Busy busy: Welcome to Friday, dear readers, and not just any Friday but the last Friday of Spring 2025 (sorta … this year’s Summer Solstice takes place at precisely 10:20 p.m. next Friday here in our beautiful Northern Hemisphere, so let’s call this the last full Friday of Spring).
If next Friday is June 20, then today must be Friday the 13th (the only one this year, for those keeping score). But we’ve nothing to fear, with another workweek wrapping up and another well-earned weekend – complete with jingoistic military parades, patriotic protests and even Father’s Day – on tap.
Field day: Softball, the baseball variation that’s popular with women and men alike, controls the diamond today.
Don’t blame us: Sorry if you’re stuck in the office today, as outdoor activities abound – it’s both National Weed Your Garden Day (featuring rakes, spades and gloves) and World Softball Day (featuring bats, balls and different gloves).
And only a species that fears other peoples’ sexual orientation and embraces the politics of hate (to delineate between good economics and bad economics and justify unabashed racism) could come up with National Blame Someone Else Day, an homage to the art of deflection that points fingers on the first Friday the 13th of every year.
Father and sun: Dutch astronomer Johannes Fabricius took all the credit on June 13, 1611, when he dedicated a written study detailing the phenomenon of sunspots. (Though, in fine Father’s Day fashion, his dad lent a hand with the discovery).
Keeping us in stitches: English innovator Thomas Saint went it alone when he earned a British patent 235 years ago today for his chain-stitch sewing machine – recorded as the birth of the modern sewing machine.
Deck hand: Also cleaning up was African American inventor Thomas Steward, who patented the modern mop – basically, a cloth attached to a stick – on June 13, 1893.
Thurgood Marshall: Civil rights champion.
Bench battle: It was this date in 1967 when president Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall – at the time, solicitor general of LBJ’s Justice Department – to become the first African American associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. (A split U.S. Senate confirmed Marshall after two months of contentious debate.)
Where no probe had gone before: And it was June 13, 1983, when NASA space probe Pioneer 10 shot past Neptune, making it the first Earth spacecraft to depart the Solar System.
In addition to becoming humanity’s first interstellar voyager, the probe – which finally ceased data transmissions in January 2003 (when it was about 7.6 billion miles from home) and should arrive in the vicinity of the red star Aldebaran in about 2 million years – was also the first Earth spacecraft propelled by nuclear power, the first to fly beyond Mars and the first to cross the Solar System’s main asteroid belt (cue John Williams).
Designing woman: British fashion designer Lady Lucy Christiana Duff-Gordon (1863-1935) – a major innovator of late 19th and early 20th century fashion who created the couture style, mastered fashion-industry public relations and survived the Titanic disaster – would be 162 years old today.
Alienating: Whitley Strieber’s fiction is scary … but not nearly as chilling as his real-life supernatural encounters.
Also born on June 13 were first-ever U.S. First Lady Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731-1802), who – fearing for her life – freed all of George’s slaves after his death; Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), who thought up electromagnetism; British engineer Sir Charles Parsons (1854-1931), who revolutionized marine propulsion with the multi-stage steam turbine; American physicist Wallace Clement Sabine (1868-1919), who founded the science of architectural acoustics; and American writer Whitley Strieber (born 1945), known best for his horror fiction and for hanging out with the Grays.
Tip of the Cap: And take a bow, Chris Evans! The American actor – known best as the first Captain America of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a role he absolutely, positively won’t be reprising in the upcoming “Avengers” movies (or will he?) – turns 44 today.
Give the heroic Steve Rogers your best at editor@innovateli.com, where our super-soldier serum is powered by your news tips and calendar events.
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BUT FIRST, THIS
Vision quest: Northwell Health is helping a Canadian technology company increase hospital efficiencies, strengthen bottom lines and improve patient outcomes.
The New Hyde Park-based health system is introducing AIQ Capture – an artificial intelligence-powered platform created by Montreal-based AssistIQ – in all operating rooms at Manhasset’s North Shore University Hospital, including those inside the Dorothy & Alvin Schwartz Ambulatory Service Center. AIQ Capture tracks supplies used in ORs and other hospital facilities, replacing outdated barcode scanners and paper logs with a real-time, AI-powered “computer vision” that’s designed to help healthcare managers streamline clinical operations and minimize lost revenues.
Northwell Health has played a key role in “shaping the clinical and supply-chain integration” of its flagship product and will “continue to inform product development while … optimizing charge capture and improving efficiencies,” AssistIQ said in a statement. “We’re thrilled by the market’s response to our product and deeply grateful to our health-system partners,” AssistIQ Chief Executive Lisa Israelovitch said in a statement, adding that partners like Northwell “help us innovate and deliver solutions that create value across clinical and operational workflows.”
What’s fair is fair: Residents of the same school district should pay equal tax rates whichever county they live in, according to Monica Martinez.
Equalization effort: New state legislation could soon correct inequities in school taxes paid by Nassau and Suffolk residents who share common school districts.
A measure sponsored by State Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Hauppauge) would level the playing field – or paying field – for taxpayers in the Farmingdale School District and the Amityville Union Free School District, both of which straddle the Nassau/Suffolk county line. Assessment-rate disparities between Suffolk’s Town of Babylon and Nassau’s Town of Oyster Bay have residents on the Suffolk side paying much higher school taxes – in December, based on new state formulas, the Suffolk taxpayers received school-tax bills that had increased by as much as 17 percent, while the Nassau ratepayers saw little or no increase.
