Author: condor

It’s A Snowy Thursday, On The Western Great Lakes… But Warm Here, As Merck Inks A Biggish BioBucks Deal, With Kelun…

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It should be noted that Merck will, in addition, make a “terms withheld” (as immaterial to Merck) equity investment in Kelun.

This is quite a deal — if the idea of antibiotic drug conjugates / candidates for oncology pans out.

And smartly, it means Mr. Davis pays only nominal amounts if the programs flame out. This is deal number three, between the companies, on these topics. Here’s the latest, from FierceBiotech:

…The exclusive licensing deal, announced Thursday, marks the third antibody-drug conjugate agreement between the two companies. Under the latest arrangement, the two companies will develop seven ADCs for cancer. Merck snagged the right to research, develop, manufacture and commercialize the ADCs and placed a hold on future candidates with an exclusive opt-in agreement. Kelun-Biotech, a subsidiary of Sichuan Kelun Pharmaceutical, will hang on to rights in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

The small upfront fee stands in stark contrast to the multibillion total offering should all go well with the ADCs. The $9.3 billion will be distributed based on future development, regulatory and sales milestones if Kelan-Biotech does not retain the China, Hong Kong and Macau rights and if all candidates achieve approval. That’s a pretty big if; the likelihood that all seven now-preclinical therapies will make it to the market is slim….

Now you know… on to a quiet mountain bike riding Thursday… at least, until my skiers arrive from Aspen, into the cacti, tonight. Woot!

नमस्ते

In Which Hinderaker STILL Cannot Read Labor Graphs (Honestly)…

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Once again (albeit more politely, since he knows his conclusions the other night… were simply riddled with false conjectures, on his part), John claims US labor stats are being manipulated to favor Democratic narratives. Uh-huh.

This morning, he says he doesn’t “mean” to impugn federal employees’ integrity, but then does… just that.

In a fit of pique, Hinderaker closes his litany of complaints with a purported “Trump labor economy” graph showing steady gains. The problem (as mine at right makes plain) is that he cuts Tangerine’s final two years out.

He leaves half of his time in office… on the cutting room floor.

He doesn’t offer any explanation. Covid played a role there, but he does nothing to defend the Trumpian deficit explosion, three million losing health care coverage, the tax burden shifting more oppressively to the lower middle class or Trump’s attempts to defund blue states.

So… whom, exactly… manipulates labor stats, for political points, Johnnie?!

Hilarious.

Seems Candace Owens Forgot That Trump Was Ordered NOT To Pervert VoA…

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Oddly (or perhaps not so!), Candace Owens seems to think Twitter (or any other private ad-selling / non-journalists’ company) helping promote US interests in the Middle East… is a huge (if wholly un-explained) scandal.

It is not. For at least 80 years, the US has used “Voice of America” radio to promote its interest around the globe. Especially, to US military forces serving in far flung theaters. So — how might Candace distinguish VoA radio… from Twitter? Right. She cannot.

But let’s not stop there, at the doorstep — let us instead “peel her (illogical) onion” back, by just a few more layers, here.

She never once complained when Trump tried to have a major donor, named Michael Pack… convert VoA into a 24/7 Trump political action radiocast.

Not US military messaging — just Trump’s various preposterous grievances about (at the time) the coming Mueller report. It all failed; fell flat on its face (like so many other Tangerine cons) — he lost in federal district court, in DC.

VoA remained properly a voice of the government — not the loony Tangerine perma-candidate.

Candace’s utter silence during those four long years on this score tells us all we need to know. She just spouts whatever the moron Kirk tells her to.

And not a lick of it makes any logical sense.

Now you know. Out.

There’s A Meme: “Sh!t My Grand-Dad Says…” This Is No Farce, Though.

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Just about eight hours ago, in his own social media platform, Tangerine published / wrote this:

“…‘The FBI and Twitter COLLUDED to elect Joe Biden.’ [Headline by Jesse Watters]. In other words, the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLEN. It all began a long time ago, they SPIED on my campaign, and tried to “RIGG” [sic] the 2016 Election, but failed. Remember, our government is doing this, not a person or party. What should be done about such a terrible thing, or should we let someone who was elected by cheating and fraud stay in office and continue to destroy our Country?….”

I suppose the only response ought to be… sympathy. He is plainly… completely… demented.

“Twitter and the FBI colluded…” Hilarious. Hey, Hinderaker — come git your boy.

