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Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products
- nancyminusone 7mo agoWhat the fuck
- still-learning 7mo agoWhen is my corporate sponsored adderall IV drip coming in?
- giraffe_lady 7mo agoI mean what do you think that big push of vc funded online adhd medication services a few years ago was about.
- red-iron-pine 7mo agogreed?
- leetrout 7mo agoI always assumed that was one of the benefits of FAANG offering onsite company doctors.
- jdross 7mo ago“While the pouches are considered a tobacco product, they don’t contain any tobacco, and are instead made from the plant fiber cellulose” It’s just Zyn, which doesn’t seem that dramatically different than coffee. But maybe that’s because I don’t drink coffee or use nicotine
- cush 7mo agoCoffee doesn’t give you mouth cancer
- stackedinserter 7mo agoDo nicotine pouches give you mouth cancer?
- giancarlostoro 7mo agoI don't think zyn has been studied enough to be conclusive, but it does have some negative effects similar to dip I suppose? Dip on the other hand is described as using something like 'fiberglass' that cuts your mouth so your gums can absorb the nicotine quicker, of course the tobacco industry denies this. I've only tried dip once, and it was like a kick to the face. I'll stick to casual cigar smoking (its been 4 years though!).
- chasebank 7mo agoDoes nicotine?
- bilekas 7mo agoNo, //cancer stems from the carcinogens in the burning / heating of tobacco//. Nicotine is not cancerous in itself any more than caffeine. I'm not a doctor though so while I might sound sure it's based on what I've read on the topic over the many years. Edit : rightly corrected its not just heating and burning, its tobacco and others in general. But nicotine itself is not cancerous.
- zardo 7mo agoChewing tobacco causes cancer
- chneu 7mo agoBut not because of the nicotine.
- steve_adams_86 7mo agoCancer also stems from non-heated tobacco because the plant itself contains carcinogens that are pressed into the skin in the mouth for example, often including lesions and such
- Georgelemental 7mo agoNicotine is addictive, much more so than coffee
- stringfood 7mo agoit's like 25x more addicting than coffee, not sure how OP misses that
- D-Machine 7mo agoProbably not the case for some modern pure nicotine products (gum, patches). Vaping is harder to say due to lack of data and clear cases of addiction in young people, but pure nicotine is definitely a different animal than the classical delivery forms. See my response to GP.
- vladvasiliu 7mo agoI wonder if the issue with vapes isn't the sweeteners they put in them. I sometimes vape a specific liquid, which has never given me any cravings. I'll just stop after my bottle is done for multiple months until I remember to buy some more. I never carry my vape with me when I leave home (not to the office, not for multi-week holidays, nothing). It's not difficult to go without, I don't even think about it when I don't have it. But the other day I ended up vaping some melon-flavored liquid. When it was empty, I was going crazy for a few hours, I absolutely had to have more. And it didn't even have more nicotine than what I usually vape. It was just the sweet taste that had me wanting more, exactly like back in my college days when I was eating Snickers bars like no tomorrow. Now that was a habit that was tough to break. And most people I see vaping out in the street seem to be vaping those ultra-sweet smelling liquids.
- D-Machine 7mo agoAn interesting thought, I myself have met at least a couple people that tried to break an addiction by switching to vape products that were essentially just flavour (no nicotine, no THC; THC vapes are common and legal in Canada) and somehow stayed just as addicted to the flavour / oral stimulation. So that sounds at least plausible to me.
- SpicyLemonZest 7mo agoFrom personal experience, this isn't even a top-down push. I know people who have defended in detail why it's a good idea for them to develop a nicotine addiction. Bizarre behavior.
- CuriouslyC 7mo agoNicotine has been demonstrated to help people with schizophrenia and certain mental illnesses quite a bit. It's considered a medicine by indigenous cultures for a reason.
