We respond…
Steve Hayward is at it again — posting charts that actually directly disprove his many prejudices and gender based biases.
He seems to think it is more “manly” — to be 11 times more likely to die on the job… as a man. Me? I just think women are smarter than that.
I’ll offer nothing more — than my best sardonic chuckle, then.
Out.
I. Just. Love. This.
There is no legal or logical basis for letting a fraudster, as found in three separate trials now, offer an IOU — for $550 million, when he claims to be worth “$7 to $12 billion”. None.
His proposed “IOUs” — like his lies about the value of his real property assets — are deserving of withering scrutiny, now. We have judgments.
And, the people of the State of New York must have confidence that they’ll be at the head of the line to collect (“prior in time, prior in right”) — once all the dust settles on all his other manifold legal difficulties.
Here’s Tish James’ take on it, tonight, in a 45 page brief (one citing lots of additional authority):
…To stay enforcement of a set monetary judgment pending appeal, the Legislature has required defendants to post a bond or deposit funds in the full amount of the judgment. That requirement applies to defendant Donald J. Trump and his co-defendants, just as it applies to any other appellant. Resort to the Court’s discretionary or inherent authority to undo the statutory undertaking requirements is neither available nor appropriate.
Securing the full amount of the judgment is necessary to ensure that the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has a ready fund available to satisfy the judgment after an appeal….
FLAWLESS.
Out.
From time to time over the prior eight or so years, we’ve discussed this silly “Bitcoin miner” — which is (for now) ’34 Act registered on the NASDAQ. It has never made a penny of GAAP EPS, from continuing operations, life to date — nearly eight years, now. But it has paid executives over $200 million in compensation — to lose perhaps $1.2 billion in that time. Insane, in a word.
So. . . today, Riot Platforms announced that it has dumped some of the cash it doesn’t earn, from EPS it doesn’t produce — as a vast “energy wasting” company… into a company that is actually trying to generate meaningful levels of “reclaimed” energy — from post consumer waste, in landfills — by capturing synthesized methane, down in dusty West Texas.
Got all that?
Good. All this money came directly from rube-shareholders, throwing good money after bad.
And even with Bitcoin above $73,000 (and a new all time high) for part of the day, today — Riot keeps falling, on the NASDAQ.
Hilarious. Here (below) are the specifics (insofar as they’ve been disclosed), but since no dollar amount was disclosed, the actual cash outlay is likely under $15 million, since that would end up below the materiality threshold — which must be disclosed under SEC rules. But I suppose it is equally likely that it is a material amount, and Riot intends to bury it, in some R&D line, rather than as an equity method “investment”.
We shall see:
…Reformed Energy Inc., a Texas corporation, announced today that it has secured a strategic investment from Riot Platforms, Inc. (“Riot”), marking a significant milestone for the company as it seeks to bring its unique plasma gasification technology to full commercialization.
By processing solid and liquid waste streams in its closed plasma gasification system, Reformed Energy can effectively prevent over 99% of the methane emissions and pollution that occurs with traditional waste disposal methods while reducing the physical volume of waste by about 90%. This process yields a versatile synthesis gas that can be utilized downstream for sustainable power generation and synthetic fuel production. In short, the company’s unique technology has the ability to clean up existing landfills and reduce incoming waste streams.
The self-contained system does not require grid interconnection and generates carbon neutral power while actively reducing existing methane emissions….
And yet… Riot remains below $11.60/share on the NASDAQ. Precious — with BTC over $72,000 — a pure bubble figure.
O U C H.
नमस्ते
Rahway continues to wisely invest / use its dividends / payoffs from the cash cow Keytruda, to take multiple, diverse “shots on goal” — for the next big thing in oncology, and bio-science, more broadly.
Today’s news brings a collab with Pearl Bio, which is a spinoff of the work of the legendary George Church (think re-animating wooly mammoths, here!), and some very well-respected Yale biologists (pictured). It is being run through a Series A round by former lawyer Amy Cayne-Schwartz — also with a Yale affiliated pedigree, and has raised quite a bit already. As it is private, of course, exact terms have not been disclosed, but many power players in bio- space are piling in.
Here’s the latest, on the story from Fierce Biotech, but this whole relationship is clearly not (yet) material to massive Merck:
…Merck has signed up to Pearl Bio’s synthetic biology platform, offering up to $1 billion in biobucks for potentially cancer-busting biologics.
