After sparring with an X user over an investment loss, billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya offered to fund the user’s daughters’ college accounts.
In an X post on Thursday evening, Palihapitiya wrote: “This guy clapped at me. I clapped back. We then spoke.”
“I also think he was very mature in how he internalized our conversation. Onwards!” he said, adding that he “funded his two daughters’ college accounts.”
The back-and-forth began after an X user 0xParabolic_ criticized Palihapitiya over a losing investment.
In an X post responding to the attention the exchange received, the user wrote: “a lot of people saw my replies to @chamath so I want to make something clear.”
“I’m fully aware any losses I incurred are on me,” he said.
After Palihapitiya saw his criticism, the two spoke privately, according to the user.
The conversation made him “stop and think,” the X user said, adding that “most usually don’t get that kind of opportunity, and I appreciated him taking the time.”
“At the end of the day, investing carries risk, lessons are learned, and as they say, there’s no crying in the casino,” 0xParabolic_ wrote.
He added that he was “extremely grateful for the very generous contribution” Palihapitiya made to his daughter’s college funds.
At press time, the X user’s posts criticizing Palihapitiya were no longer visible on the platform.
Palihapitiya is active on social media, frequently weighing in on markets, technology, and venture investing.
The billionaire investor rose to prominence as an early Facebook executive before launching Silicon Valley VC firm Social Capital, which has backed a number of startups and later became known for its role in the SPAC boom of the early 2020s.
His investments have drawn both praise and criticism over the years, particularly during the SPAC frenzy, when several companies he helped take public later saw their shares slump.
On a recent trip to France, Dr. Meghan Garcia-Webb was struck by an age-old paradox.
Everywhere she looked, she saw people enjoying cheese, wine, and bread — yet the average person seemed much healthier than the typical American.
In France, despite their reputation for rich cuisine, the obesity rate is a fraction of what we see in the United States, for all our calorie-counting and protein maxxing.
“There isn’t this pervasive diet culture of going to a restaurant and seeing how many calories are in this and how many carbs,” Garcia-Webb told Business Insider. “I do find it is refreshing in the sense that there’s not this fear around food, and the food is very satisfying.”
It’s just one example of how stressing less about your diet can lead to better weight loss and long-term health, she said.
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In her concierge medicine practice, Garcia-Webb specializes in helping high achievers, such as CEOs and attorneys, manage their weight. A lot of her job is pushing back on extreme diet fads, including the trend of tracking everything.
“I really enjoy food and the more I do this work, the more compelled I feel to show people that it actually is possible to be healthy and really like to eat,” she said.
Garcia-Webb said her favorite food hack makes it easy to eat well without turning your food journal into a full-time job. Here’s how to try it at home for more nutritious meals.
A stress-free guide to healthy eating
Everyone loves a food hack, and Garcia-Webb said hers is simple: when you prepare a meal, start by making half the plate fruits and non-starchy vegetables.
Filling half your plate with produce is a simple way to eat well without measuring each bite, calorie, or gram of protein.
Magda Tymczyj/Getty Images
“It’s actually very easy,” she said. “You don’t even have to cook them if you don’t want to.”
Think carrots, cucumbers, peppers, greens, tomatoes, berries, grapes, citrus — anything you’d find in the produce aisle (except potatoes). To make it even easier, opt for pre-cut options that are ready to eat or frozen produce, which is as healthy as fresh.
From there, Garcia-Webb builds a full meal by adding a source of protein, like lean meats or fish, to fill another quarter of the plate. The last quarter of the plate is for starchy foods like whole grains, pasta, rice, or potatoes.
The strategy makes it simple to get five servings a day of fruits and veggies. Each serving is about a handful when you’re eyeballing it.
As you fill up on produce, the high-volume, high-fiber food keeps you full and satisfied after eating, so you’re less likely to reach for junk food later. That means you’ll find yourself eating healthier without having to count a single calorie or even measure a portion.
When to track your food for weight loss
There’s nothing inherently wrong with tracking your eating habits, and calculating every gram of protein is fine if that works for you.
Still, for most people, too much tracking can be a burden, taking away the enjoyment of food and making you less likely to stick to your healthy habits long-term.
Instead of trying to track everything you eat forever, Garcia-Webb recommends keeping a food log for a few days: it can give you a baseline sense of your current habits and what you can change to move toward your goals.
“You build this intuitive knowledge, and then you have a rough sense of what it looks like for you,” she said.
A temporary habit of food tracking can be helpful if you feel like you’re doing everything right and wonder why you aren’t losing weight.
