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Home > CULTURE > SOCIETY > This Japanese Company Is Helping Moms Stay in the Workforce
This Japanese Company Is Helping Moms Stay in the Workforce
It is quite strange, yet true, that many Japanese women are more likely to have university degrees than Japanese men. However, one of the biggest reasons why women quit their jobs after childbirth is the unfeasible working hours for child care. Since the workplace in Japan is very busy, working as a mother might mean overlooking your children. Also in Japan, it is deemed necessary to devote yourself to your company especially if your job is very demanding.
In order to help women stay in the workforce, mama square, a nursing space for children, is offering child-rearing mothers the chance to have a part-time job while their children are taken care of by nursery workers free of charge.
Working Mothers in Japan
It is commonly believed that Japan is the worst developed country for working mothers. Many of the working moms in Japan struggle to keep their careers. For the last 10 years, the number of employment offered to women has been increasing, yet many are still having a hard time getting a good job. Many of them give up work as soon as they have their first child due to lack of nursery care.
Another reason for this is their husbands. Japanese men are considered far beyond their counterparts in America or Europe when it comes to housework. Many of them only spend an hour or less in helping out with the housework as well as with the kids. Though paternity leave is available in Japan, many men still don't want to use them for fear of not getting a promotion or losing the job. This is one of the reasons why they are working long hours in the office. They believe that they need to work as hard as possible.
Many Japanese women want to continue working after giving birth, but the lack of child care institutions is the biggest hurdle. The birth rate in Japan is 1.37 births per woman which is actually far below the ideal 2.1 figure that makes a country stable. To remedy this, Japanese mothers should be encouraged to stay in work or go back to work even after having children.
It is also true in Japan that women who are having children are not working, while women who are working are not having children. Both of these are considered toxic for the country's future. To lessen this problem, mothers are then encouraged to stay in the workforce by being provided with special support from some companies as well as the government.
mama square's Offer
A Tokyo-based company called mama square recently opened in Saitama City (さいたま市) as the first working cafe with child-minding functions for mothers who do not want to work apart from their children. This new working style concept has been introduced by Mitsui Fudosan Co. to support working mothers and has been founded by Satoshi Fujishiro.
mama square is a very stylish place wherein the cafe space, working space, and kids space are all separated by a glass partition in order to give mothers and children a chance to feel close to each other. Nursery care providers and children support staff are available full-time in the child-minding area so mothers can focus on their work. This proximate location allows mothers to ease their minds without having to worry about their children. This will also relieve them from the time consumed in dropping off and picking up their children from regular daycare centers.
This particular Saitama branch is located in a shopping mall which will also make it easy for mothers and children to bond or go shopping after work. They can also spend lunchtime together which will somehow make them both feel satisfied and well loved. A shift system is followed in order to prevent mothers from feeling overburdened by long working hours or days and demanding work details. Working breaks are also given to mothers to allow them to watch their children at play. A family cafe area is also available which can be used by all.
Mothers will be working only part-time as helpers for telemarketing or proofreading. They will also be given some assignments to finish by big companies and other clients. While they are working, their children will be taken care of by nursery staff free of charge. The mother can go to the nursery room whenever they want such as for changing the diaper. However, the nursery area cannot be registered as a daycare center due to the proximity of the mothers to their children but the number of nursery workers is similar to those of actual daycares.
Around 1.5 million housewives have a hard time looking for a job in Japan despite wanting to work. Improving the work system such as providing more options to mothers increases the chance for them to join the workforce. Many local governments have actually considered the work system developed by mama square as something that will become a future trend.
There are so many competent women across Japan who are willing to work after giving birth. With this kind of system, mothers are given the chance to resume their employment while raising their kids. Most mothers are worried about resuming work after spending so many years away from their workplace. They become anxious restarting a new chapter in their life that it becomes nearly impossible for them to do so.
mama square has also been planning on expanding its operations in Katsuragi, which is a city located in Nara Prefecture. This is due to the reason that for every 30 jobs offered by mama square, around 80 people apply for it which means they need to provide more job opportunities. The company also plans to open 20 similar workplaces across the country by spring 2017 to give more chances to mothers.
Japan's demographic crisis is already under way and its population is expected to continue shrinking in the future. If this kind of trend persists, then the country will probably lose a third of its population in the next century. Helping women work will hopefully encourage them to give birth to more children. Supporting them will increase the country's birth rate and enhance job security. For housewives or mothers out there who'd want to join the country's workforce, then this company might just give you the answer to your long-time problem.
mama square Website *Japanese only
There are many branches, but we will introduce one of them here.
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\section{Introduction}

Isaac Asimov's science fiction `Foundation' trilogy
is based on the presumption that it may be
possible to develop a framework which would allow
to model and predict the political and economic
development of human societies as such
\citep{elkins1976isaac,phillips1999learning}. At
the core of the framework in question, `psychohistory',
lies the hypothesis that it could be possible to
describe collective decision-making by rigorous laws,
regardless of what a specific individual decides
to do. Individual preferences would average out when
populations are large. On a decisively less galactic
level, a legitimate question regards the statistics
of cultural phenomena produced by large numbers of
decisions. Prime candidates are in this regard rankings
measuring the economic success of cultural goods,
like music albums, books and movies. Here we will
show that certain traits of the New York Times best-seller
list and the streaming charts compiled on a daily basis by Spotify,
a streaming portal, are congruent with the predictions of
an information-theoretical theory of human decision-making.

It has been recognized that charts, in particular
music charts, like the US-based Billboard charts,
provide access to the study of an extended range of
socio-cultural developments. Examples are the evolution
of harmonic and timbral properties of popular music
\citep{mauch2015evolution}, the influence of gender
and race on chart success \citep{lafrance2018race},
and how technological progress influences cultural
diversity, respectively concentration processes
\citep{ordanini2016fewer}. Other studies investigated
the correlation between acoustic features
\citep{interiano2018musical} and repetitive lyrics
\citep{nunes2015power} to market success, the interplay
between popularity and significance in popular music
\citep{monechi2017significance}, and whether there is a
trend towards a global musical culture
\citep{achterberg2011cultural}. An alternative venue
for the study of long-term societal developments are
recognized scientific and cultural awards, like the
Nobel price \citep{gros2018empirical}.

On an extended level, \citet{schneider2019five} suggested
that music charts are suitable proxies for testing
quantitatively the concept of social acceleration
\citep{rosa2013social}, viz the notion that both
personal and societal processes proceed nowadays faster
than they used to \citep{wajcman2016sociology,vostal2017slowing}.
The rationale for this suggestion is based on the observation
that long-term databases of comparable entries are indispensable
for studies aiming to measure the evolution of culturally and
sociologically relevant time scales, a condition satisfied by
charts, music and book charts alike, which provide timelines
of five and more decades of weekly compiled data. For the
US, UK, German and Dutch music charts it was found
\citep{schneider2019five}, that the evolution of the album
lifetimes and of the weekly rank decay provides evidence for
a substantial acceleration, in particular since the rise of
the internet. These findings are congruent with the changes
observed for the chart diversity and for the dynamics of
number-one hits.

Cultural items, like books and music albums, compete for
resources, such as monetary budgets, attention and dedication.
Competition for time and attention is also a driver
for the dynamics of news topics on social networks, a
process that has been argued to take place on accelerating
time scales \citep{lorenz2019accelerating}. The success of
social media generated content is closely connected to
sharing, which is an aspect not present for classical
cultural items. It has been observed in this context,
that the statistics of sharing and scientific citations
seem to follow identical universal
functionalities \citep{neda2017science}.

An accessible example of a social platform is Reddit
\citep{medvedev2017anatomy}, a user generated exchange
platform for information, opinions and comments.
Studies of Reddit data examined \citep{baumgartner2020pushshift},
among other things, the relation between popularity and
intrinsic quality \citep{stoddard2015popularity},
the stability of online communities with substantial
turnover rates \citep{panek2018effects}, and the
evolution of users interests \citep{valensise2019drifts}.

Taking the number of comments as a popularity
measure, one can generate charts which parallel
download and sales charts. One key difference is
however that the exact timing of the triggering
event is now of relevance. Download charts
contain albums that have been released not only
the same day, but also considerably in the past.
New posts remain in contrast popular on Reddit only
for a maximum of one or two days, which implies
that the day-night activity cycle of the user
could impact the lifetime distribution of Reddit
posts. This is indeed what one finds. We argue
that this observation implies that the feedback
between popularity rankings and user activity
interferes with additional time scale, like the
24\,hour day-night activity cycle, when
the timing of the user activity is strongly
correlated with that of the triggering event.

Book and music sales and streaming charts are
primarily consumption charts, for which an
aggregate information-theoretical theory is
proposed. Exactly when a consumption takes place,
like the acquisition or the downloading of books
and music, is not relevant, in contrast to the posting
of Reddit comments, and other social media activities,
which are time-relevant because they involve the
creation of new items. As a consequence, we find
when analyzing Reddit and Twitter comment and sharing
charts, that additional driving forces, in particular
the 24h day-night cycle, tend to mask the development
of fully autonomous self-organization for charts of
social media activities.

\section{Information theory of human decision-making}

On a statistical level, human decision-making may be
modeled using an information theoretical ansatz
\citep{gros2012neuropsychological}. Starting from
the same basic ansatz as \citet{schneider2019five},
we present here a modified derivation. From
an epistemology view, we stress that our ansatz
is intended as a possible explanatory framework.
Similarly, the data analysis presented further
below is not claimed to proof the correctness of
the information theoretical ansatz, indicating however that
it is a valid contender. From a generalized
perspective our ansatz is neutral
\citep{leroi2020neutral}, in the sense that is
based not on semantic, but on statistical
considerations.