- cush 7mo agoThe opening line - “puff puff pass the spreadsheets” - was written by someone with absolutely no idea what that means
- hirvi74 7mo agoHey, that is the kind of corporate lingo I can get behind.
- boringg 7mo agoyou mean AI?
- jihadjihad 7mo ago"How do you do, fellow coworkers?"
- jihadjihad 7mo agoUsername checks out?
- Jamesbeam 7mo agoBob from marketing used half a million tokens on that, you monster. He is now crying and talking to his ChatGPT therapist / boyfriend.
- stackedinserter 7mo agoBack in 2003: tech companies are stocking offices with coffee machines to boost employees productivity.
- alfon 7mo agoNot much different than a fully stocked fridge with alcoholic beverages. Consume responsibly, we're all adults.
- nickmonad 7mo agoI agree to a point. Although, alcohol (when consumed responsibly) has a social element to it, so companies having a "beers on Friday after 4pm" just feels different than "here's nicotine so you can be more productive and make us more money." They are serving different functions.
- dmix 7mo ago> just feels different than "here's nicotine so you can be more productive and make us more money." More likely these companies just offered to give them some free vending machines and some office manager said sure why not. Not everything is a careful corporate strategy.
- diacritical 7mo agoBeers on Friday after 4pm is rarely done because management really cares about the employees. It's a type of team building, improves employee morale and humanizes management. All lead to improved productivity in the long term. If my boss gives me a stimulant to be more productive, especially a relatively harmless one like nicotine, I would gladly take it, as I like stimulants and am an adult capable of making decisions for myself. If I didn't, I would just refuse, just how I might refuse the free coffee by boss offers me. I doubt anyone is forcing the employees to take the stimulants. That would be bad, indeed.
- nickmonad 7mo ago> It's a type of team building, improves employee morale and humanizes management. All lead to improved productivity in the long term. Yes, but the important distinction is that its intention is to bring people together face-to-face, not isolate them to their desks for continued work. Just because the end goal is "productivity" broadly speaking, doesn't mean the mechanisms are socially/morally equivalent. > I doubt anyone is forcing the employees to take the stimulants. I agree, and I hope my comment didn't imply I thought that was the case.
- flowerbreeze 7mo agoI'll take one addiction and a possible oral cancer for the company, thank you so much. No, I understand it's not guaranteed, but I am seriously flabbergasted by the careless actions of some companies...
- paxys 7mo agoSoldiers have always been given cocaine and meth to stay awake and alert during battles. Guess their tech backup will have to do with nicotine.
- marcosdumay 7mo agoDuring battles the calculations around health are completely different. Are the Palantir headquarters inside an active war zone?
- red-iron-pine 7mo agolord knows they're trying to be
- awakeasleep 7mo agoNow there is a perk that is going to get expensive, and boy it is going to suck when theres a downturn or new facilities manager who decides to cut back and stop offering them.
- aduffy 7mo agoIt's even funnier actually. Yes, Palantir does have free Zyn vending machines in every office, but the Zyn is only for visiting customers. Employees are explicitly prohibited from using the machines. Just vice signaling all the way down.
- general_reveal 7mo agoBig tobacco won. They realized the lobby was saying cigarettes were bad for the lungs, so they … fixed that with a vape product. Still addictive as shit. Hah! Oh, and now the Zyn. Which industry has the most to gain from these products? We’re living in some weird time period where value systems are regressing.
- karmakurtisaani 7mo agoIn this time and age going against proven scientific knowledge or even basic decency signals toughness and manliness. It works particularly well on deeply insecure men who need to prove their masculinity, and boy is there an endless supply of those in the US.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- adhoc_slime 7mo ago>The pouches are available for free in Palantir’s offices for employees and guests over the age of 21, a Palantir spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. Palantir, which did not respond to requests for comment, pays to stock the products. Is the article wrong in this statement?
- hilliardfarmer 7mo agoYes, palantir is lying to the press, suprise suprise!
