregator designed to give you full control over your news sources. It offers a fast, customizable interface. I use it to keep my feeds in a private, secure location.

I use it on a client and not directly on the web. Today on SmartRSS, before that on Unread and before that on Reeder Classic. I use it and it always works. Always.

I use it because it makes me feel less tracked, and I feel like I’m protecting one of the most important things I have: the carefully curated, decades-long selection of my information sources.

All my gratitude to you, Alexandre.

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We're always talking about blogs, anyway

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

With a toot¹ on Mastodon in which he appreciated this post, my dear friend Nicola made me think about how little I put into promoting my professional blog on these shores.

Lately – due to a work context that, at this stage of my life, I still consider unstable – I’ve been updating it more frequently than in the past. The blog’s content is mostly related to the governance of a company’s IT, managing a team, data and processes, the use of AI in the office, software development, and so on. It’s an Italian-only blog whose very marketing-oriented content, in some ways, was previously on this one².

In short, this is an opportunity to revisit it and, equally, to evaluate whether to share – and translate – that content on this blog, or just keep it there. For now, using an online translator may be sufficient.

If you like them, I’ll publish them. Let me know.

A term that, after a few years and despite the fact that I generally appreciate the platform, now gives me a bit of hives. ↩︎
Before I differentiated “personal blogging” from “professional blogging” ↩︎

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Which are worth a lifetime

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

When my daughter gets a haircut, she comes home sad and angry because she doesn’t like it, that haircut, and then her mom washes it again and fixes it, and she looks at herself in the mirror and smiles, and then, in bed, under the warm covers, shortly after, happy, she tells me, Dad, I love my hair.

What are the things or moments that, for you, are worth a lifetime?

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Vibe self-hosting

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In a recent blog post, Jordan Fulghum noted how, through the use of AI agents via the terminal, the management of self-hosted solutions has radically changed. Today, it’s easier, faster, more convenient, and even more fun to install and configure utility, monitoring, or productivity applications.

The approach Jordan used was to directly run Claude Code on a local machine and have it perform actions to install, configure, and manage open-source software.

I too have implemented a few self-hosted solutions in the last few months, and as I already wrote here, I used LLMs to get support. Calmly, I was saying.

Frankly, I preferred not to grant direct access to the production machines¹ and managed the various tasks manually. It was very easy anyway, and it gave me the ability to manage a lot of software in a clean, fast, and economical way—and also fun, I must admit!—that would have taken me months to do before.

Unlike him, I’ve taken a different approach. Some solutions are on a local machine (a Raspberry Pi 4), others on a remote VPS². Eventually, I’ll try to list the solutions I’ve decided to host on these pages, in addition to FreshRSS, which I’ve already mentioned.

I don’t know if 2026 can realistically be considered the year of self-hosting³. For now, I can say that, if you’re willing to put in a little effort, you can integrate dozens of services, abandon some well-known ones, and bring a bit of complexity in-house. But do you want to consider the satisfaction?

On my MacBooks, however, yes. ↩︎
Hosted by Contabo, a hosting provider based in Munich, Germany, where I have been sourcing professional solutions for over ten years. ↩︎
Some say that, instead, vibe coding could be a brake on open-source. ↩︎

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Calmness

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

One thing I wanted to say, regarding my last post. I am not a pessimist, and I do not want to imagine any kind of block on artificial intelligence tools for supporting creative work or development. On the contrary, aware of my past mistakes, having experienced defeat, mortificazione and frustration in my youth, I believe these tools should be used to produce faster and, perhaps, to sell the fruits of one’s labor better. Clearly – needless to say – cleary the results of these tools must be verified, corrected, analyzed, and adjusted before being put into a stable context. Already said. I am optimistic about this, but with calmness.

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The quality shop

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

As a boy I was a freelancer for many years. I built and sold websites. I did it like a craftsman: I designed the layout with Macromedia Fireworks, refined it with lines, shadows, and reflections, and then manually converted it to HTML¹. Then I used my own CMS, built from scratch with my own PHP framework, to make it dynamic.

My work was reasonably priced, and it took me a long time to complete. My customers were satisfied. The quality of the product, even though we were talking about the early 2010s, was evident.

