And today is our last session, and we're going to talk about the disability and molecular simulations, and I'll start working on that. I first planned to make it really maybe simple and keep it in very abstract terms, but then due to our discussions in the last day and a half, I decided to change it a little bit and maybe make it a little bit more personal and maybe make it a little bit more real in that case. I'll start with you words. So I'm currently unemployed and unaffiliated, so you must wonder, like, what am I doing here, actually? And the reason is because before I got unemployed and unaffiliated, I started working on envy books, which is a cloud-based repository for molecular analysis and simulations. Essentially, also something I love the most about the idea of crystal-stalking about yesterday, like bring computers to data, so you don't have to, like, move it from one computer to the next. You can analyze it in the cloud. Hopefully, one day, it's almost around the situation. Automate as much as workflow as possible for reproducibility. You can always check all the input parameters and so on and so forth. So I stole this slide from my previous presentation about the IP box. So the idea was to provide storage to the researchers and also toolbox. You can also do all sorts of things. And the idea for storage was that as we all move between different institutions, then we also lose access to the data whilst it was architectural. So accessing data on some other institution is a nightmare. I have a huge stack of hard drives which are failing. And I don't know also which data is on which drive. So I thought it would be really nice if you could just search for it on some kind of reliable service. And the reason, and of course, there are many repositories, as we have mentioned, like yesterday, like Zynado, Feature, OrrSafe. And the reason why I thought that we really benefited from a specialized repository is because we were able to customize the detailed metadata which will kind of improve searchability and findability. Maybe we can curate this a little bit better. We can maybe create better documentation in this way. We can maybe also think about new ways to analyze and visualize things. Maybe we can get some new insights. Maybe we can even develop new methods because we'll have more data. And essentially, it's all about having a better and more accessible sign so other people can look at your data. And we can learn. If we make mistakes, then we can learn from them. But if we don't really share them, if we don't really report how we do things, then we don't actually know where are we making those mistakes. And we are all making mistakes all the time. Which now I will kind of show you the next part of my course. And essentially, I was kind of interested how can I actually turn this data into knowledge because knowledge is more important than data just to get there, I guess. And now I would like to give you a quick overview of my career path expressing methods. So I started with the QM on some small systems on enzyme. I did QMM on these small systems to kind of validate if QMM works like if these parameters are working compared to benchmark couple clustered level theory. And then I moved to MD. Again, because I was working on enzyme, so you have to have this multi-scale approach to characterize all the, I guess, important aspects of enzyme function. Of course, I started immediately with the energy calculation because that's the best way to enter a molecular dynamic simulations. We got very frustrated, but I did some kind of free energy perturbation and thermodynamic integration to kind of check the difference in binding energy between substrate and the inhibitor. And then I got this just like a little side project. It would be just like a little thing. We will help these experimentalists in Munich. I would just do this quick QMM study with the mechanism of this photo enzyme which does like DNA repair. So there are like excited states, all sorts of fun stuff. And I was like, yeah, okay, well, let's give it a try because there are like several proposed mechanisms. They weren't really sure what's happening. I never got to the QMM part. I mean, I did, but not mechanistically. So essentially I got stuck in the first time because there were two histidines in the active sites. And we didn't know what I got for the protonation state. So there were essentially nine possible combinations, even just around MDs because you need to sign protonation states in advance there are no proton jumpings around. So I spent a year doing this. And then I did MD, I did QMM repair a lot to actually calculate some EPR parameters to prepare the experiment. I did Poisson Boltzmann to calculate PKs. I used all the available servers to calculate and estimate PKs. And they give you very, very good results. And essentially with Poisson Boltzmann, if you know how to choose your parameters, you can get the answer that you want out of it. And then, finally, I went back to my original project. I did more molecular dynamics, but this time now umbrella sampling and steering molecular dynamics, because non-equilibrium free energy is amazing but so hard to work with and it's really impossible for this system that I was working with because I will try to get the energy of coenzyme A, which in itself is a very long molecule and has so many degrees of freedom, and I was destined to fail, but I didn't really accept it. And then finally, I went to Poisson and I started to work on membrane proteins, which are completely different, these very complicated just because of their size. And I will also explain why in the next piece of life. I'm sorry that you got some rock bottom and satisfaction with the membrane proteins. Yes, I agree. Because none of my projects really work. Every now and then you need some kind of a boost to kind of get you going. But everything that I tried to do, there were always just more problems, more problems, so maybe just my perspective and I see problems, I'm just like, oh yeah, not a very interesting problem. I was like, no, like this I have to do this. I thought it would be easier. But then this is also the point where I started to work on membrane proteins. I really started to feel the need. I really wanted to see other people's data because I started to work on the protein where there was a lot of contradictory information even in the experiments and not to mention simulations. So I didn't really know who to trust and I didn't know what data was actually reliable. I mean, it all seemed okay, but it was all slightly different. Again, you could make data from face whatever you want in this case. And that's how I started to think about their repository, that's how MDVox was born and I started to really enjoy that. I had so much fun doing MDVox. Again, it's just a prototype but I learned really well. I got really super interested in the infrastructure and everything surrounding it including money. And then that's how I started looking for decentralized solutions and I also really, really enjoyed that. I think that's really interesting and exciting. There are some new and exciting developments in that area and it's really worth keeping an eye on it. So, definitely my satisfaction rises. So I guess un-affiliation and being unemployed is not that bad although there's a lot of problematic connotations with the words. And then in the meantime these are the main packages that I use. I use Gaussian, but I also use a bunch of others but these are what I use on daily basis. And I use Ember with Ember force field. I use mostly APBS for Poisson-Boltzman. But when I went to Pozo, I switched to Gromax and Gromax force field, I also then tried to use Ember again after three or four years' break. I had to really relearn how to use Ember because it has changed so much in the middle. But what I did actually used so many different analysis tools. I'll explain again why that I... Again, that's probably the biggest gain for my positive just by trying all these different protein analysis. I think I've probably tried every possible protein analysis that there is to make sense of the other dialysis. So, meet my understanding which is being like a protein and it's an ABC transporter. It's a multi-drug transporter. It has like more than 100 substrates and it's very slow. So you wonder, why would you even model this? And it's very large and it has like 1,300 residues. So this is the structure but there is also a linker which is missing from the crystal structure. It's 60 residues long. Crystal structures are between 3.8 and 4.2 angstroms and there are more than 15 different crystal structure of mouse feel like a protein currently in the PVD. And so and this is roughly the mechanism so there are really big conformational changes and also we have ATP binding to make them one complicated to 2 nuclear binding domains which meant that goes together and this has somehow supposed to drag conformational change with that the drug is being here in this cavity and then the drug is expelled from the so it's a drug pump essentially gets kicked out of the cell and you repeat the cycle. So time scales. So when I arrived and I started to work on this protein I browsed the literature every time when I would read another paper I would get more confused so at some point I just decided I'll just look at all the structural data and I'll stick with that. And