- duxup 7mo ago
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- 0x4e 7mo agoThis reads like an ad.
- red-iron-pine 7mo agoit is. but boy howdy wait until you read the rest of the comments. that said, this is a site run by venture capitalists -- flogging product is a given
- poplarsol 7mo agoThey're "tobacco products" in the same sense that Diet Coke is a "cocaine product".
- y-curious 7mo agoOk, nicotine products. Still addictive junk, way harder to quit than any other nicotine product.
- giraffe_lady 7mo agoOr more literally in the sense that cocaine is a narcotic. This is the legal category, not the medical one.
- D-Machine 7mo agoSeems a good time to link to Gwern's well-researched notes on why nicotine, when consumed in purer forms (e.g. patches, gum), may be pretty useful and not really as harmful nor as addictive as one might think. https://gwern.net/nicotine https://gwern.net/nicotine
- Teever 7mo agoIts been a while since I read this post and I don’t have time to reread it but from my experience while it is a useful drug it definitely has addiction and health issues even in more pure forms.
- D-Machine 7mo agoCorrect. My TL:DR summary would be: - when quantifying for gum and patches, it is really hard to conclude that these pure forms of nicotine are any different from caffeine in harms / addictiveness - cigarettes, or even pure tobacco smoked is definitely addictive and bad due to other compounds in play - chewing tobacco products are likely a lot less worse than smoking, but still probably worse than pure nicotine gum or patches - data is very unclear on vaping IMO experience suggests vaping can clearly be highly addictive (see: young adults and teens), and I know personally there is even some minimal research on vaping e.g. THC that shows that vaping might be worse than just smoking cannabis, so vaping definitely warrants caution in general [though vaping THC requires much higher temps and different solvents, and involves different terpenes and other compounds].
- padjo 7mo agoHabitually taking vasoconstrictors is almost certainly a bad idea.
- dfxm12 7mo agoThe article specifically mentions Lucy & Sesh. A quick Google search confirmed some suspicions: Sesh (2025): Max Cunningham is the Founder & CEO of Sesh, a nicotine pouch startup. In September 2025, Sesh raised $40 million in funding from investors including 8VC, a firm co-founded by Peter Thiel. David Renteln is the ceo of Lucy. I couldn't find a direct link between Thiel and Lucy, but it looks like Thiel has been friends with Renteln for a while and invested in Renteln's Soylent.
- cm2012 7mo agoNicotine is highly addictive but also relatively harmless. I would appreciate it provided by an employer though even though I wouldn't normally use it.
- BoredPositron 7mo agoYou would appreciate it? Why?
- cm2012 7mo agoMy own risk estimation is that its harmless enough for me and id want to try and see how it made me feel. Chemicals are cool. When i worked in an office with free zoke zero I drank 3 cans per day.
- butterbomb 7mo agoFunny. At least since Covid, I’ve noticed a number of employers, often at municipalities or other governments, but sometimes at private companies, are adding terms that employees cannot use any nicotine products whatsoever. What’s even stranger is the always go out of their way to explicitly note that non tobacco cessation aids are not allowed either. Seems like pure virtue signaling, though at least one person has suggested to me that the companies engaging in this are serious and go as far as blood testing.
- JohnFen 7mo agoThis is almost always because the company gets a break on health insurance premiums for enacting such a policy.
- butterbomb 7mo agoAh that makes sense. Was something changed recently to enable this? I’ve certainly seen employer health insurance discounts for not smoking for years, but the complete ban, listed in a job application, and explicitly including cessation aids feels like something I’ve only seen in recent years.
