IMPACCT Brooklyn, a nonprofit committed to helping residents and small businesses build and sustain flourishing communities, and Ring, an Amazon company, announced a collaboration to help keep small businesses in Central Brooklyn more secure.
Ring is making a donation of 200 Ring device bundles (including Ring Alarm Kit, Ring Stick Up Cams, and an Alarm Glass Break Sensor) to small businesses in need. Ring will cover the installation cost associated with the donated devices as well as a Ring Protect Basic subscription for the life of the camera devices. Ring will also provide a one-year subscription trial for Ring Pro Protect Subscription for the Alarm Kit.
“Small businesses are a central part of every neighborhood and we are committed to empowering entrepreneurs by providing security solutions to help protect their businesses,” said Karla Torres, Head of Community Engagement at Amazon Devices & Services.
IMPACCT Brooklyn will distribute devices to new and existing Small Business Assistance Program clients and will evaluate additional eligibility for the future. Amazon also donated IMPACCT Brooklyn with a $20,000 donation.
“We’re very happy to thank Amazon and Ring for their collaboration with our community partners. When our businesses are safer, everyone benefits,” said Bernell Grier, Executive Director of IMPACCT Brooklyn. “We hope these Ring devices will provide business owners peace of mind that will help foster a positive business climate. Ultimately, collaborations like this help make our communities safer, and bring jobs and economic prosperity to Central Brooklyn.”
Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman praised the collaboration in an effort to help small businesses in her district with security.
“The 56th Assembly District is home to vibrant commercial corridors and dedicated merchants who work hard to provide quality goods and services to our residents,” said Zinerman. “We know that small businesses thrive in a clean and safe environment, which makes Amazon’s investment in Ring Devices to Central Brooklyn businesses an invaluable asset.”
IMPACCT Brooklyn works with educators and local business mentors to launch workshops such as the Rolling Up the Gates/Project Restart. Through a range of informative courses, this program helps get small businesses off the ground and continue to thrive. Learn more about our Small Business Assistance Programs here.
Just a few months after the “Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time” exhibit wrapped up at the MoMA, Bar Calico at 23 Lexington Avenue by 24th Street, inside the Freehand Hotel in Gramercy, has added a new cocktail inspired by the iconic artist to its menu.
Dubbed Prickly Pair, the drink pays homage to the late O’Keeffe in more ways than one. As explained in an official press release, visually, the sip reminds of the floral motives that characterize many of the painter’s works.
The name is also a reference to her marriage to Alfred Stieglitz, responsible for her very first show in New York.
“The relationship was complicated, due in part to O’Keeffe’s career eclipsing Stieglitz’s,” reads the press release, “enter the ‘Prickly Pair.'”
Prepared using a vodka base, the cocktail features a sweet prickly pear puree, which is actually a watermelon-like fruit that grows in the arid climate of the Southwestern desert, near New Mexico, which is where O’Keeffe owned a house that she used as a private escape. See what they did there?
Bonus points: Bar Calico will donate $1 of every Prickly Pair ordered to the Breast Cancer Alliance throughout the month of October.
Head to the drinking den to enjoy a freshly made version of the cocktail right now or, perhaps, concoct your own at home. Here is the full recipe:
Ingredients:
1.5 oz St. George Basil Eau de Vie .75 oz Absolut Elyx Vodka 1 oz prickly pear juice .75 oz lime .75 oz Orgeat Egg white Lime zest
Method:
Combine all ingredients in a shaker without ice first and shake to emulsify the drink. Next, add ice to the shaker and shake to dilute. Strain into a nick and nora or coupe. Garnish by grating lime zest over the cocktail.
Laura Jackson became seriously concerned about her daughter and math when the girl was in third grade. While many of her classmates flew through multiplication tests, Jackson’s daughter relied on her fingers to count, had difficulty reading clocks and burst into tears when asked at home to practice math flashcards.
At school, the 9-year-old had been receiving help from a math specialist for two years, with little improvement.
“We hit a point where she was asking me, ‘Mom, am I stupid?’” Jackson recalled.
One day, when having lunch with a friend, Jackson heard about a disorder known as dyscalculia. She later looked up a description of the learning disability that impacts a child’s ability to process numbers and retain math knowledge. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my kid,’” Jackson said.
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The Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, is documenting the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. Join our live expert panel for families, “Solving The Math Problem,” at 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Oct. 17, at https://st.news/mathwebinar. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
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Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students face challenges learning math due to disabilities like dyscalculia, a neurodevelopmental learning disorder caused by differences in parts of the brain that are involved with numbers and calculations. There are often obstacles to getting help.
