2025-12-29 08:00:00
As 2025 comes to an end, I realize I have written less in this newsletter than I would have liked. Maybe my sometimes extreme perfectionism has held me back. Partly because I felt I had nothing worth sharing, and partly because what I wrote did not feel good enough.
I think this is a feeling we all experience at times, whether when writing or when trying to express ourselves in general. But the point of this newsletter is not to deliver something polished. It is more a way to talk about what happens to me, how I feel about it, and how I interpret it, while I try to make a living from this whole entrepreneurship thing.
So I guess I should think less and do more. I have applied that advice to other areas of my life, but not here. And 2026 feels like a good moment to start.
When I say I have not been writing here, I really mean it. I did not even write to say that I launched an app. Picmal is my first 100% native Mac app, and by not overthinking things and simply shipping something that was useful to me, I ended up discovering that it is useful to others too.
I am close to reaching 200 paying users. From the outside, especially when you see so many companies making millions every year, that number might seem tiny. For me, it feels huge. It is proof to myself that I can build things that are genuinely useful to other people.
So yes, the same idea again: think less and do more. By pure algorithmic coincidence, this YouTube channel found me. Elisha talks a lot about how his life started to improve once he stopped overthinking and began acting more, referring to it with the term _retardmaxx_.
I guess he is right. And since my newsletter is called nonsense, maybe I should start honoring that name a bit more.
Last year, when I wrote my year review, I mentioned something I have been doing since 2021. I take the photos I shot during the year and go through them month by month, writing down what I was doing and small anecdotes from those moments. It is my way of keeping those experiences alive.
Last year I changed that dynamic a bit. Instead, I started answering a set of forty questions. I liked the idea because everything becomes much more concrete, while the goal stays the same: to preserve those small moments you lived during the year so that when you come back to them later, once they are no longer fresh, they are still there waiting for you. Almost like a freezer for memories.
I added one more thing to this ritual last year, borrowed from my friend Marynes. At the end of the year, she always creates a vision board with things she wants to do in the following year. If you are a visual person, having this present throughout the year helps a lot. With a single glance, it reminds you of what you want for the year, and of the ambitions or aspirations you have for the future.
It felt like a much healthier way to approach next year’s goals. Not as another checklist or yet another work project to deal with, but rather as a gentle reminder of what we want to prioritize, both in the coming year and beyond.
Beyond Picmal, I have a few apps planned for next year. Some of the problems I want to solve:
All of them will share one thing: AI as a quiet assistant, not as the main character. I believe AI works best when it supports your thinking, not when it replaces it. A subtle layer that helps you move faster, not one that takes over your ideas or decisions.
I will share what I learn along the way here. The wins and the failures.
There are also some questions I have been sitting with, and that I want to explore more deeply:
I do not have answers yet. But I think writing is a good way to find them.
So, bye 2025. A year where I learned, again, that the best way to move forward is to stop waiting for things to feel ready. The only way of learning is by friction.
I would love to hear from you. What are your end of year rituals? Any offline places or online corners you discovered this year that I should know about? And what are you planning for 2026?
Just hit reply. I read everything.
See you in 2026. With more nonsense.
2025-10-13 08:00:00
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with death. It’s a topic many cultures don’t discuss much, yet it’s fundamental for the simple fact that we’re all going to die at some point.
I’ve always had this idea of collecting reflections from others, not so much to think about death, but rather to learn how to live. To learn what mattered to those who are no longer here and how, thanks to that, we can reevaluate our existence on this planet until we’re no longer here.
The title of this essay encapsulates the philosophy of my life perfectly:
The continuous work of our life is to build death
No one embodies this philosophy better than Montaigne.
He was a skeptic through and through, so much so that his main motto was: “Que sais-je?” (What do I know?). But his doubt wasn’t paralyzing, it was liberating. By recognizing the limits of his knowledge, he freed himself from pretending to live perfectly or appearing to be someone he wasn’t.
In 1571, he retreated to his castle tower to write. There, surrounded by books and aware of his mortality, he decided to observe himself without filters. He wrote about everything: his fears, his contradictions, his failures, even the most mundane aspects of his existence. He explored, doubted, contradicted himself from one essay to another. His writing is radical in its honesty: personal, contradictory, profoundly human.
Montaigne viscerally understood something Euripides had expressed centuries before:
How can you think yourself a great man, when the first accident that comes along can wipe you out completely?