the interesting thing with PGP just at that time there were two identical two structures that were derived from identical crystallographic data. So two different structures were two different solutions from the same diffraction data. And I'll call them for simplicity blue, orange, and green so I think it's easier than using PV codes. So essentially blue and orange are derived from the same crystallographic data because they were solved in a slightly different way I won't get into details. There were like some changes in the helices. So there were like the registry shifts in multiple helices which actually changes like which residues are actually water-explosive and which residues are memory-exposed exposes. Both of them had the same resolution so the question is like which one will be used for your simulations. And of course at that time most of the simulations in the literature were the original orange structure. The green structure came out at roughly the same again it is exactly the same resolution but it had a wider separation between these nucleotide binding domains. So is this like another confirmation? Like again old experimental data reported that you can have like a really a large motion between between these domains. So I used bromose, I mean bromase with bromose I used bromase 333 which was so slow I was getting 2 nanoseconds per day but I persisted so I go to the 200 at some point and of course they were like I think to learn how to set up a membrane system so it was old, it would be like a little bit slower and usually I also wanted initially to compare this blue structure to the orange like to my supervisor data but then I actually set it up by myself and rerun the game to make things even like more like similar to each other. But these are just like pairwise arenas, diplos and this is what the entire protein is just for transmembrane domain and this is going up to 1.8 nanometers which is really large. So essentially the difference between structures walk up to 20 angstroms in terms of higher density. So the difference was really big, old simulations they were all starting from the same point but they all diverged essentially. Except for the transmembrane domain, so this is PCA analysis, you can see that they are all scattered in the PC space but what these here and this one which is the blue structure is probably the one that changes the least in this area. So the blue structure is actually let's call it stable. So these are like the smet shots you can see that these are just representative clusters, so the simulation and this is like the helical content. So you can see that actually the protein is unfolding as you simulate it. And like all this is just like one set of variables that you can analyze but none of it is converged everything changes and obviously I'm under sampling because this is 200 nanoseconds and the entire protein works on a second time scale, but these were the longest simulations, everything was between 50 and 100 at that time and people reporting all sorts of findings, claiming all sorts of mechanistic insights but the problem is you can't do that at all. And then this unfolding was interpreted as dynamics and flexibility but we don't really know if it's this because the crystal structures were bad or maybe the protein is definitely dynamic but what's the dynamics and what's actually unfolding we can't really say. So I worked on this and I'm trying to analyze when you only get this noise and things falling apart like what kind of story is it? Like nobody's really interesting to hear like oh but your simulation is falling apart hence it's not working. So when we first submitted this I got a review saying your simulation is diverged and I was like yes that's what I'm trying to say but that was like a feedback and that the work is not novel. So I think this is really wrong way of looking at this type of work. These are just vanilla simulations this is not even an example this is like just the most basic thing you can do with a membrane protein. And then last year we had a student and I asked her to do something that was kind of I was really interested in like looking at this and like after a while I interviewed the frustration. So I actually asked her to use all the available force-fueling bromides to see what are we getting out of it. So do we get unfolding of the helices if we use different force-fuel do we get this form of transmembrane domains. And so these are like these of each particular of every nucleotide binding domains and transmembrane domains. And you can see that it varies like again it's not really diverged in any way. This is PCA analysis in dihedral in the Cartesian space and again all the simulations are pretty much all over the place. And here are distances between nucleotide binding domains. So we try to kind of pull out some experimental data but there are some theory and fed experiments which also had to be taken with care. But again you can see that distributions distances from all these different force-fueled are different. So if you choose OPLS you would get I don't know which color is OPLS. It's purple. So for example you would be here but for example if I wanted to use bromides which I did then I would be here. And then the green one is martini which actually gave the best result but only after the simulations were extended to a microsecond time scale. And then amber is here. Essentially you don't know what you're getting because we always choose just one force-fuel and if you would choose another one you would get a bunch of different results. I apologize for the quality of the pictures but I took them from a PDF because I didn't plan to talk about this so I had to scavenge from a thesis. So yeah, this is essentially what I wanted to say. So it's really hard to spell MD with the experiment. We often don't have experimental data that is comparable to MD. We are still mostly under-exampling definitely for the trans-membrane proteins because they are so large and usually quite slow. So I think we probably need to also set up some standards but how much can we say about these simulations without over-interpreting? If we have 100 nanosatons can we really make bold claims about making them? I think maybe sometimes but I think those would be rare cases. And again I made all of my data available when I published this paper. I put it on picture. I made all the input but I had to make a selection of what do I want to put out there and to be honest I also cut some corners there because it was easier. I was in a hurry. I had lots of things to do so I didn't put everything that I think should be out there. But I tried to provide all the input files the initial and final coordinates. I put trajectories. I stripped water because they would be too big to upload. I had parameter files CPR so I think things that could be useful and some analysis stuff as well. And then I did a drag and drop on picture. The problem is I did it several times as I was changing the manuscript as I was remembering oh maybe I should put this as well maybe I should add that as you know how the process of writing the paper goes. But some of my files were actually missing. I went recently just to check something and then I realized that well actually where is this file? I thought that I had put it out there. And the reason is what I did. I did drag and drop and I left it to upload because it was really the upload was really really slow. So these weren't even such huge files. I think it was like a few gigabytes so it wasn't some impossible size but it was slow to upload. And I think probably at some point because I left this window to upload and I went to do something else I did check but there was like I think there's like 60 files on it also I mean it's easy to miss if you don't. So we definitely I want to say we need some kind of flag making if we decide on both what are like some standard or really required files that you can't upload until you have like checked you need to do this this this and this because we can't really rely that we will notice everything again about it. And I also just proposed to include some other things that might be useful because I was busy with other things and I wanted to get it done and I wanted to get rid of this paper and move on with my life. And I also want to say like my simulations were one probably one year in the picture before I published the paper I did not get schooled. So I don't think there is a reason for view to that but so these were like really some basic simulations like nothing fancy about them at all example there is a mainframe in them. But just in setting up the system and how we do things and how we run simulations so I decided roughly cluster like where do we introduce some errors or not errors but where do we introduce different specifications or whatever you want to call it which might affect the visibility. So it's every time we need to make a decision and I'll start this is like my rough clustering of different sources of divergence or whatever you want to call it again. So there is theoretical one so we need to choose a force field. So you need to choose like a physical model to describe your data. You need to choose a sampling method it will be an elastimulation it will be in hand sampling if you do in hand sampling which is hand sampling if you do you have to choose reaction coordinate which reaction