\subsection{Decision-making maximizing information\label{sect_H_max}}

The brain processes and stores information. Given
the finite size, information needs to be selected
and compressed \citep{marois2005capacity}.
A suitable measure for the amount of information
encoded by the probability distribution $p(s)$ of
a quantity $s$ is given by the Shannon Entropy
$H[p]$,
\begin{equation}
H[p] = -\langle \log p\rangle,
\qquad\quad
\langle A\rangle = \int ds\, A(s)\,p(s)\,,
\label{H_p}
\end{equation}
where $\langle A\rangle$ denotes the expectation
value of the function $A=A(s)$, see e.g.\
\citet{gros2015complex}. We assume that the
overall goal of human decisions is to maximize
information, in particular the information
generated by decision-making processes. As
a proxy for the impact of actions, e.g.\ to
buy a cultural item, we examine the
statistical properties of the corresponding
chart.

Statistically, information maximization is
equivalent to maximizing the entropy $H[p]$.
This goal can be achieved in practice only
when respecting a given set of constraints.
Real-world actions typically need to factor
in the amount of effort and time involved,
as well as the uncertainty of the outcome, viz
the variance. On a statistical level these two
constraints are given by the mean and the
variance, which are equivalent to the first
and the second moment of the probability
distribution in question, $\langle s\rangle$
and $\langle s^2\rangle$. The constrained
maximum entropy distribution is consequently obtained
by maximizing the objective function
\begin{equation}
\Phi[p] = H[p] - a \langle s\rangle - b \langle s^2\rangle\,,
\label{Phi_p}
\end{equation}
where $a$ and $b$ are suitable Lagrange multipliers. Using
standard variational calculus \citep{gros2015complex},
the distribution function maximizing $\Phi[p]$ is found
to be a Gaussian with mean $\mu=-a/(2b)$ and variance
$\sigma^2=1/(2b)$,
\begin{equation}
p(s) \sim \mathrm{e}^{-a s-b s^2}
\sim \mathrm{e}^{-(s-\mu)^2/(2\sigma^2)}\,,
\label{p_s_H_max}
\end{equation}
where normalization factors have been
suppressed.

\begin{table}[b!]
\centering
\caption{{\bf Parameters of lifetime distributions.} Listed are
the linear and quadratic parameters $a$ and $b$ from Eq.~\eqref{p_L_H_max}.
Note that $a+1$ corresponds to the exponent of the power law
contribution, see (\ref{p_L_power_law}). The corresponding
quadratic curves in log-log space are shown in
Figure~\ref{lifetime_distribution_music}
and~\ref{fig_SpotifySingle_TwitterHastags}.
The table is sorted with respect to the linear
parameter $a$. The uncertainties refer to the margin of
error given a 95\% confidence level.
}
\label{tab_lifetime_distribution_parameters}
\begin{tabular}{lrr}
\\
\toprule
chart & $a\!+\!1$ & $b$\\
\midrule
Billboard Album (early) & $ -2.21 \pm 0.45$ & $ 1.5 \pm 0.22$\\
Spotify Album daily & $ 1.43 \pm 0.23$ & $ 0.89 \pm 0.40$\\
Twitter hourly 1 & $ 1.43 \pm 0.75$ & $ 0.27 \pm 0.45$\\
Spotify Single Weekly & $ 1.21 \pm 0.20$ & $ 0.11 \pm 0.10$\\
Billboard Album (late) & $ 1.79 \pm 0.45$ & $ -0.1 \pm 0.29$\\
Spotify Single Daily & $ 1.68 \pm 0.21$ & $ -0.12 \pm 0.07$\\
Spotify Album weekly & $ 2.54 \pm 0.75$ & $ -0.12 \pm 0.74$\\
Twitter daily & $ 3.16 \pm 0.28$ & $ -0.56 \pm 0.11$\\
Twitter weekly & $ 3.05 \pm 0.70$ & $ -0.68 \pm 0.38$\\
Twitter hourly 2 & $ 6.63 \pm 1.36$ & $ -1.18 \pm 0.35$\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\subsection{Human brains compress information
            logarithmically\label{sect_Weber_Fechner}}

When making decisions, which is the distribution
function $p(s)$ that is to be maximized statistically
using the entropy $H[p]$? For the case of
book and music charts, a prime candidate is the lifetime
distribution $p(L)$, which measures the probability
that a given item, a book or a music album, remains
listed for a period $L$, the lifetime. While listed,
books and albums receive increased attention, which
implies that the listing period constitutes a visible
effect of the individual decision to buy a specific
cultural item.

From the cognitive perspective, the brain is confronted with
two contrasting demands: to store incoming information
as faithfully as possible, covering at the same time
the extended orders of magnitude characterizing physical
stimuli, like sound and light intensity, as well as
time scales. An efficient solution for this conundrum
is to store information on a compressed scale,
for instance logarithmically. This is indeed the case, as
expressed by the Weber-Fechner law, which states
that the brain discounts sensory stimuli
\citep{hecht1924visual}, numbers \citep{nieder2003coding,dehaene2003neural}
and time logarithmically \citep{howard2018memory}.
It is not a coincidence that we use logarithmic
scales, lumen and decibel, to measure light and
sound intensities.

\subsection{Maximizing compressed information\label{sect_infoMax}}

When performing an operation, like information
maximization, the brain uses internal states that
we denote here $s$. These states are in general
related logarithmically to outside quantities,
as discussed in the previous section. For the case
of the lifetime distribution $p(L)$ we have
\begin{equation}
s=\log(L), \qquad\quad
p(s)ds = p(L)dL\,,
\label{s_log_L}
\end{equation}
which relates the observable distribution function
$p(L)$ with its internal representation, the probability
density $p(s)$.  Using $ds/dL=1/L$ and the maximum
entropy probability density $p(s)$, as given
by (\ref{p_s_H_max}), one finds
\begin{equation}
p(L) \sim \frac{1}{L}\mathrm{e}^{-a \log(L)-b \log^2(L)}
\sim \mathrm{e}^{-(\log(L)-\tilde\mu)^2/(2\tilde\sigma^2)}\,,
\label{p_L_H_max}
\end{equation}
with a log-mean $\tilde\mu=-(a\!+\!1)/(2b)$, and
a log-variance of $\tilde\sigma^2=1/(2b)$.
$p(L)$ corresponds to a log-normal distribution
whenever $b>0$, and to a power law,
\begin{equation}
p(L) \sim \frac{1}{(L)^{a+1}},
\qquad\quad b\to0\,,
\label{p_L_power_law}
\end{equation}
if $b$ vanishes. Power laws, which are frequently
observed \citep{markovic2014power}, are hence a natural
outcome of human activities, statistically, whenever
the variance is either small or not taken into account.

There are two causalities for why the variance may
be of secondary importance. Firstly, when uncertainties
are small, viz when fluctuations around the mean are
negligible. In this case the $b$-term in (\ref{p_L_H_max})
is numerically small, becoming important only for
exceedingly large or small lifetimes $L$.
A second, more general argument is that one
has to invest comparatively more resources
to sample the variance than just the mean,
in particular when correlations are present
\citep{broersen1998estimation}. If time is a
scarce resource, only the mean can be obtained reliably
from a time dependent functionality, such as the
lifetime distribution of cultural items. As a
consequence it follows, that power laws are present
when individual decision times are shorter than typical
chart listing duration, with log-normal distributions
emerging for extended decision times.

The probability density $p(L)$ is normalizable only
for $b\ge0$ if arbitrary large lifetimes $L$ are
allowed. Real-life time intervals are however finite,
which makes a negative $b$ also viable. The values for
$a+1$ and $b$ obtained throughout this study for different
music and social network activity charts are discussed in the
next section.

\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=1.00\columnwidth]{nytimes_cd_pone.pdf}
           }
\caption{{\bf Long-term evolution of charts and best-seller lists.}
{\em Left:} The chart diversity $d=N_a/N_s$, with $N_a$ denoting
the number of unique titles  on a chart with $N_s$ slots. The
chart diversity of the New York Times best-seller list (orange)
follows a trend similar to the top 10 of the Billboard
album chart (purple). The top 100 album chart (blue) is
also shown for comparison. The dotted lines indicate the
inclusion of streaming data into the Billboard album chart
(see Sect.~\ref{sect_charts} for details).
{\em Right:} Out of all number-one best sellers/hits, the
fraction $P_{\rm one}$  of books/albums that top the
best-seller list/charts already on entry, viz the first
time they are listed. Initial success is all important
for today's cultural items.
}
\label{nytimes_cd_pone}
\end{figure}

\section{Results}

The information-theoretical approach to
the statistics of human decision-making
implies a characteristic functional dependency
for the distribution of the lifetime
of cultural items. We tested this dependency
for book and album sales charts, for music
download charts, as well as for social media
comments. Data retrieval and processing is
described in Sect.~\ref{sect_data}. To visualize
the possible $p(L)$ distribution functions,
figures with log-log representations of lifetime
distributions include quadratic fits that correspond to
Eq.~\eqref{p_s_H_max}. However, these fits are not
claimed to correspond to statistically
validated models, as discussed, e.g.,
by \cite{clauset2009power}. In
Table~\ref{tab_lifetime_distribution_parameters}
and~\ref{tab_nytimes_lifetime_distribution_parameters}
the respective parameters are listed.

\subsection{Chart diversity \label{sect_nytimes_chart_diversity}}

An intuitive measure for the turnover rate of charts
is the chart diversity $d = N_a/N_s$, where $N_a$ is
the number of unique titles, here per year, normalized by
the number of available slots $N_s$ (for the whole year).
Figure~\ref{nytimes_cd_pone} shows the evolution of the
chart diversity of the New York Times best-seller list,
in comparison with the top 10 and top 100 Billboard
album charts. Billboard introduced streaming data into
the chart in 2014 but still published a sales chart.
This is why the line splits in 2014, with
the chart including streaming shown as a dotted line.