- giraffe_lady 7mo agoThe first time I heard about it was hospital groups and other healthcare employers around 2010. Like you said it was originally an optional bonus/discount but even then there were explicit plans to make it mandatory over some years. The timing as I remember it matches up with ACA passing (optional) and going into effect (mandatory) so may have something to do with health insurer costs related to that. But I don't know enough about it to guess more, just a suspicion.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoI strongly urge against consuming any tobacco or nicotine product. At the very least, it's very bad for your heart in pretty much every form, whether pure or impure, smoked or absorbed. Besides being directly bad for the heart, nicotine also metabolizes to carcinogens. If you need a boost beyond caffeine, consider a square of 95% or 100% dark chocolate. It works. It too stresses the heart mildly, and can aggravate reflux a lot, but overall it's significantly safer than any tobacco product. You can also eat more of it if as needed. The only sane time to take pure nicotine might be if someone is dying from Covid, their lungs are collapsing, and one desperately needs a daytime breathing boost.
- nobodyandproud 7mo agoAny brand or store recommendations?
- OutOfHere 7mo ago"Montezuma Absolute Black 100% Cocoa With Orange And Coco Nibs" is what I ultimately went with. It is available on Amazon. I have paused it for the time being due to reflux, but not everyone has reflux. Note that its strength can build up over days, so do not exceed the amount taken by more than 1 square a week. Overall, do not exceed 1 square per day per 50 lbs of body weight. Overuse can risk a high heart rate and insomnia.
- api 7mo agoI've been wondering how long it would take for tobacco to make a comeback given that we seem to be in a weird era where it's some kind of flex to embrace idiotic ideas. Nicotine (without tobacco e.g. Zyn or gum) does seem to have some nootropic-ish properties but it's vastly inferior to a lot of other things and has major addiction/tolerance problems. It's not a great performance enhancer for anything but very sporadic use.
- m4ck_ 7mo agoIf companies are going to start giving us free drugs to boost productivity, they should at least give out the good stuff. Give me a modafinil (/provigil) vending machine, forget nicotine.
- jesse_dot_id 7mo agoHistory has taught me to wait on the science of newer products that are consumed.
- giraffe_lady 7mo agoSeriously. How many times in your life have you seen "ok ok, yah that thing was bad, sorry everyone. but this new one isn't :)"
- nobodyandproud 7mo agoI’m taking a low dose (and spread out beyond 1 week) of mounjaro. I realize the risk as GLP long term use is untested, but in my case it’s that; or deal with inevitable health problems from high BP and being only moderately overweight. I don’t see a good reason for nicotine products.
- giraffe_lady 7mo agoI didn't mean to say don't take novel but mainstream medications you have a health reason for and are under the guidance of a doctor about. I'm saying nicotine pouches are the tobacco industry's successor to vapes in the way vapes were their successor to cigarettes and some conservatism is warranted in light of that. Or like how every 10-15 years the evidence of health effects of some ubiquitous plastic grows too heavy and 3M comes out with a new one to replace it and the cycle repeats.
- nobodyandproud 7mo agoRight. I’m just saying the nicotine pouches have no real reason for being, other than the industry itself pushing it.
- jihadjihad 7mo ago> Palantir’s move is just one of the ways biohacking has taken the Silicon Valley tech space by storm. It's not a new phenomenon, either. I remember biohacking being mentioned in the late aughts, if not earlier, and it's referenced as being part of SV culture in the 2012 novel Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Penumbra%27s_24-Hour_Bookstore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Penumbra%27s_24-Hour_Books...
- Pwntastic 7mo agohttps://archive.ph/Upeo5 https://archive.ph/Upeo5
- bkummel 7mo agoI used to envy people that work in Silicon Valley, right where all the action is. But with all the recent developments, I don't anymore. I'm happy that I live in Europe, where we are still acting more or less normal these days.
- dariosalvi78 7mo agobiohacking? it's snus and it's dangerous: https://www.fhi.no/en/publ/2019/health-risks-from-snus-use2/ https://www.fhi.no/en/publ/2019/health-risks-from-snus-use2/
- ac29 7mo agosnus is tobacco, these nicotine pouches have no tobacco (its just nicotine and wood fiber)