I am also from Germany and get payed for donating thrombocytes at my university hospital. The compensation is actually quite substantial imo at (up to) 75€ per session, which can be done every two weeks. The money is however mean to offset the time required, not the thrombocytes donated. So it is correlated to how long it takes.

You get 15€ (?) for up to 15min (if they have to abort very early for some reason or at your first visit where they just draw blood to test), 50€ for up to 1h (which equals to 1 instead of 2 pack of thrombocytes, usually done at your first real donation or if you maybe dont have enough for 2 on this particular day), and 75€ for anything over 1h (which is the norm).

Timewise the hospital is on the outskirts of the city, so most will have to travel a bit, then you have to fill out forms, have a quick talk with the doctor, and finally depending on your parameters it takes anywhere from ~55-70min to extract, during which you are tethered to a machine (which takes out some blood, then seperates out the thrombocytes with a centrifuge, pumps back the rest, and repeat).

One could get philosophical about the topic, but from a practical perspective the money makes a lot of sense imo:

• It costs them a lot of money to investigate new prospects, so you want reliable repeat donors

• Each donation already has other costs associated with it. Like for example the kit used during extraction, the staff handling everything and so on. So even those 75€ are just one more expense among many, and from donation to usage probably vanish in the overall costs.

• For the donor it is quite a substantial time commitment, especially when done regularly every two weeks. Unlike for example full blood donations you’d maybe do twice a year. And you should be reliable and not randomly cancel at the last second, so ideally it also has priority over some other things in your life.

• the small amount of blood that remains inside the machine is sometimes used for other research (if you agree to it, which i do)

From my own experience i can say that i might still do it without, but certainly not at the same frequency. And considering the time and effort required i don’t think anyone could be blamed for doing it less frequently without the incentive. So at least in this case it imo is a fair trade and net positive. Although it does also help that this is a university hospital that directly uses it themselves, rather than a for profit company.

So like the Stillsuits in Dune?

I think the satellite based cellular networks like ASTS is currently trying to launch will be ubiquitous.

The tech already seems good, so it’ll happen much sooner than 34, but I imagine by that point it will just be one of those things everyone takes for granted.

I can also see small autonomous drones playing a much larger role with various tasks.

That is one aspect of it: if you are 10, then 1 year is 10% of your whole life, more if you consider the first few to not really be conscious. If you are 50 it’s only 2%.

But I think another factor is what stays in our memories vs what gets filtered out. If you are young, you’ll experience lots of “first times”, major changes, and defining moments. As you get older there are more parts of your life that are routine and repetitive. Looking back at a year/a whole life what are the things you can vividly remember?

This is also what imo causes the shift in perception for the covid period. Suddenly a lot of events that usually create memorable experiences didn’t happen. No parties, festivals, meeting new people, or vacations in foreign places. For most of us it will have been a major change initially, but relatively quickly routines setting in.

Agreed. I remember when lightbulbs got banned here in the EU starting from 2009 to 2012 in steps. Here in Germany plenty of people were mad and hoarding them.

Nowadays with the larger focus on energy prices, especially in light of the russia-ukraine war, it seems insane that not even that long ago to light a room one or multiple lightbulbs using 65-100 watts were used. That’s like the equivalent of an office PC running just for some light.

I always like this answer by Steve Jobs on the topic (here it’s xerox, but this also fits Intel pretty well).

I am not registered, but I have a organ donor card (where I approve organ donations).

Background:

Germany just recently (18th of March this year) launched an online database where you can register your preference. Until then there was only a small organ donor card that you could fill out and carry with you.

Reason I haven’t registered there yet is that I first need to unlock the online function on my passport (nowadays always enabled, but I still have one from when it was optional). So I’ll eventually get around to doing both.

As for my reasoning behind being a donor:

• I would like to receive them in an emergency (or for someone I care about to do so).

• And in case I become a donor I am not there anymore to care about what people do with my organs.