alt.hn

8/23/2026 at 9:32:54 AM

The Sloppification of Peptides

 https://henryaj.substack.com/p/the-sloppification-of-peptides

by henryaj

8/23/2026 at 11:29:01 AM

A robots.txt explicitly allowing LLMs has nothing to do with whether it was made for humans or not and is generally the right move assuming you want your site picked up and recommended by AI tools. No different than allowing search engine crawlers to pick it up and the authors focus on that is bizarre when the rest of the evidence is so stark.

by elliotec

8/23/2026 at 11:56:29 AM

His point is that the goal of this site is to skew the knowledge of future models, to which this is a relevant point (though.i agree not smoking gun alone)

by xyzelement

8/24/2026 at 6:21:00 AM

> The robots.txt is the real story.

Ironically that reads to me like a typical claudeism

by geysersam

8/24/2026 at 6:33:16 AM

It was a quote from Claude.

by debone

8/23/2026 at 2:05:49 PM

I do like the Potemkin Village metaphor for things like the website in question. Given how little effort something like this takes, I imagine there are a lot more of them than I've considered before, and given the way search engines operate and index, and LLMs scrape relatively indiscriminately, it seems to have implications that go beyond Google's stupid summarized answers at the top of the results page.

by MPSimmons

8/24/2026 at 1:32:17 AM

I mean, are you fooled by these websites?

Training corpuses (corpii?) have always had lies, propaganda, derangement, you name it.

by brookst

8/24/2026 at 3:52:54 AM

> corpuses (corpii)?

The Latin plural of corpus is corpora. It gets used a lot in linguistics articles, perhaps other fields as well.

by dlenski

8/24/2026 at 5:46:26 AM

Indeed, and I've come across it even in pre-AI times.

However given that in English we don't care eg about Latin cases, I don't think we should care all that much about Latin plurals. So corpuses is fine by me.

by eru

8/24/2026 at 9:18:31 PM

Both "corpora" and "corpuses" are correct. Sometimes we import the plural as an irregular plural in English; sometimes we don't. "Corpora" is common enough that you're not wrong to use it. "Corpuses" (the regularized English plural) gets enough use that it's valid.

"Corpi" gets used as a hypercorrection, but it's deprecated in favor of the two previous.

"Corpii", as suggested above, is right out.

by jfengel

8/25/2026 at 12:21:00 AM

Or, my suggestion to use corpuses instead of corpora was pure prescriptivism, yes.

I often use corpora, because it's what's common enough. And I sometimes use nonsense plurals like octopodes just to be silly.

by eru

8/24/2026 at 9:37:26 PM

> However given that in English we don't care eg about Latin cases, I don't think we should care all that much about Latin plurals. So corpuses is fine by me.

The reason I replied is because the OP appeared to be interested in the most accepted or used plurals for this word.

by dlenski

8/25/2026 at 12:18:50 AM

No, and I don't think they're meant to fool humans.

by MPSimmons

8/24/2026 at 12:42:46 AM

I wonder if AI companies already have a good way of filtering out these generated sites, or if the internet has just become worthless for training.

by Levitating

8/24/2026 at 3:48:24 AM

Given that AI companies are buying up tons of old books and scanning them destructively… I'd bet that the Internet has already become relatively useless as a source of new training material.

by dlenski

8/24/2026 at 5:44:50 AM

We can't make that inference. Just because people use escalators doesn't mean that cars are relatively useless.

by eru

8/24/2026 at 7:16:30 AM

AI companies are data hungry, they likely use everything from books to the internet and chat logs.

by citrin_ru

8/24/2026 at 5:12:55 AM

I read a prediction back in 2023 about there being some epoch date, where any data after it is untrustworthy for training, as it might result in a sort of fixed point, with LLMs training on LLM-generated content rather than human-generated content.

In truth, I don't think that's quite how it works, but I wouldn't be surprised if teams who scrape data for training apply weights in favor of data that is known to be generated prior to the GPT-3 era.

by chao-

8/24/2026 at 5:44:00 AM

The people who curate training data use all kinds of tricks, yes. They also constantly try new ideas and see what helps.

Btw, learning from your own generated data isn't necessarily bad, if you have an external source of validation. See how AlphaGo learned from self play for a simple example.

by eru

8/24/2026 at 6:58:11 AM

The vaaast majority of LLM training data is LLM generated.

Source: look at how good Chinese models are.

by dr_dshiv

8/24/2026 at 5:18:32 PM

What the author did in the article, AI companies can do it too, in particular he used pangram, an automatic AI detector, there is no reason AI companies can't use something like this.

It is even simpler because AI companies don't need to be that precise, just a classifier that can tell roughly what is slop and what is not, missing some of the non-slop is no big deal, and having having a bit of slop get through is not going to change things much. LLMs are relatively robust, otherwise considering the amount of bullshit we find online, they would be completely useless.

by GuB-42

8/24/2026 at 4:13:41 AM

My guess is that a llm would swallow a slop site like this raw.

