Amazing art - 19

 

Holding on to hope is what we have left

Meet artist Alex Peter Idoko, who paints these portraits with fire

Mark Rox is an accomplished artist known for his stunning 3D murals that create captivating optical illusions

Cooking meals - 1

 

Incredible 5 top receipts

Julius Caesar's Health Debate Reignited: Stroke Or Epilepsy?

 

People look at the head of a statue depicting Julius Caesar (100BC- 44BC) as they visit the the exhibition entitled 'the myth of Cleopatra' on April 9, 2014 at the Pinacotheque in Paris. (Photo credit ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images)

ByKristina Killgrove

"He was of spare habit, had a soft and white skin, suffered from distemper in the head, and was subject to epileptic fits, a trouble which first attacked him, we are told, in Corduba." -- Plutarch's Life of Caesar 17.2

Famous words from the Greek historian Plutarch have offered tantalizing clues to the causes of Julius Caesar's ill health prior to his assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC. But Plutarch was born long after Caesar's death, and his writing in particular has been interpreted a number of ways over the past two millennia.  Caesar had migraine headaches. Or hypoglycemia. He had a tapeworm in his brain. Most commonly, he has been diagnosed with morbus comitialis, the Latin term for epilepsy.

Francesco Galassi and Hutan Ashrafian have been fascinated by the ancient world since childhood.  The medical doctors, who practice at Imperial College London, have proposed a new diagnosis based on their reading of the ancient sources: cardiovascular disease causing strokes. Galassi told me that they are "reconsidering the very Greco-Roman sources philologically and medically, liaising with experts in the field in Italy, the UK, and the US" to better understand Caesar's health. "We refuse to accept a priori the diagnosis of epilepsy."

Epilepsy in ancient Rome was well known and its symptoms often reported. Galassi therefore thinks that there should be more numerous accounts of Caesar's epileptic episodes in historical records if he truly suffered from it. By combing through the ancient literature, Galassi and Ashrafian have come to a different interpretation of Caesar's reported symptoms.

In a letter to the editor of Neurological Sciences published last month, Galassi and Ashrafian explain their reevaluation. "Together with the symptoms of headache, vertigo and falls as a possible result of limb paresis, gait disturbance, sensory deficit or syncopal episode can be considered in terms of cerebrovascular insults and stroke," they write, and depression and personality changes Caesar suffered "may also be consistent with cerebrovascular disease."

As doctors, Galassi and Ashrafian know that a good medical and family history is key to understanding a person's health. Pliny the Elder mentions the sudden death of Caesar's father and another close relative, which can easily be associated with "cardiovascular complications of stroke episode or a lethal myocardial infarction." If Caesar's relatives died of a heart attack, it is reasonable to question the dictator's symptoms in light of a possible family history of cardiovascular issues. Galassi says that "we think the TIAs [transient ischemic attacks or mini strokes] started at the end of his life; likely in 46 BC or a littler earlier."

Barry Strauss, a Cornell University military historian whose book The Death of Caesar represents the latest research into the dictator's life, told me that, while he finds the cardiovascular theory intriguing, he is not convinced. "Caesar's illness is said to have begun in Cordoba, Spain," Strauss says, referencing Plutarch, "which would suggest a specific event such as head trauma."  Traumatic head injuries can cause neurological problems, and since Caesar is reported to have recovered quickly from each episode, Strauss finds a diagnosis of epilepsy more convincing.

If Julius Caesar was suffering from mini strokes, as Galassi and Ashrafian believe, why would his problems be documented as epilepsy?  It is not necessarily the case that ancient historians did not understand the disease.  Rather, Galassi and Ashrafian suggest that "Caesar and his adopted son Octavius may have contributed to the diagnosis of epilepsy, as this was considered a 'sacred disease'." It may have made Caesar look more powerful and more divine, shoring up his public profile and ensuring his eventual deification. But Strauss counters that "it was not to Caesar's advantage to admit that he had epilepsy because Romans considered epilepsy to be a bad omen and the Hippocratic Greek corpus denied that epilepsy was a sacred disease."