coordinate how you will choose that so on and so forth. Then we analyze data then you have to unbiase your simulation you have to do all sorts of steps again you need to choose what you need to do whether you want to use the available tools do you want to write your wrongs do you want to use empty analysis or empty trash or romance like it doesn't really matter. And then again there is what computational I don't want to even go there but there is a high verse CPUs, GPUs, architecture all sorts of things that affect precision and we know about this and there is not really much we can do so I don't really want to go too much you know but there is also software like which package will you use which version of that package will you use are you going to write your own code will you share that code so there are all sorts of things that again affect the results and then there is a code that is practical where eventually we are setting up the system topology building which paternation state so which ions do you want to put in which water model do we do want to use initial coordinates which PDB will you choose will you try to build something by yourself if you are building some kind of polymer again what will you choose as a starting point because starting points are really important and then relaxation I call this relaxation because other people do refer to this like equilibration as well but how do you when you minimize things like do you heat it up do you put position restraints all sorts of decisions that are good in here and then again production parameters which thermostat refers to which electrostatic method how many simulations do you want to run how long all of this kind of affects this reproducibility and essentially all these preservation flows I think you call it workflow so all these things are going to make a decision that's a workflow right and now I would before we continue I would be forgotten just the our voice so I think before we break out into this question which maybe we will talk about what reproducibility really means and what does it mean for us because I think it's probably also very different and there is a lot to a lot of discussion about reproducibility and so this is not a discussion this is not a definition for repeatability repeatability and reproducibility people make the difference between these three terms but there are often in language used interchangeably so repeatability means same thing same experimental setup essentially replicas when you start maybe from the same point on the same machine set it up and set it up in exactly the same way different teams same experts replicability team same experimental setup essentially someone is using your machine your devices but someone else is doing it reproducibility means completely different environment and different experimental setup they can follow your protocol but in a way everything is different including machines equipment and people working on the experiment additionally some people kind of introduced research reproducibility definition which is really that means provide sufficient detail about procedures and data so that the same procedure could be exactly repeated reproducibility obtain the same results from independent study with procedures as closely matched to the original study as possible and then there is this inferential reproducibility draw the same conclusions from either independent replication of a study or reanalysis of the original study so which definition do we choose actually when we discuss these things I think that's really important so we are all on the same page so that we are all trying to provide this solution for the same problem rather than the people thinking about different steps and we have seen that there are really many steps in terms of reproducibility and I guess the question is like what do we really want is reproducibility really important for MD like how would we achieve it what do we mean by and yesterday we discussed quality of simulation what do we mean by quality am I making better simulations than I don't know someone else are my simulations of better quality I don't know how do we find quality like how long do you run it which force field do you use I think it's a really tough question to answer maybe not even one without answering but I think what is worthwhile what is really important to push forward what is it that we really care about and what can really make this method more usable in the end so I think rather than reproducibility I'll focus on another hour that's reliability so we have really good best practices so if you follow this if you want to calculate Biden free energies for example they should be probably good not necessarily perfect but maybe this is the best way to achieve the highest accuracy and so forth we can give each other recipes and best practices and how to check out the things that are actually good we should also maybe focus on accuracy so make sure that our force fields are performing well which means we should maybe do some more benchmarking studies which maybe means that we should team up with some experimentalists who could actually derive data sets that are really comparable to MD maybe we can really try to work on that to have these benchmarking sets because we don't have them in the month we have some but I don't think enough and we can also do relative comparisons sometimes but these are studies that are kind of bird computing time and it doesn't bring with it those novel results that get you published in Nature's and finally how do we which metrics do we want to use and how do we validate what is actually useful and for this I think really the nicest thing that I have seen recently is that living journal of molecular sciences and their best practices in terms of error bars and error calculations trying to learn also that it's exactly the same thing but it took me a very long time because I was searching for this literature all over the place so I think we really need to start consolidating things that we have learned maybe in the past 10 years and make it more available and accessible to people who are coming so they don't also have to spend like months trying to understand how to calculate error bars and things and I think Eric's message from breakfast is aim well don't aim too high let's get at least something done


Moodle 4 – Assignment Assignments in Moodle 4 can now include activity instructions for when students begin an assignment and an assignment timer. Along with other graded activities, assignments can now be marked complete based on a passing grade. And as with all activities and resources in Moodle 4, the teacher can now notify students of new or updated content. Let's follow our teacher as he clicks to add an assignment from the new coloured activity icon. The colour reflects the assignment's function in the course, which is to assess learners. He can add a description, which may optionally be displayed on the course page, but he also has a new area, Activity Instructions. Here he can explain what students need to do and they'll see these instructions once they've started work on their assignment and not before. Scrolling down the settings, he is also now able to set a time limit on the assignment, so in this case, he chooses 15 minutes. This assignment will have a pass grade, and with Moodle 4, it is now possible to make that pass grade a completion condition, so it will only show as complete once the student has reached the required level. Finally, a useful new feature available in all activities and resources, not just assignments, is the Content Change Notification. When our teacher adds new content to the course or updates existing content, he can tick this box to let students know. If we now log in as student Paula, we see she's been notified that there's a new assignment. She can go directly to that assignment, and when she clicks to begin the assignment, then she sees the instructions. Luckily, Paula passes the assignment and it shows as completed on the course page. To summarise, Moodle 4 assignments include activity instructions and a timer, and benefit from the new grade to pass completion condition and content change notifications.


Add Buck Allen. So a concern for Alex Collins going into the 2018 season was that he wasn't the clear cut goal line back for Baltimore. And this isn't me just saying this after the fact. I wrote about it in my week one, the report column. But since the Ravens have run six plays within the opponent's five yard line with four of those being rushes, Buck Allen has two of those carries and Alex Collins has one. Now I don't think it's time for Alex Collins owners to completely panic. It just means that Buck Allen may get in the way of Collins ceiling in that offense, which limits his overall upside. But for those of you that see Buck Allen sitting on your waiver wire, snag him. Get him this week. Not only is he going to get work at the goal line, but he's continued to be a receiving threat in that Ravens offense. He has 13 targets over the first two games. Seeing looks the goal line and through the air is perfect for a fantasy football running bag because touchdowns are everything and targets are more valuable than rushing attempts. And keep in mind in Buck Allen's two full seasons in the league, he's had 60 or more targets. It's not like this usage is just coming out of nowhere.