Over time, I met a small web agency that, more or less, sold the same product as me. They built it with Microsoft FrontPage starting from existing templates. They had no technical skills whatsoever. The work didn’t go through any design, coding, or PHP engine development process (sometimes I did it for them). The sites were mostly static; they updated them manually by uploading new pages via FTP. It was already “slop” for all intents and purposes.

To build a website this way, they took at least a fifth of the time it took me. The price was the same. The quality was extremely poor, but no client had ever noticed.

How did it end? I started collaborating closely with the agency because I worked more, producing more, on the low-end product they produced instead of creating my own from scratch.

I don’t want to be melodramatic, but it was clear: quality pays, but only when there’s no other option. If quality can be eroded to move faster and produce more economically, those willing to spend will—almost always—choose the latter option.

Today, over twenty years later, there are LLMs. Software can be produced much faster. The quality of the code? Well, it’s often mediocre without any human intervention. But the seller takes a tenth of the time to produce it. And the customer doesn’t notice the difference, especially if they pay less.

I see myself drawing a gray vector line and then a black one, trying to simulate a shadow under a menu bar. And I imagine my former colleague pressing a button and getting a similar but not identical effect, on one of the worst software programs ever. Who will notice anyway?

Commercially, he had won. Commercially, today, those who can get AI to support them in producing their own processes will win. It’s the law of the market. And unfortunately, the market rarely rewards quality.

The good products will remain on display, priced dearly, in a shop in a place kissed by the sea and frequented only in the summer.

Even for that shit Internet Explorer 6. ↩︎

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On Made in EU digital

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In an post from a few years ago recently republished on his blog, Lionel Dricot compares the “American dream” with the European one, the economic benefit that characterizes American technological production and the community and social benefit of the European one (read Linux, VLC, the Internet itself or the World Wide Web).

We often hear that Europeans don’t have, like Americans, the “success culture.” Those examples, and there are many more, prove the opposite. Europeans like success. But they often don’t consider “winning against the whole society” as one. Instead, they tend to consider success a collective endeavour. Success is when your work is recognized long after you are gone, when it benefits every citizen. Europeans dream big: they hope that their work will benefit humankind as a whole!

I’ve never identified with protectionist pro-European positions. I’ve never chosen a technology simply because it’s indigenous. I’ve chosen and use digital solutions because they work for me and because, evidently, at the time I selected them, I found them better than others.

There are many efforts to promote European digital products[^h1], and I have the utmost respect for all of them. However, no one in particular has managed to convince me to abandon a made-in-USA solution just because it is made in the USA. I am not someone who promotes European – albeit less Italian – patriotism and pride as a yardstick for my choices.

I can’t deny, however, that I’m very worried today. I’m seriously reflecting on the ownership of the companies that manage my essential data, communications, and devices.

Let me be clear: I don’t think at all that Apple, Alphabet, or Amazon will stop providing their services in Europe. But since Trump is president again, I can no longer rule it out. What if it were to happen? What if the US administration decided that for an hour, a day, or a month, US tech companies should no longer serve European citizens? We live in a historical context in which this eventuality cannot be ignored.

So, what to do?

I have no intention of abandoning the devices I use or giving up some of the services I’m used to or subscribe to for passion or work. There are some that are essential to my digital workflow, especially in my professional life. But I feel compelled to reflect. I’ll be more careful. I’ll start placing greater emphasis on the origins of the technological solutions around me. I’ll favor European alternatives if, as I’m sure they exist in some cases, they’re on par with the more well-known ones or those I’m already familiar with. I’ll look under the cup to see where it was made before making a purchase. I’ll avoid diving into a solution unless I’m first certain there’s a viable European alternative.

We will have the opportunity to reflect on this together, here on the blog too.

Do you use European solutions that you consider better or equal to American ones? Can you come up with email services, cloud services, AI (…) or software that are absolutely worthwhile? And from a professional and business management perspective, have you tested them and can you suggest anything interesting?

I know plenty of solutions, let’s be clear, and I’ve often tested them for a while. But I think the time has come to persist. And to resist.

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If this is a man

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0100

United States of America, A.D. 2026.

