Latest news with #DavidKaplan
Eater
22-07-2025
- Business
- Eater
Savannah's Death & Co. Bar Is the New Spot to See and Be Seen
When Municipal Grand swung its doors on July 11, the hotel's eponymous lobby bar quickly packed with patrons thirsty for a taste of its much-anticipated beverage program — and the people it attracts. The debut came within two years after Midnight Auteur, a new hospitality group from the founders of Death & Co. and Denver's the Ramble Hotel, announced plans to reimagine the six-story, 1960s landmark into a cocktail-driven, 44-room destination. Municipal Grand's name is a clever nod to the past: the First Federal Savings and Loan Association, which operated from 1961 to 1989, later served as a City of Savannah workplace at 45 Abercorn Street. The preserved architecture, from terrazzo tiles to the bank vault, sets the tone for the midcentury modern-inspired interiors by AAmp Studio — the same firm behind Death & Co.'s bars in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — in collaboration with Savannah-based Lynch Associates Architects and Ward Architecture + Preservation. Drink martinis or 'cheekies' at the bar. Kelly Calvillo By design, Municipal Bar is the city's best new spot to see and be seen, both in person and on Instagram. Anchoring the lobby is a curved, 14-seat bar surrounded by serpentine banquettes and low lounge seating. Although at street level, the entire floor feels like one big sunken conversation pit, thanks to an upper mezzanine level encasing the perimeter. The Municipal Bar's menu of shareable drinks and small plates further leans into its sociability. A 'Family Style' list of playful offerings encourages guests to start with banana daiquiri 'cheekies' — miniature renditions made with Wray & Nephew rum and served in port glasses for $8 per person. Or, patrons can 'Keep It Going' with espresso martini cheekies at $6 a pop. For a fancier pour, the $36 'Proper Martini Service' for two — inspired by London's Dukes bar — is served ice-cold with a choose-your-own-adventure selection of accouterments, plus the option to add a side of salty shoestring fries for an additional $5. Of course, there's also a full selection of regular-sized beverages, such as the neon-hued white Negroni (Terroir gin, Americano, and Gentian amaro), garnished with a juicy pineapple wedge. With a subtropical climate in mind, rum or mezcal concoctions — complete with crushed ice, crystal-clear rocks or frosted glassware — are heavenly for cooling off in Savannah's thick humidity. Ranging from $16 to $19, these are contemporary riffs on classics, expected given the Death & Co. association. The hotel also offers creative fare for brunch and dinner. Kelly Calvillo For the uninitiated, Death & Co. first opened by David Kaplan and Ravi DeRossi in the mid-aughts as an unassuming bar in Manhattan's East Village. The brand would become one of the world's most sought-after cocktail bars, with four locations in New York, Denver, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. With insatiable demand (parties still often wait hours to enter the flagship) came the spin-off concepts: in 2018, Kaplan launched the full-scale hospitality firm Gin & Luck with several partners, including Alex Day, who serves as chief operating officer. This branch is responsible for recent projects like Close Company in Las Vegas, Nashville, and soon, Atlanta. The expansion is fueled in part by investor funding through SeedInvest, an online equity crowdfunding platform. As the Death & Co. institution appears closer to cementing its status as a household name, some may wonder if this dilutes the brand's popularity or prestige. On the contrary, Midnight Auteur operates as a distinct entity—more of a cousin than a sibling. Joining Kaplan and Day in this venture is Ryan Diggins, the founder and operator of the Ramble Hotel in Denver, Colorado, where the second Death & Co. opened in 2018. The midcentury modern-inspired interiors are by AAmp Studio. Kelly Calvillo With this ownership team based across the country, they brought in Franck Savoy to lead Municipal Grand as general manager. The son of chef Guy Savoy, of Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Las Vegas, launched his career in fine dining alongside his father before moving on to roles at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, California, Auberge Resorts, and most recently, Berg Hospitality Group in Houston, Texas. Joining Savoy is a mix of talent recruited to relocate to Savannah, like Death & Co. veteran Sam Penton as the director of outlets, as well as an all-star lineup of familiar faces from around the city. Helming the kitchen is executive chef Karim Elkady (formerly of Hotel Bardo, Southern Cross Hospitality, and Perry Lane) and executive sous chef Shannon Koprivich (also formerly of Southern Cross Hospitality), with Justin Stevenson (formerly of Husk Savannah) managing the front of house. Behind the bar, locals recognize James Nowicki and Sebastián Montero-Hernández, just to name a couple. Herein lies the true joy of a visit to Municipal Grand — the dynamite combination of the Hostess City's famed hospitality paired with Death & Co.'s gravitas. That, and food to back it all up. In the era of the aesthetic restaurant, when Instagrammability is weighted as highly as the quality of the food and service, Municipal Grand delivers on all three. Brunch at Municipal Grand. Kelly Calvillo Loaded with vibrant herbs and veggies, jewel-toned dishes are as colorful and refreshing as the cocktails and the artful vibe. Lunch standouts like the smoked salmon tartine, crispy chicken sandwich, and a mortadella roll, all served on Flora and Fauna bread. 