Look at what companies like Telus or ScaleAi are doing. There are probably tens of thousands contractors at the moment sitting carefully tuning LLMs with quality, vetted, question answers.

by chvid

8/24/2026 at 10:49:31 AM

For model training, maybe, but the concern of this article is web search, including AI summaries and search as an assistant tool to agents, gets infected with this. You can see it searching virtually any technical troubleshooting topic these days. You've got at least a 50/50 chance the infamous "oneuptime" blog, which once posted over 20,000 posts in the span of a single minute, will be in both the top five links and a reference for the summary.

by nonameiguess

8/24/2026 at 6:03:53 AM

To be fair the internet also had huge amounts of slop before the advent of chatGPT

by dev_hugepages

8/24/2026 at 7:32:32 AM

I always wonder why this comment chain exists in every thread about LLMs uniquely harming our sphere of information.

Yes, <bad code, fake pictures, security vulnerabilities, malicious actors> existed before LLMs. No one is saying otherwise.

by reddozen

8/24/2026 at 1:37:34 AM

Hey, could be worse. At least the amino acid chains themselves aren't LLM-generated. Right..?

by andai

8/24/2026 at 12:46:08 PM

Before reading the article this is exactly what I was expecting it to be about. There's been a real boom of people taking highly questionable peptides with evidence about as thin as an old wives tail. It would be entirely unsurprising if they were just throwing any old chain together and trying it out.

by Traster

8/24/2026 at 3:25:24 AM

One sec let me ask an LLM..

by cgyvbunji

8/23/2026 at 12:18:03 PM

"Anyone who’s not been living under a rock knows that we’re in full peptide mania."

No, they don't, it's a very Silicon Valley specific thing and I never heard about them here in France. People need to stop thinking their experience generalizes by default

by aweb

8/24/2026 at 1:31:01 AM

They might have been too hyperbolic with the "living under a rock" comment, but at least in the US they're very much the latest health thing (among those with the money/access to get them). Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. touts them.

by djeastm

8/24/2026 at 5:34:03 PM

So the latest grift to separate fools from their money? Noted.

by conception

8/24/2026 at 10:21:53 AM

Yes they are a thing in France, haven't you seen young people being obssessed with their body? It seems there are more gym that boulangerie now.

They learn about it through Insta or Snapchat and take whatever is promoted by whatever big muscular guy.

by Glawen

8/24/2026 at 5:32:22 PM

-- more gym that boulangerie now. --

haha, good one! ++1

While I doubt, actually, just for the reason that a) a boulangerie is much cheaper to open and that there are in general b) more people who need a boulangerie more necessarily than a gym?

:-))

by KellyCriterion

8/24/2026 at 1:42:02 AM

I think it's more generational than geographic.

I shall consult the zoomers.

by andai

8/23/2026 at 12:36:53 PM

One of America's biggest exports is culture - but primarily in English. I bet the UK knows it.

by inigyou

8/23/2026 at 12:41:41 PM

Yeah, France should try to export its culture sometime!

by PessimalDecimal

8/24/2026 at 3:48:41 AM

You've never heard of Asterix comics? Of which I think the other reply to your comment is a reference.

by pseudohadamard

8/24/2026 at 5:32:59 PM

a "global brand" (tm)

:-)

by KellyCriterion

8/24/2026 at 5:03:41 AM

He said, eating a croissant...

by ShinyLeftPad

8/24/2026 at 12:36:43 PM

"Omelette du fromage"

by Integrape

8/24/2026 at 1:20:53 AM

"Ils sont fous, ces Anglais!"

by ggm

8/23/2026 at 12:50:19 PM

The only reason I know it is because I keep seeing spam for it on reddit.

Not every aspect of american culture makes it overseas and much less does now than used to 20-30 years ago.

I think peptides (and medicating yourself out of a hole in general) are a pretty uniquely american thing.

by pydry

8/23/2026 at 12:58:53 PM

You reading things on Reddit is one way that America exports culture, yes. Or on Hacker News.

by inigyou

8/23/2026 at 1:12:44 PM

But in this case it's "exported" primarily to be ridiculed.

We're amused by your antics but no one wants to emulate American culture anymore.

by jappgar

8/23/2026 at 1:39:22 PM

It doesn't work that way. You're not immune to advertising.

by inigyou

8/23/2026 at 2:36:00 PM

"you're not immune to advertising" does not imply that "any sort of advertising will work on you, guaranteed" though. :/

by bluefirebrand

8/24/2026 at 11:49:45 AM

I agree. it also doesn't imply a direction, same with the propaganda version. It's quite possible you overindex in the other direction!

heck I know I do this with some american stuff

by RugnirViking

8/23/2026 at 2:03:13 PM

Deep

by jappgar

8/23/2026 at 2:08:13 PM

did you think I was ignorant of them being american?

if I asked 20 of my friends about peptides I'm probably the only one that subscribes to that american leaning, peptide-spammed subreddit.

by pydry

8/23/2026 at 12:47:39 PM

As someone from the UK, Techy, nerdy people can know, but normies don't.

Also, I'd add that gym bros definitely have heard of them, especially if they are familiar with steroids.

The GLP-1 drugs are probably the main cause of this. We have this amazing class of compounds that work really well, But are priced pretty high, at least considering lower UK wages.