In addition to Jonathon Ross murdering Renee Good, the very same day they went to a high school and attempted to arrest students and staff. One day after this, 6 men with guns kicked in the door of someone’s home without a legal warrant and dragged the husband out in cuffs. He is an American citizen. Today local law enforcement in and around the Twin Cities held a press conference calling out these “agents” in breaking the law. They are now targeting and attempting to detain off-duty officers. Every single one of the officers they targeted are people of color. It is straight up racial profiling. They are smashing car windows and tear-gassing people including toddlers. People are carrying their passports and birth certificates around with them and often they are not even allowed to show these “agents” their paperwork before they are beaten and/or abducted.

I have a dear friend who passed her citizenship test 6 years ago and is now carrying her documentation with her wherever she goes. She did everything “the right way” yet she is worried. Frankly, because she doesn’t look Hispanic or African she will probably be ok. Again, I can’t believe I just typed this sentence. Our nephew’s elementary school (in a very affluent, predominantly White suburb) canceled their school’s International Night for fear it would draw Immigrant Enforcement to the school. Pete and I are witnessing field trips to the Science Museum cancel left and right because schools are afraid they will target the children.

These people are not targeting the “worst of the worst” as they claimed they would do. They are not following the law or allowing due process. Minnesota is under siege. They are now telling observers who are giving witness and recording these crimes that “they should learn a lesson or they will be next.” Currently, these “agents” outnumber our local law enforcement 4 to 1. Donald Trump and Noem have particularly targeted Minnesota even though our state falls far behind other states in the amount of undocumented workers. Everyone is on edge. No one is untouched by this chaos.

Thanks to Ben’s family for sharing this email from Minnesota.

As a European, as an Italian, as someone who carries the values of the resistance against Nazi fascism, I see traces of a recent past we thought we had forgotten. Like Jen, I ask myself the same question: what happened to empathy and humanity in the USA?

When did the American dream die?

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How to solve a problem

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I stumbled upon Vinson Guo somewhat by accident. I don’t remember exactly, but I think his app was suggested to me by Gemini or Perplexity. I don’t remember. Anyway, Vinson is a developer based in Chengdu, China. In recent months, he’s been working on publishing SmartRSS.

Vinson with his reader app has committed himself to solving intelligently, including through the use of AI, a problem that for me is a huge one, given the sheer volume of information I consume daily. Actually, more than one, in fact.

First, the translation. I read a lot of posts in foreign languages (English, mostly, but also from other parts of Europe) and every time, whether out of speed or incompetence, I found myself forced to open the browser¹ and read the translated version. Boring.

And then the summary. My feeds also include streams from newspaper sites, which I keep updated. But I don’t read everything; I couldn’t read everything. I make a significant selection. Despite everything, I like to get a general overview of interesting news items that aren’t essential to my media diet. Often, but rarely, I’d have some LLM prepare a summary for me, but it was a cumbersome and slow task. I avoided it and marked it as read.

Here, SmartRSS allows you to receive the summary or translate it directly while reading the article, without leaving the client. Furthermore, using AI², you can create other prompts based on the article content (most important points, timeline, food for thought, questions, etc.).

Two trivial problems, if you will, solved by a developer with an idea. Bravo!

Sure, the app is still a little immature in some ways, and its design is still a bit clunky³, but it works great. And it’s been my default feed reader for about a month now. I literally couldn’t live without it.

My congratulations to the developer, and best of luck. He deserves it.

As does SmartRSS. Invest in it.

Almost always Chrome, which I installed just for this purpose on my iPhone, because Google Translate’s translation remains among the best, if not the best. ↩︎
You need to enter your LMM API key. ↩︎
Don’t hate me, Vinson, but I really don’t like the cat icon! ;) ↩︎

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January 13, 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I use Umami for this site’s statistics, but I rarely read them. Well, now, to improve my visitors’ privacy, I’ve set up the service on my local server, bypassing the provider’s cloud.

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Until January 12, 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0100

This is an archived version of my Now page.

I’ve done a lot of things in the last few months. Above all, I’ve had a lot of fun setting up a server to host a series of applications and free myself from cloud services: FreshRSS, Umami, VaultWarden, LanguageTool and I’ll gradually install more.

