The most exciting new books coming in February offer a window into the fantastical and the eccentric. In The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi delivers a dazzling fairy tale for adults. Camonghne Felix delves into her childhood dyscalculia, a math-related learning disability, to explain her heartbreaking errors in love. Two novels, Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss and Dizz Tate’s Brutes, are deliciously unconventional, centering on a sex therapist’s transcriptionist and a gang of 13-year-old girls in Florida, respectively. Here, the best new books to read this month.

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Big Swiss, Jen Beagin (Feb. 7)

Jen Beagin has had a busy five years. In 2018, she published the funny and fearless novel Pretend I’m Dead, and then its sequel Vacuum in the Dark the next year. Now, she’s releasing Big Swiss, about a lovable oddball named Greta. Greta has just moved to upstate New York, where she works as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist named Om. Through her headphones, Greta listens to a client who she dubs “Big Swiss” (for her height and nationality) and promptly falls in love with.

Buy Now: Big Swiss on Bookshop | Amazon

Don’t Fear the Reaper, Stephen Graham Jones (Feb. 7)

Jennifer “Jade” Daniels is back. Two years after Stephen Graham Jones published My Heart Is a Chainsaw, which introduced us to this bitter outsider, and four years after the character’s turbulent senior year, Jade returns to Proofrock, a fictional Idaho lake town. But the same day she gets back, so does someone else: the serial killer Dark Mill South escapes from his prison transfer in the middle of a blizzard and racks up 20 murders in 36 hours. Jade must once again rely on her encyclopedic knowledge of slasher films to crack the case. But when she realizes that the killer knows plenty of horror movies himself, she’s forced to make a new game plan.

Buy Now: Don’t Fear the Reaper on Bookshop | Amazon

What Napoleon Could Not Do, DK Nnuro (Feb. 7)

DK Nnuro’s debut novel revolves around three characters. Belinda Nti moved from Ghana to the U.S. to attend college and then law school. She has achieved, as her father puts it, “what Napoleon could not do.” Her brother, Jacob, an awkward computer programmer, stays behind in Ghana, jealous of his sister, and is repeatedly denied a visa to join his new wife in Virginia. Belinda’s husband, Wilder, a wealthy Black businessman, further complicates the picture: he’s from Texas, and views the U.S. as rife with racism and marginalization. But the Nti family puts the country on the pedestal, causing a rift in Belinda’s marriage, which may become too wide to overcome. What Napoleon Could Not Do tackles these differences, as well as family and sexuality, with eloquence.

Buy Now: What Napoleon Could Not Do on Bookshop | Amazon

Culture: The Story of Us, From Cave Art to K-Pop, Martin Puchner (Feb. 7)

Martin Puchner, a professor of literature at Harvard University, embarks on a quest to connect the dots between various time periods and civilizations using the through line of arts and culture. From ancient Greek theaters to the sculpture of a South Asian goddess to the rise of K-pop, the author illustrates how his field, the humanities, allows for the global transmission of knowledge—and thus the growth of civilization. People across distance and time—like a Chinese pilgrim returning from India with Buddhist texts—are in constant dialogue with each other. “The arc of cultural history,” he writes, “bends toward circulation and mixture.”

Buy Now: Culture on Bookshop | Amazon

Victory City, Salman Rushdie (Feb. 7)

Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie returns to the India of his birth in his 13th novel, Victory City. It’s the 14th century and nine-year-old Pampa Kampana watches as a battle razes her home and family. In the aftermath, the goddess Parvati speaks out of Pampa’s own mouth, telling her that an empire will rise in this exact spot, that Pampa will see it all and tell its story—and that here, women will hold equal power. Through the course of her 247-year life, Pampa shepherds Victory City into existence and success, guided along by Parvati. “It’s as if Rushdie has dropped a molecule of divinity into a petri dish containing the other basic stuff of life,” writes Nicholas Mancusi for TIME, “and watched a civilization cultivate.”

Buy Now: Victory City on Bookshop | Amazon

Brutes, Dizz Tate (Feb. 7)

Dizz Tate’s debut novel follows a cluster of 13-year-old girls and one queer boy in Falls Landing, Fla. Tate paints the fictional town as a place of scorched bougainvillea flowers and stasis, until something happens that rattles the group to their core: Sammy Liu-Lou, the edgy preacher’s daughter with whom the younger girls are obsessed, disappears. Through alternating perspectives, including a heavy reliance on the first-person plural as the whole group talks, the narrators scrutinize where Sammy has gone. “Women,” as Tate writes, “notice everything.”