The chart diversities of the New York Times best-seller
list and of the Billboard album charts have taken a similar
evolution over the course of the last three to four decades.
This fact is quite remarkable, given that individual music
albums and fiction books differ substantially concerning
their respective consumption times. Generally one
needs substantially longer time to read a novel than to listen
to an album. Their overall key core characteristics are
on the other hand similar. The average number
of weeks a novel spent on the New York Times best-seller
list $\bar{w}\approx 1/d$ (where $d$ is the chart diversity),
shrunk from $\bar{w} \approx 1/0.1 = 10$ weeks in the 1980s
to about $\bar{w} \approx 1/0.3 \approx 3 $ in 2010. The
equivalent
numbers for the top-10 Billboard album charts are
$\bar{w} \approx 1/0.1 = 10$ in the 1980s and
$\bar{w} \approx 1 /0.4 = 2.5$ in 2010.

\begin{table}[b!]
\centering
\caption{{\bf New York Times best-seller
lifetime distribution parameters.}
Listed are the linear and quadratic parameters
$a$ and $b$, respectively, for the log-normal distribution
Eq.~\eqref{p_L_H_max}, as shown in
Figure~\ref{fig_lifetime_distribution_nytimes}. Note
that the prefactor of the linear term is $a+1$, see
(\ref{p_L_power_law}). The uncertainties
refer to the margin of error given a 95\% confidence level.}
\label{tab_nytimes_lifetime_distribution_parameters}
\begin{tabular}{crr}
\\
\toprule
period & $a\!+\!1$ & $b$\\
\midrule
1959 -- 1968 & $1.81 \pm 0.70$ & $-0.49 \pm 0.44$\\
1969 -- 1978 & $2.02 \pm 0.88$ & $-0.69 \pm 0.55$\\
1979 -- 1988 & $1.15 \pm 0.72$ & $-0.12 \pm 0.46$\\
1989 -- 1998 & $0.06 \pm 0.71$ & $0.73 \pm 0.49$\\
1999 -- 2008 & $-0.33 \pm 0.66$ & $1.46 \pm 0.53$\\
2009 -- 2018 & $0.75 \pm 0.72$ & $0.85 \pm 0.50$\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

The New York Times best-seller list and Billboard album charts
are also similar with respect to the dynamics of titles that
eventually make it to the top, the number-one titles. For
this there are two possible courses. Either a title enters the
chart directly at the top, then its number-one position is
guaranteed. Alternatively a given title starts lower and
works its way up to the top, over the course of several
weeks or months. The probability for a number-one title
to take the first course of action, $P_{\rm one}$, is shown in
Figure~\ref{nytimes_cd_pone}. In the 1970s and 1980s
close to no number-one best seller entered the New York Times
best-seller list at the top. This changed dramatically in the
following three to four decades. From the late 2000s onward
close to all, about $95\%$ of all number-one novels started
charting right at the top. This is similar to the evolution
the Billboard album charts took. A small difference is that
the New York Times best-seller list started the transition
about five years prior to the Billboard album chart, however
with the evolution taking about ten years longer. In general
the Billboard top 10 and top 100 charts differ only marginally.

The changes in $P_{\rm one}$ are also reflected in the time it
takes on the average to become number one. Before 1980, when
close to all number-one titles had to work their way
up to the top, this process took on the average five to
eight weeks. Today number-one novels as well as albums
become number one in under a week on the average, since
almost all number-one titles start as such.

\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=1.00\columnwidth]{lifetime_distribution_billboard_spotify.pdf}
           }
\caption{{\bf Lifetime distribution of music albums.}
The probability of album lifetimes, the number of
weeks listed, for the Billboard (left) and Spotify
(right) charts. A log-log representation has been used, for
which log-normal distributions correspond to parabolas
and power laws to straight lines, see Eq.~(\ref{p_s_H_max}).
Two three year periods, 1980-1982 (orange) and 2017-2019 (yellow)
are compared for the Billboard data. Daily (violet) and weekly
(blue) Spotify album charts have been evaluated for 2017-2019.
Note the outlier for the Spotify daily charts  at a lifetime
of exactly one week, which coincides to the minimal lifetime
of the weekly chart. The Billboard charts are consistently
compiled on a weekly basis.
}
\label{lifetime_distribution_music}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Musical chart lifetimes}

In Figure~\ref{lifetime_distribution_music}
the lifetime distributions of daily and
weekly music album charts are presented, namely
for the Billboard album charts, which are published
on a weekly basis, and for the respective
Spotify download charts.

Comparing the functional dependency of past
(1980--1982) and present day (2017--2019)
Billboard album lifetimes, one observes a transition
from a log-normal distribution to a power law,
as parameterized by \eqref{p_s_H_max}. An
equivalent transition is seen between daily
and weekly Spotify charts. A caveat is here the
outlier that can be observed for the Spotify
daily charts at a lifetime of exactly one week.
The origin of this outlier is unknown, it may
be caused possibly by weekly algorithmic influences,
such as maintenance periods. It is in any case
remarkable, that the lifetime distributions
presented in Figure~\ref{lifetime_distribution_music}
change on a functional level, either with time
or when the charting period is increased. We
argue, that a separation of time scales causes
both transitions.

\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=1.00\columnwidth]{lifetime_distribution_twitter_spotify.pdf}
           }
\caption{{\bf Spotify single downloads and Twitter hashtag popularity.}
{\em Left:} Lifetime distribution of individual songs on Spotify
daily and weekly single charts. Data for 2017--2019.
{\em Right:} For top-50 Twitter hourly, daily and weekly
hashtag charts the lifetime distribution. A kink
corresponding to 24\,hours is present for the 1h charts.
Dashed/solid lines hourly charts correspond to quadratic
fits to the data below/above the kink.
Data from \citet{moensted2019}.
}
\label{fig_SpotifySingle_TwitterHastags}
\end{figure}

Traditionally, music albums were bought in
music shops, which involved a personal trip,
and hence a comparatively long execution time.
Long decision and execution times imply, as
argued in Sect.~\ref{sect_infoMax}, that the
variance of the album lifetime distribution
is relevant, which takes consequently the form
of a log-normal distribution. The typical
time needed to acquire a music album dropped
however substantially below one week when
online shopping started to become relevant
in the 1990s. Given that one week corresponds
to the chart frequency, this development implies
that the variance of the album lifetime
distribution lost its relevance. The desire
to maximize information, the basis of the
here discussed theory of statistical
decision-making, leads in this case to power laws.

We believe that an analogous argument explains
why daily and weekly Spotify album charts show
respectively log-normal and power law distributions.
On the average, it is presumably not a matter of
only a few hours to listen and to appreciate music albums,
which may contain a substantial number of titles, but
of a few days. This time scale, several days, lies
between the frequencies of daily and weekly
streaming charts, which would explain why daily
and weekly album charts are respectively
log-normal and power law distributed.

Whereas the Billboard album charts are sales-based,
the respective single charts are compiled
predominantly on the basis of airtime
statistics, for which the number of times
songs are played by radio stations are counted.
A direct comparison of album and single charts
is in this case not possible \citep{schneider2019five}.
The equivalent caveat does not hold for the Spotify
charts, for which both album and single charts are
based on streaming counts.

In Figure~\ref{fig_SpotifySingle_TwitterHastags}
the lifetime distributions of daily and weekly
Spotify single charts are shown. Both are
close to power law distributions with only small
quadratic contributions. The overall process, to
listen to a music sample, to decide to stream,
and to actually do it, can be assumed to take
only a few minutes for individual songs, but
substantially longer in the case of albums.
The observation that already daily single
download charts show indications for power law
behavior, with respect to the distribution of
song lifetimes, is hence consistent with our
basic framework.

\subsection{New York Times book best sellers}

In Figure~\ref{fig_lifetime_distribution_nytimes}
we present the probability that a given title stays
for a certain number of weeks on the fiction best-seller
list of the New York Times. In contrast to the
top-100 music charts discussed further above, only
the top ten titles of the week are included in the
NYT best-seller list. In order to compensate for the
comparatively limited database, we averaged the
lifetime distribution over consecutive ten-year
periods. Substantial scattering of the data can be
observed nevertheless.

Included in Figure~\ref{fig_lifetime_distribution_nytimes}
are quadratic fits, $-(a+1)s-bs^2$, to the log-log
representation of the lifetime distribution (compare
Eq.~\eqref{p_s_H_max}). It is notable, that the
distribution of book lifetimes evolves from being
convex in log-log scale in the 50s and 60s to be
being concave, starting from the 80s. The turning
point, in the 70s, matches roughly a shallow
minimum in the chart diversity, as shown in
Figure~\ref{nytimes_cd_pone}. It is presently unclear
what drives this interesting phenomenon. The
presence of a finite second-order component, $b\ne0$,
indicates in any case that the individual time scales
for buying and reading books has not dropped below
one week, the charting frequency. A power law appears
in the 70s, when the lifetime distribution transits
from convex to concave. The power laws seen in the
distribution of musical charts emerge in contrast
in the concave region, see Figure~\ref{lifetime_distribution_music},
when an initial $b>0$ progressively vanishes
\citep{schneider2019five}. This indicates two
distinct causalities for the two power laws,
for the late-state Billboard lifetime
distributions and for the book lifetimes in the 70s.

\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=1.00\columnwidth]{lifetime_distribution_nytimes.pdf}
           }
\caption{{\bf Six decades of NYT best seller lifetimes.}
The lifetime distribution of books on the
New York Times best-seller list. Shown is the
average over ten-year periods. Note that
only ten books are listed weekly, the data is
hence comparatively sparse. In a log-log presentation,
as shown, a long-term evolution from convex
to concave is observed.
}
\label{fig_lifetime_distribution_nytimes}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Dynamics of Reddit comments}

New data items, like posts or images, are at the
core of social media activity. The response of
other users, in the form of comments or likes,
will determine the popularity of social media
posts and with this the likelihood of additional
likes and comments. In this context we analyzed
the statistics of Reddit post commenting, using
publicly available data \citep{Reddit}. Note,
that Reddit is a discussion website organized around
collections of user-created discussion boards for
individual subjects called ``subreddits''. Users
can submit posts such as text posts, links, images
and videos to a subreddit. Posts are then voted up or
down and commented on. While upvoting can be done
directly on the post overview screen while scrolling
through, in order to comment, users have to actively
click on the post.