So there is a big incentive to look at getting these much cheaper from China. You hear about this happening, and then you see the fact that these companies have big catalogues full of other peptides that are a crypto payment and a click away.

by holbrad

8/23/2026 at 4:50:22 PM

I strongly suspect that peptide use is more common amongst the botox/filler crowd than techies in the UK. Most aesthetics clinics have been pushing peptide-based skincare for years, so it was only a small step into injectables for them.

And, as you say, the gym performance / sports crowd.

The BBC and the Guardian have covered it fairly neutrally, but the likes of the Daily Mail and gossip mags have been both more frequent and more breathless.

by roryirvine

8/24/2026 at 6:41:36 AM

Not just clinics, but mainstream skincare and cosmetics companies have been doing topical peptide products for the past 10 years. You can get a peptide serum from a drugstore for ~$30.

by ikr678

8/24/2026 at 9:41:26 AM

I live in the Netherlands, and travel multiple times a month to france for me, and peptides is definatly popular.

by phazerfamza

8/24/2026 at 9:51:28 AM

Hello from Berlin. I am aware of peptide mania, along with my health conscious / gym affine colleagues.

by marton78

8/24/2026 at 11:22:02 AM

Outside the gym bro bubble I would be surprised if people had a clue.

by xorcist

8/24/2026 at 5:33:33 PM

do "gym bros" have actually some type of clue?

by KellyCriterion

8/24/2026 at 2:46:07 AM

I mean, I _live_ in Silicon Valley, work in tech, and I've only ever heard of them from podcasts allegedly reporting on Silicon Valley.

I've never heard an actual human in person talking about them.

by rconti

8/23/2026 at 1:09:51 PM

I don’t think it’s popular in Germany as well. I know some Leo taking steroids, but seems like peptides are yet to be popular

by sajithdilshan

8/23/2026 at 4:10:51 PM

I live in a college town on the east coast and it is highly advertised at all of the wellness businesses here.

by UncleMeat

8/23/2026 at 12:45:56 PM

East Coast exurbs of NYC here, these things are everywhere, go to a gym the whole place is on them

Maybe a US thing

by zzzeek

8/23/2026 at 12:52:09 PM

It's all over in Norway too. Anecdotally it is definitely more common than steroids already. I can only find statistics on the legal ones, but they show that 10% of all women in their 50's are prescribed the ones for weight reduction <https://www.fhi.no/he/fr/folkehelserapporten/samfunn/legemid...> (Fig 13).

by CerebralCerb

8/24/2026 at 2:21:14 AM

I'd make a distinction between Semaglutide/Tirzepatide and other GLP-1 agonists that are available through the regulated pharmaceutical system with strong evidence for particular uses, and ordering unregulated peptides from China based on a subreddit's recommendation.

I used to be on a biohacking/nootropics discord a decade ago. People were trying to treat their depression by ordering research chemicals from Russian labs or synthesizing them themselves. Huge difference between that and going to the GP and getting a Prozac prescription, with semi-regulated supplements being in the middle. That's analogous to ordering peptides from sketchy suppliers, getting a GLP-1 prescribed by a doctor, and getting a peptide facial from a medspa.

I would assume that an order of magnitude more people are getting prescription GLP-1s than are ordering other peptides from online suppliers and injecting them.

by annzabelle

8/24/2026 at 2:09:17 AM

Everyone with ADHD knows about peptides. But the normies still have no idea.

by MrBuddyCasino

8/23/2026 at 1:03:30 PM

uh, a friend of mine in barcellona is going all in on peptides as well, along with his friends.

it's not a sv-only thing.

by znpy

8/23/2026 at 1:13:31 PM

[dead]

by aweb

8/23/2026 at 7:59:02 PM

You've never heard of Ozempic? It's not a silicon valley thing, it's made by Novo Nordisk, Denmark's second biggest company, and Ozempic is partly why they're so big.

by adammarples

8/24/2026 at 1:08:15 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

8/24/2026 at 8:08:09 AM

If you base your trust towards a thing you intent to inject into your body on the niceness of some website and clumps of letters that appear on it, you should think long and hard about your life because you must have made at least five grave mistakes sometime earlier that led you to this point.

by scotty79

8/23/2026 at 1:23:48 PM

“stay strapped” is a fantastic sign off.

by HtmlProgrammer

8/24/2026 at 1:40:03 AM

ESL here, apparently this phrase has multiple meanings. The first result was "broke", and "stay broke" definitely doesn't sound right. The second one was "having a gun", which I assume is metaphorical for staying on your toes in the context of an increasingly hostile socioeconomic environment.

by andai

8/24/2026 at 3:37:56 AM

Yes, it’s the second one. “Strapped” alone generally means “broke” or “in a bind”, but native English speakers would rarely if ever use it in the imperative.

by derektank

8/24/2026 at 7:51:46 AM

ESL as well ; I was assuming that this sign-off was referring to the kind of tourniquet you'll see drug users strap on before an injection.

by sebastiennight

8/24/2026 at 3:47:04 AM

There's also another meaning when it's spoken by someone in black leather whom you have to address as "Mistress".

by pseudohadamard

8/23/2026 at 11:26:54 AM

But, what actually are the benefits of all this peptide ingestion ? Does it replace, Good Food, Sleep and an exercise ?

