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This Is What “Dare Mighty Things”… Looks Like: Now Two Decades Of Wheels Rolling — And Mobile Science — 140 Million Miles Off, On Mars.

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Spirit.

Opportunity.

Two amazing, wholly self correcting wheeled explorers on Barsoom. In the last three years, they’ve been joined by… winged ones — a helicopter, on the red planet. And its own later gen wheeled rover. These rovers, and copters, are performing well beyond their designed specs. This is top notch, zero mistakes engineering at work:

…On the 20th anniversary of the landing of Spirit and Opportunity, celebrate NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project with this two-sided poster that lists some of the pioneering explorers’ accomplishments on the Red Planet….

Now you know. “Mars, she rises like a hot coal, in the night — with a moan.”

Smiling now, into an even warmer rain tonight — and London like fogs, rolling in over the snow….

नमस्ते

I Had Forgotten: The Same Five Supremes That Stopped Texas — And The Razor Wire Barrier — Are The Five That Stopped Fifth Cir. Attempts To Continue “Ghost Gunning”.

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Brett Kavanaugh (as I said) was no surprise as a dissenter — in the razor wire barrier case, at the Supremes.

I was surprised by Barrett joining the Chief — and perhaps I should not have been. [Perhaps due to bias in favor of the state where I grew up, I thought better of Gorsuch. I shouldn’t have.]

It turns out that a fine UT Austin law prof has reminded me that Justice Barrett was also the deciding vote in favor of allowing Mr. Biden’s prosecution of “ghost gunner” kits… to take effect. Again, it was a Fifth Circuit imposition of an injunction, against clear federal statutory authority, as applied to the states — in both the gun- and razor- cases. And Barrett voted to strike both of those lawless injunctions.

The ghost guns were doubtlessly allowing crooks to use firearms to kill opponents with utterly untraceable weapons, assembled at home. The razor wire barrier was responsible for at least three drownings, in the past two weeks — and the laceration of dozens of young asylum seekers, as photographic evidence from CBP proved.

So, maybe Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett is not quite the Federalist shill I imagined her to be. My apologies. Let us see how she rules on Tangerine’s preposterous “absolute immunity” farce, due up for argument… very shortly. That will be the acid test. And a decision on it is likely before March 4, 2024. Stay tuned.

नमस्ते

Tangent — Real Life Sciences R&D: Merck Makes A Tiny “Pre-Public” Investment In A Danish “TechBio”(!) Company, Working In AI-Powered Immuno-Oncology…

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Just to clear the bad karma here — we offer some more main-stream learnings, in the real life sciences… a field from which Mr. Shkreli must remove himself, for the balance of his life. Onward.

Overnight, Merck (via an EU sub called MSD) filed an SEC Schedule 13G — which has put me on a bit of a sleuthing mission this morning. See at right — it calls itself a “techbio” company, which I infer means it is tech (AI) first; and biology (pipettes and petri dishes) second.

Because Merck’s sub likely spent less than $7 million all in, to end up with over 11 per cent of this not yet US-traded Danish company, it is definitively a… gnat.

However, as with many of our most recent mentions… it has… potential, in the white-hot AI powered immuno-oncology targeted therapies space. So… we will show the readership the results of our search. [To my knowledge, Merck itself hasn’t mentioned this deal anywhere publicly — at the health care/life sciences confabs, or elsewhere.] Here’s a bit from the Evaxion SEC filings, in its “Description of Business” (but, to be clear — Merck’s aims are broader than just cancer vaccines, of course — the tech is presumed useful, in identifying therapeutic targets as well):

…PIONEER™ is our proprietary AI prediction model for the rapid discovery and design of patient-specific-neoantigens used to derive cancer vaccines. It has been shown that neoantigens, which arise from patient-specific tumor mutations, play a critical role in T-cell mediated antitumor immune response. Neoantigens, being absent in normal tissues, are, we believe, ideal cancer vaccine targets because they distinguish themselves from germline proteins and can be recognized as non-self by the immune system. We believe our AI modules within PIONEER™ enable us to efficiently identify and select those neoantigens that will generate a de novo T-cell response leading to significant antitumor effect in each patient. By combining these neoantigens with a purposefully selected delivery modality believed to further enhance this antitumor effect, we design and deliver our vaccines to patients, effectively training their immune systems to target and kill cancer cells with no or very limited adverse effects on healthy non-cancer cells.

Our proprietary AI modules identifying neoantigens within PIONEER™ have been trained using gradient-boosted decision trees, transformers and a conditional generative adversarial network approach on our internally generated data as well as other data, including, but not limited to, next generation sequencing data from tumor samples, mass spectrometry immunopeptidomics, peptide-MHC-binding affinity data, T-cell immunogenicity data and peptide-MHC-binding stability data. We have demonstrated that development and iterative training of our AI modules improves its predictive power in identifying and selecting therapeutic neoantigens….

