TIL: when using 'motion' (via motionEye), one cannot have continuous recording as well as notification about motion events. Continuous recording is a hack that forces it to consider everything as motion. The debug images would have numbers at the top and moving boxes that made it seem otherwise.

It's unfortunate. I really would prefer to keep everything for a week just in case the detection parameters aren't properly tuned or go out of tune. Then get poked by notification when motion detected.