Then, my daughter discovered that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, taking advantage of the opportunity. I published the list of my subscriptions for 2025, all the ones for which I express enormous gratitude. I criticized Apple’s default apps, and I was surprised by the intelligence of artificial intelligence.

Also:

I go to the pool at 7 a.m., and I love watching the mist skim the water;
I watched both Stranger Things (all seasons) and Wednesday with my daughter, both on Netflix;
I finished another book on personal finance, but then that’s it for a while, I swear;
I’ve watched One Battle After Another, The Addams Family (1 and 2), and Frankenstein (2025) in the last few days;
work, well, work.

I’m doing something else too, I just don’t remember it.

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Even if you're lazy

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 01:22:22 +0100

I often suffer from technical issues related to the imperfect functioning of processes, applications, or workflows I use daily, which really irritate me. These frustrations drag on for months before finding a definitive solution because, essentially, I’m lazy. I realize that with very little effort and just a modicum of goodwill, it’s easy to resolve and permanently improve the way I approach our digital world; but my laziness, in fact, trumps everything else.

For a few years, I had access to the FreshRSS instance of Devol, an Italian group of tech activists who host self-hosted solutions for free, and I connected my clients to it (Reeder Classic first, Unread later). Suddenly, however, after a server upgrade, nothing worked anymore.

I had manual monthly backups – yes, I’m picky – so it was a small problem for me to go back to using iCloud sync directly in the app. I didn’t have time to do anything else, so I left everything as is for a few months.

But I felt like I was missing something. A kind of strange precariousness. The idea that I wouldn’t be able to use non-Apple devices to access my feeds unsettled me, even though I don’t own any non-Apple devices!

So, this past weekend, in a very short time (it took me about twenty minutes), I:

installed a FreshRSS instance on my Raspberry Pi at home with Docker,
imported the latest OPML extracted from my client,
connected the client via FreshRSS.

My Raspberry Pi isn’t exposed to the internet, and I use Tilescale for private access. It wasn’t a problem; the client still connects.

As soon as I can, I’ll also implement an automatic backup system for the entire instance.

It was a small thing, but a constant annoyance. It was solved in a flash. Sometimes, damn it, it really doesn’t take much to improve your digital assets. Even if you’re lazy.

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Delete it, don't be afraid

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 01:22:22 +0100

Perhaps there is a baby bear strategy?

Archive: Anything you have a feeling might be useful

Delete: Anything you’re pretty sure would be useless in the future

Like Chris Coyier, I also archived practically all my messages with Gmail in the past. This took me in recent times to take a dive into the past like with a time machine, and it was nice too¹. But in reality it makes no sense. Purchase confirmations, flight notifications, newsletters and mailing lists, shipment tracking, reservation tickets, invoices, payment notices, etc.: I’ve been deleting everything for a few years now.

I archive in my inbox only the conversations that make sense (especially those that come from the blog²) and those that contain documents, but only until I can save them elsewhere. I temporarily keep – until read or delivered – newsletters and purchase confirmations: then I delete them; for events and trips I do the same thing, with the difference that I create a dedicated label that I remove upon return or shortly after.

My inbox is much cleaner and the delete button has definitely taken on the importance of the archive button. Always archiving is useless, it’s not healthy. Delete it, don’t be afraid.

Regarding the use of Gmail, given the persistent use of some Google services recently, I am making some partial re-evaluations. But I’ll come back to it another time. ↩︎
Write to me and you will be preserved! :) ↩︎

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The gratitude subscriptions, 2025

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 01:22:22 +0100

Last year, I decided to give back, in a small way, the amount I receive from projects, services, apps, or people through a “gratitude subscription.” Every month, a contribution of around €10 as a thank you for using it, for the information, or for existence itself¹. I repeated the experiment.

This is my donation list for 2025, with repeat donations from last year marked with an asterisk. This year, too, I hope to share what I appreciate so you can appreciate it too.