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 11:49:47 AM

Ozempic and Mounjaro are peptides. They are a silver bullet for obesity and orders of magnitude more effective than anything up to a gastric band surgery. Insulin is a peptide and keeps some 50 million people alive globally. You could go on and on.

The real question is: Should you be putting novel, poorly researched and dubiously manufactured substances (which happen to be peptides) in your body via injection? To that I say, to each their own but I'll wait for the pharma industry to catch up. I'm not that bored.

by zemvpferreira

8/23/2026 at 12:06:47 PM

My take on the peptides craze is it’s like random people started injected insulin because they have a hazy idea of it being helpful for something or other based on the word on the street but they aren’t sure about dose and also can’t be sure what they’re injecting is actually insulin or uncontaminated. They also aren’t diabetic.

by mint5

8/23/2026 at 12:19:41 PM

Most peptides don't seem nearly as dangerous as insulin, luckily. Injecting insulin without medical supervision is a good way to give yourself hypoglycemia and die - blood sugar regulation is not something you want to mess with!

People don't seem to be regularly dying from peptides, at least not now.

by Legend2440

8/23/2026 at 1:48:04 PM

I'd love to be able to make that statement with such confidence, but you just don't know. Literally no one has any clue what the long-term effect of injecting BPC-157 or what ever stupid well-marketed bullshit is the flavour of the week is, is.

by zemvpferreira

8/23/2026 at 5:21:53 PM

It is true. Because the short-term effects of incorrectly injecting insulin are far greater and known risks. I agree that the long term effects are unknown but considering you could basically kill yourself quite easily with insulin... its clearly far more dangerous.

by BenzeneDream

8/24/2026 at 4:51:36 PM

I get the point but given we don't have any rigorous studies on these substances, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that they likely won't kill you now. It's ludicrous of course but we could have a 100% fatality rate over 5 years from a given peptide and we...just wouldn't know at this moment.

Don't take insulin if you can avoid it. Don't take other stupid shit if you can avoid it. You can definitely avoid this stupid shit.

by zemvpferreira

8/24/2026 at 3:59:39 AM

Doesn't this suggest that all these "Chinese peptides" which Silicon Valley people are injecting are probably fake placebos or just ineffectual?

If these substances actually had substantial effects on the body, people using them without medical supervision would almost certainly be overdosing with some frequency, I think.

(As I understand it, it is very possible to overdose on Ozempic… the reason it doesn't happen is because the purity is controlled, and people are taking specific medically-recommended doses.)

by dlenski

8/24/2026 at 4:32:22 AM

It doesn't suggest that at all? There are a lot of degrees of impact between "directly affecting blood glucose uptake in cells for respiration" and "nothing burger placebo".

by wpm

8/24/2026 at 5:12:36 AM

BPC-157 was discovered in the late 80s, not really novel. As opposed to mRNA shots that everyone was taking happily.

by drno123

8/23/2026 at 1:05:17 PM

> The real question is: Should you be putting novel, poorly researched and dubiously manufactured substances (which happen to be peptides) in your body via injection?

on one hand: no, absolutely not, hell no.

on the other hand: these people are voluntarily doing human sperimentation. things like this are going to happen anyway so we might as well collect the data (samples, effect etc). it's not much different from the safe needles initiatives.

by znpy

8/23/2026 at 1:23:36 PM

Except the data is completely useless. Especially given the extremely strong selection biases towards: status/image-obsessed; high-risk; low-intelligence; generally high appetite for a constellation of dubious interventions.

by estearum

8/23/2026 at 2:25:30 PM

The data isn't entirely useless. It might be a good signal of areas to point legitimate research toward

Narrowing down areas into "Anecdotally many people say it works, we should check" does have some value, even if it does just wind up debunking the claims

by bluefirebrand

8/23/2026 at 3:13:53 PM

In theory, maybe. In practice, there are far better sources of signal for far more valuable therapeutics to develop.

There are far more promising development targets than there is development resources. Self-reports from a bunch of the most drug-addled people in the world are not going to make it to the next-most-viable target.

by estearum

8/23/2026 at 1:37:27 PM

So, chemical pollution and the destruction of our microbiome with excessive antibiotics cause a global obesity problem, and we pump more chemicals into the body to try to solve it.

Life out of balance, indeed.

by Arodex

8/23/2026 at 2:14:33 PM

What other solution do you propose?

(Yes, eating healthy and exercising would probably help most people, but many remain)

by armchairhacker

8/24/2026 at 5:49:50 AM

Eating healthy and exercising.

And for the remainder: go to your physician to get to a state where you can do healthy diet and exercise.