Buy Now: Brutes on Bookshop | Amazon

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi (Feb. 14)

Take a fairy tale, infuse it with a gothic flair, drizzle in some dark romance, and you get The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. In Roshani Chokshi’s adult debut, an unnamed narrator marries the mysterious and wealthy heiress Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. Their courtship is built on an agreement: they can fall into fantasies together as long as the narrator never digs into Indigo’s past. But then the couple moves back into the house where Indigo grew up to take care of her dying aunt, and secrets claw their way to the surface—including one about Indigo’s childhood best friend. Indigo’s husband is forced to reckon with his wife’s past and their increasingly fraught future.

Buy Now: The Last Tale of the Flower Bride on Bookshop | Amazon

Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation, Camonghne Felix (Feb. 14)

Camonghne Felix had a bad breakup. Like, a really bad breakup. A breakup so bad that she ends up in a hospital. Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation chronicles that split—and the life that led up to it—in three parts: “Fractals,” “To Square,” and “The Final Value.” We learn about the cracks in Felix’s upbringing, the hurt from the breakup itself, and a pain that spans a lifetime, all through a sharp millennial voice. “Black girls get to write about benign heartbreak too,” Felix writes. “Proud and saccharine and pathetic. When you’re healed you tell the story differently.”

Buy Now: Dyscalculia on Bookshop | Amazon

Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, Erica Berry (Feb. 21)

In this singular exploration of “wolf, self, and the stories we tell about fear,” Erica Berry blends history, science, cultural criticism, and memoir to craft a book entirely its own. In her nonfiction debut, Berry tracks one famed wolf, OR-7, through his journey out of the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon after straying from his pack. Berry describes the psychological origins of the werewolf myth and how Indo-European teenage warriors related to wolves, while also unpacking her own relationship with the idea and reality of wolves. “I am not an academic nor a scientist,” she writes. “I am just one animal trying to see another.”

Buy Now: Wolfish on Bookshop | Amazon

A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, Jai Chakrabarti (Feb. 21)

The 14 stories in Jai Chakrabarti’s A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness are set in India and America and examine what it means to cultivate family in today’s world. In the titular story, two gay men, Nikhil and Sharma, want to raise a child together. But in 1980s India that seems impossible. So Nikhil proposes fathering a son with closeted Sharma’s wife—and chaos ensues. In “Daisy Lane” and “The Fortunes of Others,” Chakrabarti addresses adoption, its exploitative side, and the economic inequality that drives it. Throughout the collection, Chakrabarti illustrates the challenges and rewards of raising children, and asks big questions about the definition of family.

Buy Now: A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness on Bookshop | Amazon

I Have Some Questions For You, Rebecca Makkai (Feb. 21)

In 2018, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Now, she’s releasing her first novel since, a campus-set murder mystery. Bodie Kane, a 40-year-old from Los Angeles, has just arrived at her boarding school alma mater in New Hampshire to teach a course on podcasting. One of the topics Bodie suggests to her students is the murder of Thalia Keith, her former roommate, who died during their senior spring. Omar Evans, the school’s Black athletic director at the time, was convicted, but as Bodie reckons with her own past, she’s no longer so sure. While her students dig into the years-old crime, Bodie begins to question everything.

Buy Now: I Have Some Questions For You on Bookshop | Amazon

Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay, Cyndie Spiegel (Feb. 28)

After the most difficult year of Cyndie Spiegel’s life, when she suffered devastating and unexpected losses, the author decided to zoom in on the small things and bask in the pleasure they bring. In her new book, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay, Spiegel gives actionable guidance on how to take in these moments of joy and find relief. For Spiegel, those include her mother’s cake recipe, her local spice shop, and a sun-soaked room in her new apartment. Each chapter ends with a prompt to invite readers to shift their thinking this way, too. “You don’t always have to be all things to everyone,” Spiegel writes, “including to yourself.”

Buy Now: Microjoys on Bookshop | Amazon

Aubrey Gordon still recalls going to the doctor and having her blood pressure checked three times—because the provider couldn’t believe it was normal, given the fact that she’s overweight. Considering the treatment she’s received at doctors’ offices all her life, she wasn’t exactly surprised.

“It’s kind of wild to see that my size comes with so many assumptions,” she says. “From the moment I walk in, my fatness is considered a problem to be solved. Even before I speak, there’s bias and misconceptions based on how I look. I’m considered lazy, non-compliant, and less worthy of care than a thin person.”