Daniel Medvedev vs. Nicholas Jarry is the second quarterfinal for the Men's Miami Open for 2024. Both players have been very good to get to this stage. Jarry started the tournament as the 22nd seed and we're going to buy in the first round. In the second round he take on Draper and after saving match points would fight to win in 3, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6. In the third round he take on Vilch who had just beaten Fritz in the previous rounds and again Jarry would fight back to win 6-7, 7-5, 6-3 in a very spicy match. In the fourth round he take on the number 7 seed Rude who he had had some battles with on the clay last year and after a very close first set he would get through in straights 7-6, 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinal. Medvedev started the tournament off as the number 3 seed and we're going to buy in the first round. In the second round he take on Fucovich but this is no problem getting through in straights 6-4, 6-2. In the third round he take on Norrie the 30th seed and again this is no problem getting through in straights 7-5, 6-1. In the fourth round he take on Coppa who had just taken out Baez and Umbair to get to this stage. After a close first set Medvedev would run away with a second 7-6, 6-1 to advance to the quarterfinal. These two have only played the one time before that was all the way back in 2019 on the clay in Barcelona. Medvedev getting in straights sets wins so five years ago long time in tennis and also don't forget this is not on clay which is kind of weird that Medvedev would win that in the first place but this is going to be on a hard court and the way Jarry is playing right now this is going to be a lot more dangerous. Jarry is going to win this one and he's going to use that serve four hand combo. It works so well against Rude he was so aggressive the entire time it also came to the net a little as well. We know that Medvedev does struggle sometimes with those volley players so he's going to have to come to the net be aggressive if he's going to beat Medvedev. Medvedev is going to win this one and he's a serve well and get off to a good start. He hasn't lost a set all week but there has been a couple of chances for their opposition in the first sets of his matches so far so he has to win that first set and really come out of the box a little bit quicker than maybe he has been. Great matchup fun matchup expect there's to be a lot of aces here and maybe a lot of big hitting as well especially from Jarry's point of view but I think Medvedev is going to get it done in a close straight sets. I think Jarry has had a great run till now but I just think that Medvedev is probably going to overpower him in the end and maybe just get him in the tie breaks but I think this is going to be very very close. Let me know down in the comments below who's going to make the semis.


can you hear me? Awesome. I am so sorry there was some technical difficulty but we're here now. Thank you for joining. I am Sneha and I'm so glad to connect with you all. I have a little bit of a presentation that I prepared but we don't actually have to stick to it. If you have questions I'm happy to answer as we go. So while I'm trying to figure out how to share my screen, don't actually know how to do that right now. Okay I think it's going to be a bit hard for me to share my screen because I don't really know this interface too well. But that's fine. Let me introduce myself. My name is Sneha. I was the head of product for a team called the service platform at Spotify as of last two weeks ago. I'm in between jobs and I'm switching to a new job starting on Monday that I haven't publicly disclosed yet but you'll be the first to know. I'm joining Colibra which is a vendor for data governance and data intelligence and joining them as a director of product leading their platform ecosystem. So I'm super excited about that. It's been a while since I switched jobs and in a way I'm you know perhaps in a similar boat as some of you who are thinking about their their next gig and how to break into product management. My background really over the past couple of years has been specifically in platform product management and I'm gonna talk about what that means in a second and besides work I think it's also good to know who we are as people because work is not our only identity.  I'm actually in one of the kids rooms so you can see a little valley bed sheet behind me and that's my little kid and I am also a dog rescue worker. I enjoy working with little pups getting them to a better home and when I'm not working I enjoy weightlifting. It's a good stress buster and I think as product folks you kind of need to find what that thing is to mentally and physically you know stimulate your energy and balance the chaos because as much as I love product marketing I think most PMs would agree it's a very chaotic world that we live in. So a little bit about my career I'm also monitoring the messaging so if you have questions for me you know feel free to ask them and I will you know keep looking for specific questions that I can help you with. I'm here for you I understand you know making the pivot towards product management is never an easy one so while I'm monitoring the messages I'll keep talking but feel free to you know interrupt me at any point. So a little bit about my career journey I started off as a developer back in 2006 I got a degree in GIS which is Geographic Information Systems and then I quickly over the next two and a half years I networked really hard with a lot of nonprofits who were sort of in that sphere and landed a very cool gig at NASA data center called FISN and worked as an individual contributor as a data engineer for about four years and through the work I did I found that I was leading product and project initiatives at a very large scale at the data center and I really truly enjoyed doing that. The bigger the complexity the more the dynamics of decisions and stakeholders and different types of use cases that came in the more I enjoyed you know sort of developing and I'm working through solutions through those challenging moments and I worked at a few media houses like New York Times, Comcast, which is an ISP as everyone knows, and then I landed at Spotify so I've been at Spotify for six and a half years so and it's a it's a lovely organization I couldn't recommend it more. I'm guessing everyone has probably heard of the brand but it's a music streaming platform that pivoted to audio first a couple of years ago so Spotify is way more than just music it's audiobooks it's podcasts and you know so many more experiences that we keep turning out. I say we because I've been there long enough that it's become a part of me and what I did at Spotify during my time was I worked with growing the data analytics capabilities so if you experience a personalized experience on the platform it comes from us understanding deeply understanding your taste understanding the genres that you are have a natural affinity to and perhaps you know exploring affinities that you haven't been exposed to introducing you to new indie artists and new you know types of you know music genres that you haven't really been exposed to with the intent that that might expand your world you might actually enjoy it or if you don't enjoy it you'll let us know and that will help us find more fine-tuned fine-greened experiences for you so that's what I did for the first two years I helped turn out the analytics that would personalize that user experience for you the next two years from 20 18 to 2020 I helped Spotify through the chaos known as GDPR which is really to help you know hold users whole companies accountable for user data and to help consumers get more control over what data is exposed by and is owned by companies and if you're uncomfortable with the amount of data that any enterprise has you have the right to ask for what they have and ask them to essentially scrub the ecosystem of your information and that was a very tough job because no one had ever done that before it was a compliance rule that had come initiated by the European Union but had soon become like the ways of working for many different countries California state had also adopted a similar policy then Russia did and India did and so governance and data governance was top of mind and working through those challenges with with data infrastructure teams or working out how to build capabilities for engineering teams like developers within Spotify which at that time were about 4,000 strong and helping them understand that as they were building features personalized experiences for consumers that they needed to think through why did they actually need a personal user information and in 99.99 percent you don't actually need to know who a user is to serve them a specific experience you can do it anonymously and that was such a fun experience I really grew a lot I learned a lot the company was growing tremendously at that point as well and then over the past two and a half years I I moved into you know leading Spotify in its cloud