Brief: Ellen show ending, Covid variant B117, NFTs??

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Short talking points

1. Ellen Degeneres is ending her talk show after 19 years. Ellen made her show very popular from her dancing onto the set at the opening of her shows and also from having A-List celebrities as guests. The guests on her show were more famous than those appearing in Late Night. It was like a Late Night show in the middle of the day.
2.  B117, the coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom in December, is the most common variant in the United States.

Long talking points

1. NFTs
   1. For the life of me, I can’t seem to muster up the mental energy to figure out what NFTs are and how they work. What are they? Non-fungible Tokens? Blockchain digital art? Umm… I’m not really sure what’s going on here but I think some things are meant to not be understood. It is not something I have to take care of so I’m choosing not to worry too much about it. To be honest, I’ve never heard anyone not on the TV or radio talking about NFTs. I think it’s one of those things that the media introduces to the public to create a small sense of confusion.
   2. Here is the best link I could find on NFTs: https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq. But after reading half of it I still couldn’t really make sense of it so I just gave it up.
2. Scientists say that India’s COVID outbreak is because of a specific variant B1617 that is infecting everyone, even people that are vaccinated. 
   1. The b1617 variant has also been reported in the UK and other countries so they aren’t sure about its origins.
   2. The mutation of the coronavirus occurred in the spike protein, which is the key to unlocking our cells. The mutation makes it much easier for the virus to enter our cells and replicate, making it much more infectious.
   3. The mutation of the spike protein is also what is reducing vaccine efficacy because the vaccines that have been developed create antibodies to fight the spike proteins of the original coronavirus. The antibodies are proving to be less effective against the variants.