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Gordon, who’s the cohost of the anti-diet podcast Maintenance Phase and author of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, often hears similar stories about fat people who are refused care, sent home without treatment, and later discovered to have serious illness. Or, they’re simply told—over and over again—to lose weight even if they’ve been trying for decades. Often, they’re given this guidance despite meeting other measures of health, like normal blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and good cholesterol numbers.

“When you start from a place of thinking someone who’s fat is unhealthy, and not deserving of support or empathy, that will inform their care at every level,” Gordon says. “The good news is that we know even a small amount of awareness can make a difference. You can’t change the culture of thinness we live in, but as a doctor, you can shift your mindset about fat patients and see them in a different way.”

Roots of bias

American society has long valued smaller bodies, and a robust pool of research indicates that medical professionals continue to value thinness as a marker of health.

For instance, a 2013 study in the journal Academic Medicine surveyed 350 medical students on their views around fat and thin patients. More than half of respondents showed significant implicit weight bias, including anti-fat views. Two-thirds of these students were unaware of that bias, according to the findings. Another study, published in 2003 in the journal Obesity Research, found that even doctors who specialize in clinical management of obesity showed very strong weight bias and used words like “lazy, stupid, and worthless” to describe fat patients.

Other studies have shown that higher-weight individuals often experience shorter appointment times, less comprehensive exams, fewer referrals for specialists and imaging, and longer wait times for surgeries and other procedures. A 2019 research review in Primary Health Care Research & Development about weight bias and utilization found evidence of patronizing and disrespectful treatment, poor communication, and assumptions about weight gain.

Another aspect to consider is the common use of body mass index (BMI) as a measuring tool, says Sabrina Strings, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. BMI—a person’s weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared—was developed as a way to assess a population, not individuals. It’s especially problematic because it’s based on white men, while Black and white people tend to have different body compositions, says Strings.

“Use of BMI is rooted in anti-Blackness and sexism,” she says. “Shifting away from BMI would require a tremendous overhaul in medicine and society since it’s so ubiquitous, but the reward would be taking away this harmful approach that contributes to racism, fatphobia, and misogyny.”

Ripple effect

When patients anticipate judgment, bias, and stigmatizing language from doctors, they tend to avoid seeking health care—not just in terms of checkups, but also for potentially significant concerns that are already causing symptoms. For example, they may not get a lump checked for cancer, talk about blood in their stool, or report issues such as fatigue, migraines, or pain.

“We’re seeing that patients aren’t seeking medical care or are delaying care when they’re ill because of anti-fat bias in health care,” says Dr. Rekha Kumar, an endocrinologist who’s the former medical director of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. It’s part of the reason why patients with obesity may have suffered worse outcomes as a result of COVID-19, she adds. “Another negative outcome is the lack of continuity of care, because patients may not return to the same physician if they feel judged based on their weight.” When that happens, strong patient-doctor relationships aren’t formed, “and there’s a lack of trust and of routine screenings.”

Weight bias can also have significant psychological consequences, Kumar says, potentially increasing the risk of depression and anxiety.

If weight bias is contributing to shorter and less comprehensive exams, or a reduced willingness to order imaging and lab tests, that means even if a fat patient comes in with an issue, it’s possible a doctor won’t detect a serious problem.

Small changes, big difference

Weight bias exists at multiple levels: within medical education, clinic policies, research, and patient interactions. As a result, it can feel overwhelming to find a starting point for change. But as with any major shift, it’s helpful to start where you are, and do what you can.

For example, consider the chairs in your waiting room, suggests Dr. Florencia Halperin, an endocrinologist and chief medical officer at Form Health, an app-based medically-supervised weight-loss program. Not having appropriate seating forces a fat patient to stand, and that draws attention to them in a way that’s further stigmatizing, she says. Similarly, these patients might need larger exam tables, bigger blood pressure cuffs, and imaging equipment that can accommodate their bodies. Even stock photos around the office—the kind prompting people to get health screenings, for example—can show a lack of inclusivity if only one body type is depicted.

“This is simple stuff, but you can’t believe how much of an impact it makes,” Halperin says. “Not only does it communicate to patients that you’re ready to care for them, but it sends a message to other patients and staff. It improves the environment for everyone.”

Adopting people-first language is another respectful tactic, she adds. For instance, instead of calling someone obese, the preferred terminology is a person who has obesity. “You wouldn’t say someone is cancerous, you’d say they have cancer,” Halperin says. “Yet it’s become very common to say ‘the obese patient,’ which is dehumanizing.”