journey so back in 2016 I believe the GCP journey had started so Spotify moved from the data centers to Google Cloud Platform we did a lift and shift if folks are familiar with what that is just take your environment take all the applications shifted on to the cloud we were one of the first on GCP it was a wild ride you know it was a cool collaboration with Google and then the next you know era of like being on the cloud is optimizing your application so that they're more conducive for you know app modernization so being able to push code more often and to test and release more often and to be able to observe patterns of you know incidents and like optimizing the response time to incidents it becomes more and more critical so that's the kind of stuff that I I I worked on with my theme both as an IC and then manager and then a manager and managers the growth was tremendous in the span of 2.5 years I thoroughly enjoyed it it was wild it was crazy to go from you know through such a steep learning curve because being a product an individual contributor focusing on the craft focusing on the end user is a different skill set than you know managing a team of brilliant technical product managers and then you know the scales are quite different when you're leading in teams that are led by by leaders as well and I'm happy to talk through all three of those journeys as that's what I've experienced and essentially that's what I mean by my my career has essentially been building platforms whether in for NASA's data centers and you know for remote sensory imagery whether it's for GDPR compliance for Spotify and ensuring that we have checks and balances to respond to users and they need to understand what we have and what we know about them and to be able to do that responsibly or whether it's scaling out the capabilities to stream data to stream like these massive consumer experiences efficiently at scale on the cloud I've done that and I there's just so much to grow in in the sphere and I feel like I'm at the start in many ways there's and it's something I've thoroughly enjoyed so that would have been my presentation for you in a nutshell if there are any questions that you have feel free to drop them in the chat I see a lot of introductions I see a question are you currently hiring product interns for summer 2023 I think that's a great question for Spotify I as I mentioned at the start of this I I no longer work at Spotify I left the company about two weeks ago but there are several summer internships and there's like a cohort of summer interns that are hired every year so I would recommend going to the job site and sort of watching that space for dates and you know applications and how to go about it I hope I hope that answers Shristi I hope that answers your question awesome um anyone else I'd love to hear from the folks I see they're about at least 20 people on the call if not more I can't actually see the whole list um I'm just going through the chat list what do you see so a question from Samal what do you see the future of music beyond streaming oh fantastic if I was Oracle I would say that and again this is totally my opinion but I think that the future for music will always exist it's such a fun experience it's it's such a personal experience to like the music I like based on my identity where says what you assume I might enjoy versus what I actually enjoy there's just a lot of complexity and a lot of like you know psychological metrics that go into like the choices we make at every stage of our life so as a child as a teenager as a young adult as a parent it keeps changing it keeps evolving so there's always more to explore and now if the question is about how does music evolve I think we're seeing it we're seeing music as a short format we're seeing podcasts as like a longer format we're seeing people artists sort of experiment between you know the piece that they create and then releasing content around how they created it in the form of podcasts and that in itself becomes an album of content which is very interesting so if you're like me and you're you're crazy about a specific you know show like I loved Game of Thrones I wanted to know how they compile like the battles and how did they produce those those pieces I would actually dive into the extra content and I'd listen into the podcast and I'd listen into other fans and what they're thinking about and how they responded to like a specific dialogue or specific point and and that's just the way we're consuming content right now so I don't have a specific answer I think it's a great question I think the um we're going to see how things evolve in you know tangible experiences in person experiences face-to-face concerts COVID has you know sort of shown us that we need to get comfortable with you know being at home and so how does that change the way we experience concerts and you know those virtual experiences versus people are dying to go back out there so physical stage experiences are also here to stay so I don't actually know I think things will evolve as they always do which is watching trends is is I guess what I would do if I was in the music streaming like industry as a product manager to listen to watch the space to watch what customer needs are and evolve that experience accordingly. Samuel that was a very long response but I hope that got it got somewhere um all right I'm going to try to go faster with my responses here I see a lot of introductions hi everyone hi summon hi Nikita hi Snehal um you have a question somewhere in there what would your recommendation be to a new grad entering product management especially considering the current job market my heart goes out to everyone who is starting out right now I know I feel it the recession is hard it's a tough time no doubt um but if you know if my experience matters here I would say that I graduated with as an immigrant so I wasn't born in America I was born in Dubai and I moved to America to study and I had I was a student on a F1 visa and I needed a job after I graduated and I graduated 2008 and if you don't remember 2008 was perhaps one of the worst recessions of our time um and I I was struggling for a good six months interviewing you know posting my resume networking as much as I could doing everything that was within my control and not really getting a lot of contacts because people or folks were not hiring but um I I think at that moment I I just kept going and that would be my recommendation I know it can be demoralizing when you know you keep doing what you're supposed to do but the outcome uh that you're looking for doesn't quite hit um but keep uploading your resumes keep connecting with hiring managers whatever hiring managers do do share their contact information get in touch with recruiters at the companies you want to connect with try to go to like you know you're here right now at this career fair maybe uh you know a connection is made right here right in this moment share what what's your passion what is it that you're looking for what specific rules would be interesting to you um I would challenge you to to dig within your own skills your own capabilities along with where you aspire to be because sometimes there might be a gap between you know where you'd like to be uh and the skills that the company is looking for versus what you have at this you know point in time uh you might need to you know take like an ABC sort of journey to get to that you know that that role that aspirational role or that aspirational company that you're looking for and that's okay um you know life is a linear and let's start treating it linear um these are the cars that were being served uh a recession is or macro recession or macro economics as they call it um you know it's happening it's it's not great uh but I'm convinced that connecting with people and um you know showing your positive intent showing what you're passionate about demonstrating that maybe through some projects that you have maybe writing a personal note to a hiring manager about a role and how that can mix with you all of these things make a difference and uh don't stop don't give up uh that's the one thing I I I really hope uh you know you you take with you uh I know it's hard uh but you got to keep going um I hope and I've helped them in um answering all uh is shita uh I see a question from you hi um always wondered how could Spotify improve the experience for the artists and still be profitable for both are they already on it um I I think so I mean we've been doing it for a while we've been serving our artist community and being equitable with how we pay in comparison to labels in general and other streaming platforms you know the numbers are out there we Spotify is very competitive and and uh and does uh do as much uh as they can to keep of the music industry uh as equitable for every artist in fact uh you know Spotify is also leaning towards helping individuals uh you know create their own destiny so uh you know we have a mission to to serve as many creators so that they can live off of their art whether you're an independent