Got all that? Cool. But the company proposes patient-by-patient DNA sequencing to create personalized medicines. And as we’ve long said, this it a very high-price, high-stakes approach.

So — as many of these might… this might end up going… nowhere (i.e., flaming out) — but at these prices, it is a bet on a “field horse” — at Churchill Downs, on the Friday before Derby day. If it comes in — everyone gets a lobster dinner on Saturday night! Heh! Now you know. Onward.

नमस्ते

Okay John — Yes, Indeed! Let’s Talk About It: Trump’s Racism — Stretching Across Four Decades…

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Tonight, Hinderaker is indignant that the NYT has told the truth about Trump’s literally lifelong affair — with racism — and its cousin, all whyte supremacist themes.

Hinderaker claims falsely that the handful of examples he cites… are not evidence of racism. I won’t bother with those examples.

I don’t need them.

Hinderaker’s wrong (the Times‘ examples do prove racial animus) — but there are far more cogent examples that he neglects here (because, apparently the Times didn’t expound on these others at any length). To wit:

Recall that during the opening moments of his term as president, Trump said a judge born in Indiana could not treat his case (on Muslim Ban 1.0) fairly, because the USDC Judge was “Mexican”. The Indiana born judge had a Latin surname, and a whyte mother.

Recall that Trump, in 2018, told a crowd (regarding AOC, then a sitting House Rep, from NY) “send her back to Puerto Rico!” She was born here. He demonized her for… her ethnicity.

Recall further, that just three weeks ago, at one of his campaign rallies, he invoked Hitler — saying that the southern border asylum seekers are coming to “poison our blood”. Of course he’s referring to whyte blood, being “corrupted” by various brown / Latinx peoples. Not racist — eh, John?!

Okay, then… recall that in over 30 years, across more than 7,000 apartments in NYC (a deep melting pot city!) — Trump and his father had only ever rented to one Black person. This led to a settlement, with the federal and NY Civil Rights Commissions. To date, it appears that — in a city of over nine million people (with up to 20 per cent being people of color — and about 15 per cent of those being very high income people of color) Trump’s properties are less than one per cent occupied by people of color.

So, perhaps in the 2020s, sensible people of color don’t want him as a landlord (based on the above and below) — true. But for over forty years, he’s regularly dismissed even very high income tenants — primarily if… they are people of color. Not racist, Hinderaker?

Recall that he has never apologized for being dead wrong about the Central Park jogger attack case — having called for the death penalty (right after arrests, but on no evidence) for five young Black men who — for 15 years now it has been definitively established — these young men had nothing to do with the attack on a female jogger.

Recall that there is an audiotape (played in bankruptcy court in Delaware in the early 2000s) of Trump saying, after a Black male accountant for the Organization left the room in his Atlantic City casino (the one that went bankrupt!)… that he didn’t want any “Black guys” handling his money. He only “wanted Jews” handling his money. [He was referring to the Jewish, long time CFO of his Organization — who, BTW, is now in jail, and has testified against him in the NY AG’s civil Tax- and Lending- frauds cases.]

I could go on for about… forty paragraphs — but the 50 years of recorded evidence plainly… speaks for itself.

And Hinderaker well-knows it.

He is trying (impotently, I might add) to mitigate the size of Trump’s coming loss, in the ’24 general election.

Nothing else.

What a malign soul he is.

Out.

[U: DHS / CBP Responds To The Lies.] I Must Note This For The Record: State of Texas Officials Are Willfully Lying In Federal Court…

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UPDATED @ 4 pm EST — Federal agencies (DHS and CBP) have just called BS on the Paxton prevarication below. Read this later in the day filing, from the feds to catch up on the verified state of the play, here — as opposed to Texas’s lies. And recognize that the Supremes have told the feds they may properly remove the barriers — just as this same trial judge ruled, in early September 2023.

Vulnerable humans / asylum seekers are dying and being lacerated, as a result of Gov. Abbott’s and AG Paxton’s Cold War style cruelties. This needs to end right now. End, updated portion.

Texas just filed a willfully false sworn pleading in the Western District of Texas.

What. The. Actual. Hell?!

See the middle of page 8 — the Supremes themselves are aware that three asylum seekers died in the river last week. The photos in evidence flat out contradict what State of Texas guard / police / rangers are swearing to, here — under oath:

…The buoys have now been in the Rio Grande for more than seven months. During that time, Texas has continued to maintain around-the-clock surveillance. See ECF 26-2 at ¶ 12. Not one person has been harmed by contact with the buoys….

