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1000 results for “Flip_Switch”
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18 years on Facebook for me and a lot of people from a former social media network, #FriendFeed, that I'd love to stay in contact with, so I'm planning to put up a series of posts with ways to find me and requests for ways to find them. Have to hope the algorithm lets them see it before I flip the switch.
I've also got a lot of family there - Americans, Irish - but family is a perversely easier thing to break connections with as I've made my own on the web over the decades.
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During our #GaggiaClassic Pro Evo testing I'm confirming how to REALLY, SIMPLY achieve good temperature surfing results with minimum interaction.
It's coming back to what I did on a Gaggia Classic back in 2003:
- Preheat machine 10min.
- Grind your coffee dose
- Flush the machine until the ready light goes off.
- load, wdt, tamp coffee in PF
- Watch for lamp to come on, flip steam switch for 5 sec, turn off, brew the shot.Scace shows 200F in groupehead, every time, doing this.
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Prompt: Could I please get a drabble about Magnemite, my favourite Pokemon? Any canon is fine with me. Feel free to get spooky too if you like. My prompts are: rust, candle, and flashlight.
creepycute #magnemite drabble for peasina 🧲 :pokeball:
#pokemon
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Steel scraping against rusty metal, audibly puncturing the walls, was the first sign of life you noticed in the abandoned power plant. You pull out a flashlight, hesitating to shine light on what lurks in the shadows. But before you can flip the switch, the batteries burn—overcharged—stinging the palm of your hand. The metalic screeching inches closer, and you wish you would have brought a candle as backup to see just enough to size up the approaching threat.Reaching desperately into the darkness straight ahead, you feel cold metal nuzzling your palm, sparking happily. It's a lost Magnemite!
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The lumpy lime failed at providing much juice.
I made veggie soup. I also baked chicken breasts in the toaster oven.
I added some frozen zucchini noodles to the soup and used the microwave to thaw them (while also using the toaster oven) and tripped a circuit breaker. So glad they replaced the old style fuses in my building several years ago so I just had to flip a switch.
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Prompt: Could I please get a drabble about Magnemite, my favourite Pokemon? Any canon is fine with me. Feel free to get spooky too if you like. My prompts are: rust, candle, and flashlight.
creepycute #magnemite drabble for peasina 🧲 :pokeball:
#pokemon
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Steel scraping against rusty metal, audibly puncturing the walls, was the first sign of life you noticed in the abandoned power plant. You pull out a flashlight, hesitating to shine light on what lurks in the shadows. But before you can flip the switch, the batteries burn—overcharged—stinging the palm of your hand. The metalic screeching inches closer, and you wish you would have brought a candle as backup to see just enough to size up the approaching threat.Reaching desperately into the darkness straight ahead, you feel cold metal nuzzling your palm, sparking happily. It's a lost Magnemite!
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Prompt: Could I please get a drabble about Magnemite, my favourite Pokemon? Any canon is fine with me. Feel free to get spooky too if you like. My prompts are: rust, candle, and flashlight.
creepycute #magnemite drabble for peasina 🧲 :pokeball:
#pokemon
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steel scraping against rusty metal, audibly puncturing the walls, was the first sign of life you noticed in the abandoned power plant. You pull out a flashlight, hesitating to shine light on what lurks in the shadows. But before you can flip the switch, the batteries burn—overcharged—stinging the palm of your hand. The metalic screeching inches closer, and you wish you would have brought a candle as backup to see just enough to size up the approaching threat.Reaching desperately into the darkness straight ahead, you feel cold metal nuzzling your palm, sparking happily. It's a lost Magnemite!
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Prompt: Could I please get a drabble about Magnemite, my favourite Pokemon? Any canon is fine with me. Feel free to get spooky too if you like. My prompts are: rust, candle, and flashlight.
creepycute #magnemite drabble for peasina 🧲 :pokeball:
#pokemon
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steel scraping against rusty metal, audibly puncturing the walls, was the first sign of life you noticed in the abandoned power plant. You pull out a flashlight, hesitating to shine light on what lurks in the shadows. But before you can flip the switch, the batteries burn—overcharged—stinging the palm of your hand. The metalic screeching inches closer, and you wish you would have brought a candle as backup to see just enough to size up the approaching threat.Reaching desperately into the darkness straight ahead, you feel cold metal nuzzling your palm, sparking happily. It's a lost Magnemite!