For the small part that remains is highly suggest getting an actual physician to give you treatment options, instead of self medicating with sketchy Chinese chemicals.

by anon48293

8/24/2026 at 4:35:53 AM

That's what GLP-1s do: they make it trivial to eat healthily.

by tptacek

8/24/2026 at 12:34:44 PM

If you want to be reductive, and correct, these medicines make it trivial to manage total food intake.

by jgalt212

8/24/2026 at 8:12:00 AM

Progress on making fecal transplants more widespread, less wide-spectrum antibiotics prescriptions and more targeted ones (it would help with antibiotics resistance, as a nice side-effect), investing more in bacteriophages as an alternative to antibiotics, and far stronger limits to chemical pollution, and cleaning up existing ones.

by Arodex

8/23/2026 at 1:05:08 PM

Peptides are basically protein chains. Proteins are instructions to certain things in our bodies, proteins can activate/deactivate certain processes in our bodies among many other things.

If you artificially inject the correct protein into your body to mimic a naturally producing one, it would do the job and in that way peptides works. However, most of peptides injected by people are hardly human tested for long term effects. Human body is remarkable at adjusting and maintaining a baseline and we don’t know what would be the unintended side effects of these peptides because the body would try to counterbalance it. At best it could be just a mild headache or stomachache and at worst it could be cancer

by sajithdilshan

8/23/2026 at 11:33:55 AM

You can feel like you have control of your life and body, without doing anything about sleep, exercise or food. If you like that control.

by fl0id

8/23/2026 at 11:36:15 AM

I guess "feeling like", sounds like a placebo.

From what I've read there is some real risks associated with using them. Sounds a bit like the marketing of steroids in the 70s.

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 11:52:27 AM

Insulin is a peptide. Not sure if it is really a placebo when a diabetic needs insulin.

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 12:38:11 PM

Peptides aren't all insulin.

by inigyou

8/23/2026 at 2:06:53 PM

exactly my point. That it is dumb to dismiss all peptides as useless when at least some are necessary for survival for some people.

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 9:28:10 PM

Clearly I’m not talking about insulin , people aren’t having insulin injecting parties.

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 1:27:11 PM

Hormones control a lot of what you describe as "feeling like."

The drugs (coincidentally of shape "peptide") that have been through clinical trials are obviously measured against placebo, and they (like the approved GLP-related set of drugs) are outrageously effective beyond placebo. And have very little downsides compared to the downsides of being obese, which are far more immense than people appreciate.

by estearum

8/23/2026 at 11:51:54 AM

Clearly they have effects. Heck insulin is a peptide. And pretty sure it has a benefit for those with diabetes. Dismissing peptides outright is just as silly as thinking peptides are the solution to everything

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 1:25:49 PM

"peptide" is just a category of chemical. Some of them do good things, some do bad things, some do nothing at all.

Anyone talking about "taking peptides" as a meaningful sentence is absolutely dismissible in the same way someone talking about "taking chemicals" is dismissible.

by estearum

8/24/2026 at 7:57:43 AM

If there were suddenly thousands of websites advertising "taking chemicals" as cure-all solutions, and a two-year fad where thousands of accounts advertised "chemicals" on social media, and vernacular use of "taking chemicals" meant "self-inject unregulated substances from unknown foreign manufacturers", then do you see how it would make no sense to make this pedantic point to dismiss any concern over the new "taking chemicals" craze?

by sebastiennight

8/24/2026 at 11:16:10 AM

Maybe I wasn't clear, when I say people should be dismissed for saying "taking chemicals," I mean that they don't get to turn the conversation into a battle of anecdata to try to make their arguments.

For the vast majority of these chemicals, there's no evidence they do anything beneficial. Until there is, you're an idiot for taking them and our regulators are idiots for letting them be marketed to you as if there are benefits.

The entire conversation is goofy because once there's solid enough evidence of safety and efficacy, we just call it a "drug" like any other drug, but somehow a lot of the voluntary lab rats in this craze trust a gas station kiosk more than a billion dollar RCT.

TLDR I agree with you

by estearum

8/23/2026 at 2:08:24 PM

Yup

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 12:08:55 PM

You also wouldn't want to randomly inject yourself with insulin outside of medical supervision, because it can kill you pretty quick.

Injecting poorly-studied grey market peptides seems like a bad idea.

by Legend2440

8/23/2026 at 2:07:16 PM

For sure.

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 12:23:16 PM

How is insulin a peptide? Insulin is a giant folded protein

by timcobb

8/23/2026 at 11:52:47 PM

The terminology is all a bit loose. Proteins are peptides, but we don't usually call them that. But when a hormone is a protein, rather than a small molecule, then we call it a "peptide hormone". I suppose because we're making a chemical point, that the hormone is in the family of peptides rather than steroids or eicosanoids or whatever?

