Space is my favorite word. As a kid, my favorite TV show was Space: 1999. It inspired me a lot; I built the Eagle spaceship out of LEGO elements, which later helped me land my very first job as a LEGO Space designer in Billund. For my application, I designed a spaceship that took many cues from the Eagle (my favorite spaceship of all time; watch out for the Eagle documentary). Later on, in the 90s, I taught concept development at the Space Invaders education program in Aarhus. I’m also a big fan of the Open Space process for group work. Oh, and my favorite movie is 2001 – A Space Odyssey.
The concept of space holds so many connotations and possibilities. Never forget that you have power over your personal space, both your physical and mental space. You can give others space but even more beautifully – you can hold space for another human being. And there is still plenty of space, virtually infinite amounts. Later, I will write about my favorite place, the Liminal Space. So all I can say is watch this space!
Not too long ago I almost crashed on my motorcycle. The keyword here is of course, ‘almost,’ and I will get back to that in a bit, but first a few thoughts on the joys of riding a motorcycle. For me, it started as a kind of happy accident; in my youth, I had never considered riding a bike, but one day in the mid-90s, out in Billund, the bus to Vejle drove off without me. So, a colleague offered a ride home on the back of his motorcycle, and I was sold on the spot; the acceleration, the speed, the open-air feeling, it just felt great. So, without telling anyone, I got the driver’s license and bought my own bike. That has been one of my best decisions in terms of the amount of fun and pleasure it has brought for almost 30 years now. I don’t go that fast (as opposed to when I’m cycling) and almost always avoiding highways and very often taking new, unplanned detours on small roads in the countryside.
Krybily Kro
Had I not missed the bus by accident 30 years ago, I may not have found out about the joy of riding, and of course, there is a little lesson about trying out unfamiliar and unexpected things. You get the picture. Motorcycles are statistically a bit more dangerous than cars, but I have always tried not to take any chances. Someone early on told me it is so important to ride defensively, as you are the more vulnerable part compared to cars. Many will know that motorcyclists always greet each other on the road (except for police officers and Hells Angels types!) This is such a nice tradition, feels a bit like I salute you for also being an adult on two wheels instead of four.. In fact, as I was headed home from Kolding a while back, I was thinking about this very thing as two motorcycles approached me.. I turned my head for a split second to greet them – the road ahead has a slight bend where the driveway leads into the local inn. And I had not noticed that the car ahead of me had abruptly slowed way down to take a sudden left turn. I was going close to 80 km/h, and without even thinking, I locked my brakes hard and barely managed to steer around the car and then come to a sudden stop. So close.. All my muscles were extremely tense and frozen up, especially in my legs, and I was a bit rattled by the incident. But I quickly got back up to speed and rode homewards like nothing had happened. It felt like the right thing to do, just get back on the road straight away. The incident kept playing in my head for a while, but now I’m just thankful nothing bad happened. Would love to ride for another 30 years if the machinery is up for it.
The danish summer is not over yet (I hope) but here are some of my favorite photos from the summer of 2025 so far. Lots of good clouds this year, and a stop sign on the sky (unedited image). More to come.
When people criticize AI in general and LLMs in particular, 90% of the time all I hear is “I’m bad at prompting.” Many laymen still treat ChatGPT as a glorified Google search. Custom instructions and asking directly for what you want will get you far.
Just ask. That is the simple key to a lot of good use of AI. If you don’t like the responses, be more clear about what you want. If you don’t know what to ask, just ask the AI to help with the questions or have it literally question you before answering. Easy. Make sure to give it something to work from; context is everything.
Remember back when we got flashlights in our phones? We suddenly realized how often we actually have a need for a flashlight. It feels a bit like that with AIs; you suddenly realize you have many more questions and topics to explore when you can just ask and get good answers without much friction.
While some of us find great value in AI, there is a clear and growing backlash happening, especially when it comes to visuals. We grow tired of visual gimmicks faster and faster (remember Ghibli-style and cutting up glass fruit?) AI/LLMs are not going away, but the resources needed for running all those servers are vast, and growing like crazy..
When people share long threads where they have a ‘dialogue’ with an AI, more often than not it is just as boring as hearing long and intricate stories about their dreams and nightmares. It’s too specific and personal; without the proper context, it’s close to meaningless. And did I mention it’s also boring?
IBM chairman Thomas Watson is perhaps most famous for the (false) quote I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. Some say half-jokingly; Watson was only off by four, but in an AI world, the five can be said to be the handful of frontier AI models fighting for dominion: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Llama, Claude and perhaps a Chinese wildcard.
If a person claims they know what is going to happen with AI in the next 12-18 months, run away as fast as you can. No one knows this in any meaningful detail; a few may know the broad strokes. And those who know the most are busy building it. Far too often, the predictions remind me of the blind people and the elephant, except AI may very well be the whole room rather than just the elephant in it.
(And yeah, I made this image with ChatGPT, or just Chat as most of the younger people call it now. My guess is that OpenAI will rebrand ChatGPT to Chat later this year, they already own chat.com..)