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Prompt: Could I please get a drabble about Magnemite, my favourite Pokemon? Any canon is fine with me. Feel free to get spooky too if you like. My prompts are: rust, candle, and flashlight.
creepycute #magnemite drabble for peasina 🧲 :pokeball:
#pokemon
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steel scraping against rusty metal, audibly puncturing the walls, was the first sign of life you noticed in the abandoned power plant. You pull out a flashlight, hesitating to shine light on what lurks in the shadows. But before you can flip the switch, the batteries burn—overcharged—stinging the palm of your hand. The metalic screeching inches closer, and you wish you would have brought a candle as backup to see just enough to size up the approaching threat.Reaching desperately into the darkness straight ahead, you feel cold metal nuzzling your palm, sparking happily. It's a lost Magnemite!
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♲ @[email protected]:On this day in 1973: “The First DEVO Concert”
by Gerald V. Casale
At #KentStateUniversity’s 1973 Creative Arts Festival, we were the “ #Sextet Devo ” Why was it a sextet? Because my college student best friend and early #Devo collaborator, Bob Lewis, was insistent that I couldn’t sing. He convinced us that having a crooning signer — who had sung with the James Gang ( #JoeWalsh) and with The Measles, a locally popular cover band — was the way to go. I didn’t buy it, and I was personally offended that he said I “couldn’t sing.”
But there was a more important and subversive reason for going along with the ploy. It allowed us the “Sextet” billing to qualify for a pretentiously curated arts #festival, sponsored yearly by the university gatekeepers. Clearly “Sextet #Devo” was “art,” and not Rock N Roll. So we slipped in with a vote from Dr. Robert Bertholf, a tenured English Literature professor (and all around cool, brainiac guy), who was sympathetic to our cause. And that cause — starting then — was spreading The Gospel Of #Devolution.
Our setlist was eclectic, to say the least, and ample evidence that Lewis and I had spent way too much time philosophizing — and convincing Mark #Mothersbaugh of the merits of the #De-evolution trope — and way too little time with songwriting.
On April 18th, #1973, our line-up was my brother #BobCasale and #BobLewis on guitars, myself on bass guitar and vocals (I prevailed and sang “Sun Come Up, Moon Go Down”), #FredWeber on lead vocals/tambourine, drummer #RodReisman, and #MarkMothersbaugh as #keyboardist.
The video that my good friend and colleague, #ChuckStatler, shot that night to document our nascent performance is interesting in the same way that the recently surfaced news footage of 11-year-old Prince supporting the teacher’s strike in Minneapolis is interesting. Looking back, it is important historical evidence of… something.
In front of an audience of 20 or so students, seated in a small auditorium and curious enough to check us out, we slugged through mid-tempo experimentation on songs like “Wiggle Worm,” “What Goes Up Must Come Down” (a relatively lively blues stomp by comparison), and a #folk-rock indulgence titled “River Run” that showcased #BobLewis’s #country-folk leanings.
All of that followed after Mark had played a solo #keyboard warmup intro while the meager audience trickled in. He plunked out tunes like “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” and “Mr. Jingeling” which was a Northeast Ohio advertising jingle for Halle's department stores. (Their mascot character, named Mr. Jingeling, was a grotesque man in a Christmas elf-type suit who went from store to store enticing kids to come in with their parents to buy, buy, buy!)
The preamble that Mark provided was an excellent example of what we called “Low #Devo.” But for me, the rest of that set doesn’t matter much, in retrospect. However, at age 24, it did provide a painful lesson on an artist’s learning curve.
What did I learn?
(A) Sing your own songs.
(B) Don’t let others discourage you with doubt and fear.
(C) Practice, do more, and talk less.
The real highlight, though — given our critique of technology and of conformity culture — was classic Devo perfection. Mark’s #Minimoog malfunctioned, and it was stuck in a loop of sine wave #noise that swooped up in pitch like a warning alarm in a nuclear plant. He could only flip a switch and make it swoop down. And boy, that’s what he did for what seemed like an eternity, while we stood and watched. He kept putting his hand to his forehead, as if confused, and in pain. (Oh, did I mention that Mark was wearing a full-head chimpanzee mask for the entire set to hide his identity?)