As you say, insulin is a fully fledged protein, albeit a small one, and i wouldn't call it a peptide myself. But then, insulin is 51 residues, whereas tirzepatide (Mounjaro) is 39; is that such a big difference? FWIW i think a lot of other "peptides" are even smaller, eg CJC-1295 is about 30 residues.

by twic

8/24/2026 at 2:49:08 AM

peptides (2-50 amino acids) are smaller than proteins (50+ amino acids)... it's impossible to call a complex protein a peptide, it fails to meet the definition.

by jijji

8/24/2026 at 8:54:05 AM

Is that an standard classification? It so simple I can't believe this is the first time I'm hearing it.

by Urahandystar

8/23/2026 at 1:36:31 PM

Insulin is a peptide hormone. It is a small protein made of 51 amino acids in two chains linked by disulfide bonds.

by andsoitis

8/23/2026 at 2:08:05 PM

Probably better people to explain it. First sentence on wiki ” Insulin (/ˈɪn.sjʊ.lɪn/ ⓘ;[5][6] from Latin insula 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the insulin (INS) gene.”

by victorbjorklund

8/23/2026 at 12:29:34 PM

Seems like it is very much on the edge of categories thus fits both. And it really is not a giant as proteins go and instead is on smaller end.

by Ekaros

8/24/2026 at 3:05:11 AM

peptides seemed to have popped up about 10 years ago.... now we've got probably over 100 common peptides that are used for various things, here is a sample:

1) PT-141 is a peptide that releases sex hormone into the blood and literally makes you horny, and its primary use is for premenopausal women that have low sex drive.

2) PNC-27 is a peptide that supposedly attaches to the cell membrane of tumor cells and performs cell lysis (death) of the tumor cell, and it's supposedly affects many different kinds of tumor cells: breast, pancreatic, lung, colon, ovarian, cervical, and leukemia

3) Epithalon is a peptide that is noted for extending telomers on chromosomes, leading to longevity benefits.

4) MOTS-c is it peptide that in animal studies is shown to boost physical endurance and mimic molecular changes associated with training/exercise.

by jijji

8/24/2026 at 7:07:47 AM

> Epithalon > extending telomers

Telomeres are part of your anti-cancer mechanisms (they stop cell reproduction after say 60 DNA self-copies to help fight unbounded cancerous growth).

If chasing 'benefits', you'd want to be careful before fucking with that mechanism.

by robocat

8/24/2026 at 11:17:48 AM

If creating working drugs was as simple as "supposed" MoAs or animal study results, we'd all be cured of everything.

by estearum

8/23/2026 at 11:30:10 AM

I have seen so much talk of Bay Area "peptide parties", so at least there is some social benefit?

by TFNA

8/23/2026 at 11:39:39 AM

I'm not sure I'd agree that a "bay area peptide party" has any real, useful social benefit. Sounds like hell.

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 12:50:17 PM

Just because you wouldn’t like it doesn’t mean no social benefit. Going to mar a lago and watching the president put ketchup on a well done steak doesn’t sound fun for me, but could be very socially beneficial for a lot of people.

by phoghed

8/23/2026 at 12:57:53 PM

I mean both things sound like hell, has the USA ran out of ideas?

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 1:01:20 PM

Yes, those are the only two things that happen here

by phoghed

8/23/2026 at 9:28:44 PM

And the Super Bowl

by bamboozled

8/23/2026 at 10:55:13 PM

And the $15 acai bowl

by ElProlactin

8/24/2026 at 1:22:00 AM

Sometimes it IS good food. Protein is peptides. Collagen is peptides. Eat hearty beef stew, Salmon and you're eating .. peptides.

Unfortunately many peptides break down in the GI tract. However there is some reason to believe eating protein, like collagen in meat does produce an outcome in terms of muscle mass and skin condition. I guess because those breakdown products make their way through the blood/lymph system to where they're needed.

All those people huffing Whey powder after Gym? peptides! Just enjoy a low sugar yoghourt at lunchtime guys. same-same

by ggm

8/24/2026 at 8:33:45 AM

> All those people huffing Whey powder

Please tell me you're kidding.

by akoboldfrying

8/24/2026 at 9:36:15 AM

Huffing was kidding.

by ggm

8/23/2026 at 2:06:13 PM

Ingestion, like eating?

by MPSimmons

8/23/2026 at 12:41:40 PM

> what actually are the benefits of all this peptide ingestion ?

50 years ago it was cocaine, 40 years ago there was crack, 30 years ago it was heroin, 20 years ago we had bath salts, 10 years ago it was gas station drugs and meth, 5 years ago it was Ivermectin, this year it's SF techies doing their own research into peptides and taking some. Taking the latest drug (or peptide in 2026) is its own benefit.

by zzgo

8/23/2026 at 1:10:02 PM

Ah yes... Ivermectin, very much like the crack epidemic. "It's for horses!!1!" "They do their own research!"

As with any substance, there can be use, and abuse. If you would have told people 30 years ago you use creatine, you would be stared at as if you inject steroids or growth hormone. Today it is in the supermarket, literally next to the protein bars. Throwing Ivermectin on the same pile as crack and heroin though.. :D

I am sure there are dozens (dozens!) of idiots who inject whatever they think it is for whatever reason, valid or not. Peptides is a craze, and it is also emerging here in the Netherlands, but as people have pointed out, lots of things are peptides, and lots of them seem to have significant health benefits, when used properly. Give it another 30 years... they will be next to the protein bars as well, once someone has figured out how to capture the profits.

by mvdwoord

8/24/2026 at 9:29:09 AM

Its the same as Ketamine?

by iberator

8/24/2026 at 3:01:53 AM

I was researching this topic to see if any peptides existed that were isolated from Ratfish-aka Chimaera monstrosa- Liver to help rejuvinate the pineal gland via decalcification. As I understand it, ratfish liver oil is a lipid-based supplement though I've read that bioactive peptides could theoretically be isolated from the liver tissue itself (the solid matter left after oil extraction) through enzymatic hydrolysis. Thus far, I've researched a couple of sites that carry peptides but don't see any Ratfish Liver-based products. Ratfish liver oil is hard to come by, expensive due to the fish being endangered.

by SilentM68

8/24/2026 at 7:47:45 AM

This comment looks so much like today's YouTube comment spam that I fully expecting you to mention that you finally found this miraculous ebook/website, and then a stream of comment replies saying "me too!" with their own "testimonials".