Out.

Hinderaker Is Back To Arguing The Frothy Wing Of The GOP Should Buy Out All US Women’s Magazines…

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This, my friends, is proof that Hinderaker knows… they’ve lost the war.

Likely for good.

As a side car to the old “women’s mags” / Glenn Harlan Reynolds’ (Tenn. law prof’s.) saw, here — he also argues that the Koch family should buy all Spanish language radio stations. Uh-huh.

What John doesn’t admit… is that the hard right GOP mantras… have now utterly… failed to persuade a large majority of the populace in the US — at least, they have failed to connect with humans who’ve correctly perceived the GOP sneering at them, as a group.

And, as a result — his ilk will now lose election after election, well into the 21st Century, except perhaps for very local — ruby red ones.

Flawless.

Hey Johnson, How was NY Post “Suppressed”!?

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As a footnote, having already promised to fall silent on how manifestly silly Scott Johnson’s have been on the Twitter / 2020 kerfuffle… I need to mention one more thing, about it.

Scott is so far down the rabbit hole, he wrote this facially-preposterous opening sentence, this morning:

“…I am particularly interested on the reverberations of the Twitter Files in the pages of the New York Post, whose reporting on the Biden family corruption was suppressed in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election…“

Seriously?

I read every story Scott. Whom, exactly, “suppressed” a company that spills about three tons of red and black ink every morning on NYC street corners?! Who?

Oh — right!

You mean… a for profit business that decided not to “syndicate” some of the NY Post’s more outlandish claims, into its advertiser reliant social media offering.

That’s not in any sense of the word — a suppression. Poppycock!

Many US newspapers don’t — and do — occasionally see other media outlets pick up, original stories… and re-run them.

The fact that Scott has defined words to mean only what HE says they mean… pretty much makes his breathless, pearl clutching retelling…

H I L A R I O U S.

Unintentionally so, though, to be sure.

Out.

Hinderaker Forgets That Trump Touted The DJIA, When It Measures Only The Top 1% Wealthiest’s Well-Being, In The US…

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So — in a display of seriously advancing… senility, tonight Hinderaker whines that government labor statistics… get (properly, and normally) adjusted, from time to time. They represent about 200 million people, afterall. It has happened dozens of times, under Bush 41 and 43 — and a few times under Tangerine. [Even Saint Ronnie saw it occur on his watch.]

But to hear John tell it, this is all a vast, but nearly instantaneous “leftists’” plot — he seems to claim we control all federal governmental agencies… (only in the doddering old fool’s addled mind, that is).

Indeed, I wish to take his in another direction: John evinces an even more salient bit of myopia here (as ever). He cheered Tangerine’s recitation of every new Dow high water mark, claiming “the Trump economy” was going gang-busters.

But in fact, only the top 1 per cent or so ever feel any real tangible benefit from a rising stock market. [Fewer than 10 per cent of Americans own significant amounts of stock, at all.]

And As of 2018, the top 1% of US households owned 58% of all stock market wealth.

The US economy lost 2.9 million jobs by Trump’s last year. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3 per cent by the end of his term. The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016. The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. The federal debt held by the public went up by over 33 per cent, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.

So — when measuring by almost any real lower-to-middle US class metric, Trump’s economy was… a disaster.

John should really sit down and shut up.

[U] It Would Seem The Insight Barsoomian Lander Has Reached “End of Mission” Status. No Response — To Any Ping.

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Well, for almost five long years, we have enjoyed following the ups and downs of this mission, on Mars.

We enjoyed the science puzzler, of figuring out why the hammer/drill was just bouncing about (rather than making progress, at drill depths), in the soft slushy “mosh pit” of the regolith. We sat slack-jawed, at the wonder of watching Mars-quakes reverberate around the smaller globe there… and ultimately, meet its end — as micro-layers of copper-hued dust settled year after year on it, occluding its solar panels, and thus draining its power source. Here is JPL on it all:

…As of Nov. 29, 2022, InSight was generating an average between 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .95 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7)….

As of Dec. 12, 2022, InSight was generating an average of ~285 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .96 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7)….

On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022. The team members at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy — a state engineers refer to as “dead bus”….

The mission will continue to try and contact InSight….

