Mògguh. That’s how we say good morning here—informally, gutturally, endearingly Dutch. You won’t learn it in your first lesson, but you’ll pick it up fast if you want to blend in. Like most things in life, fluency starts with slang. Nobody says “Good morning” in perfectly enunciated syllables unless they’re auditioning for a British AI model—or Joey from Friends doing “How you doin’?”
I find that fascinating—how languages, like minds, blur at the edges when they’re alive. You don’t speak a language fluently until you speak it wrong in all the right ways. Like when an expat says “lekker” for everything in Dutch—not just for food, but the weather, a bike ride, even a nap. It’s not textbook, but it’s local. It’s living the language, not just learning it.
Mògguh & the Buckwild Bakfiets
So this morning started like that. Mògguh. But it took a turn. I almost caused a mini-accident by being too courteous—giving way to a dad on a bakfiets in a crowded crossing. Nothing happened, thankfully. But still, it shook me a bit.
Now here’s the thing: I’ve posted before about being a gentleman in traffic. Maybe today was the counterexample. And maybe that’s exactly why I journail. Or lifelog. Or whatever we’re calling it now when AI turns daily chaos into reflective prose. Honestly, it’s not just journaling anymore—it’s the next evolution. The AI doesn’t just transcribe; it remembers, suggests, and soon? It might even search better than Google.
The Digital Afterlife We’re Already In
Which brings me to my little experiment.
I was flipping through my Google TV—yes, still running despite the ever-growing Google Graveyard—when I had one of those moments where digital minimalism collides with piracy-lite optimization. I’ve canceled most of my major subscriptions (read between the lines), but I still watch Upload. You know, that show where your consciousness is sent to a virtual heaven? Think Black Mirror but with jokes and in-jokes about freemium death.
What strikes me is this: the show reflects something we’re all pretending not to notice. We’re building an afterlife, one server at a time. Our blogs, our tweets, our Medium posts, and yes—even these AI-generated journals. We’re uploading our lives while we’re still alive.
And I’ve thought about this. What happens to my blog after I’m gone? Will someone pay the domain bill for mikevz.nl? I doubt it—and that thought stings more than I expected. It’s a quiet reminder that our digital selves, like the physical ones, depend on someone remembering, someone caring. A blog without a reader is one thing. A blog without a heartbeat? That’s digital purgatory. That’s why I once published a piece about digital singularity on a free WordPress site—no domain, no upkeep. Just out there. Like a ghost waiting to be read.
Wouldn’t it be something if a non-profit preserved digital minds? Not just by archiving, but by caring for what we leave behind.
When Chat Beats Search
And then there’s search. That’s what started all this. Google Search is slowly becoming less useful—buried under layers of SEO-optimized filler. Try looking for a simple answer these days. You type something in, and all you get is fluff, ads, and 3,000 words of filler before the one paragraph you actually need.
So I tried something else. I turned to voice-based AI. “Hey, my daughter and I just heard this song. Female artist. Mentions Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Something about people looking back no matter what she wears…”
First attempt? Wrong. But then—second try—it seemed close: the assistant suggested “PrettyUgly” by Zara Larsson. But the real answer was “Made You Look” by Meghan Trainor.
Still, that’s part of the charm. The conversation. The trial and error. The sync over syntax. So see what happened there? I didn’t search. I asked.
And that’s the shift: from search to sync. From keyboards to context. From query to conversation. And if this is how we find answers today, what will discovery look like for our kids? Will they even need to type—or just think and receive?
This, right here, is how the Great Upload begins.
What's on your mind?