I think, if you wanted to find out about the topic you mention, you might first want to look for literature that would support such claims (even preprints on arxiv would at least be a start) before looking for actual products.

by sebastiennight

8/25/2026 at 3:12:46 AM

Not really spamming, just in need of a solution. I've spend decades researching different literature for the many issues that I have. Not afraid to admit that I suffer from many issues, most of which are painful, uncomfortable, and limit my productivity as well as ability to make a living. Employers, it turns out, are clearly very hesitant to hire somebody with medical conditions. Suffice to say, that reading about something has yielded little results, most things only promise pain management, no cures, at least for me hence my lack of patience with reading mainstream medical, journals that don't seem to cure anything, thus my preference for AI-based research, to the dismay of many here.

by SilentM68

8/24/2026 at 5:43:52 AM

Have you tried contacting your nearest snake oil salesman?

by anon48293

8/25/2026 at 3:18:50 AM

I have tried many forms of snake oil, have yet to find one that totally cures my pain. Oddly enough, I have found no modern medicine that totally heals my issues thus my reasons to focus on holistic solutions and non-traditional methods. Native Americans used natural remedies to heal and alleviate conditions. Who's to say their remedies are not effective. Same deal with acupuncture. Chinese have used it for centuries. I personally tried it a few years ago, when I had the money and it helped me. I find that holistic, non-traditional methods are helpful, especially when compared to opioids, pill-popping, etc.

by SilentM68

8/24/2026 at 2:04:47 PM

Interestingly, snake oil gets it's reputation not because it is itself ineffective, but, it was because so many counterfeiters piled in selling cheapfakes, while simultaneously inflating cure-all claims. (citation, Smithsonian Magazine on Stanley Clark). Snake medicines are still used commonly in various types of Chinese medicine.

by zenapollo

8/25/2026 at 3:30:43 AM

Correct :)

by SilentM68

8/24/2026 at 7:48:16 PM

Yes, Chinese medicine indeed contains a lot of nonsense.

What disease does snake oil cure exactly according to you?

by anon48293

8/25/2026 at 3:33:18 AM

Keep in mind that the term "Snake Oil Salesman," was a twisting of the truth. Yes, it originated with Chinese immigrants from the 1800s. Among the items the Chinese railroad workers brought with them to the States were various medicines, including snake oil. Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original form really was effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and bursitis. The workers would rub the oil, used for centuries in China, on their joints after a long hard day at work. The story goes that the Chinese workers began sharing the oil with some American counterparts, who marveled at the effects.

It is these American counterparts that dissembled the truth by creating ineffective variations of the formulas hence the twisting of the term, "Snake Oil Salesmen."

NRP Article on History of Snake oil Salesmen https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377...

by SilentM68

8/24/2026 at 2:22:43 AM

The problem with certain peptides (the Eli Lilly patented ones like Tirzepatide and Retatrutide) is that when you carefully look at whats going on, you'll notice that they are recently filing lawsuits for anyone who mentions those words on their website, even med spa's and compounding pharmacies [0].

It is legal to sell research only peptides that are not FDA approved, but as soon you talk about efficacy and human use, you also become a target for the FDA warning letters. [1] [2] [3].

Anyone selling these peptides who are indexed by search engines face increase scrutiny immediately, especially if you're going to try to sell the patented ones, because then you're a Target of not just the FDA but also Eli Lilly... peptides are big business but it's big risk if you do it wrong.... Eli Lily wants people spending $1,000 per month to use these peptides.

I think the trick about selling peptides to people is to probably do it word of mouth, no indexing by google, no ads, double gated website with invite only structure.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/08/13/g-s1-138594/eli-lilly-files-6...

[1] https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...

[2] https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...

[3] https://www.raps.org/resource/fda-warning-letters-target-mar...

by jijji

8/24/2026 at 3:34:11 AM

There are some peptides which have been abandoned by the pharmaceutical industry before completing phase 3 trials and which can be sold through an FDA exception by compounding pharmacies.

That being said, there’s usually a reason they were abandoned by the pharmaceutical industry; they were ineffective or had a worse side effect profile compared to other drugs already in the pipeline. Good example of this is the “Barbie drug” melanotan II which was abandoned in favor of bremelanotide for treating hypoactive sexual desire because the latter targeted fewer receptors and was less likely to cause hyperpigmentation and other side effects.