Deification of Julius Caesar. Engraving by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphoses Book XV, 745-850. (Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons)

In the end, Caesar's diagnosis may not be a case of either/or. Strauss notes that in researching his book, he learned from neurologists that strokes and head trauma are both risk factors for developing epilepsy later in life. "Caesar could have had both epilepsy and transient ischemic strokes," Strauss says.  Did cardiovascular disease cause strokes that in turn caused epileptic episodes? Did Caesar suffer a blow to the head in Cordoba that resulted in epilepsy? Considering that even with modern medical technology there is no test that can confirm or rule out epilepsy, Strauss points out "we can't be sure about a diagnosis 2,000 years after the fact."

Reanalysis of ancient diseases is not a new phenomenon, and with staggering advances in medical technology recently, both medical doctors and archaeologists are learning more about disease in the past. Research into the lives and deaths of King Richard III or Ötzi the Iceman would not have been possible a couple decades ago. The difference between these men and Julius Caesar, though, is that their skeletons were found intact. As Caesar was cremated following his assassination, there is little hope of bioarchaeologists finding his mortal remains and poring over them for additional clues to his health. We may be debating about one of the most powerful figures in history for a long time to come.

https://tinyurl.com/3cnyefyf

Master Claude

 

Most people think they’re leveraging AI… but in reality, they’re just chatting with it.

This framework completely reframes how serious professionals should be using AI.

Not as a tool.
But as an operating system for thinking and execution.

✳️ Here’s the deeper insight most people miss 👇

We treat AI like a search engine—quick questions, quick answers, then we move on.
But high-leverage users don’t rely on isolated prompts.

They build systems that think with them.

This framework is built on that exact philosophy:

1. Environment matters more than prompts
If you’re using AI casually (browser, mobile, quick chats), you’re already limiting its potential.
Serious work requires a dedicated setup—where AI can handle files, context, and continuity.

2. Modes define outcomes
Not all AI interactions are equal:
• Chat → quick, low-stakes thinking
• Projects → structured, repeatable work
• Deep work (Cowork) → actual execution with files and context

Most people stay stuck in “chat mode” and wonder why results feel shallow.

3. Structure creates clarity
Instead of messy conversations, you design a workspace:
• ABOUT ME → your voice, standards, priorities
• PROJECTS → where real work evolves
• TEMPLATES → reusable frameworks
• OUTPUTS → clean, final deliverables

This turns AI from reactive → organized and intentional

4. Replace prompts with core instruction files
This is the real shift.

Stop writing 50 different prompts.
Create 1–2 powerful files that define:
• How AI should think
• What it should avoid
• What quality looks like

One strong foundation beats endless trial-and-error.

5. Let AI guide your thinking
At the highest level, you stop “asking” AI what to do.

Instead:
AI suggests → you refine → AI executes

It becomes a collaborator, not a tool.

6. Integrate, don’t isolate
When connected to tools like Google Drive, Slack, and Notion, AI stops being a separate tab.

It becomes embedded into your daily workflow.

7. The endgame is automation with intelligence
Imagine waking up to:
• Structured outputs ready
• Projects already progressed
• Clear briefs waiting for execution

That’s not productivity.

That’s leverage.

✅️ The biggest takeaway?

Your knowledge is valuable.
But unstructured knowledge doesn’t scale.

When you document your thinking, organize your workflows, and train AI around it…

You don’t just use AI.

You multiply your capability.


😅 Most people will continue writing random prompts.

A few will build systems.😎

Those few will outperform everyone else.🤓

Where do you stand right now? 🤔

https://tinyurl.com/3nw45a7j

ChatGPT vs Grok vs Gemini vs Claude vs Perplexity vs DeepSeek

 

Ravi Samrat Mishra

The era of “one-size-fits-all” AI assistants is ending. What we’re seeing instead is a fast-maturing ecosystem of specialized models — each engineered with different strengths, trade-offs, and professional use cases. If you want to get real work done (not just entertain hypotheticals), choosing the right assistant — or better: orchestrating several together — makes the difference between a breakthrough and a time-sink. Below is a practical, professional guide to what these tools excel at, where they fall short, and how to combine them into dependable workflows you can use today.

Summary in one line (for busy people)

ChatGPT — creative writing and coding workflows; Grok — real-time trends and social commentary; Gemini — Google Workspace and collaborative docs; Claude — long-form reading, contracts and detailed comprehension; Perplexity — verified research and citations; DeepSeek — technical math, debugging and precise calculations.

What each tool is best at (practical lens)

• ChatGPT — Excellent for idea generation, narrative copy, multi-step coding tasks and general creative problem solving. Great when you need polished prose that’s flexible. Watch for hallucinations on factual matters.