This awareness of fragility didn’t paralyze him, it awakened him. He knew his time was limited and that spending it on pretensions or living for others was wasting it. That’s why meditating on death didn’t seem morbid to him, but practical: know yourself, accept yourself, and live calmly, without thinking you’re more than you are, knowing your time is limited.
For Montaigne, preparing to die was the first step to living well. Accepting that you are ephemeral, contradictory, and imperfect finally allows you to be fully alive.
You’re in that tower, whether you know it or not. The question isn’t whether you’re going to die, but whether you’re going to live before you do.
Some of the references in these essays are from the book How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer , which I recommend.
2025-07-20 08:00:00
I’m someone driven by obsessions, and by phases.
When I’m in one of those phases where I want to do everything on the computer, I forget about the rest of the world. I can spend 18 hours straight in front of the screen, and as you can imagine, that’s not sustainable. Because then I burn out and go three months without wanting to touch the computer.
I’ve always tried to set a time to shut down the computer and do something offline, like writing or reading. That time has always been 8:00 pm. And I’d be embarrassed to admit I could count on one hand the times I’ve actually done it on my own will.
So I said: “Fuck it, I’m going to find a way to fix this.” I don’t want to be the one deciding anymore. So here’s a super simple tip for how I handled it.
Just open your terminal and type:
crontab -e
Once you’re in, add this beautiful line:
0 20 * * * /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to shut down'
If you want to pick a different time, just ask ChatGPT how to do it or change the 20 to whatever hour you want (for example, 7pm would be 19).
To exit vim successfully, remember to hit :wq. Finally, check that everything is in place with crontab -l.
If it shows up, you’re all set. You can close the terminal and forget about it. Now, every day at 8pm, your computer will shut down and you’ll have no choice but to settle for a sad little notebook or a boring book.
2025-07-13 08:00:00
When I first started building Picmal, a simple image converter for macOS, the App Store was the obvious destination. That changed quickly.
After paying for the Apple Developer license and getting my first version ready, I hit an unexpected wall: every time users tried to save an image, a permission dialog appeared. It was intrusive and ruined the experience. The cause? Apple’s sandbox restrictions.
The only way around it was to skip the App Store entirely and distribute the app independently.
But before that, let me tell you why I built Picmal in the first place. The idea came from a daily frustration: opening a browser, finding an online converter, uploading images, waiting for them to process in the cloud, and then downloading them again. I wanted something simple, fast, and offline.
So I decided to make it native, even though I had never built a fully native app before. That was challenge number one. Challenge number two was finding a smooth way to share it without the App Store.
After some research, I discovered Gumroad. It turned out to be the simplest way to sell and distribute my app directly. Here’s how I did it:
Once your app is ready for release, do the following:
.app file.
To give users a better experience in order to install the app, I used create-dmg, a simple CLI tool that outputs a polished DMG file.
In the terminal you need to execute this:
# Install create-dmg if you haven't already
brew install create-dmg
# Create the DMG installer
create-dmg \
--volname "Your App Name" \
--window-pos 200 120 \
--window-size 600 300 \
--icon-size 100 \
--icon "YourApp.app" 175 120 \
--hide-extension "YourApp.app" \
--app-drop-link 425 120 \
"YourApp.dmg" \
"source_folder/"
Once it’s done you will have your DMG installer ready, but you need to do an extra step, which is notarize this DMG too to avoid getting an error like this:
First I highly recommend you to create a profile so that every time you have to notarize your new releases you don’t need to remember the password:
xcrun notarytool store-credentials --apple-id "[email protected]" \
--team-id "YOUR_TEAM_ID_HERE" \
--password "your-app-specific-password" \
your-app-profile
Note: The password you use here must be an app-specific password generated from your Apple ID account. Regular Apple ID passwords will not work for notarization. If you haven’t created one before, follow Apple’s instructions to generate an app-specific password for use with
notarytool.
After creating the profile you need to notarize the DMG file with your newly created profile:
xcrun notarytool submit YourApp.dmg --keychain-profile "your-app-profile" --wait
Now you need to staple the DMG:
xcrun stapler staple YourApp.dmg
And finally you are almost ready, just to check that this process has worked, you can check it in your terminal using:
spctl --assess --type open --context context:primary-signature -v YourApp.dmg
# Expected output:
# YourApp.dmg: accepted
# source=Notarized Developer ID
If you see something like this message, you’re done. You can upload your DMG to Gumroad (or wherever you prefer) and start selling. Here is how it looks my app in Gumroad:
If you’re interested in experiencing Picmal, you can buy the app and start using it today.