The collaboration could pile more biologics onto Merck’s pipeline and serves as validation for Pearl, which emerged from stealth in June 2023 with the backing of Khosla Ventures. Merck is paying an undisclosed upfront fee and offering up to $1 billion in milestone payments for Pearl to identify biologics to treat cancer.
The biotech describes itself as creating “template-directed biomaterials with tunable properties.” Co-founder, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer Amy Cayne Schwartz elaborated in an email to Fierce Biotech, describing how the platform can “encode synthetic chemistries to tune therapeutic properties (e.g., half-life, drug antibody ratio).” The company is in the process of raising its series A round, she told Fierce….
Onward, into the warming sunshine here, then… smiling. As we’ve said before — we applaud Church’s creativity, but we aren’t sure the world is quite ready for (nor in need of) the “de-extinction” of wooly mammoths, genetically crossed with modern Asian elephants’ DNA.
In any event — ever smiling.
नमस्ते
‘Tis in many many ways, almost unimaginably… poetic: the small hot red coal — moaning a gravitational song in the night, 140 million miles off… so very far away, and so faint. . . but when given enough time… into millions of years… that song is enough to stir our own deepest oceans of… life. Into whirlpools they tumble, over and over — across billions of years of time. Over the rocks from the basement of time, itself. Whoosh — that is amazing, to me.
And, of course, our own emissions are certainly a more profound, and immediate intervening variable — but it seems on about a 2.5 million year cycle, the orbit of Mars tends to give Earth a nudge — either elongating or rounding our orbital path around the Sun enough… to cause deep, deep whirlpools at the bottom of our oceans.
That in turn drives weather changes at the surface. Climate change, in short. The connection is born out in the sedimentary layers at the bottom of our oceans — of over 2 billion years. So… might there be a way to use this learning, to manage our own deep whirlpool creation mechanism, and help reverse the potential for collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation? Perhaps — as it seems our own efforts at reducing emissions are falling woefully short.
Here’s that Earth / Planetary science story, from CNN on a Tuesday (and a teaser) — do go read it all:
…For the Earth, this interaction with Mars translates to periods of increased solar energy — meaning a warmer climate — and these warmer cycles correlate with more vigorous ocean currents, the report found.
While these 2.5 million-year cycles affect warming and ocean currents on Earth, they are natural climate cycles and not linked to the rapid heating the world is experiencing today as humans continue to burn planet-heating fossil fuels, said Dietmar Müller, professor of geophysics at the University of Sydney and a study co-author.
The authors describe these currents, or eddies, as “giant whirlpools” that can reach the bottom of the deep ocean, eroding the seafloor and causing large accumulations of sediments, like snowdrifts….
Again — the age of darkness (ignorance) seems to be receding almost everywhere, except in US (and Russian) politics. For our part, we remain optimistic that rational, principled common sense will prevail, come November — again. Grin.
नमस्ते
Most of us would do better to just enjoy the SNL send up of her (it is about at the midpoint of the above clip) — she’s a walking punch line now. And we all well-knew the objective truth — and most of the GOP… have been complete strangers, for going on 20 years now.
Not only did this “story” occur under Bush 43 (i.e., 20 years ago!) — the woman has said she wasn’t taken by cartels, and was never trafficked in the US. She was a captive in Mexico only — and never crossed into the US under Biden, or Obama.
I N S A N E.
Add to all of this that Britt engages in truly junior high school level “fainting couch” acting — throughout the “GOP response”… and yep, the whole thing is a punch line. [But she’s Hinderaker’s “best girl”.]
And Tangerine is the butt of this joke.
Separately, almost as a footnote — did everyone catch that Trump is now for Tik-Tok, when he were agin’ it, for three years… while preznit? The guy claimed he had the power to ban TikTok nation-wide (thankfully, the ACLU among others won suits saying the First Amendment means what it says).
This is all going to be… great comedy, going into November.
Onward, grinning — as Mr. Biden has tonight decided that individuals with net worth of more than $100 million ought to pay at least 25% of their annual income as an absolute floor, in taxes. It will increase — but if a person makes $100 million in any year, s/he must pay no less than $25 million in federal income tax, should Mr. Biden (as I predict) win re-election.
F L A W L E S S.
Out.