It was a fine mission, overall — with great new data — scads of it, in fact — on Marsquakes. It matters little that the “mining” portion of the mission mistook harder rock for… a “Dippin’ Dots” sort of ice cream pebbles regolith, and thus could not gain traction — as in a ball pit, at McD’s of yester-year. The mission was a full on, bangin’ success! Here’s to a fine new year… onward, into the warm afternoon mountain bike rides. Then to Sky Harbor to get more scattered family collected into the copper colored Adobe-clad homes we keep down here…. Smile. It is almost… celebration time!

नमस्ते

Yes John — Indicting A Former President Is… A Bleak Day. But Not For The Reasons You Imagine.

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Hinderaker (along with Steve Hayward) has lately been offering various “last stand” exhortations to the faithful frothy hard right GOP. Both of them, all but acknowledging that 2024 is a lost cause, already.

The upshot is that they think THEY are saving our way of life (albeit not much before 2028 or so)… from some “liberal” thing or another (mostly, peoples’ rights to love whom they love, I think).

But tonight in particular, John feels it will be a bleak occasion for the US, to see the Tangerine blowhard indicted, tried and convicted.

He said it in the context of the J6 Committee’s findings today — but for me, it will indeed be a bleak day, when Mr. Jack Smith presides over an unsealed speaking indictment, alleging multiple felonies — including ones implicating national security, a few months from now.

It will be bleak… because Hinderaker, Johnson and Hayward were openly complicit it forcing this day. They had a duty to help end it, and chose instead to champion Trump’s lunatic theories, advised against using the courts in a sensible manner, and then urged many NOT to respect the courts’ uniform dismissals of Tangerine’s insanity.

That is how we got to this sad day: they (and lots of other supposedly educated lawyers) attacked the (non-existent) “political motivation” of judges and judicial panels, all finding against an avowed insurrectionist. They cheered people who would kidnap the sitting Governor of Michigan — and claimed if the evidence ultimately supported convictions, it would be due to “false flag” operations run by the FBI. [There have been J6 and Michigan convictions now, by the dozens. And not one post from these losers — urging respect for the rule of criminal laws.]

Yes… it will be a bleak day. A bleak day because these codgers, each of whom dodged service in Vietnam, btw — knew full-well Trump’s attacks were baseless — and that he was willfully scheming to, and wantonly actually violating dozens of felony statutes… yet each of them egged him on.

Their collective shame should ring in eternity — along with Trump’s — as traitors to the ideals of this fine (if incomplete, and occasionally flaw-prone) nation.

O U T.

While The Parties Meet Privately To Hammer Out A Compromise — The Next Lanham Act Merck v. Merck Court Date Is February 10, 2023…

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Updated 12.19.2022 — and bumped:

The discussions will continue in private, with next court settlement conference (and potentially public results) in February 2023, thus:

…The next settlement conference in this matter will take place before the Undersigned on February 10, 2023, beginning at 10:00 a.m. EST. To accommodate the schedules of counsel and Mr. Kolle, the conference will proceed via Zoom. The Court will provide counsel the Zoom link. On or before February 3, 2023, lead counsel will provide Deputy Clerk Jacquetta Baker with a list of all conference participants and their e-mail addresses. Any supplemental settlement memoranda shall be submitted by February 3, 2023, to [redacted] @ njd [dot] uscourts.gov. If the conference requires a second day, the Court will discuss scheduling with counsel and the parties at the close of the February 10th session. So Ordered by Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer on 12/19/2022. (Hammer, Michael)….

End, updated portion.

This one may well be nearing the finish line, over a decade on (or… a century, depending on how you count, from the end of World War I).

Of course there are lots of other companion cases like it, pending in courtrooms dotting the globe… but perhaps, just perhaps — here at near Christmas 2022 — this will be a truly global settlement. We can only hope — and specifically, this was filed overnight, on a Friday night in Newark:

…December 9, 2022

Dear Judge Hammer:

We, along with Sidley Austin, represent Plaintiffs Merck & Co., Inc. and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. in this matter. With the consent of Blank Rome LLP and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, counsel for Defendant Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, we are writing with an update as requested by the Court’s Text Order of December 1, 2022 (D.E. 209).

The parties are continuing their discussions and therefore respectfully request a short extension to Monday, December 12, to provide a further update to Your Honor.

We appreciate the Court’s attention to this matter….

/s/ [for] McCarter & English

Getting excited for the return of my kiddos… out into the steel and glass canyons, and the half-light reflected there, from the emerging winter’s gloaming… to see “The Menu” — smiling. Ever, smiling.

नमस्ते