America’s schools have long struggled to identify and support students with learning disabilities of all kinds. Kids often languish while waiting to receive a diagnosis; families frequently have to turn to private providers to get one; and even with a diagnosis, some schools are unable to provide children the help they need.
That’s slowly changing — for some disabilities. Most states have passed laws that mandate screening early elementary students for the most common reading disability, dyslexia, and countless districts train teachers to recognize struggling readers. Meanwhile, parents and experts say schools neglect students with math disabilities like dyscalculia, which affects up to 7% of the population and often coexists with dyslexia.
“There’s not as much research on math disorders or dyscalculia,” as there is on reading disabilities, said Karen Wilson, a clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in the assessment of children with learning differences. “That also trickles down into schools.”
Math scores in the U.S. have remained dismal for years and only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning struggles for some may be due to dyscalculia or other math learning disabilities, yet few teachers report their students have been screened for dyscalculia.
Experts say learning the most effective methods for teaching students with math disabilities could strengthen math instruction for all students.
“If it works for the students with the most severe disconnections and slower processing speeds, it’s still going to work for the kids that are in the ‘middle’ with math difficulties,” said Sandra Elliott, a former special education teacher and current chief academic officer at TouchMath, a multisensory math program.
Some signs of dyscalculia are obvious at an early age, if parents and educators know what to look for. Young children might have difficulty recognizing numbers or patterns. In elementary school, students may have trouble with math functions like addition and subtraction, word problems, counting money or remembering directions.
Even after Jackson learned about dyscalculia on her own, her daughter’s Seattle-area public school was doubtful the third grader had a learning disability because she was performing well in other areas. Teachers suggested Jackson spend extra time on math at home.
“For so many parents, they assume the school would let them know there’s an issue, but that’s just not how it works,” said Jackson, who ultimately wrote a book, “Discovering Dyscalculia,” about her family’s journey.
Students with dyscalculia often need a more structured approach to learning math that involves “systematic and explicit” instruction, said Lynn Fuchs, a research professor in special education and human development at Vanderbilt University.
Part of the problem is that teachers don’t receive the training needed to work with children with math disabilities. At least one state, Virginia, requires dyslexia awareness training for teacher licensure renewal, but has no similar requirement for math disability training.
“It’s pretty rare for undergraduate degrees or even master’s degrees to focus on math learning disabilities with any level of breadth, depth, quality or rigor,” said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
Without more widespread knowledge of and support for dyscalculia, many parents have had to look for specialists and tutors on their own, which they say can be particularly challenging for math, and costly. In 2019, Jackson started pulling her daughter out of school for part of each day to teach her math at home.
“I am not a math teacher, but I was so desperate,” Jackson said. “There’s no one who knows anything, and we have to figure this out.”
At the tutoring organization Made for Math, specialists have found children with dyscalculia need repetition, especially to understand math facts. Some students attend tutoring up to four days a week, at a cost of up to $1,000 a month.
“It’s hard because it’s not something schools are offering, and kids deserve it,” said Heather Brand, a math specialist and operations manager for the organization.
There are pockets of progress around the country in screening more children for math disabilities, but movement at the federal level — and in most states — is “nonexistent,” said Malone, of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
New York City is one district that has prioritized math disability screening and math instruction in the early years. In 2015 and 2016, the city spent $6 million to roll out a math curriculum featuring games, building blocks, art projects and songs. The district has also introduced universal math and reading screeners to try to identify students who may be behind.
There are ways that all schools can make math instruction more accessible, experts say. In elementary schools, activities that involve more senses should be used more widely, including whole-body motions and songs for teaching numbers and hands-on materials for math operations.
Jackson said her daughter could have benefited from a wider variety of methods at school. When the teen returned to school-based math classes in high school, after several years of learning math at home, she achieved an A in algebra.
“When you really understand what it is to be dyscalculic, then you can look around and decide what this person needs to succeed,” Jackson said. “It’s not just that you’re ‘bad at math’ and need to buckle down and try harder.”
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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Mads Refslund, chef and co-founder of the Copenhagen restaurant Noma, the “World’s Best Restaurant,” just opened ILIS, a new wood-fired kitchen and restaurant in Greenpoint, and if there’s one thing we can say about it it’s that they’re offering New Yorkers a pretty unique dining experience.
And, considering Refslund has been working on the restaurant for years, we wouldn’t expect anything less.
ILIS, from the Danish words for fire (“ild”) and ice (“is”), focuses on plants, seafood, and wild and sustainable North American bison and venison, the only four-legged animals you’ll find on the menu.