• Grok — Built for real-time cultural context, trends and playful/razor-sharp social commentary. Use when voice, speed and trend relevance matter more than formal precision.

• Gemini — Best when deep Google integration matters: Docs, Sheets, and Workspace collaboration. Use it to streamline team workflows inside Google’s ecosystem.

• Claude — Superb at reading long documents, contracts, and reports. Use Claude to summarize, highlight risk, and produce citation-ready drafts when fidelity matters.

• Perplexity — Designed for research-first answers with source attribution. Use it to double-check facts, gather citations, and build a defensible evidence base.

• DeepSeek — Built for heavy-duty technical tasks: math, symbolic reasoning, debugging and multi-step calculations. Use it when correctness and numeric rigor are non-negotiable.

How to choose — a short decision guide

• Need creative brainstorming or polished marketing copy? Start with ChatGPT.

• Preparing social posts that must feel current or viral? Bring Grok in for tone and trend hooks.

• Working inside Google Docs/Sheets with a team? Use Gemini to keep everything in one place.

• Reviewing contracts, long research papers, or technical spec decks? Send them to Claude for a careful read and extractable highlights.

• Building a fact-backed report, pitch, or white paper? Use Perplexity to gather and cite sources before writing.

• Debugging code, solving algebraic problems, or validating algorithms? Put DeepSeek on the case.

A practical, repeatable workflow (two-minute recipe)

1. Research & evidence: Use Perplexity to collect up-to-date sources and extract verifiable facts.
2. Technical validation: If the task involves math/code, validate calculations or algorithms with DeepSeek.
3. Drafting & ideation: Draft headlines, hooks and structure in ChatGPT (fast, creative iterations).
4. Workspace integration: Move the draft into Gemini for collaborative edits and real-time team feedback in Docs/Sheets.
5. Compliance & fidelity pass: Run the final document through Claude to surface legal risks, ambiguous language, or places that need precise citations.
6. Social & launch: Use Grok for brief social captions, trend-inspired angles, or punchy commentary tailored for the moment.

Pro tips that actually save time

• Chain tools, don’t worship one. Each model’s outputs become higher quality when preceded by the right upstream check (facts → Perplexity, math → DeepSeek, long-form read → Claude).

• Build short, explicit guardrails in prompts: required citation style, maximum factual claims, and “flag any sentence that isn’t 90% certain.”

• Use human checkpoints. For high-stakes or external-facing content (legal, finance, press releases), always have a domain expert validate final outputs.

• Version control your prompts and examples. Small prompt changes produce big differences — treat your best prompts like code.

• Be mindful of data residency and privacy: workspace-integrated assistants can simplify workflows but may have different data policies.

Risks and where human judgment still wins

Specialization reduces the risk of errors but doesn’t remove it. Models that are fast and witty (Grok, ChatGPT) can misstate facts. Models that are conservative and precise (Claude, Perplexity) may be slower or more literal. Deep technical accuracy still benefits from human review. And finally — the more tools you stitch together, the more you must own the final quality-control step.

Final thought

The sensible play today is not to ask “Which single assistant will replace my job?” but “How can I design small, reliable workflows that let each assistant do what it does best?” When you orchestrate these tools intentionally, you get speed without sacrificing accuracy — and that’s the rare compound advantage most teams are chasing.

Which assistant are you using most right now — and for what task?

https://tinyurl.com/4689mhef

Cognitive Biases in UX design and research

 

Why knowing about cognitive biases is important?

Cognitive Psychology and UX design are two closely related fields: users apply their cognitive functions during their interaction with digital products (services).

Cognitive biases are shortcuts, distortions in our perceptions, parts of our cognitive activity. The important thing to understand here is that biases are not necessarily bad: as Rüdiger F. Pohl expresses in his book, Cognitive Illusions:

“The question of whether a decision, judgement, or memory is “correct” (in a normative way) is usually secondary to the question of whether that decision, judgement, or memory is helpful in the current situation.”

So by understanding the effects of the most relevant cognitive biases, we can improve user experience not only by trying to avoid the possible negative consequences, but also by taking advantage of them!

Another significant aspect is that we, designers also have cognitive biases, so we need to pay attention to these during the research and design process.