uh you know musician looking uh to you know collaborate with you know famous artists and and join their band or whether you are an indie artist that you know wants to sort of bring your creation forward they're all of these tools and ecosystems that have been created on Spotify specifically for creators um and um at various different like um equitable thresholds like there's a free experience as a premium experience and there's like you know the platinum experience for those who are backed by large enterprises there's advertising and getting your name out there um so i i think Spotify is doing a fantastic job here is there more work to be done absolutely but um that would be less of my concern at at this point and um i think at the 20 billion dollar company i think they're quite profitable and uh they're they're doing they're doing fine um what else can i help you guys with uh while i'm here i'm scrolling i'm scrolling uh nice to meet you all jyoti aditi um i see a question here as a hiring manager how can a career changer to product make an impact while their application and convince you to take a bet on them particularly someone who's moving from another part of debt that is customer success and operations um i think that's a fantastic question and i sort of touched on it in a previous response you always want to bring your transferable skills to your next job i uh i think everything that you've experienced in life makes you a better you know employee at the next company that you join and it's especially true in product management so when you say customer success in operations i i see a lot of breadth of tangible transferable skills that you come that you get with that you proud as a customer success person you have probably interacted with multiple edge cases and lots of different scenarios of you know what gets in the way of for customer truly benefiting from a feature service a product that is being put out there so how do you sort of translate what you have experienced the breadth of knowledge that you've accumulated through the careers that you've had the experience that you've had and put it on your resume a static document i think that's the challenge but you don't have to limit yourself if you have a powerful story your resume may be a good start you know try to find metrics to document your achievements in you know the business wins that you've had during that time during those roles that you've had quantify it you know if there's revenue goals or number of customer touch points that you've had or you know how you've actually need a customer's life better what did you do what did you specifically do in order to get there operations may be similar like how have you enabled a team or an organization to be more operationally effective what have you done what are your accomplishments so that's your resume but then there's also the option to write you know a blurb traditionally known as a cover letter but it could just be an email to the hiring manager sort of saying hey i see you have a job here i'm super excited to apply for this this is how i believe i would be an asset to your organization and then write about that experience that you have that directly you know that you can connect to the role that you're applying to i think as humans we're always looking for connections so if you can find what that common ground is that connects to like a specific responsibility on the job posting to a thing that you've achieved that might just be it or it could you know i would steer away from just talking about how you aspire to be a part of a brand and you know you're a big mega fan of a company and you're aspiring to just be a part of it and it would be your life's biggest you know goal to just be there i mean that's great you know being a fan fan boy fan girl it's great i've done it i enjoy it but how does that help the hiring manager make a decision about your skillset how does that help them understand i mean clearly you're passionate about the job or you know the company and all of that that's great the fashion is one dimension there's you know there's tangible hard skills as well so i would say balance your messaging to the hiring manager with fashion along with like this is what you get out of you know out of the experiences i've had this is how i enabled you um and i will stay online for as long as you go as one i have a hard stop as um well i said as long as you all want but i have a hard stop at one but i'm here till uh till then to answer any questions you have um but for those who need to bounce to like another session thank you all uh this has been great uh and uh i've dropped my linkedin um link on my bio page on hoppin feel free to connect with me and you know all the best uh you know i i love what i do and i uh welcome you to you know growing in uh you know as a product leader as a product manager as your first you know associate job as a product manager it's great it's exciting it's a wild ride thank you all um for those who are still on um so i see a note from kathya if you haven't already fill out the networking form and stay connected with everyone um please do i'm here i i love product school i love what they stand for so um i'm gonna keep doing what i can to keep this industry going um any other questions for me folks uh i see a question from basker uh can you please share how did you keep yourself motivated while looking for full-time roles during the o8 recession how did you keep your stuff positive um i think that's a really good question basker um it was tough i won't lie i um i you know i definitely had moments where i wasn't sure that i was actually going to be in the country for very long um but um i think in those moments surrounding yourself with family and friends who you know who are always going to be there like i think all too often we think of our job as our identity and our singular identity which is a really harmful place to be and it's taken me many years to sort of find a balance uh and to see my world as as many things that that you know in combinations sort of make me happy and a job is important obviously like it helps you achieve the things you want it helps you buy the things you need it helps you live a comfortable life um um and but family is important too and surrounding yourself with a community is really good um i remember um joining multiple associations at that point i'm indian i joined like indian professional networks um i you know i enjoyed connecting with others and just sharing notes about what was happening how were they going about it there were a lot of you know fresh grads who were in a similar situation as me and just talking about it somehow made made your heart lighter in that moment at least that's how i felt um i know a lot of people you know to picked up hobbies uh you know when it hit the gym for an hour or two just just sort of bust that anxiety that's building up um and whatever ways you find to cope with the anxiety that you're feeling at least that's how i felt um is um is it's personal and it's what you need to do for yourself um and i wish you the very best i know this is a tough time um and if you want to connect uh and talk more about it i'm i'm happy to you know take a call and to chat um hi shita i see you from pscp google um and i am looking through everyone's notes thank you all it has been wonderful connecting uh here um it's so great to see something new introductions and new faces um i see a question from steve uh consider consider yourself as the product consider the user the employer and their needs and what are the key features that are important to them then make sure your product you as a candidate speaks to those features in the marketing materials and actual feature set skills oh wow i love that absolutely uh i couldn't have said it better yes you are the product uh you are connecting with your user so find the audience and you know work on your pitch um and keep working on it you know practice makes perfect so if uh it you know maybe connect with steve he might help you get that pitch right because i i love what he just shared um Cecilia uh nice to see you too uh do you have any recommendation to practice hand on hands on skills when you're looking for pm jobs absolutely there's a lot that can be done if i had presented my slides uh i had actually put together some materials that could be helpful um i see so the industry is constantly moving and every company sort of has their way of building product but there is some consistency in the way planning cycles work so getting familiar with okr's objectives key results if this is new to you there are multiple references books on what is what are okr's how how are they sort of written uh how do i sort of get comfortable thinking about objectives and business outcomes versus outputs um that's like a mental shift for a lot of people so if you already know that great but if you don't uh i recommend sort of understanding and reading about um outcome driven and outcome oriented roadmaps um there's also lean business uh models and building out canvases for every single