Someone said to me; “I will be following from the sideline.” Honestly, I like that thought. (Love to) build it and they will come (maybe). Life is about reaching out, and in some cases, waiting for someone to reach out. Both are good; life is a balance between push and pull, between wanting and waiting. Are you driven toward something or driven away from something? Knowing what you don’t want can be a powerful force because then the outcome is open. There is no fixed goal, so perhaps you’ll discover something unexpected while you run away from the unwanted. Going for a specific goal can be good, but sometimes it will give you tunnel vision. And sometimes you don’t really know what you want. As in many other cases in life, the main thing is to be aware of those different approaches and to consider the balance between actively seeking out things and just letting things happen. In my experience, serendipity is seriously underrated. My work life can be said to be a fairly good example of this. For 25+ years, I have had my own one-man company, and as if by magic, work opportunities have found me at the right pace and at the right time. Something interesting has always come up when I was close to being bored and/or slightly scared. Being self-employed has always felt like freedom with a touch of fear. It may sound like a somewhat passive approach, but no. It has just been the way things worked out. Very privileged, I know. Less than a handful of times have I reached out to get work, and in those cases, it was mainly a desire to work with a specific company. For instance, I’ve been a fan of Bang & Olufsen since I was a teenager, and it was on my bucket list to do some work with them. So I made an active choice to go to Struer and show my work. I did a couple of consultancy jobs there and for a couple of other cool companies along the way. But most of the time, interesting work has come to me, and I am super grateful for that.
Sometimes I need a break from social media, and then I simply stop posting and stay quiet for a while. Sooner or later, a few people will reach out and ask if everything is OK. Those who know me will know that this is normal procedure for me to take breaks and go semi-offline for a week or two. But it is appreciated when people who don’t know me well reach out to check if everything is OK. At one point in my life, I had a feeling that some of my relationships were asymmetrical in the way that it was always me who had to reach out to keep the connection active. So I made a choice to not reach out and then wait and see. Those friendships died in that operation but left space for new ones. All good.
Maybe you can use my approach; it’s a simple and useful way to sharpen your intuition. Always come to the museum or the show when it opens in the morning. That way, you have optimal energy and openness to take in new things. Start by walking all the way through the exhibition at a fairly high pace. Don’t stop during the walk, but try to notice all the artworks without thinking or judging the pieces. Then, walk back to the beginning. Now you know more about how to pace the visit, but more importantly, you have a sense of where to put your attention. And I think most people will like to know what they are getting into; we like estimated reading times on articles, and we want to know how long that video or podcast is before committing our precious time. There is always way too much to see and take in, especially at the big museums. But I’ve found that my intuition will point me to a handful or two of artworks that deserve a deeper dive. So, more often than not, I will spend 80% of the time on 5-10% of the art. The Tate has a good little piece on Slow Looking, well worth a look. The approach described works well for me; perhaps it’s something to try?
I am generally not interested in knowing the titles of the works or the artists’ intentions or life histories, etc., beforehand. This limits the ability to simply experience the work without prejudice. The most important thing is to experience the works, not sort them into little buckets of “beautiful,” “ugly,” and so on and so forth. Always having a kind of “beginner’s mind” when looking at art is extremely important to me. I know a bit about art history and artists (especially the current Danish ones), but I believe that knowledge can get in the way of having an immediate experience; it can become a case of intellectual connect-the-dots that does nothing for me.
My approach to watching movies is similar; I generally like to know as little as possible before watching. The movies I like are often a bit strange and open to interpretation, so I prefer to be as open as possible. But after watching a good movie, I will often take a dive into analyses and reviews. I will also be happy to take in a good behind-the-scenes feature (something which has sadly been a bit lost with streaming; DVDs often had all that cool bonus material. But often there is stuff to be found on YouTube). Here are some unusual movies that I like.
A few ideas for your next visit to an art museum;
– If you go together with friends or family, split up, at least for some of the time at the exhibit. Then meet up and talk about what you’ve seen; maybe revisit some artworks together. But looking at art is really not a team sport.
– Show up early. Once I went to the Louvre at opening time. Most of the guests headed straight to see you-know-who; I went straight to the furthest corner of the world’s largest museum. A whole hour passed before I met another guest; it was great.
– If you really like the art, try to see if you can go twice to the same exhibit. It can be an extra look through at the end of a one-day visit, but even better to come back at a later date. Once a year or so, I visit Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen to look at new stuff, of course, but also just to revisit some favorite paintings.
– Take lots of photos. It’s impossible to remember all the great stuff you see on an extensive visit to a museum. Today it’s super easy to do an image search later to get more info on the works. So it’s not so much for looking at the art per se, more as a visual diary for later recall and research.
As someone who loves both LEGO and Pharrell Williams, it will come as no surprise that I really liked the animated biopic “Piece by Piece“. Pharrell has had a hand in most of the mainstream pop I like from the last 20+ years. I like most of his own work, with one big exception; I really, really can’t stand his massive 2013 hit “Happy“; it makes my skin crawl. But otherwise, he seems like a really nice and cool guy. Certain people seem to have no age; David Bowie comes to mind, and Pharrell is in the same category. He was born in 1973, but listening to him speak and sing, he could be 32 for all I know. And making an autobiography as a $16 million LEGO animated feature film is a crazy idea. But it totally works. They shot all the celebrity interviews the traditional way and then animated the LEGO characters to the soundtrack (great fun to see Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and many others as LEGO minifigs).
And speaking about the movie with Rick Rubin, Pharrell says something interesting here: “I needed to see myself objectified first to write about myself.” So basically, he had to watch himself as a LEGO minifigure before he could create a song about his own life (the catchy ‘Piece by Piece‘ theme song from the movie).
Here’s the trailer; needless to say, if you are not into Pharrell, it will be a fairly boring movie, even if it is visually quite interesting and some of the jokes are good. One fun aspect is that Pharrell has synesthesia, meaning that he sees music and beats visually in his mind. This is brilliantly done with little LEGO builds in the movie, would have been hard to pull off in a more traditional documentary. Oh, and of course there is an official Pharrell LEGO Spaceship set you can get.
This site has already lived up to its purpose. Not many are reading, but as long as the right people are here, that’s all that matters to me. So if you are here, thank you ♥️
... 