Ultimately, most people should probably just stick to pharmaceuticals that have been FDA approved.

by derektank

8/23/2026 at 12:55:36 PM

This article is not so much about peptides it's about entirely AI generated ecosystems. The goal is to promote questionably scammy commercial interests, or obviously political interests as I'm sure is happening also, by creating whole webs of semi convincing looking portals, discussion boards, review sites, community activity, etc, all fake.

The blog post rightly points out we should get good at spotting all this but this is not the scary part, the scary part is that the audience for these ecosystems is not even humans, it's the big AI players like Gemini and ChatGPT, and those are places that a lot of people are going to get information and advice on things.

I use Gemini quite a lot and lately I've already noticed it's very quick to give me a broad spectrum vibe on some issue or topic and not good at all at backing it up with reputable sources. So I think this is potentially a very ominous development of the entire web itself becomes a giant poisoned cauldron of untrustworthy AI maliciously influencing "trustworthy" AIs.

Update: i fed this comment into Gemini and asked "what is Google doing about this?" and it produced a very long, detailed answer, leading off with tagging this as the so-called "internet ouroboros" problem. For those who don't feel like doing the same, I can distill it's answer as follows: "Yo. Chill. We got this, bro. Lol" so we're good!

by zzzeek

8/23/2026 at 1:35:14 PM

The battle between black-hat SEO and search engines has been going on for a long time. They may or may not "got this," exactly, but they definitely know a lot about it. I'd wager if a blogger can sniff this out, the search engines at least stand a chance.

by billyp-rva

8/24/2026 at 1:55:58 AM

Back when I still used Google, in the dark old days of mid-late 2025, it sure seemed like the SEO was winning. Once you got to page 3, where the ads ran out, you would then smoothly transition into total scam. A common one was where they'd show you scraped SO (remember that one?) content which somehow placed higher in the rankings than actual SO, and there'd be like 3 of those in various skins. I assumed they wanted to show me more ads, though those were much more easily handled with an ad blocker, unlike Google's search results. I assume it's continued to deteriorate from there, does anyone know?

by igor47

8/23/2026 at 2:28:14 PM

[dead]

by sergeo

8/23/2026 at 1:34:11 PM

was any evidence ever given?

>"The trained eye, weary of vibe coded designs, will see Claude Code’s aesthetic fingerprint all over this. "

yeah, everyone is re-doing old interfaces with LLMs.

>"They're hosted on AlexHost"

yeah, they're selling grey market pharma.

Now, I have no problems saying that the whole thing is a bot driven scam -- it probably is , grey market web is filled with scams -- but there was no evidence given; just an ad for a magic tool that detects AI... somehow.

...which makes me feel like an asshole for putting in the time looking for the anchor and hoping it wasn't an advertisement.

by serf

8/24/2026 at 4:38:40 AM

> was any evidence ever given?

Try browsing through the offtopic forum [1] if you're not convinced. About half of the threads lead with a post which uses the phrase "food noise" (often "the food noise came back"), even in topics like "Pet photos thread" or "TV shows to binge while on the treadmill" [2] where that content is completely inappropriate.

Or, along the same lines: try reading the "welcome thread" [3]. No one actually introduces themselves; all of the replies immediately start treating the thread as if it's a discussion of some vague topic. "Admin" even comes back several times to "close the loop on my own question" and to return "with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one" [4].

In short: all the simulated user behavior on the forum is wildly unnatural. It doesn't stand up to any close examination.

[1]: https://www.compoundtalk.com/forums/offtopic/

[2]: https://www.compoundtalk.com/threads/t29681/, https://www.compoundtalk.com/threads/t31154/

[3]: https://www.compoundtalk.com/threads/t34774/

[4]: https://www.compoundtalk.com/threads/t34774-page-10/#post-47, https://www.compoundtalk.com/threads/t34774-page-20/#post-98

by duskwuff

8/23/2026 at 1:44:37 PM

I'm struggling to get the point. Which one these?

* Use pangram for catching AI slop

* Be good at spotting AI slop

* Beware of website built for AI crawlers only

* Do not buy stuff from China

* Do not consume peptide supplements

* Peptides are good but buy local

* Do not live in SF

by zkmon

8/23/2026 at 4:50:44 PM

Interesting what athletes get popped for a few years ago = what optimize bros will inject into heir body, from test to peptides. Honestly lowkey glad Muricans willing to guinea pig when it comes to "performance". Asians have passed west in doing stupid beauty regimes, I like that US has big enough athletic culture to focus on performance. Hopefully Hegseth diverts billions into testosterone research, actual good use of department funds.

by maxglute

8/24/2026 at 3:31:32 AM

This was fascinating right up until the confident use of an AI detector extension of some kind, as if that was a valid investigation of the matter.

Sadly, my view on the AI literacy of people who gleefully use 'slop' stays steady... which is a shame. Cause we're all on the same side, in the end.

by bbor

8/23/2026 at 1:30:41 PM

Is this an ad for "pangram"? Reads like one to me. Not much of anything related to peptides was actually communicated, which makes the insult about your reader's potential ignorance of peptides even more unnecessary.

by cure_42