The Hart Scott Rodino waiting period had expired about a week ago (without an added request from the Antitrust Division), and we mentioned the original inking of the purchase contract, here two months ago… but it is now put to bed. The assets are owned by Rahway, as of this morning, and the Harpoon stock symbol has stopped trading — on the NASDAQ.
Good news — but even so, as a cogent commenter pointed out in January, there have been some reports of off-target effects in the T-cell engager space (but the patients often face dire circumstances, with SCLC — without therapy).
Here’s the latest:
…[Rahway today completed] the acquisition of Harpoon Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: HARP). Harpoon is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck, and Harpoon’s common stock will no longer be publicly traded or listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
“We continue to augment and diversify our oncology pipeline with innovative approaches to help people with cancer worldwide,” said Dr. Dean Y. Li, president, Merck Research Laboratories. “We are pleased to welcome our Harpoon colleagues to Merck and look forward to working together to advance a novel portfolio of T-cell engagers, including MK-6070.”
Harpoon’s lead candidate, MK-6070 (formerly known as HPN328), is a T-cell engager targeting delta-like ligand 3 (DLL3), an inhibitory canonical Notch ligand that is expressed at high levels in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and neuroendocrine tumors. The safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of MK-6070 is currently being evaluated as monotherapy in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT04471727) in certain patients with advanced cancers associated with expression of DLL3. The study is also evaluating MK-6070 in combination with atezolizumab in certain patients with SCLC. In March 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Orphan Drug Designation to MK-6070 for the treatment of SCLC….
Now you know — onward, grinning — sunny here!
[With our second (smaller) graphic, at left, we remind readers of an AI-powered diagnostics deal Merck has, in the oncology space.]
नमस्ते
In an update / comment (largely unrelated to a Scott Johnson post) John just wrote:
“…Abraham Wyner testified as an expert witness on behalf of the defendants in the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn case. We saw his testimony when we were in D.C. for the trial. Wyner presented a statistical analysis that showed that Mann’s famous hockey stick graph was, in fact, fraudulent. His analysis was persuasive and Wyner was a great witness, but unfortunately neither his testimony nor the other evidence presented by defendants was enough to [stave off a $1 million libel loss]. At least, not with a D.C. jury…”
Well, son… that’s because Steyn knowingly, and falsely so — called Dr. Mann a pedophile — repeatedly. The actual libel per se didn’t go to any climate science disagreement. None at all. [Some expert eh, Scott?]
But John read the DC verdict, and commented on it last month — in real time… so he well knows he’s lying, in the pull quote, above.
Yawn. Out.
Back in July of 2000, Hinderaker falsely accused the a German bomber (10 injured or dead) of being… Muslim. [Later he changed even the location and date of the bombing he claimed was “Muslim-led” in his edits.]
He never apologized (the guy was a whyte radical German Neo-Nazi / Christian). But he did delete almost all of his original “story”; leaving only a link to the AP feed; and deleting a photo that he claimed (falsely) implicated a Muslim man. The man in the photo he had sourced at the time… turned out to be one of the bomber’s intended victims.
Again, John never apologized.
Last night, he falsely accused a Black teenager of “murder”. The whyte girl is not dead; the situation is tragic beyond words — but was the result of a school-yard brawl. Both are juveniles (age 15). The whyte girl is in the hospital — and expected to recover.
But Hinderaker wants the Black girl tried as an adult — for attempted murder.
Again, she’s 14 — and he wants life in prison — it was… a school fight, John.
Why? Because… she’s dared to beat a whyte girl for taunting her. Violence should never be the answer, but John hasn’t yet apologized for claiming falsely that the Whyte girl died in the attack.
Wow.
Just more of the same from John the race-baiter.
Out.
Apparently, Tangerine took to his dying social media site tonight — to decry awards being given to [what he views as] politically correct causes… and actors.
But late in the broadcast, he renewed his feud with Jimmy Kimmel. So Kimmel decided to have fun with it, in near real time. He read Trump’s blurb, word for word… and then asked, incredulously…
“Gee… it is getting kinda’ late out East… Mr. President, aren’t you just a little late… for JAIL?!”
The crowd went… wild.
So… [except for about 5% of America] all Cheeto-lini achieved tonight… was to forcefully remind the rest of us that he is a petty, vain, thin-skinned bitter old man… and… that he is indeed… eventually headed to… prison.
Well done dotard… well done.
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