Posture, eye contact, and body language also play a role, adds David Tzall, a Brooklyn, New York-based clinical and health psychologist who’s worked in public hospital settings. Sitting with your arms crossed, looking away while a patient is speaking, having an expression of skepticism or disgust, or glancing at the clock more often are all behaviors that can send strong signals about your attitude—and you may not even realize you’re acting this way, Tzall says.

Another strategy that may seem minor but could have major benefits is not weighing every patient for every appointment, adds Halperin. Although this has become standard practice at many offices, it’s often done automatically without questioning whether it adds to knowledge about a patient’s health. Unless weight gain or loss is a factor for a specific diagnosis, scale numbers may be irrelevant—and worse, may be one more source of discomfort for a larger patient.

That doesn’t mean never talking about weight. But it does involve a shift toward more respect and collaboration, and a thoughtful approach around how weight is discussed, says Dr. Kecia Gaither, a physician and associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology with Cornell Weill Medicine.

“The manner in which you discuss obesity with a patient makes a difference in how it’s received,” she says. “The conversation should be around how to optimize health, rather than just about losing weight. It should center on patient engagement so they feel part of the process, instead of feeling judged negatively.”

Also, take a step back when trying to apply knowledge about obesity and chronic conditions to the patient who’s right in front of you, suggests Stephanie Fitzpatrick, a clinical health psychologist who’s an associate professor in the Institute of Health System Science and Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health. Even a large-scale study doesn’t represent the lived experience of an individual patient who has goals, unique health concerns, and factors like socioeconomic status at play, she says.

Moving in the right direction

In addition to adjusting behavior, and perhaps the clinic or hospital environment, it’s helpful for physicians to consider anti-fat bias with a wider lens. To some degree, weight bias is moving in the right direction with more awareness, Tzall says. But it will require much more effort on the part of not only physicians but also the entire medical system—including educators, administrators, other health professionals, and insurers—to keep navigating away from weight stigma.

A big step would be finally decoupling weight from personal responsibility alone. While patient choices around nutrition and exercise are certainly a factor in their health and weight, they’re far from the only variable, Halperin says.

For instance, obesity is a more heritable trait than heart disease, and a 2010 study in Current Diabetes Reports shows heritability estimates between 40% to 70%. Commentary published in the journal Nature in 2014 calls obesity “one of the strongest genetically influenced traits we have,” with both genome influence and hormone involvement.

Another aspect to consider is whether excess weight truly confers only health disadvantages. While being at higher weight has been shown to increase risk for some conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes, that doesn’t mean everyone who has obesity will be unhealthy or develop chronic issues. Similarly, not everyone who’s thin is healthy.

Most of all, doctors should cultivate more awareness around their own beliefs, language, and approach, Strings advises. “Being fat is not an illness,” she says. “Just using that perspective would take us a long way toward change.”

Rep. George Santos (right) with an order of Il Bacco’s ravioli campagnola in a pink sauce

Il Bacco / Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• George Santos’ campaign spent thousands at an Italian restaurant in Queens during his run for Congress. 
• He spent a whopping $26,032.06 at Il Bacco Ristorante Italiano, according to campaign finance disclosures. 
• That’s enough money to buy 1,131 orders of the restaurant’s $23 rigatoni bolognese, or nearly 1,800 pizzas. 

Rep. George Santos apparently loves his Italian food.

The embattled first-time Republican congressman’s campaign spent more than $26,000 in funds at an Italian joint in Queens, New York, updated financial disclosure documents from his campaign show.

The Santos team’s spending on pasta, pizza, and more totaled a whopping $26,032.06 at Il Bacco Ristorante Italiano in Little Neck, NY. 

For context, that’s enough money to buy 1,131 orders of the restaurant’s $23 rigatoni bolognese. 

It’s also enough money to buy 2,002 $13 Caesar salads, 1,735 $15 Margherita pizzas, or 3,718 $7 cannolis. 

Santos’ financial disclosures also revealed he owes the restaurant another $18,773.54 for a campaign election night event.

The campaign’s updated disclosures show they paid down $8,000 on that debt.

That brings Santos’ total Italian food expenditure up to $44,805.60.

Insider doesn’t know exactly what was on the menu during the 32 separate appearances at Il Bacco — which his campaign lists as “dinner meetings,” “fundraising events,” and “food and drink” expenses.