initiative that you are responsible for starting with the why like what is it that i am responsible to for what is the mission i'm on uh what is the customer need what is the business need why is it critical that we build this feature to the worst uh like why are we well positioned to do that that's what uh uh a lean canvas can help you achieve it can help it it provides prompts of questions to ask yourself upfront and then fill in uh fill in the blanks as as you as you go and it also helps you identify like you know what do you not understand about uh the opportunity that you've been placed on and it helps you you know put your energies towards ask getting uh those answers like what are the kpis that will uh will define uh success for the feature that i'm launching here uh is this just a business outcome and uh there are no customers out there who really want this well that may be a reason to go back to your leadership and sort of um ask them well help me understand what is the customer need here what is it that uh uh how will they benefit from this um there are a lot of biases in and product management um biases from leadership but by a biases from the executive biases from ourselves as you build products and i think as a product manager the best skill that you can hone in on is how to unbias yourself over time how do you sort of ask questions like i i start with assumptions we all do but how do you sort of check those assumptions along the way um um so assumption mapping lean canvas uh uh you know building on a lean business model canvas um you know understanding outcome oriented road maps and okay ours um i think this is a good start um i'd also recommend some books that uh i um i find always at my end table as like something i reference often um and the refresher helps me personally as well um i love good strategy bad strategy by richard remount um it's uh it's it's a book that's been around at least for a decade it's not longer but uh it's a classic it sort of demystifies what is a strategy uh what is what uh what makes uh for a good strategy um and uh how do you sort of check yourself as uh as you find yourself going down a rather goal of you know um writing a dog in assuming that that is uh you know a strategic direction enough for your team um another book uh and basically anything uh marty kagan is something i recommend i think he's a pioneer uh in product management and um i like his um a book empowered um but i would start with inspired if if you haven't read it inspired is uh you know series one empowered is more for leaders so if if you are looking for uh to lead a team of product managers designers i think that's a really good book um and then um i think something that uh leaders in general and something i've actively practice uh can be better at is vulnerability and knowing when to see what you're good at and knowing when to admit that you actually don't know and you don't have the answers um and uh brelly brown has written a really good book dare to lead um and i highly recommend uh you read it uh maybe it helps you become more empathetic uh towards those uh you connect with and collaborate with um uh all right folks i'm going to take one more question and and then i'm going to have to bounce this has been fantastic um and i'm scrolling scrolling scrolling and i think okay i see katya thank you so much for sharing my slides for whatever reason i wasn't able to um but i guess that's it folks all the best uh and uh i see a few things on linkedin so i'm gonna start responding to those but be connecting with you all and have a wonderful rest of the day take care bye


Welcome to Toffy TV and I'm Delighted today. I'm joined by Evans Newshine and James Sarkofty. Thank you. Welcome. Have you found it at Evans so far? It's been good, really enjoyable. The staff have been great so far. I'm very satisfied with them. I feel like I've been here more than 10 days or so. It's been a great experience so far and I'm really enjoying it. It's hot here.  Tough, really tough but enjoyable. A lot of the ball. We're just starting to work towards the way we're going to play a bit more with the ball over the fitness side. But that's all about the minutes I'd say and I'm working towards the big goal which is the first one we're going to do. We'll come back to that in a minute. Cynny asia if obviously last season we were at Birmingham. There was a lot of noise around in terms of the fans and how they were cleaning the coats and all of this stuff that went on. As a player at the opposite, did you notice that? Did you pay any attention to it? I know it's difficult as you've had another club but did that catch your eye at all? Of course. You couldn't miss it really could you? It was obviously a big story going to the end of the season. Being at a different club and looking from the outside and seeing the way the fans supported the players was incredible. You would have thought the team was in the top half of the table fighting for the top four spot if anything compared to where they were. So fair play to the fans of sticking by them and supporting the way they did. I'm excited to get to go to some park and play in front of them yourself. I was going to say that it's difficult to say if they play any part or certainly the size of it. Just reaffirming that it is a big club. Of course yeah but I've always knew that I'm from the north and I understand the size of the clubs up here. It's always been the two big Manchester teams and the two big Liverpool teams. For me it's one of the biggest clubs in the league so the opportunity to come play for them myself was incredible. I'm really excited to get out there. So getting back to Nile then so obviously you've just made your debut. It wasn't the result we wanted but clean seat while you were on the pitch. It was a good night. We had a couple of young boys in our side. It's mainly about the minutes but you do want to start getting them patterns of playing on the defensive pitch right. For my 45 it was a good defensive display against a good side. They were probably a little bit ahead of us in terms of minutes to play down the pitch in the amount of training we managed to do. So there was definitely positives there and still things to work on. There was one thing I think Evertonians are really going to get behind you for. There's that looking after Stanley Mills at the end there. I think our fans are going to love that. Is that something you bring that like leadership or you like to think you bring the leadership? I think so. I've got a fair bit of experience now. I'm coming to my later 20s and I've spent a lot of time in the game. So I see young men out there. I thought it was great tonight to be fair. Both him in the middle and the goalie bill of Rhys. What an experience it was and they all did really well. So when I see someone a bit older picking on them I thought I'd have to go and avoid myself. But I enjoy it. It's part of the game and it's good fun. I've seen you doing that to some of our players. A couple of times. I've shouted at you a couple of times as you do. Seeing again just going back to the club and obviously coming out here. What was it like seeing the fans in the stadium and stuff? We've just been around it today and it's mad to see coming over from Liverpool and seeing so many Evertonians. But what's it like when you come over to the state and you see that in the way it was? Well it's what an experience isn't it. For me myself driving here, getting a police escort, seeing a lot of people tearing up. Not what I expected to be as I needed to be fans here but not the sort of fans that we had. And I say what an experience to come and see fans at a stadium like this and play against Arsenal. I was just taking it on and really enjoyed my night. And I'm sure the fans are more very enjoyed it too. I mean not the result we wanted but the overall experience has been great. And then off to Minnesota to play. It'll be another difficult game. I've seen MLS team and a different experience. Yeah well they're mid-season so we've got the band got it. And I'm sure coming up against Premier League side against us they want to go and improve a point really. So we need to ready again so we've got a couple of days training beyond this and we'll fly out there. And we'll look forward to another game. And then finally obviously the Premier League is fast approaching.  I'm sure you know half five kickoff. You'll get to experience that. There's already talk of a coach welcome and blue smoke everywhere. So is that something that I know you're never going to say you're on start and all that. But is that something that you're looking forward to? Yeah of course. I think as soon as the fixtures are announced you look straight away to the first game. And seeing it's a half five kickoff against Chelsea at home. I was excited straight away. So we'll look forward to that in a few weeks time. And hopefully we can build up now to a good performance coming to that game. But there's still a bit of work to do on the forwarder. Absolutely James. Thank you very much for taking the time. Cheers fellas.