The most popular posts from each subreddit are also shown
on the front page on login. There are multiple options for sorting
to determine which posts are the most popular. The old default
was ``Hot'', which was based on the number of upvotes
(log-weighted) and the submission time (recent posts
prioritized). In 2018, ``Best'' was introduced as the new default,
which tries in addition to show new content, including weighting
based on comment activity. Comment data is publicly
available \citep{Reddit}, including precise timestamps,
vote counts are available however only as monthly averages.
The technical aspects of our data analysis is described
in Sect.~\ref{sect_Reddit}.

For book and album charts the ranking criteria are the
number of sales and downloads within the respective chart
periods. In analogy, we used the number of comments
for Reddit posts. In Figure~\ref{reddit_lifetimes} the
chart diversity and the respective lifetimes for 10-
and 60-min Reddit top-100 charts are shown. Within the time
window analyzed, 2013-2015, a downward trend in chart
diversity is observed, with an equivalent increase in
chart lifetimes. This is in contrast to the
long-term trend for book and album charts that can
be observed in Figure~\ref{nytimes_cd_pone}.

The distributions for 10- and 60-min chart lifetimes
presented in Figure~\ref{reddit_lifetimes} is
non-monotonic. On a coarse level, the probability
to observe a certain lifetime drops in a
power law-like fashion, which is however
interseeded by a pronounced local maximum.
The maxima correspond to characteristic time scales
of about 20-26 hours, for both the 10- and the 60-min
charts, which suggests that the intrinsic 24\,hours
day-night activity cycle may be involved. Users
may sleep on a post or comment of the day, in order
to revisit it in the next morning. A lesson learned
from the Reddit database is then, that the presence of
characteristic time scales may interfere strongly
with the otherwise operative feedback loop between
posts and comments.

\subsection{Twitter Hashtags}

We use a publicly available corpus of
Twitter hashtag statistics to study the
residence time of hashtags in hourly, daily
and weekly top-50 charts. See Sect.~\ref{sect_Twitter}
for data source and handling. Hashtags and
Reddit comments are both examples of active
user contributions, albeit with a key difference.
Adding a hashtag to a tweet can be presumed to
be on the average less time-consuming than
composing an entire Reddit comment. We may hence
expect the trend towards self-organization to
be more pronounced for Twitter hashtag charts,
than for Reddit comments.

In Figure~\ref{fig_SpotifySingle_TwitterHastags}
the distribution of Twitter hashtags for
hourly, daily and weekly top-50 charts are presented.
With respect to the Reddit data shown in
Figure~\ref{reddit_lifetimes} one observes that
the 24\,hour activity cycle is now substantially less
pronounced. Instead of a peak, the dominant feature of
the lifetime distribution of the hourly Twitter hashtag
charts is a kink. To be precise, only a weak local maximum
occurs at about 18h for the hourly charts, and a
30\% drop at 24h. For daily and
weekly charts no anomaly is observed. Fitting the
Twitter hashtag data with the maximum entropy distribution
(\ref{p_s_H_max}), we decided to split the 1h lifetime
data in two parts, below and above the above discussed
kink. Within the log-log representation, one finds that
the quadratic contribution tends to become smaller for
longer charting periods, viz when going from 1h to daily
and weekly charts. This observation complies with the
argumentation laid out in Sect.~\ref{sect_infoMax},
namely that lifetime distributions become more
power law-like when the time scale of the individual
activities is substantially smaller than the charting
periods.

\begin{figure}[t]
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=0.5\columnwidth]{Reddit_chart_diversity.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\columnwidth]{Reddit_average_lifetimes.pdf}
           }
\centerline{
\includegraphics[width=0.5\columnwidth]{Reddit_2013_first.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\columnwidth]{Reddit_2015_last.pdf}
           }
\caption{{\bf Reddit comment charts.}
{\em Top:} The evolution of the diversity of 10/60\,min comment
charts over the observation period (left) and the respective
average lifetimes (right).
{\em Bottom:} Respectively for the first six months of 2013 and
the second half of 2015, the distributions of comment lifetimes,
both for 10min and 60\,min charts. Adaptive binning has been
used, as described in Sect.~\ref{sect_binning}, with either
a minimum of 70 or 1000 comments per bin. The local maxima
in the lifetime distribution (vertical arrows) correspond
to 1240/1560 minutes (20.7/26.0 hours) for the 2013
10/60\,min charts and to 1160/1320 minutes (19.4/22.0 hours)
for the 2015 10/60\,min charts.
See Sect.~\ref{sect_Reddit} for data processing.
}
\label{reddit_lifetimes}
\end{figure}

\section{Data sources and processing\label{sect_data}}

\subsection{Book and album charts\label{sect_charts}}

The New York Times book best sellers \citep{NYTbestseller},
the Spotify music streaming charts \citep{spotifyCharts}
and the Billboard sales-based music charts \citep{billboardCharts}
have been obtained from public internet sources.
We also examined the statistics of
the set of Twitter hashtags
compiled by \cite{lorenz2019accelerating}.

The algorithm used for the compilation of the
Billboard charts has been adjusted over time,
with a major update in 2014/15. At that point
the traditional sales-based ranking was substituted
by a ranking based on a multi-metric consumption
rate, which includes weighted song streaming.
This update, which took effect at the end of 2014,
affects the chart statistics profoundly.

The original Billboard album chart, the Billboard Top 200,
was retained after the 2014/15 metric update under a new name,
as `Top Album Sales'. Data continuity is consequently achieved
when using the Top Album Sales charts from 2014/15 on.
Whenever possible, we show results obtained from both the
Billboard Top 200 and the Top Album Sales charts, where the latter
are compiled according to the unaltered sales-based ranking rules,
albeit only for 100 ranks.

For data analysis we used statistically relevant binning,
which consists, as explained in Sect.~\ref{sect_binning},
of adjusting bin sizes dynamically such that a minimal
number of $N_{\rm min}^{\rm (data)}$ data points per
bin is obtained.

\subsection{New York Times Best-seller List\label{sect_nytimes}}

In contrast to the Billboard magazine, the
New York Times does not publish a full
history of their best-seller list. Only
recent lists are published on the official
New York Times website \citep{NYTbestseller}.
Consequently, the analysis presented here relies
on a republication of the data by \citet{nytimesArchiv},
which collected and republished the weekly
best-seller list from the 1950s until today.
Since the length of the best-seller list changed
repeatedly, all analysis above consider
a top 10 ranking.

\subsection{Reddit data analysis\label{sect_Reddit}}

Reddit data was downloaded from the \citet{Reddit}. Due
to the large data size, we restricted our analysis
to two six-month periods, the first half of 2013,
which contains 19.050.122 post and 187.385.130 comments,
and the second half of 2015, with a total of
37.038.895/347.236.797 entries. Comments of posts
receiving less than 1000 comments over the observation
period were removed from the data, since they would
not show up in the charts analyzed. The cleaned
comment data was separated into time slices
based on the comment timestamps and aggregated
by post IDs (identification labels). In this way
charts for consecutive 10 minute and 60 minute slices
where generated, as based on the number of comments
received. Post lifetimes were evaluated from the
respective top-100 charts.

\subsection{Twitter Hashtags\label{sect_Twitter}}

The hourly ranking of the 50 most common hashtags were gathered
by \citet{moensted2019}. This dataset, which has been used to
study the acceleration of collective attention
\citep{lorenz2019accelerating}, contains the 50 most common
hashtags out of a 10\% sample of all tweets, which were gathered
every hour during the period from 2013 through 2016. For every
hashtag the dataset also shows the number of times it appeared
during the last hour in the 10\% sample. This additional information
allows, modulo the top-50 cut-off, to compile charts with longer
observation intervals, e.g.\ daily or weekly charts.

\subsection{Adaptive binning\label{sect_binning}}

For the generation of probability distribution
functions from collected data one needs to
group events together into bins. When sets of bins
with predefined width are used, the number of
events may vary strongly from one bin to another.
It is hence advantageous, for statistical relevant
binning, to adjust the width of the individual
bins dynamically, until a minimum of
$N_{\rm min}^{\rm (data)}$ data points per bin
has been reached. The binning procedure is finished
once this is not any more possible. Comparing
results obtained for different $N_{\rm min}^{\rm (data)}$,
as done in Figure~\ref{reddit_lifetimes}, allows
to gauge the accuracy.

\section{Discussion}

Consumption charts, like sales and streaming charts, show
remarkable similarities between different cultural products,
e.g.\ when comparing music albums and literature. The evolution
of the respective chart diversities, as well as the probability
that a number-one title debuts as such, follow parallel
courses for these two cultural goods. Similarly, one can fit
the distribution of on-chart residence times, the respective
lifetimes, in all cases by a generalized log-normal
distribution that can be shown to maximize the
information content of the lifetime distribution, to
the extent as it is stored in the brain. Taking the long-term
perspective, one notices distinct features for the evolution
of the lifetime distribution of the New York Times best-seller
list, and for album sales charts.

For music albums \citep{schneider2019five}, the
lifetime distribution evolves from a log-normal
distribution, as before the 1990s, to a power law,
as for nowadays. In this context it is important to notice
that power laws belong to the class of generalized log-normal
distributions, albeit with a vanishing quadratic term in
the exponent. The information-theoretical arguments
presented in this study for the occurrence of log-normal
distributions suggests that a transition from fully
log-normal to a power law takes place when uncertainties,
viz the variance, fade into secondary importance. This
phenomenon is related to the time needed on the average
for decision-making, given that it takes longer to gauge
variances than means.

In societies, some time scales remain constant, others
are subject to a secular acceleration process
\citep{rosa2013social}. An example of a non-changing time
scale is the period of typically 4-5 years between general
elections, which contrasts with an accelerating opinion
dynamics \citep{gros2017entrenched}. Of relevance for
the present study is the charting period of one week,
which did not change since the inception of classical
music charts and book bestseller lists. In contrast to
the charting period, the decision time to buy an album
is likely to have fallen substantially with the rise of
the internet. Here we have argued that this development
is reflected in the respective chart statistics. It is
less clear if the same holds for the time people need
to read a book.