January. €10.40 to the Wikimedia Foundation for their enormous work in supporting knowledge. I don’t use it excessively, but I’m sure that many services that use it drink without restraint from their water. It’s my little contribution. My gratitude.
February. $11 (~€10.61) to Bjørn Erik Pedersen, lead developer of Hugo, the framework — that I love — with which this blog is built. I really appreciate his work. My gratitude. ✱
March. €10 to Devol, an Italian group of IT professionals. They are engaged in the development of a decentralized, private, secure, and reliable web, and are responsible for maintaining the Mastodon.uno instance, which holds my Mastodon account. I no longer use the FreshRSS service, but my appreciation for the work they did remains. My gratitude. ✱
April. €10 to Reus Salini, lead developer of the PodTube.me service, which lets you turn YouTube channels into podcasts. It became a paid service later this year, but the donation I made allowed me to use a minimal amount of the service—more than enough for my needs at the moment. My gratitude.
May. $10 (€9.25) to Alex Rodionov, lead developer of Maccy, the best clipboard manager for macOS I’ve ever used. My gratitude. ✱
June. €10 to Jordan Baird, lead developer of Ice App, powerful menu bar management tool for macOS. Frankly, I then stopped using it, mostly because I changed Macs and no longer installed it, not because of inefficiency. A very useful tool. My gratitude.
July. $11.70 (€9.95) to the Debian Project (via SPI). I don’t use Linux extensively anymore, except for a Raspberry Pi I have at home. I wanted to donate for all the joy it’s brought me over the past few years. My gratitude.
August. €10 to Francesco Tucci for his podcast Pillole Di Bit, capable of explaining complex technology briefly and in simple terms. My gratitude. ✱
September. €12 to Manuel Moreale, for his hard work spreading the pleasure to have a blog, and for his People & Blog project. My gratitude. ✱
October. €10 to the Too Big To Fail Podcast, an Italian podcast about personal finance, told with hilarious professionalism. My gratitude.
November. €10 to Cyberduck, the best FTP (and SFTP, WebDav, S3, Backblaze, Google Drive, …) client for macOS with the most beautiful icon in the entire Apple application landscape. My gratitude.
December. €10 to Leandro Facchinetti, lead developer of Kill the Newsletter!, the service that I use to read my subscribed newsletters in my RSS client. My gratitude. ✱

Thanks to all.

As with last year, some gifts are for Italians, and you’ll easily understand why. ↩︎

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Santa Truth

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 01:22:22 +0100

Yesterday we were having lunch at my parents’ house. At the end of lunch, my daughter, driven by some unknown motivation, asked her mother if Santa Claus really exists. She’s getting on in years, and we expected the question sooner or later. We hoped later rather than soon.

My partner, still surprised, replied that yes, he exists, that if she believes in him, of course he exists!, but that in reality we’ve always bought and wrapped the presents ourselves, not Santa Claus. Her eyes welled up—mine too—and she first said we’re bad, then that she loves us.

Then, turning to me, she asked: “So who answered my letters?” I cried like Ataru Moroboshi when he was hit by Lum. I wrote the letters for you, I answered her. She first slapped me, then hugged me and kissed me.

We were like that for about twenty seconds. Then she moved away a few inches and looked me in the eye: first she whispered thank you, then she asked me to buy her an iPad for Christmas.

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Mills and wind

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:22:22 +0100

Zaanse Schans is a small village where the Dutch landscape remains more or less the same as it was hundreds of years ago. Windmills, traditional clogs, chocolate, and plenty of wind. Exactly.

Camera	iPhone 15 Pro
Data	21/08/2025
Location	Zaanse Schans, Nederland

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Nothing

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 01:22:22 +0100

“Blackness” still implies something. I think death is the absence of anything at all. Just like before you were born: there’s no consciousness, no awareness, no blackness. Simply nothing.

I agree with Kev¹: after death, in my opinion, we fade away, we no longer exist. I believe our minds are incapable of imagining it, a bit like we’re incapable of not thinking. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing.

When we die, all of those elements that make you you break down and are reabsorbed into the universe. And basic physics tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So the energy that powered you is also recycled back into the cosmos.

So what happens after we die? Given enough time, the elements that formed my body and the energy that animated it will likely be used again to create new life. It won’t be me in any conscious sense, but some part of what once was me will exist in something else.

I did, however, enjoy and surprise his vision of a sort of reincarnation. It’s too spiritual for me, despite his intention not to be, but it’s fascinating and profound.

Good luck to the whole family in getting through this difficult time quickly. ↩︎

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