Santos’ finances have been making headlines as the freshman congressman hasn’t explained how he got so much money to spend on his campaign — and apparently delicious Italian cuisine.

He first claimed the money came from a personal loan but has since backtracked. 

His financial follies are a drop in the bucket of a slew of lies and fabrications he’s told on the campaign trail. Santos has admitted he lied about his work history, education, and more while running for Congress. Since then, former romantic partners and friends have come forward to accuse Santos of everything from lying about his history in drag to stealing a roommate’s beloved scarf.

After frantically cutting costs for the last several months, FedEx announced it’s laying off about 10% of its officers and directors.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• FedEx told staff it is in the process of laying off 10% of its officer and director team.
• The company has been on a cost-cutting crusade since the end of last year to rescue profits.
• Read CEO Raj Subramaniam’s letter to staff below.

FedEx is laying off more than 10% of its directors and officers as it continues to cut costs, the company told staff Wednesday. 

“This process is critical to ensure we remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment, and it requires some difficult decisions,” wrote CEO Raj Subramaniam in a letter to staff, shared with Insider. 

The company has more than half a million employees, but exact the number of layoffs was not specified. A former FedEx executive estimated that thousands are losing their jobs. 

FedEx has been frantically cutting costs for the last several months, after the end of the pandemic e-commerce boom slowed revenue. 

Subramaniam said FedEx cut an extra $1 billion at the end of last year, bringing the total expected cuts in this fiscal year to $3.7 billion. Most of the cuts are from FedEx’s Express business, which makes overnight and next-day time-definite deliveries. It also told delivery contractors there would be further cuts to costly Sunday service last week.

But today’s layoffs are across the entire company, and bring the cuts from the operations to the office. 

The CEO said today’s cuts, along with some consolidation of teams within the company, are intended to ensure the company remains competitive and agile.

Read the full memo from CEO Raj Subramaniam to FedEx staff here: 

Feb. 1, 2023 | To FedEx team members

Team,

As you know, we have embarked on a transformation effort to create the world’s most flexible, efficient, and intelligent supply chain for our customers. This process is critical to ensure we remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment, and it requires some difficult decisions.

Today we are in the process of informing a number of team members across our global enterprise that their positions have been eliminated as we reduce the size of our officer and director team by more than 10% and consolidate some teams and functions.

Saying goodbye to longtime colleagues and friends whom we value and respect is extraordinarily difficult. Unfortunately, this was a necessary action to become a more efficient, agile organization. It is my responsibility to look critically at the business and determine where we can be stronger by better aligning the size of our network with customer demand. While we have already taken many actions to that end, it was necessary to also look closely at the size of our leadership team and functions that could be consolidated.

I am sincerely grateful to those departing for the role they have played in building FedEx. We are committed to a transparent and supportive transition. Our HR team will be in touch with them today with information related to next steps including outplacement services, benefits, and severance compensation.

At FedEx, we have a rich 50-year history of evolving to meet the needs of a dynamic market. We have changed the way the world does business. I am equally confident in our ability to continue driving the world forward for the next 50 years and beyond.

Thank you for your commitment to our transformation.

Raj Subramaniam

President and Chief Executive Officer

FedEx Corporation

Echo VR, which is shutting down in August, can be played using Meta’s Quest 2 device pictured above.

Meta

• Echo VR is a multiplayer virtual reality game made by developer Ready At Dawn.
• Ready At Dawn announced Tuesday it would only continue running Echo VR until August 1, 2023. 
• Meta purchased Ready At Dawn in 2020; the game can be played using several Oculus headsets. 

To the dismay of many avid gamers, Echo VR will soon be shutting down. 

On Tuesday, Ready At Dawn, the game developer behind the multiplayer virtual reality game announced in a post on Medium that the game would be shutting down on August 1, 2023. 

Until that time, players can play to their heart’s content, purchase the game, and re-download it, according to the post. After that point, however, the servers and services for the game will be shut down, the post noted.

Gamers will also be able to spend their Echo Points until that time, but there will be “no refunds on in app purchases, DLC, and in game currencies,” the post noted. 

Ready At Dawn was acquired by Meta in 2020. 

“After many discussions internally and with our partners at Meta, we have made the difficult decision to shut down Echo VR,” the post stated. 

Still, the reasons why Ready At Dawn is shutting down Echo VR remain vague. 

In response to the question of “Why is support for Echo Arena ending” (which was Echo VR’s former name) the post noted, “Ready At Dawn is working on our next project and are consolidating studio support to work on it.”