Cognitive Biases: the first 6

The second part of the Cognitive Bias UX Knowledge Base Sketch series describes 6 cognitive biases:

• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Information Bias
• Loss Aversion
• Confirmation Bias
• Distinction Bias
• Negativity Bias

All these have important implications on how we should design with the users’ cognitive tendencies in mind.

Cognitive Biases: 6 more to explore

The third part of the Cognitive Bias UX Knowledge Base Sketch series describes these cognitive biases:

• Framing Effect
• Bandwagon Bias
• Focusing Effect
• Outcome Bias
• Anchoring Effect
• Selection Bias

Cognitive Biases: 6 more to explore

The fourth part of the Cognitive Bias UX Knowledge Base Sketch series describes these cognitive biases:

• IKEA Effect
• Survivorship Bias
• Ambiguity Effect
• Peak-End Rule
• Observer-Expectancy Effect
• Attentional Bias

Cognitive Biases: 6 more to explore

The fifth (and for now the last) part of the Cognitive Bias UX Knowledge Base Sketch series describes these cognitive biases:

• False Consensus Effect
• Sunk Cost Bias
• Clustering Illusion
• Social Desirability Bias
• Empathy Gap
• Fundamental Attribution Error

Recommended Reading & Useful Links

• Ariely, D. (2010). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
• Phol, F. R. (2005). Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory
• Gilovich, T.; Griffin, D.; Kahneman, D. (2002). Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
• Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, Fast and Slow
• 67 Ways to Increase Conversion with Cognitive Biases
• The Importance of Cognitive Bias in Experience Design
• Are we in control of our own decisions? — TED Talk by Dan Ariely
• Tversky, A.; Kahneman, D. (1991.) Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model
• Kruger J.; Dunning D., (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
• Hsee C. K.; Zhang, J. (2004). Distinction Bias: Misprediction and Mischoice Due to Joint Evaluation
• Does comparison really lead to better choices?
• The Negativity Bias in User Experience
• Don’t Let Your Brain Deceive You: Avoiding Bias In Your UX Feedback
• 67 Ways to Increase Conversion with Cognitive Biases
• Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion: How Users Make Decisions
• Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. (1981). The Framing of decisions and the psychology of choice
• Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade D., Schwarz N., Stone, A. A. (2006). Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion
• Cherubini, P., Mazzocco, K., Rumiatic, R. (2002). Rethinking the focusing effect in decision-making
• Baron, J., Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation
• Decision Frames: How Cognitive Biases Affect UX Practitioners
• 67 Ways to Increase Conversion with Cognitive Biases
• Reward Framing & Its Stunning Impact On Conversion Optimization: What You Need To Know
• The Bandwagon Bias — The Dangers of Groupthink
• Empty Your Cup: How to Address Biases in UX
• Outcome Bias — Not All Outcomes are Created Equal
• The Types of Cognitive Biases that You Need to be aware of as a Researcher
• Overcoming Cognitive Bias in User Research
• 4 basic problems cause all the cognitive biases that screw up our judgement
• User Memory Design: How To Design For Experiences That Last
• Design principles: Selection bias
• Avoiding Bias from the Survivor Effect
• Overcoming survivorship bias in data-driven experience design
• Overcoming bias in research and product design
• 6 common cognitive biases UXers should know
• Cognitive Biases in Digital: Why users are irrational and how to design for it (Part 1)
• Attentional Bias and Your Decisions
• Aronson, E. (2008). The Social Animal 10th Edition, p167
• Cognitive psychology for UX: how to avoid the false consensus effect
• You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect
• Don’t Let Your Brain Deceive You: Avoiding Bias In Your UX Feedback
• You Are Not Your User
• Cognitive biases in user research — 2
• Sunk-Cost Fallacy: How to Avoid Bias Based on Past Decisions
• Design principle: Know when to quit
• The Types of Cognitive Biases that You Need to be aware of as a Researcher
• Psycho Wednesday #2 Clustering illusion
• 18 Cognitive Biases You Can Use for Conversion Optimization
• UX & Social Desirability
• 9 Biases In Usability Testing
• 6 common cognitive biases UXers should know
• Overcoming the social desirability bias in UX research
• Empathy Gap
• Cognitive Biases in Digital: Why users are irrational and how to design for it (Part 2)
• UX 6 of 10: The Fundamental Attribution Error
• The Fundamental Attribution Error
• Fundamental Attribution Error and the User

Krisztina Szerovay

https://tinyurl.com/3rryezet