Modern streaming charts can be used as a test bed for the
relative time scale hypothesis. The available high
temporal resolution allows narrowing down the time
individuals need to decide to listen to an album, and
then to actually do so. The lifetime distributions of
Spotify album charts show that this time scale is
nowadays between one week and one day. For a single song
the decision can be made comparatively faster, which
leads for both weekly and daily single charts to power law
lifetime distributions.

Activity charts, such as Twitter hashtags or Reddit postings,
differ in certain aspects from consumption charts. Human
activities are subject to a day-night cycle, which shows up
for the case of commenting on Reddit as a resurgence after around
24\,hours. Previous-day posts are likely to be revisited after
a night of sleep, as evident in Figure~\ref{reddit_lifetimes}.
This phenomenon, the 24h-cycle, will mask underlying
power laws, if existent. The Twitter charts provide evidence
for an equivalent occlusion mechanism, see
Figure~\ref{fig_SpotifySingle_TwitterHastags}.

The lifetime distribution of hourly hashtag charts
is characterized by a peak at 18\,hours, together
with a subsequent drop at 24\,hours. Charts
averaging over one or more full days, daily and
weekly charts, are represented instead by smooth
distributions. One finds indications for power laws
with minor quadratic corrections. These results
suggest that power laws appear ubiquitously
for long-enough charting periods. In conclusion
we believe that the data examined supports the
basic hypothesis presented here, namely that
aggregated human decision processes exhibit the
pronounced statistical features characteristics
of compressed information maximization.

Beyond information maximization, we found
marked changes at the top of cultural charts,
which started with the raise of the internet
in the 1990s. This phenomenon regards the
route to become a number-one hit, which took
substantially longer in the past. We believe
that this observation deserves further investigations,
which would however transcend our present
framework.

\section*{Acknowledgement}

The work of BS was supported by the research grant of the
Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation,
CNCS/CCCDI-UEFISCDI, project nr.\ PN-III-P4-ID-PCCF-2016-0084.

\section*{Data availability}

All data is available from publicly
accessible sources, as described in
Sect.~\ref{sect_data}.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Q: How to create one-to-one relationship between same table in Entity Framework 6 Code First? Here is a simple representation of the two classes.
public class Person
{
    [Key]
    public int ID {get; set;}
    public virtual ICollection<Friendship> FShip{ get; set; }
}

    public class Friendship
    {
        [Key]
        public int ID { get; set; }

        [ForeignKey("Friend1ID")]
        public virtual Person Friend1{ get; set; }
        public int Friend1ID { get; set; }

        [ForeignKey("Friend2ID")]
        public virtual Person Friend2{ get; set; }
        public int Friend2ID{ get; set; }

        public double FriendshipScrore{ get; set; }
    }

When the table is created I was expecting two foreign keys for each friend. But there is another foreign key for Person table. Person_ID (which is the problem)
Below is the corresponding part in Migration code.
ForeignKey("dbo.Persons", t => t.Friend1ID, cascadeDelete: true)
.ForeignKey("dbo.Persons", t => t.Friend2ID, cascadeDelete: true)
.ForeignKey("dbo.Persons", t => t.Person_ID)
.Index(t => t.Friend1ID)
.Index(t => t.Friend2ID)
.Index(t => t.Person_ID);

A: You should also tune Person class to specify explicitly links to Friend1 set and Friend2 set at Friendship class:
    public class Person
    {
        [Key]
        public int ID {get; set;}

        [InverseProperty("Friend1")]
        public virtual ICollection<Friendship> FShip1{ get; set; }

        [InverseProperty("Friend2")]
        public virtual ICollection<Friendship> FShip2{ get; set; }

        [NotMapped]
        public List<Friendship> FShip{ get {
                  return FShip1.Union(FShip2).ToList();
             }
        }
    }

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


College Democrats of Illinois is an organization of student activists dedicated to electing experienced, hardworking Democrats to local, state, and federal office in Illinois. Sign up below to get updates on how to help your communities fight back against the Trump and Rauner agendas.
Check out our new video featuring Nikita Richards for McLean County Clerk! In the past year, Nikita has been featured in MSNBC, Huffington Post and Business Insider for her life of service and the impact she will bring to the McLean County Clerk's office.


text:
Has the Google started Mobile-First Indexing?
Posted by Joe / November 10th, 2016 / No responses
The mobile friendly sites have now become more important with the announcement of mobile first indexing.
Google's mobile-first indexing was just a strong rumor until now in the SEO world. But now, Google has finally started experimenting the approach for looking at the mobile content first, rather than the desktop while raking your pages in its SERPs. No official confirmation was provided from the Google's webmasters until now. Except on 4th November, finally the words came from the webmasters.googleblog that the ranking system is going to be revised in the coming days and would have a considerable effect on your desktop as well as mobile SEO. The experiments have already been started in a small scale.
Google says, they understand the statistics that confirm the involvement of mobile devices in the major proportion of the queries on Google's Search Engine. They also, mentioned that the new system will not simply discard the typical look up at the desktop version as it would be an unfair treatment to the websites who use lesser content on mobile pages than the desktop pages.
This step defines the intention of Google in making its SERPs even more relevant and useful to the searchers. The typical single indexing system of websites and apps would continue to be in use but eventfully the primary consideration shift to the mobile version of a site's content to rank the pages from the particular website. Google also ensures that the new indexing will continue to provide the more relevant results irrespective of the device used. The relevancy of the Search results will be improved in both the mobile and desktop devices. So, if you do not have a mobile version of your site, then keep up with the guidelines for responsive sites and you won't be in a disadvantage either.
Utilize the recommendations of google to avoid loosing visibility.
A clear indication has also been provided that the system would be made permanent only after going through some comprehensive experiments. The experiments are being conducted on a smaller scale till the first few months, and later would be rolled out when the results are confident enough.
Words from Google's official notification on webmasters.googleblog.com say:
"We understand this is an important shift in our indexing and it's one we take seriously. We'll continue to carefully experiment over the coming months on a small scale and we'll ramp up this change when we're confident that we have a great user experience. Though we're only beginning this process, here are a few recommendations to help webmasters prepare as we move towards a more mobile-focused index."
The experiments are still in the initial phase, but the recommendations from the Google's webmasters have been rolled out in the same post. It is wise to be an early adopter and prepare our site according to what Google has to say in the lines below. Here is what Google has to say regarding the recommendations:
If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn't have to change anything.
If you have a site configuration where the primary content and markup is different across mobile and desktop, you should consider making some changes to your site.
Make sure to serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version.
Sites can verify the equivalence of their structured markup across desktop and mobile by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
When adding structured data to a mobile site, avoid adding large amounts of markup that isn't relevant to the specific information content of each document.
Use the robots.txt testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot.
Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links; we'll continue to use these links as guides to serve the appropriate results to a user searching on desktop or mobile.
If you are a site owner who has only verified their desktop site in Search Console, please add and verify your mobile version.
If you only have a desktop site, we'll continue to index your desktop site just fine, even if we're using a mobile user agent to view your site.
If you are building a mobile version of your site, keep in mind that a functional desktop-oriented site can be better than a broken or incomplete mobile version of the site. It's better for you to build up your mobile site and launch it when ready.
Hopefully, in a couple of months the experiment would be ready to roll out. This notification can be considered as a clear intention of Google for its plans on mobile first indexing. Desktop sites are still important in the search engine optimization. It is just that to improve the usefulness of the results, a major preference is expected to be given to the mobile versions of the sites in the Google's SERPs.
Has the Google started Mobile-First Indexing? was last modified: November 24th, 2016 by Joe
ecommerce services Mobile-First Indexing SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Houston, Texas (February 2, 2018) – At least one person was killed in a collision involving two trucks in Houston on Thursday, February 1.
According to a local news report, the accident occurred at about 5:15 a.m. on Interstate 10 at Highway 6 near the Barker Cypress exit.
Houston Police reported that a truck had pulled over after it developed mechanical damage when it was struck by a second truck.
The driver of the second truck was killed in the collision.
The driver of the disabled truck had exited the vehicle before the accident and was unhurt.
The identity of the deceased was not disclosed.
The circumstances of the collision were yet to be established.


A seven unit trade park in the North West ,funded by Annandale, is now built, let and trading.
A residential development of 40 units, funded by Annandale in the Midlands, has been purchased by a social landlord and is now available to be occupied under a variety of support schemes.
A medium term loan was negotiated by Annandale, to replace the existing lender and provide additional funding to purchase adjoining property and improve the recreational facilities at a south coast marina.
A Working capital loan facility has completed for a London engineering company secured against plant and machinery.
A long term loan was arranged to purchase a prime office investment in the East Midlands. Rental, after amortisation, is released to the investor quarterly.
A disused Victorian industrial building required and received government gap funding to enable a viable conversion to residential units.
An Incomplete city office building was finished and let.
An owner managed hotel's brand, property and business value was preserved though the creation of an operating company and negotiation to let to an overseas hotel operator.
Working with developer, residential and commercial developments were managed and built out to the agreed deadlines ensuring that build/sales numbers and target dates were achieved.
Short term finance to puchase land and improve the planning consent for a retail warehouse development was obtained without profit share.