Over the past few years, Echo VR has catapulted into the league of an e-sport.

Echo VR can be played using the Meta’s Oculus Quest, Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro, and Rift S devices, according to the Oculus website. Once players put on their headsets, they’re transposed into a zero-gravity arena, where they battle for victory as robots using a mix of video game savvy and athletic prowess. 

The game was one of the flagship games of the Oculus Quest and Rift S launch, according to The Verge. 

One fan on Reddit went as far as to describe Echo VR as “more than just an esport, Echo VR is a sport. Full stop.”

A petition titled “Save Echo VR” has been created on change.org, and has already racked up 9,848 signers. 

Meta and Ready At Dawn did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for a comment. 

 

Elon Musk.

REUTERS/Steve Nesius

• A crypto token named after Elon Musk’s dog has soared 200% this year. 
• Floki is another Shiba Inu-themed token, and was created after Musk posted a picture of his Shiba Inu puppy in 2022.
• The Tesla CEO has been associated with the dog breed since touting dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin on his Twitter.

A meme crypto token named after Elon Musk’s dog has soared 200% since the start of the year, beating the gains on other Musk favorites like like dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

Floki climbed to $0.00024 as of 10:00 am ET, up 199% from its price at the start of the year at $0.000008. That’s the biggest surge among the crypto market’s top meme coins, surpassing gains posted by dogecoin, which rose 32%, and Shiba Inu, which rose 45% in January, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Floki has also handily beaten gains seen in mainstream crypto tokens like bitcoin and ethereum, which have gained 39% and 31% respectively since the start of the year.

The jump in prices comes as Floki holders approved a proposal to burn 4.97 trillion, or $55 million of the tokens, to remove them from circulation, a tactic that can be used to boost a coin’s price. 

The token, another Shiba Inu-themed cryptocurrency, was created in 2021, shortly after Musk posted a picture of his new Shiba Inu puppy with the caption “Floki has arrived.” By then, Musk had cemented his association with the Japanese dog breed, after touting Dogecoin and Shiba Inu to his Twitter followers.

Musk has periodically posted pictures of his dog Floki on Twitter, though he’s given no clear indication that he’s involved with the Floki crypto project.

After a steep sell-off following the collapse of FTX, crypto prices have rallied to start the year as investors assess falling inflation and price in softer rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. This week, Dogecoin soared 10% after the Financial Times reported Musk was looking to add a payments system to Twitter, leading to speculation the meme coin could be accepted as payment on the social media site. 

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is taking a pay cut.

Business Insider

• Intel’s CEO and members of its executive team will take pay cuts of up to 25%, Reuters reported.
• Intel told Insider the company is working “to reduce costs across the company.” 
• The move aims to free up cash for investments in line with company strategy, Intel said in a statement. 

Intel’s CEO and its executive leadership team are taking pay cuts of up to 25%, as the company attempts to navigate a shaky economy and avoid further layoffs, Reuters reported. 

A spokesperson for Intel told Insider the company has made “several adjustments to our 2023 employee compensation and rewards program,” part of a larger effort to “navigate macro-economic headwinds and work to reduce costs across the company.” 

“These changes are designed to impact our executive population more significantly and will help support the investments and overall workforce needed to accelerate our transformation and achieve our long-term strategy,” the spokesperson said. 

Intel’s chief executive Pat Gelsinger is taking the largest cut at 25%, while other higher-ups will have their salaries reduced by 5%, 10%, or 15%, per Reuters. 

The move announced Tuesday comes as Intel’s stock continues to slump, after the chip manufacturer’s value was halved in the last year, Bloomberg reported. The company’s stock has been volatile in recent weeks, after recovering somewhat from a low last fall. 

It also comes as other companies opt for executive pay cuts in an effort to prevent mass layoffs. Among them is Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is taking a 40% pay reduction this year, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. 

Still, Intel hasn’t been totally impervious to layoffs — the tech giant warned California officials earlier this week it plans to layoff more than 340 employees from its Folsom campus, stating it is “identifying cost reductions and efficiency gains,” per local outlets. 

Intel predicted one of the worst quarters in its history last week, as the PC market cools following years of growth during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg.

The pay cuts aim to free up cash within the company to be invested elsewhere — with the aim to save up to $10 billion per year by 2025 — as Intel looks to build new manufacturing plants in the US and Europe, seeking to compete with chip manufacturers in Asia, Bloomberg reported.