Food labels can mislead you by making a processed snack seem healthy because of added protein, but sneaking in extra sugars.
Luke Chan/Getty Images
Garcia-Webb said if you’ve never tracked your habits, it’s common to eat more and exercise less than you realize.
These days, plenty of convenience foods disguise ultra-processed junk with a “health halo” of added protein or other nutrients to make you believe you’re making a nutritious choice.
“People think that they’re eating healthier than they are,” Garcia-Webb said. “Something that we can all fall prey to is very good marketing.”
That’s the question laid-off workers are grappling with in the aftermath of losing their jobs. The No. 1 suspect is often artificial intelligence, but connecting the dots on how that led to their firing isn’t always clear.
Jacob Zinkula has spoken to dozens of laid-off workers who are trying to piece together why they were let go.
Some might deem those efforts fruitless. (Congrats on figuring it out! You’re still unemployed.)
A better understanding helps inform the next career move, and plenty of people could use that. This January saw more layoffs than any January since 2009.
Further muddying the waters is companies’ reluctance to say AI drives layoffs. When Amazon made its first round of deep cuts last fall, many speculated it was due to AI. But CEO Andy Jassy said it was about “culture,” not AI or costs.
It’s one thing to lose your job because of tech. It’s another to hear you don’t have the personality for it.
The way I see it, AI impacts layoffs in three main ways.
AI took my job: While the most direct, it’s also the least common these days. There aren’t many examples of AI doing everything a human can at work. In most cases, there’s still a need for some human interaction.
As much as it stinks to lose your job this way, at least it’s a clear sign you need to change what you’re doing. AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s already here.
AI makes my job a lot easier: This applies to just about everyone. AI can’t automate everything you do, but it can sure carry a lot of the load. At first glance, that seems like a good thing. But if AI enables you to do more with less, your company has the same benefit.
Sure, some will position it as an opportunity to supercharge their employees to drive more business. The more likely outcome is that this is an opportunity to reduce headcount.
The silver lining is that your job is still needed. There are just fewer opportunities out there, and you need to get really good at managing AI to get them.
We need to pay for this AI somehow: The most frustrating of the three. AI isn’t directly impacting your job at all, but those tech bills aren’t going to pay themselves. If you fall into this bucket, chances are you weren’t driving a ton of revenue for the firm. (After all, why kill a cash cow when money is tight?)
It’s a hard pill to swallow. However, it could serve as a wake-up call for how you approach your next gig. Like it or not, AI is the way forward for most companies. So if you’re not helping a business reach that goal, you might need to reconsider what you’re doing in the first place.
Hims & Hers unveiled a once-a-day weight-loss pill this week, calling it an alternative for needle-averse customers and those looking for smaller doses.
It was essentially a cheaper copy of the Wegovy pill that the pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, released earlier this year.
About 48 hours later, the telehealth company said it would stop selling it.
“Since launching the compounded semaglutide pill on our platform, we’ve had constructive conversations with stakeholders across the industry,” Hims & Hers said in a statement shared with Business Insider on Sunday. “As a result, we have decided to stop offering access to this treatment.
When Hims & Hers first made the compounded semaglutide pill available to customers on Thursday, the company said it met “rigorous clinical standards.”
“We adhere to all federal and state standards for compounding, and all active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in compounded treatments are sourced exclusively from FDA-registered facilities,” the company said.
Compounding a new version of existing drugs typicallyoccurs when those drugs are facing a shortage, which has periodically been the case in recent years for some of the most popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs on the market.
However, the Food and Drug Administration called out Hims & Hers in a statement issued the following day.
The agency said it intends to restrict certain ingredients used in non-FDA-approved compounded drugs that are “mass-marketed by companies — including Hims & Hers and other compounding pharmacies — as similar alternatives to FDA-approved drugs.”
“Entities engaged in the manufacture, distribution, or marketing of unapproved compounded GLP-1 products should be aware that failure to adequately address any violations may result in legal action without further notice, including, without limitation, seizure and injunction,” the agency said.
Although weight-loss medications aren’t new, Novo Nordisk breathed new life into the industry with its product, Ozempic, around 2022. The company marketed Ozempic as an injectable type 2 diabetes medication, but doctors began prescribing it to patients to address obesity. As a result of rising demands, Novo Nordisk developed Wegovy, a drug specifically geared toward managing weight.
Both those drugs were administered only by injection until Wegovy launched its oral version in January.
Many health-focused companies have developed off-brand versions of the medications to cash in on soaring demand.