March has been an overwhelming month, so much happened in March, I have no idea where to begin. All I can say is that I'm so grateful to everyone who believed in me and encouraged me to move on and grow in this field. Highlights for March – 2019 Featured Interview with a US-based magazine … More Lessons learned through my Blogging Journey!
Leave a comment Lessons learned through my Blogging Journey!


text:
House of Lords written question HL849.
Question for Department for International Development
UIN HL849, tabled on 13 July 2017
Lord Judd
Her Majesty's Government what action they have taken to ensure that UK funding which is intended to mitigate the migration crisis in the central Mediterranean is not used to finance the indefinite detention of migrant and refugee children.
The UK contribution to the Mediterranean migration crisis is delivered through trusted humanitarian agencies such as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Through these agencies, UK aid in detention centres is specifically designed to protect migrants' and refugees' human rights and meet basic needs, including by advocating for alternatives to detention for vulnerable groups like children. We also assist migrants to return home, if they wish to do so.
Department for International Development


text:
Updated on : Monday, August 26, 2019, 7:56 AM IST
Man loses Rs 7.5 lakh jewellery in auto, cops recover it 3 hours
By Staff Reporter
Police, with the help of close circuit television (CCTV) cameras, tracked the number plate of the autorickshaw and then traced the driver.
Mumbai: A 42-year-old manager from a jewellery shop who lost Rs 7.5 lakh jewellery in an autorickshaw, was relieved when the Mumbai police found the bag of jewellery in just three hours.
Police, with the help of close circuit television (CCTV) cameras, tracked the number plate of the autorickshaw and then traced the driver. A resident of Mira Road, Praveen Singh works for a jewellery store in the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC).
On Saturday, he was going to deliver diamonds and gold jewellery worth Rs 7.5 lakh to a jewellery-maker in Goregaon.
He took a train to Goregaon and then took an auto to Virwani estate. While alighting from the auto and in the process of giving the fare, Singh kept his bag of jewellery on the seat of the rickshaw.
After the payment, he forgot about the bag and proceeded. Unaware of the bag, the auto driver drove away. When Singh realised about his mistake, he ran down to look for the auto, but it was already gone. Then he rushed to Vanrai police station and narrated about the incident.
The police team then checked the CCTV footage for the number plate of the auto rickshaw. They quickly identified the auto, took its number and reached the owners house in Appa Pada in Kurar village.
The owner confirmed about the auto as his but said it is currently been driven by his brother Munna Chaubbey (48) who stays in Nalasopa. After taking his number, police contacted Chaubbey and asked about the lost bag.
He said that he found the bag in his auto but since he was in a hurry to reach home, he kept the bag with himself. He further said he wanted to hand over the bag to the local police next
morning. Police then recovered the bag and jewellery from Chaubbey. All the jewellery were intact, said an officer.
Singh thanked the Mumbai police for their efforts and said, "I am very happy that the police acted promptly and in no time I got the jewellery back."
Man Loses
Cop Recover


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Hawaii surf contest The Eddie returns thanks to towering waves
HONOLULU (AP) — One of the world's most prestigious and storied surfing contests — dubbed the "Super Bowl of Surfing" — went forward Sunday in Hawaii for the first time in seven years with towering wave faces and a gigantic swell that was expected to grow throughout the day.
And this year female surfers competed alongside the men for the first time in the 39-year history of The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
WATCH: Massive rides of The Eddie
The event — alternatively known simply as The Eddie — is a one-day contest held in Waimea Bay on Oahu's North Shore only when the surf is consistently large enough during the winter big-wave surfing season from mid-December through mid-March. The wind, the tides and the direction of the swell also have to be just right.
Organizer Clyde Aikau said at a news conference Friday that he was expecting waves to reach 25 to 30 feet (7.6 to nine meters) by Hawaii measurements or 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 meters) on the national scale — and the conditions were meeting expectations.
Coleman said The Eddie is about the best of big-wave surfing and the best of Hawaiian culture.
On Sunday, the sets were already big, with the swell expected to grow as the day went on, and an estimated 60,000 people packed the beaches and surrounding area to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. One huge wave swept onto the beach and hit a family, sweeping a baby under a house, but the child was not injured, Hawaii News Now reported.
"We've been looking at 30-foot to 40-foot wave faces for the most part, (and) the biggest waves of the day are going to be in excess of 45 feet. By local scale, they'll call those waves 25 feet — and we've seen a couple sets like that already," Kevin Wallis, director of forecasting at Surfline.com, said by phone Sunday morning.
"It's amazing, it's really cool to see and it's such a rare and prestigious event, and there's a lot of energy and a lot of buzz around, for sure," he said.
Luke Shepardson wins The Eddie
How rare is The Eddie?
Edward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau rose to prominence as the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu to work on Oahu's North Shore and was revered for saving over 500 people during his career. He is also famous for surfing towering waves that no one else would dare ride.
Who was the legendary big-wave surfer Eddie Aikau
"They always say at the opening ceremony, where they gather to launch the holding period, 'This is not just a contest. We're not surfing against each other. We're surfing in the spirit of Eddie,' " Coleman said.
Mindy Pennybacker, a surf columnist for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and author of the upcoming book, "Surfing Sisterhood Hawaii: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves," said there has long been an assumption that Waimea was too dangerous for women and they couldn't surf there.
She said women had to fight to be included and have meanwhile shown that they could handle big waves in spots around the world.
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Please join us on March 16th for Steminist Saturday, an event for girls of all ages to understand how STEM is applied to the real world. Through workshops and activities, presentations, and Q&A's, we hope to emphasize how STEM concepts and jobs go beyond the numbers and equations.
Participants will get the opportunity to engage in discussion, learn something new, and meet others girls from around Massachusetts and New England. Our goal is to merge science and technology with humanitarianism, and empower young women to be representatives of our world with a deep understanding of these topics.
Pass along the invite to your Girl Up clubs, robotics teams, friends, and families - we hope to see you there! Feel free to email girlupboston@gmail.com for any questions.


James and the Trouble with Trees is a Play-scenes with DVD set that came with a free DVD that only came with 1 Thomas episode. It also came with an exclusive scared face James and track piece.
The prototype version featured James with grey wheels. His final model gained the correct black wheels.


May is a good month. It lies approximately halfway between spring and summer, and gives us the opportunity to make the adjustments.
It is the month to enjoy the flowers the prophecy "April showers bring May flowers" fulfills. It is the month when we recognize mothers and all they mean to us. We recognize our armed forces on Armed Forces Day.
Perhaps May is best regarded as the time when we remember those who are no longer with us on Memorial Day. It is also a day for special recognition of veterans who gave their all.
May is also a time when we recognize our students who graduate from grade school, high school and the university. Graduation of students has a way of reminding us that we, too, were once students.
May is a month of celebrating class reunions when we meet with former friends to reminisce.
We show up at one-year, 10-year, 25-year, 50-year and even 60- and 70-year reunions, if we are fortunate.
Have you heard the statement "All those people have changed so much that they didn't recognize me"?
Changes do occur, don't they? But it is so very enjoyable to meet them again and to discuss (maybe even lie a little) about what has happened through the years. They were good years back then, weren't they?
I received a poem that speaks of reunions and reminds us of such things as we can remember. I do not know the author of the poem since I received it via e-mail with no accompanying name. I hope you will enjoy it.


The 2019 Banquet was a tremendous success.
We would like to thank all of the attendees that came out to the banquet as well as our sponsors and donors for your wonderful support. At Pheasant Fest 2017, thanks to your support, the chapter was recognized for reaching the $500,000 mark of spending for habitat, youth programs, public awareness, education and land managment.
Next year's banquet is scheduled for February 29th, 2020 at Lent Town Hall.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more information about next year's banquet.


From the opening flag ceremony to climbing to zip lines, there's so much to see at the Summit this jamboree. Patrol Z is on the ground, immersed in the full-on jamboree experience and documenting it all through the lens.
Look for more Patrol Z posts and see the 2013 National Scout Jamboree through their eyes.


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Lorenzo Cortez (born 12 September 1939) is a Filipino former swimmer. He competed in two events at the 1960 Summer Olympics.

References

1939 births
Living people
Filipino male swimmers
Olympic swimmers of the Philippines
Swimmers at the 1960 Summer Olympics
Sportspeople from Manila
Asian Games medalists in swimming
Asian Games bronze medalists for the Philippines
Swimmers at the 1958 Asian Games
Medalists at the 1958 Asian Games
20th-century Filipino people
21st-century Filipino people

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Talk of genetically modified octopuses filled the air at Hallowed Grounds Tuesday night, as ORCSA hosted its first-ever student stand-up comedy show.
The five performances, which included four aspiring stand-up comedians and one act by the improv comedy troupe Off-Off Campus, had the student coffee shop consistently ringing with laughter, though at points it was clear that audience members found certain routines too lewd.
First-year Will Dart, the fourth act, had a few listeners heading for the exits during his short act, when he speculated about the awkward morning-after if he were to sleep with one of his younger sister's friends.
"I have this theory that beards correspond with levels of manliness, like Super Saiyans in Dragon Ball Z," Dart said. Coming up with material was a simple process, he said, despite having never performed stand-up before. "I bounce a lot of stuff off him," he said, pointing to his friend and audience member, first-year Brandon Rayhaun.
First-years Mickey Desruisseaux and Oliver Dean also delivered punch lines.
The longest routine belonged to Off-Off Campus, who consistently drew laughs with a round of the improvisation game "Montage," wherein multiple disconnected scenes are put in sequence.
In the final act, second-year Anna Moss delivered a rendition of rapper Asher Roth's song, "I Love College," modified to be more pertinent to the average University of Chicago student.
ORCSA sponsored the student event following the success of other recent stand-up shows, like a performance last year by 30 Rock writer Donald Glover, according to ORCSA's campus activities coordinator Katie Przybys.
"I think that it just takes one student to get up and do it and succeed to encourage other students to try," she said.


Address: Cullen Mallow Co. Cork, Cork. See full address and map.
Address: 18 Fair Street Mallow Co. Cork, Cork. See full address and map.
Address: Sirius House Main St Passage West Co. Cork, Cork. See full address and map.
Find every business listed for Communications Training in Ireland.