Source / ILIS
The ingredient-forward dishes will be served raw/chilled (incorporating the “is”) or cooked over a large open fire (bringing in the “ild” aspect).
What makes the space unique is their dining policy–guests are required to order at least five dishes (a minimum of $150) in the dining room.
It’s not exactly a tasting menu, however, as there’s flexibility on choice of course, manner of preparation (i.e. hot or cold), and length of the dining experience. Whether a guest wants to dine for 1.5 hours or 4 hours, Refslund doesn’t want them to feel trapped by a set menu or time.
Source / ILIS
To begin the dining experience, carts of seafood and produce are presented tableside. Afterwards, guests select the ingredients of their choosing as well as deciding whether they’re prepared hot or cold (or both).
Opening menu dish examples include Shigoku Oysters with green almond and cucumber, a Surf Clam fashioned into a flask, sealed with beeswax, and filled with a chilled clam drink with tomato water and smoked dashi, and BBQ Eel “On The Cob,” wild caught and brought to chefs live, brined for 48 hours, then smoked. A marigold flower is used by the guest to brush it with tare (a savory Japanese glaze).
Source / ILIS
There will also be a shared dish for the table, which is only served in one preparation (such as a whole roast wild duck). Each dish is delivered personally by the chefs.
As for the restaurant itself, it’s housed inside a 4,500-square-foot former rubber factory warehouse. The open concept space features a 14-seat bar and a lounge situated at the entrance and a large open kitchen in the center with 58 wrap-around seats.
According to Mads and the team all the best dinner parties wind up in the kitchen, and that’s exactly what they want ILIS to feel like.
Source / ILIS
Aging compartments for meat, game, and fish, as well as temperature controlled compartments for plants and flowers can also be found in the space, and plants and flowers will be dried on workstations and hanging from walls and the ceiling beams, doubling as eye-catching art pieces.
Reservations can be made on ILIS’ website, and a very select amount of lounge tables are available for walk-in. The bar is also fully walk-in.
A casual Saturday service will eventually be offered, and a 1,500-square-foot private dining room space adjacent to the restaurant is set to open later in the season.
Commodity trading, the buying and selling of raw materials and natural resources, offers substantial opportunities for investors. But successfully navigating this intricate market calls for strategy, expertise, and the proper partners. This post will discuss some common mistakes made by commodity traders and offer advice on how to select the best online brokers to help…
After weekends of endless rain, it’s safe to say that New Yorkers have had enough of Mother Nature’s jokes. But unfortunately, the rain doesn’t plan to let up anytime soon with Friday and Saturday’s forecast showing precipitation.
In fact, last month actually smashed NYC rain records, proving to be the wettest September in more than a century! Out of September’s 30 days, it rained for 14 of them. According to Spectrum News, NYC saw three times the amount of typical rain for the month with a total rainfall of 14 inches. That’s just shy of NYC’s wettest September on record with 16.85 inches in 1882.
If you haven’t guessed already, majority of September’s rain can be credited to the flash flood that occurred on Friday, September 29th. The severe storm was responsible for more than 30% of the month’s rainfall.
Dan Shure / Secret NYC
Areas like JFK experienced record shattering totals with rainfall surpassing 8 inches—the highest on record. Moreover, Central Park saw the sixth wettest day in 141 years and the Brooklyn Navy Yard had more than 7 inches fall.
The month actually began as a scorcher with three consecutive days reaching in the 90s. Yet, by the end of the month, temperatures plummeted into the 50s.
The process of boarding a place is about to be less of a headache–at least if you’re flying United Airlines–as the airline recently announced in a memo they’ll be rolling out a more efficient boarding process later this month, and those stuck flying in the dreaded middle seat are going to want to listen up.
The new boarding process, referred to as WILMA–which refers to “window, middle, aisle”–calls for those flying in window seats to board the plane first, followed by middle seat flyers and then those in the aisle seat.
According to the airline, this new process will save up to two minutes of boarding time–and we all know every minute is precious when it comes to flying.
Group three will now include flyers in window seats, exit row seats, and non-revenue travelers. Group four, which as of now includes those flying in the middle and aisle seats, will be limited to only middle seats. Group five will include only aisle seats.
In addition, they also created a group six for those flying in restricted basic economy that don’t have a carry-on option.
Unsplash / Lukas Souza
Pre-boarding, as well as boarding for groups one and two, will remain the same.
For families and other flyers who share a reservation, all members of the group will be able to board in the earliest category based on their tickets. In other words, if a family is taking up an entire row, all travelers in that reservation can board in group three.
The new boarding policy will go into effect this month on Thursday, October 26th.
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