'There's no club sandwich or Caesar salad. That's intentional,' says Savoy. This fall, the hotel will unveil its basement cocktail den, Hot Eye, decked out in red walls, blackened mirrors, and oxblood leather booths, just in time for the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. For a quieter experience, visit in the morning. The Carolina Gold rice porridge — a combination of currants, coconut, carrot, and pistachio that tastes like a cross between overnight oats and carrot cake — and a 'Fancy Omelet' (complete with a cheese pull) are well worth waking up early for. The Municipal Bar is open daily from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Access to the rooftop Sun Club is currently reserved for hotel guests.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate, million-acre farm to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel. Contact Mia Thurow at mthurow@ This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee scientists help discover space object ASKAP J1832-0911
USA Today
25-06-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. What was this cosmic discovery? ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. What does this have to do with everyday life? Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' How was the object discovered? The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' What was the discovery process like? The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate, million-acre farm to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Who was involved and what were their roles? Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate million-acre farm so as to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel. Contact Mia Thurow at mthurow@ This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWM scientists help discover mysterious space phenomenon
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Kodiak looks to go public via SPAC deal
This story was originally published on Trucking Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Trucking Dive newsletter. Kodiak Robotics intends to go public via a merger with Ares Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company, at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation, according to a Monday press release. The autonomous vehicle technology company, founded in 2018, believes that entering the public markets will fast-track its plan to expand partnerships, reach a larger customer base and offer better solutions to the trucking industry, said Don Burnette, Kodiak's CEO, in the release. While the SPAC deal is subject to shareholder approval, the companies expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2025. Kodiak AI — the newly formed firm — would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols KDK and KDK WS, respectively. The agreement comes after Kodiak expanded its partnership with Atlas Energy Solutions earlier this year, enabling the energy company to haul over 100 loads of proppant on private roads in West Texas. Atlas has since committed to an initial order of 100 autonomous trucks, according to the Kodiak presentation. Kodiak cites that strong customer traction — as well as a $4 trillion global market opportunity — among its top ways to create value for investors. The company also compares itself to competitor Aurora, which has logged just as many autonomous miles, but has a higher quarterly cash burn, per the presentation. 'As an early-mover in autonomous trucking and first to deliver a commercial driverless product to a customer, Kodiak has quickly set itself apart as an industry leader in a significant addressable market,' said David Kaplan, CEO and co-chairman of the board of directors of AACT and co-founder of Ares, in the release. In addition to new public market investors, the combined company anticipates a $551 million cash infusion from Ares Management Corp., an affiliate of Ares Acquisition, the release continued. Institutional investors, such as Soros Fund Management and Ark Investments, have also committed $110 million in additional funding. SPAC deals have been volatile in recent years, however. Following a pandemic-era resurgence, SPACs launched between 2019 and 2020 reported 35% year-over-year losses, according to Investopedia. While SPACs have generally underperformed in the market, there was an increase in IPO activity last year with $9.6 billion in gross proceeds. In its presentation, Kodiak outlined more than 50 risk factors for potential investors, including its net losses and limited operating history. While specifics are not available about its net losses, Kodiak noted that it has a $20 million quarterly cash burn. The company is expected to release a registration statement soon, which will include more details about its existing and future business model. Recommended Reading Kodiak, Atlas scale autonomous truck deployment on private road network Sign in to access your portfolio