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Forma Cheese Grater by Zaha Hadid
Following the aesthetic zaha hadid has created in many of her architectural works, the alessi grater is derived by natural forms. The cheese grater is similar to a pebble or rock that has been smoothed over time by water and wind. 'forma' consists of two elements: a sculptural black base holding a mirror-polished stainless steel grater. the ergonomic shape is carefully designed to fit comfortably in the palm of the user's hand. the ease of handling is influenced by its metal surface which is punctured by the unique hole pattern and as a product, it adds a taste of architecture into the kitchen tabletop.
About the designer Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid (Bagdad 1950) studied at the Architectural Association in London, where she qualified in 1977. She joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, with Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, returned to lecture at the Architectural Association and then in other universities in Europe and the United States. In 1993 she was responsible for the Vitra Fire Station at Weil am Rhein, Germany, and a residential building for the iba in Berlin. Her major completed projects include the lf one pavilion at Weil am Rhein (1993-99); the Mind Zone at Millennium Dome in London (1997-99); a tram station and car park in Strasbourg (2001) and a ski jump in Innsbruck (2002). Her projects now under way include: the Contemporary Arts Centers in Rome and Cincinnati; a Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany; a ferry terminal at Salerno, Italy; a public square and multiplex cinema in Barcelona; the bmw Works in Leipzig; the extension to the Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenaghen and a bridge in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Zaha Hadid is also well known as a painter and designer: her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Britain and Germany. Zaha Hadid died in 2016.
Green Vases by Hubsch
Gold Mirrored Top Table by Hubsch
Price€150.00
Black Mirrored Top Table by Hubsch
Black & White Pouf by Hubsch
Black Pouf by Hubsch
Candlestick by Hubsch
Price€35.00


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St. Kitts Scenic Railway
Railway Tour
Where is St. Kitts?
Cruise to St. Kitts
Saint Kitts (also known more formally as Saint Christopher Island (Saint-Christophe in French) is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean. Saint Kitts and the neighbouring island of Nevis constitute one country: the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The island is one of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It is situated about 2,100 km (1,300 mi) southeast of Miami, Florida. The land area of St. Kitts is about 168 km2 (65 sq mi), being approximately 29 km (18 mi) long and on average about 8 km (5.0 mi) across.
Saint Kitts has a population of around 35,000, the majority of whom are mainly of African descent. The primary language is English, with a literacy rate of approximately 98%.[citation needed] Residents call themselves Kittitians (or Kittians).
Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest fortress ever built in the Eastern Caribbean. The island of Saint Kitts is home to the Warner Park Cricket Stadium, which was used to host 2007 Cricket World Cup matches. This made St. Kitts and Nevis the smallest nation to ever host aWorld Cup event. Saint Kitts is also home to several institutions of higher education, including Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, Windsor University School of Medicine, and the International University of Health Sciences.
Link to St. Kitts Tourism Authority
Want to know more about our country?
Click here to Wiki


The optics race is a nonstop fight to get the attention of prospective shooters. It has been exciting if nothing else to watch some of the developments over the past decade or so, particularly from a consumer's point of view. But have there been any real game changers?
I am always on the lookout for good optics, as I am frequently approached by friends and others looking for good shooting options. And optics is one of those heavily fielded questions.
So when I had the opportunity to try out one of Riton Optics scopes, I jumped at it.
Riton is a fairly new manufacturer, I had hardly noticed them before getting hands on one of their scopes. That scope is the RTS Mod5 6-24X50, it is a first focal plane scope, which is a must for me anymore. It has a traditional configuration with a side focus/parralax adjustment, an illumiated proprietary reticle with the rheostat ontop of the eye box, and a focus ring at the back.
The reticle and turrets are both MOA, I'm more of an MRAD fan, but at least they both match. It wasn't that long ago that many scopes were a hybrid mix of MOA and MRAD, thank goodness those days are gone.
I like the reticle, I found it very useful for measuring corrections and holdovers. Being an FFP reticle was also very handy, avoiding any kind of field math is a plus for my slow processor.
While shooting the MDR I became quite familiar with the features of the Riton scope, though it took me a second to revert back to MOA.
Engaging targets as far as twelve hundred yards was no problem with the Mod 5. I am not a large magnification shooter, I usually have about five to ten more X's than I need, but most of the time I shoot between eight and sixteen power.
I think that is where the Mod 5 shines, as with most scopes, you loose some clarity and brightness at the higher magnification. And in my experience, the lower the price point on the scope, the higher the disparity in sharpness at high magnification.
The Mod 5 was no different, I did find that at twenty four power it was a little difficult to pick out little details out past the grand mark. I solved the problem by backing off to eighteen or twenty power for those long observations. I also wish I'd had a sunshade for it, most of my scopes use one, and it is very apparent when even a little bit of sunlight hits the objective. Luckily, Riton has me covered, and Ive got a shade on the way.
I also ran a test on the click values, they were consistent, but slightly off. Over the course of the forty nine minutes of available elevation from my zero, the click value was on average 0.262 MOA. Again, thats a little off, but it was consistent. The good part was it returned to zero perfectly every time, and no significant reticle wandering or cant.
There was a time that I wouldn't have trusted a sub 1000$ optic to be precise for repeatable turret travel in serious long range shooting, but technology has caught up it seems. And now scopes like this one are showing that not only can it be done, it can be done well.
The Mod 5 weighs in at thirty ounces, which isn't necessarily light when compared to it's competition, but its not particularly heavy either. For my taste, it'll do just fine. I am used to hauling heavy guns all over these mountains, so switching to something this light was very refreshing.
I ran the Riton pretty hard, up and down, zooming in and out, hiking across mountains and riding up dirt roads in the bed of a truck, semi auto fire, mounting, re-mounting, etc. No issues with it so far, it keeps right up with me.
All Riton scopes are guaranteed for life, with no hoops to jump, or rules to follow. Thats good to know, becasue we all know about Murphy's Law.
There was plenty of things to like about the Mod 5. I like the reticle, and the the glass is inline with the price point, the internals appear to be robust and repeatable, with simple turret rezeroing. I will also say this, according to the medical practitioner, my eyes are in pretty good shape. So I tend to second guess my own approval of some optics, mainly because what looks fine to me, is usually pretty crummy when someone with anything less than great vision tries it out. I was happy that the Riton RTS Mod 5 got more than just my own approval. The clarity and quality of the imagery seen through the scope was exactly what I would have expected for a scope in this price range.
-MRAD for starters, its not 1987 anymore. I know there are some misguided souls out there still addicted to minutes, but the rest of us have graduated to MRAD. Having both options would greatly improve this scopes desirability to a larger audience.
-Turret rotation graduations, would be very helpful to see what rev your on.
-Parrallax, seemed a little off at times, not bad, but requiring frequent adjustment and checking.
-Magnification ring, the texturing was counterintuitive, making it slightly uncomfortable from the shooting position to zoom in or out. This is a very small gripe, and could simply be preference.
I dont want to sound too hard on this scope, because I actually do like it very much. Hunting season is here, and Junior and I have a date with several deer, and elk. I have all the confidence in this scope to get us on target, whether it be a head shot on a cow elk at four hundrd yards, or a high shoulder shot on a big cross canyon buck at eight hundred and fifty yards.
I look forward to a long future with this scope, and Im sure it wont be long till Riton brings something new. They obviously have the drive, adapting newer and better optics is inevitable. I'll be waiting to see what that is, and I'll make sure to have an empty set of rings available until it does.


Kaleidoscope 2015 is the annual intercollegiate fest of Sophia college, Mumbai and it's all about talent, energy, and passion. It's during this time students energetically participate and perform in various competitions to evince their caliber. It is one of the biggest opportunities coming your way this week on the occasion of Teacher's Day. Yes, that's true! Now on its 30th year, it's back with a bang.
If you're interested in going to the most amazing college fest in Mumbai, keep reading. Forever 21.com in association with I AM INDIAN and DO YOUR ENTERTAINMENT, powered by MumbaiMirror sponsors Kaleidoscope 2015 which has been scheduled to take place on September 5 and 6, 2015 from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., in Sophia College, Mumbai.
It's one of the biggest and most incredible inter-collegiate festivals in Mumbai, which hosts a number of events each year, and every year students, alumni and students from various other colleges come to the Fest to take part to manifest their talent, creativity and skills.
The people you meet, the friends you can make, and the experiences you have at this two-day festival can be everlasting. It is a place to experience the rich and diverse flavours of India all in one place, Kaleidoscope 2015 features various events, irresistible challenges, live entertainment, fun and much more.
So, are you convinced to participate in the Kaleidoscope 2015 Fest in Mumbai? If not yet, you must see what all events are waiting to challenge your caliber and creativity. Have a look at the events that are taking place in Kaleidoscope 2015 during this two-day festival, in which you can participate too.
Before you miss the opportunity, spot your hidden talents and participate in the biggest ever inter-collegiate festival in Mumbai. To know more about Kaleidoscope, visit our website at www.meraevents.com and to know about the events click Kaleidoscope 2015.