I talk a lot about the power of taking personal responsibility for your own health, for your family's health, but there are forces in play when it comes to influencing what we eat. Check it out. In the 1970s, the US government went from just subsidizing some of the worst foods to paying companies to make more of them. In the 1970s, the farm bills reversed long-standing policies aimed at limiting production to protect prices, instead starting to give in payouts in proportion to output. Extra county started pouring into the food supply. Then Jack Welch gave a speech. In 1981, the CEO of General Electric effectively launched the shareholder value movement, reorienting the primary goal of corporations towards maximizing short-term returns for investors. This places extraordinary pressures on food companies from Wall Street to post-increasing profit growth every quarter to boost their share price. There was already a glut of calories on the market, and now they had to sell even more. This places food and beverage CEOs in an impossible bind. It's not like they're rubbing their sticky hands together in the thought of luring more handles and gretles to their doom in their houses of candy. Food giants couldn't do the right thing if they wanted. They are beholden to investors. If they stopped marketing to kids or tried to sell healthier food or anything that could jeopardize their quarterly profit growth, Wall Street would demand a change in management. Healthy eating is bad for business. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's not even anyone's fault, really. It's just how the system works. Given the constant demands for corporate growth and rapid returns and an already oversaturated marketplace, the food industry needed to get people to eat more. Like the tobacco industry before them, they turned to the ad men. The food industry spends about $10 billion a year on advertising around another $20 billion. Another forms of marketing such as trade shows and incentives, consumer promotions and supermarket slotting fees. Food and beverage companies purchased shelf space from supermarkets to prominently display their most profitable products. They pay supermarkets. The practice is also evidently known as cliffing, because companies are forced to bid against each other for eye-level shelf placements with the loser being pushed over the cliff. With slotting fees up to $20,000 per item, per retailer, per city, you can imagine what kind of products get the special treatment hint. It ain't broccoli. To get a sense of what kind of products merit prime shelf real estate, look no further than the checkout aisle. Merchandising the power categories on every lane is critical, reads a trade publication on the best practices for superior checkout merchandising. They were referring to candy bars and beverages. Evidently, even a 1% power category boost in sales could earn a store an extra $15,000 a year. It's not that they necessarily don't care about their customers' health. Many traded companies, like most of the leading grocery store chains, are said to have a fiduciary duty to increase profits above other considerations. Tens of millions of dollars are spent annually advertising a single brand of candy bar. McDonald's alone may spend billions a year. The food industry now spends more money on advertising than any other sector of the economy. Reagan-era deregulation removed the limits placed on marketing food products on television to children. Now the average child may see more than 10,000 food ads a year. And that's on top of the marketing online, in print, at school, on their phones, at the movies, and everywhere in between. And nearly all of it for products detrimental to their health. Besides the massive early exposure and ubiquity, food marketing has become highly sophisticated with the help of child psychologists. Companies learn how to best influence children to manipulate their parents. Packaging is designed to best attract a child's attention and then placed at their eye level in the store. You know those mirrored bubbles in the ceilings of supermarkets? They're not just for shoplifters. Close-circuit cameras and GPS-like devices on shopping carts are used to strategize how best to guide shoppers towards their most profitable products. Behavioral psychology is widely applied to increase impulse-buying, eye movement-tracking technologies are utilized. The unprecedented rise in the power, scope, and sophistication of food marketing started around 1980. That aligns well with the blast-off slope of the obesity epidemic. Some of the techniques, such as product placement in-school advertising and event sponsorship skyrocketed from essentially zero to multi-billion-dollar industry since the 80s. This led one economist to conclude, quote, the most compelling single interpretation of the admittedly incomplete data we have is that the large increase in obesity is due to marketing. Yes, innovations in manufacturing and political maneuvering led to a food supply bursting at the seams with close to 4,000 calories a day for us all, but it's the advances in marketing manipulations that are used to try to peddle that surplus into our mouths. The opening words of the Institute of Medicine's report on the potential threat posed by food ads were, marketing works. Yeah, there's a large number of well-conducted, randomized studies I could go through showing advertising exposure and other marketing methods can change your eating behavior and get you to eat more, but what do you need to know beyond the fact that the industry spends tens of billions of dollars a year on it, right?  It's like when my medical colleagues accept drug launches from pharmaceutical representatives and take a fence that I would suggest it might affect their prescribing practices. I mean, do they really think drug companies are just in the business of giving away free money for nothing? They wouldn't do it if it didn't work, right? To give you a sense of marketing's insidious nature, though, let me share an interesting piece of research published in the world's leading scientific journal. In-store music affects product choice. Documented an experiment in which either French accordion or German beer-caller music was played on alternate days in the wine section of a grocery store. On the days the French music was playing in the background, people were three times more likely to buy French wine, and on German music days, shoppers were about three times likely more to buy German wine. Despite the dramatic effect, not just a few percent difference, but a complete three-fold reversal, when approached afterwards, the vast majority of shoppers denied the music had any influence on their choice. We all like to think we make important life decisions like what to eat consciously and rationally. However, if that were the case, we wouldn't be in the midst of an obesity epidemic, right? Most of our day-to-day behavior does not appear to be dictated by careful, considered deliberations. Rather, we tend to make more automatic impulsive decisions triggered by unconscious cues and habitual patterns, especially when we're tired, stressed, and preoccupied. The unconscious part of our brain is thought to guide human behaviors as much as 95% of the time. This is the arena where marketing manipulations do their dirty work. The part of our brain that governs conscious awareness may only be able to process about 50 bits of information per second, which is roughly equivalent to like a short tweet. Our entire cognitive capacity, on the other hand, is estimated to process in excess of 10 million bits per second. Because we're only able to purposefully process a limited amount of information at a time, if we're distracted or otherwise unable to concentrate, our decisions can become even more impulsive. An elegant illustration of this cognitive overload effect was provided from an experiment involving fruit salad and chocolate cake. Before calls could be made at a touch of a button or the sound of your voice, the seven-digit span of phone numbers was based in part on the longest sequence most people can kind of recall on the fly. We only seem to be able to hold about seven chunks of information, plus or minus two, in our immediate short-term memory. Okay, so here's the setup randomized people to memorize either a seven-digit number or a two-digit number to be recalled in another room down the hall. On the way, offer them the choice of a fruit salad or a piece of chocolate cake. Memorizing a two-digit number is easy and presumably takes up few cognitive resources. Under the two-digit condition, most chose the fruit salad. Faced with the same decision, most of those trying to keep the seven digits in their heads just went for the cake. This can play out in the real world by potentially the effect of advertising. Have people watch a TV show with commercials for unhealthy snacks and no surprise, they eat more unhealthy snacks compared to those exposed to non-food ads. Or maybe that is a surprise. I mean, we all like to think that we're in control and not so easily manipulatable. The kicker, though, is that we may even be more susceptible, the less we pay attention. Randomize people to the same two or seven-digit memorization task during the show, and the snack attack effect was magnified among those who were more preoccupied. And look, how many of us have the TV on in the background or multitask during commercial breaks? This research suggests that it may make us even more impressionable to the subversion of our better judgment. There's an irony in all this, right? Calls for restriction on marketing are often resisted by invoking the banner of freedom, right? But what does that even mean in this context, when research shows how easily our free choices can be influenced without our conscious control? A senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation, even when it's far to suggest that, you know, given the dire health consequences of our unhealthy eating habits, insidious marketing manipulation should be considered in the same light as the invisible carcinogens and toxins in the air and water that can poison us without our awareness.