2025-03-12 08:00:00
Novelty has always attracted me far more than what was already obvious to me. It always promised better future plans, while I looked at my side, staring at that static and boring present with a face of indifference, making it clear that I was ignoring it.
I always thought routine was suffocating—until I discovered it could heal.
Because everything depends on the kind of routine you find yourself in. A routine that is good for the soul can never be suffocating, and it was clear that, at the time I had those thoughts, I wasn’t in a pleasant routine.
I’m writing these lines from NODE Coffee in Taipei. It’s one of the few cafés that opens early in the morning, so it has become my place of pilgrimage whenever home feels too small or when I simply want to be outside.
Here I am, counting the stamps I have left for my free coffee, practicing my embarrassingly low level of Chinese, trying to greet the café staff with a Zao an (good morning).
I’m learning to recognize the notes of the La Marzocco coffee machine as it hums endlessly, over and over again. Meanwhile, I wait for the different actors of my day to appear, as if I were the protagonist of The Truman Show: the lady who always comes with her cart to buy coffee, greeting everyone; the man who always sits in the last outdoor chair, cigarette in hand; and finally, the suited man who looks like he stepped out of a Yakuza movie, always carrying his Starbucks cup.
When you enjoy a routine, everything becomes easier, clearer, and more beautiful. You notice the details better, like when you rewatch a movie. You begin to understand the gears that keep these people’s lives running. You appreciate novelty even more because it shines brighter when not everything is new.
That’s why I know the key in life isn’t to escape routine but to create one we love—one that makes us walk around with a smile. And when that’s not possible, one that helps us regain a bit of sanity before losing it completely.
People who have met me in recent years always tell me I’m a routine-driven and highly organized person. The truth is, I never saw myself that way—until I realized that routine was good, that I didn’t have to run from it, and that I had to pack it with me on every adventure.
Everything I once hated—doing the same thing every day, seeing the same people, walking through places I know with my eyes closed—is now among the things I value most.
We never know when we’ll do something for the last time. That’s why repeating it daily is a way of being grateful for being alive—a way to feel a little more at home, even when we’re traveling around the world.
2025-02-17 08:00:00
I’ve always been someone who sees things in black and white, believing that things are either one way or the other. And for those of us who think like this, life eventually slaps us in the face with a big dose of gray. That’s when we realize that life is one big “IT DEPENDS.”
Universal rules don’t exist, which is why we need to be careful with the hair growth sellers we encounter every day. They’ll tell you their way is the right way, that it’s foolproof. But the truth is, you’re going to go bald, and nothing can stop it. The only choice you have is to accept it and find yourself a good hat—or embrace the baldness with pride. It’s up to you.
The reality is that no one can teach you how to live better than yourself because no one else is inside your head. We need to draw inspiration from others, absorb their energy, and use it in the best way we can. But no advice works straight out of someone else’s mind. It’s only when we shape it, adapt it to our own worldview, that we can unlock the full potential hidden within an idea.
Our way of seeing the world is unique, built from fragments of all the experiences we gather throughout life. And while our experiences may resemble those of others, if we look closely, we’ll see that no two are ever exactly the same.
Robert Kegan has an interesting theory about the stages a person must go through to become an independent adult. Around the age of 20, we enter what he calls the “Self-Authoring Mind” stage, where we take responsibility for ourselves and begin developing our own rules and values.
That’s why, when I see so many people stuck in this state—never reaching that stage—I feel a deep sense of sadness. They complain about the government, their parents, or society as a whole, but I don’t see them using that frustration to take control of their own lives.
So never look for the easy way out. There are no magic formulas, and if someone tries to sell you theirs, run as fast as you can. Effort and time put things in their place and shape better people.
Feel free to doubt everything and everyone. No one holds the absolute truth about anything because what worked for them won’t necessarily work for you. Experiment, make mistakes—your path is only found by walking it.
Even if you think someone is horribly fascist, sexist, or just an idiot, expose yourself to all kinds of ideas. Even if you completely disagree, don’t lock yourself in a bubble—just listen. Otherwise, you risk falling into your own trap, believing your truths are the only ones that matter.
And then, the idiot will be you.
Of course, don’t take my word for any of this. Get out there and create your own rules of the game.