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How Mashama Bailey Became the Hottest Chef in Savannah
What it takes to survive the "honeymoon phase" of a hit restaurant opening
by Hillary Dixler Canavan@hillarydixler Apr 15, 2016, 1:00pm EDT
Via All Eater Interviews [E]
Share All sharing options for: How Mashama Bailey Became the Hottest Chef in Savannah
Leslie Ryann McKellar/Eater
"On opening night, I felt like it was all possible," says chef Mashama Bailey of the December 2014 evening when she debuted the hit Savannah restaurant the Grey. Armed with a multimillion-dollar space that would eventually be named the most beautiful restaurant of 2015, Bailey offered dishes like her take on Steak Diane, which Eater restaurant editor Bill Addison cited as an example of how her menu "gambols between audacious and accessible." Seven months after opening, the Grey earned a coveted position on Addison's 21 Best New Restaurant list. But with success comes experience, and experience has a way of changing how a chef thinks. "Now I'm like, 'No,'" Bailey says of even seemingly standard decisions like expanding service hours. "I have to think about it a little bit more and be more patient."
For the chef who worked her way up through the New York City restaurant circuit, culminating in a multi-year stint at Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune where she transitioned from cook to sous chef, the Grey was in no way the fulfillment of Bailey's long-term plan or vision. But when New York native John O. Morisano — more commonly referred to by his nickname Johno — approached Bailey with his plans of renovating a Greyhound bus station in Savannah, she remembers a meeting of like minds. The wheels were set in motion.
"I'm working very hard at not being a flash in the pan."
A few months after the restaurant's first anniversary, Bailey is at Charleston Wine + Food, cooking at a dinner where tickets sold for $750 a pop. Bailey now describes a new kind of challenge: transitioning from being a first-time executive chef to being a chef that impacts Savannah's restaurant culture. "I'm working very hard at not being a flash in the pan," she says measuredly. "I want to be a part of this community. I'm invested; I'm proud of my restaurant community."
And those original plans she had for the Grey have refocused, along with her outlook. "I'm looking forward to growing into a person that's respected in this industry, and that's all," she says. Here now, a look back at how the Grey became Savannah's hottest restaurant, and how Bailey has approached the difficult decisions that have gotten her where she is today:
Congratulations on a year at the Grey!
Thank you! I think people in the business recognize it, but the first year is really hard. You learn a lot about yourself, your management style, your kitchen. You have to make painful decisions, too. You have to decide if the people that you're with are going to take you to the next level, and that's kind of where we're at right now.
The first year is the grind, and you have line cooks doing everything. I'm sweeping the floor, mopping, prepping, cooking, and expediting. People don't necessarily know that's what they're signing up for. They think they're there just to cook, but it's like, "Hey, guess what? We gotta wash the windows today." It can turn into a "Jack of all trades" kind of thing. It can start to get to people: Certain people rise above it and welcome it, and certain people just start to shut down.
Photo: Quentin Bacon, courtesy of the Grey
Does it feel like it's been a year?
Yes and no. Right when we turned a year old — around late November, early December of 2015 — I remember pulling up in front of my apartment and sitting in my car. And I was just like, "That was rough." It didn't feel like a year until right at the year mark, and I just looked back and thought, "That was something." We're still sort of in that honeymoon phase, but our expectations for ourselves are really high. My business partner [Morisano] wants a beautiful restaurant, a beautiful home, and I do, too... Going into the second year, we're trying to figure out how not to make the same mistakes, or as many mistakes as we did in the first year. We're going to make mistakes. We try not to make the same ones too many times.
What about Johno's proposal made moving to Savannah exciting?
The opportunity to be a partner in a restaurant. I'm a line cook, I'm a sous chef, and that's what I was at the time. He was offering me this real investment in a building, in a restaurant, in a culture that no one was offering me. As we talked, we understood each other, and we realized that we liked the same things. We had very similar goals. I thought, "What the hell?"... Savannah is small. It's not what I'm used to, but the people are great. They love food in Savannah, and they're very particular. I like the fact that they're very particular, because they're a tough crowd.
"They're out there ready to crucify me if it's not good."
A chef here in Charleston was saying that, too. If people don't like it, they tell you.
I'm not used to that in New York. New York has so many options, and people like what they like, and they may continue to go back. Here [in Savannah], there are so many things that are changing and the food is getting so much stronger: Where it was something that was in the homes, it's really starting to come into restaurants now. Because of that, people are a lot more critical of the food. My family, we didn't go out to eat, because it's like, "Well, why would I go out and have soul food when I can cook Sunday supper at home?" It's very judgmental about who makes good greens, who makes good chicken, or who has the best pork chops. It's very particular, it's very intimate.
Is that something you had gotten a sense of before you opened, or is that something you discovered?
I got a sense of it before I opened. I met a few people and we had a few tastings. The worst tasting we had before the restaurant opened, no one at the table ever had my cooking before, and it was bad. I bit off more than I can chew, I had a lot going on, everything was a la minute... I think people left a little lukewarm.
At that moment, I realized that I can't just throw something on the plate, or put a dish together and [have people] be amazed. I had to really research and pay attention to what people wanted to eat, what I wanted to eat, and have it come from somewhere, because they weren't having it. I wasn't going to be able to just throw something together and they'll be like, "This is great! Oh, thanks for coming from New York!" No, they're out there ready to crucify me if it's not good.
When you were in the opening process, where did you hope the Grey would fit in into the Savannah ecosystem? And now that it's been a year and a few months, where does it actually fit?
I was hoping that it would just fit in. I was hoping that local people would come. I didn't want it to turn into a tourist place. Locals are really the heart and soul of a restaurant. It [speaks to] the region, it relates to the culture of the city, and I really wanted the Grey to be a local place. Now, we're right in the middle. I think that we're a little bit on the upper scale: I don't think that we're more expensive than any restaurant in Savannah, but I definitely don't think that we're an inexpensive restaurant.
I was thinking it was going to be all locals when we first opened, because we didn't advertise on a level that attracted people who were flying into Savannah for a few nights. Now we're sort of right in the middle, local and travelers.
"If you do have good people, you hold on to them: benefits, pay, vacation. Take care of them, because they're worth it."
Speaking more to staff, that seems like a pretty obvious difference between Savannah and NYC would be the amount of people working in the industry. How has staffing been?
The staffing is so different in Savannah. There aren't as many restaurants like the Grey. You don't have the same pool of people, and it's difficult to find people who understand what your goal is, and actually commit themselves to working hard and being able to take criticism. I know that there are people in Savannah willing to do that, but it's hard to find them. Staffing has been difficult.
The people that we have we're very, very grateful for, but it's been a process. There's been a lot of, "Yes, I will do the job, I'm so excited. I will do anything, I'm a hard worker, I'm a team player." Then you ask them to do something that's a team requirement, but not necessarily a part of their job, and there's push-back. I don't know why. I think anybody who's ever worked in a restaurant understands that you have to do everything. I don't understand why everybody doesn't have that same mindset. It's a little baffling to me, because there's a lot of restaurants in Savannah and people work there — and they work there for years — but it's very difficult to find the people that excel. It may sound a little disrespectful, but it's hard to find those people. If you do have them, you hold on to them: benefits, pay, vacation. Take care of them, because they're worth it.
A big part of the restaurant's story is the amazing transformation of the bus station, both physically and also symbolically, from a segregated space to one where there's an African-American, female chef running it. To what extent do those transformations impact the way you think about the restaurant, your goals for it, and how you actually run it?
I want it to be a little bit more diverse. When I was looking at the plans with Johno, he's like, "This is the entryway, and this was the 24-hour diner, and this is the lobby, and this was the colored waiting room," and I was like, "Wait, what?" He said, "It actually still exists, it's still there." I went through the space and I just was driven to go into the colored waiting room and see what it felt like. A lot of the bus station's claim to fame during that time was that it was fully air-conditioned, the whole building, and it was a big deal that the colored waiting room was in the air-conditioned part of the building. You can actually see the separation, and it's kind of sad.
Becoming the chef here, I'm always looking to see if there are people of color in the building, because sometimes there's no one of color eating in the restaurant. Then I get in there sometimes and there are tables and tables of people of color, but it's not every night. I want to make sure that the servers are diverse, and it's a representation of me, my family, and the people I grew up with. I don't want it to be so segregated, because it could become that. It could become only black people in the back of the house and white people in the front of the house.
"I'm always looking to see if there's people of color in the building, and I want to make sure that the servers are diverse."
Is that a phenomenon you've noticed?
That's a phenomenon I've noticed in the south. When we put out for applications for cooks, porters, and stuff like that, 90 percent of the people who show up are African-American. Then when we put out ads for people who are in front of the house, 70 percent of them are white Americans.
There's a lot to unpack there.
Yeah. I want to be very careful about how we staff. I want to hire the most qualified person for any position that we hire for, but I also want to make sure that we're paying attention to how it could look. If a black person comes in and sits down and eats dinner, they're looking around to see who's serving them. It's important to represent everyone. It's important to represent me and Johno in the front and back of the house, because I think that speaks of both of us.
You can only deal with what you're dealt, so there's a little bit of that, but also I think we have to figure out how to impact the community to let them know these are viable positions. You can make a lot of money being a server: You can make 50, 60 grand a year waiting tables. But people don't look at it as a career. One of our goals is to impact the community in a way where people understand that the service industry is a viable industry, a money-making industry that people can take seriously and raise a family [working in].
You don't hear people speak about hiring practices in restaurants frequently enough, so I'm very energized by what you were just saying, that you're actively thinking about it. You can't just let it roll.
If you let it roll, it's just going to go back into traditional roles. I think people's self-worth starts to diminish when you start to do that. You have to push people and their boundaries. Being in a segregated bus station, we have to push the boundary of how the chips may fall. You have to shake it up a little bit. You have to require more from people, even if they don't traditionally fit in that role, so they can step up and understand: "These are real skills that I can take and do anything with." That comes from bussing tables.
Bill Addison
Photo: Bill Addison/Eater
That's how I started. I was a server.
Exactly! It's something you can do for a couple of years or for a lifetime: It depends on what you want to do with it. It's a viable industry. I started out waiting tables, and I probably was like, "Well, I'm only going to do this through college." Then the next thing you know, I'm out of college and thinking, "I'm going to try the back of the house." You just don't know if it's going to bite you. It's a bug that bites you, and it bites you because it's a magical industry. You come in, you make people happy, they leave happy, they talk about you, they come back, and you get the pleasure of feeding them again. There's not a lot of places that you can actually see gratitude on people's faces unfold right in front of you.
Speaking to restaurants as a viable career, how have you been thinking about some of the issues surrounding tipping and living wages?
Before we opened we went around to a few restaurants and asked people if they pool tips, and a lot of them were like, "What is that?" So that's what we did, pool tips. We had to explain it to [the staff] in such a way where they got it, it made sense, and they didn't feel like they were missing out. Which is the best thing we could've done, because now we have this camaraderie between the front and back of the house.
It starts to put us all in the same boat. I would love for my cooks to make $20 an hour. We're trying to figure out how to do that, because I think they deserve it. Right now, we're getting them as close as we can to that, but it's hard to figure out those logistics when the culture isn't quite there just yet.
Beyond staffing, are there any major differences you've seen in the work of operating a restaurant in Savannah versus New York?
It's all so new to me I wouldn't know the difference between New York, Savannah, Japan. I'm like, "Am I going to cry today? No, it was a good day."
Do you see yourself opening a second restaurant?
I do see myself having a second restaurant, but not for a long time. The Grey is my baby. We spent so much time and we're investing so much, and I'm learning so much about myself doing this restaurant. I'm just excited to go to the Grey and make it better.