I suppose the only way to read that, and not see perjury — is to assume Texas doesn’t regard the people who drown, and were lacerated in the water… as people, at all.

They are… chattels to Texas.

Charming.

Who. Are. These. Miscreants!?

The state of Texas knows it has lost, and is trying to avoid a trial on the merits down in the federal district court — where the Supremes’ ruling of yesterday argues powerfully that Texas has no standing to keep the razor wire in place. The District Judge already ordered its removal. And he is moving forward to finalize that order, based on the Supremes’ precedent.

So Gov. Abbott’s people… simply lie — to try to stave this off.

I N S A N E.

Out.

A Small Matter, Perhaps — But Johnson Cannot Seem To Spell The Texas Governor’s Name…

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Scott is burping up lots of bile this morning. He’s upset that (as Greg so succinctly puts it) the Supremacy Clause means what it says.

He laments that Gov. “Abbot” is being restrained from drowning and maiming asylum seekers at the Rio Grande shores, near Eagle Pass, Texas.

A B B O T T

Man. What a tool.

He goes on, for some nine five more paragraphs — before obliquely mentioning that the Constitution is unmistakably clear on this point: Texas has no authority to police NATIONAL borders; that is exclusively a federal role. Within federal discretion — unless the feds are violating our treaties (as Tangerine did for four long years), the Supremes will let Mr. Biden run his policies (so long as lawful) in peace.

So shut it Scott. Your analysis is more than a day late — and $10 short.

Out.

Small Outlay Today, For Rahway — But Could Pay Vast Dividends, In About A Decade… $220 Million Biobucks To Unnatural Products

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More biobucks this morning, out of Rahway — to Santa Cruz. This is a peptide discovery deal, using AI, to seek therapeutic targets for “challenging” cancers. Merck continues to invest heavily, but wisely — in its future.

As ever, this amount is immaterial to Merck, but certainly validates Unnatural Products’ approach. Let’s listen in to FiercePharma, on it all this morning:

…Months after hailing macrocyclic peptides as the “next wave of drug discovery,” Merck & Co. has pushed further into the space by penning a $220 million biobucks deal with Unnatural Products.

The California-based biotech uses its combination of AI and chemistry expertise to “address the complexities of medicinal chemistry in the macrocycle space,” the company said in a Jan. 23 release. Now, Merck has tapped up UNP to apply its tech to develop macrocyclic candidates against a “challenging” undisclosed oncology target….

Now you know — with the end of the snow… transitioning to a soft, warmer rain, now. Grinning….

नमस्ते

In Which “Rigby” Runs Circles Around… Hinderaker.

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Hinderaker’s — of tonight — evoked some inspired realism, from Rigby (I am proud to call him a regular commenter).

Here is Rigby’s — and it is ALL spot-on:

…I love the never-ending complaint, “The Democrats keep running on the abortion issue!” Well, yeah.

It’s an issue about which the vast majority of the country disagrees with you (and fellow Republicans). Why wouldn’t they run on that issue? In an election after election, it’s a winning issue for Democrats and a losing issue for Republicans. In a normal society, this would cause Republicans to self-reflect and adjust their stance to be more in line with the voting majority. But no. They just double down and complain that Democrats are extolling their own strengths and exploiting the Republicans’ weakness — as if this were a dastardly trick rather than a winning election strategy.

Also, Hinderaker’s lament that Republicans should run on the economy may be grounded in a small kernel of truth (public misperception), but it’s not grounded anywhere near reality, as the economy is just humming along under Biden. Inflation is decreasing, unemployment is down, and the numbers are generally rocking. Similarly the Republicans’ so-called “strength” on border issues is also grounded in misperception, in that the Biden administration is adhering to existing law. There is a bipartisan immigration reform bill in Congress, but Republicans won’t vote for it because they don’t want to give Biden a win.

If I have any frustration with Democrats’ messaging, it’s not their focus on abortion (which, again, is a winning issue for them), but rather their failure to punch back against the two glaringly obvious public misperceptions I outlined above….

Excellent!

And now you know….

Hinderaker “Has A Sad” About The ‘24 Issues He’s Created

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So… very few people have written more pieces (and certainly no one has, with less grace!), to ensure that hatred (in its many forms) might become the only common plank, among all the fractured Republicans… than John.

So it’s a little precious to hear his lament — just now — that abortion will not be an issue the GOP can blunt, with distractions, like the southern border.

But under all his endless burpings, of course, is the implied but clear admission: GOP is dead stick in ‘24 under Tangerine.

And… I love that.

He’s your monkey, John — this is the circus you bargained for.

Cheers.