Martinez’s legislation – approved by the State Senate, now awaiting a State Assembly vote – would require the state commissioner of taxation and finance to create special equalization rates spanning the entire Farmingdale and Amityville school districts. “Homeowners shouldn’t face significantly higher school taxes just because of which side of a county line their property is on,” Martinez noted. “This bill provides a clear directive to establish more accurate and timely equalization rates, helping restore fairness for taxpayers.”
POLL POSITION
Innovate Long Island’s first-ever Reader Survey is off and running! The response has been terrific so far – multitudes of readers (and potential readers) sharing their thoughts on our little advocacy-journalism experiment and how we can make it better.
Hey, we know that random drawing for three $50 Visa Gift Cards is a pretty sweet lure – but we still appreciate all these folks taking 90 seconds to tell us what they like about Innovate Long Island, where we should go next and how we might get there.
Don’t miss your chance to influence our future (and your own) – and make sure your entire innovation team gets in on it, too. Our quick-and-easy poll is standing by right now!
TOP OF THE SITE
Minority leader: The Debrief goes one-on-one with Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce President Phil Andrews, who discusses 40 years of advocating for minority-owned businesses.
Why wait? We can’t wait to send you the next Monday Calendar Newsletter, which details all of the – wait, what? You don’t receive our Monday Calendar Newsletter because you’re not a subscriber? If only there was an always easy, always free way to remedy that. Oh, wait … there is!
ICYMI
Renaissance School of Medicine researchers have achieved a “biofabrication” breakthrough – a major advance in the science of bioprinting living structures.
Something to say? Welcome to The Entrepreneur’s Edge, Innovate Long Island’s new promoted-content news feature platform – a direct link from you to our innovation-focused audience. Progressive product to promote? Singular service to sell? Sociopolitical position to push? Shine a bright light on the big picture, the little details and everything in between with The Entrepreneur’s Edge. Living on the edge.
BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)
Innovate LI’s inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This week’s brightest out-of-towners:
From New Jersey: Warren-based gaming-PC pacesetter Maingear redefines power, efficiency and performance with revolutionary Ultima 18 laptop.
From Colorado: Boulder-based kombucha-soda king Rowdy Mermaid announces strategic acquisition by Brooklyn-based operating company Next in Natural.
From California: Los Angeles-based sisters Sydney and Kaitlin Wiseman (a toy creator and family physician, respectively) reimagine pediatric healthcare through the power of play.
ON THE MOVE
Samir Taneja
+ Samir Taneja has been appointed Northwell Health senior vice president, Northwell’s chairman of urology and chairman of the health system’s Smith Institute for Urology. He was chairman of the Department of Urology, director of the Division of Urologic Oncology and professor of urology and radiology at NYU Langone Health, and professor of bioengineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
+ Kinga Fenikowska has been hired as an associate at Smith, Sovik, Kendrick & Sugnet in Uniondale. She was an associate at Sheehan & Associates in Great Neck.
+ Two new members have been appointed to the Nassau Health Care Corp. Board of Directors:
- Lisa Zakiya Newland is a full professor of social work at Molloy University and chairwoman of the university’s Department of Social Work.
- Rory Lancman is director of corporate initiatives and senior counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and vice-chairman of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority.
+ Robert Melle has been hired as a financial advisor at Hendel Wealth Management Group in Smithtown. He was a financial consultant at Charles Schwab in Manhattan.
+ New York City-based Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby has announced the hiring of four new associates at its Garden City office:
- Alexia Seepersaud was an associate at Pillinger Miller Tarallo in Garden City.
- Lynn Waylonis was an associate at Pillinger Miller Tarallo in Garden City.
- Todd Hellman was an associate at Pillinger Miller Tarallo in Garden City.
- Melissa Tsynman was an associate at Pillinger Miller Tarallo in Garden City.
+ Melville-based H2M architects + engineers has announced the hiring of four new executives:
- Danielle Mohr, former sports reporter at The Tennessean in Nashvillle, is now a marketing coordinator.
- William Donohue, former senior counsel at National Grid in Hicksville, is now corporate counsel.
- James Park, former painter/inspector in the Insulation and Coatings Department at PG&E in California, is now senior coatings inspector 1.
- Carineh Mendez, former community liaison at the Huntington Union Free School District, is now a STEAM outreach specialist.
+ Wayne Fortino has been hired as director of Olympic Program Development at the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association in Garden City. He will remain chief executive of Quest Sports Travel in Merrick.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask Nixon Peabody). Gregory Zeller can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Dad Jokes Edition)
Sunday pun-day: Just grin and bear it on Father’s Day.
Old material: “Dad jokes” became a thing in 1987, but they’ve been around much longer.
Joke’s on him: “Tone-deaf” VP Vance roasted during ironic staging of “Les Mis.”
Cringeworthy: Set phrasers to pun with corny comedy that aims to please.
No joke: Please continue supporting the fantastic firms that support Innovate Long Island, including Nixon Peabody, where your success is always serious business. Check them out.