As the “Dada” aspect of Mark’s broken #synthesizer disaster began to fatigue the audience, the other performers walked off stage and into the wings. But Mark and I refused to leave. Because our set wasn’t finished. And I can be heard in Statler’s video, yelling to a stage hand, “Hey! Go Get Those Guys!”
Mark’s improvised “Headache Solo" was Devolved genius, and the thing that still resonates with validity nearly half a century later.
©2022 GVC | GeraldVCasale.com/
Permalink to this story:
GeraldVCasale.com/pages/the-fi…
P.S. Witness historic video clip here:
yewtu.be/yslKp2DKe0I
P.P.S. Today, Bob Lewis admits: “The only reason for having Fred Weber was he was a ‘professional’ singer who fronted #theMeasles and sang with #WalshandtheJamesGang on occasion. In retrospect, an aberration.”
NOTE: #GeraldVCasale in the yellow plastic raincoat in the photo.
#protopunk #postpunk -
My experience ‘going paid’ on Subastack in 2024
Well, has it been a while! And here am I, back to overwhelm your inbox with a girnomous essay! Just kidding – I hope?
Anyway, recently, in a moment of weakness, I subscribed to a popular newsletter about increasing Substack paid subscriptions. I wondered if there was a “magic formula” for Substack success.
Turns out, there isn’t any.
Subscriber Content
Add content here that will only be visible to your subscribers.
You see, I’ve worked in content marketing for years, so the writer didn’t tell me anything new. If anything, the advice felt simplistic.
The biggest takeaway?
Substacks that revolves around personal essays and fiction are incredibly tough sells … unless your brand is strong.
And your brand is essentially your personality or your persona. You must be dramatic, magnetic and, yes, famous enough for people to pay for content that doesn’t fulfil an urgent need.
The easiest way for Substackers to get more paid subscribers is to offer a service that isn’t easily replicable. News about China perhaps. Top tips to earn a million bucks in a year, that kind of thing.
This shouldn’t have surprised me.
Personal essays and fiction have always, always, always been challenging to monetize, no matter the medium.
My experience of going paid
I introduced paid subscriptions sometime this year, when Tai Tales was mostly a newsletter sharing fiction. And when I did, it was on a whim. Someone told me to flip the switch on because who knows, I may get subscribers! Since I’ve got nothing to lose, I did just that, all the while thinking who in the world would pay me for my blatherings.
To my surprise, some of you did end up being my paid subscribers, and for that, I’m endlessly grateful.
I’ll be honest: paid subscriptions do come with guilt and pressure. I constantly wonder if my work is worth your hard-earned money. And since I’ve pivoted Tai Tales away from fiction, and have stopped writing fiction for a while, the guilt is immense!
For those of you who’ve deigned to become paid subscribers, I want to assure you that every penny goes toward my survival fund which I save and invest. As a worker in the tech industry, the reality is that I’m always one moment away from a pink slip. (As I recently shared with paid subscribers, who will know what I’m talking about.) So, your generosity will literally feed me, and I’m deeply, deeply grateful for your generosity.
When I think about Tai Tales, I can’t pinpoint a solid reason why anyone should pay for it. Does that mean I’m being too hard on myself? Not really. I’m simply looking at things through a content marketer’s lens. If your content doesn’t offer something people can’t find elsewhere, its value becomes harder to justify. And, yeah, I don’t think I’m famous.
Last time I checked anyway.
But maybe newsletters is more than just value?
Staying paid, but patronage style
Photo by SHAYAN Rostami on Unsplash. You’re probably thinking, why all the ballerina photos? Well, as a writer I feel that I’m always having to dance to algorithms or platforms. Is it a good thing? Not sure!
I recently watched a video from a YouTuber I deeply admire. A scientist by trade, he shares incredibly valuable content to improve your health without any strings attached—no courses, no upsells.
He only recently opened a Patreon account to let people support him because they begged him to. He said that he was told that his approach to sharing content was “unique”, but he doesn’t want to do any sponsorships, content marketing or advertising, because that’s not his way.
His approach—the “patronage model”—really resonates with me far more than the aggressive content marketing approach that that popular Substacker recommends.
I will still keep the TMI category, where I share private or personal updates, exclusive to paid subscribers. It feels right to reserve those private moments only for them. I also have a tip jar where you can tip me whatever you like.
Recently, some Substackers I follow have been ungating their content, such as Lily Pond in I’m Calling This a Blog.
I’m thinking of doing the same, but I haven’t figured out the mechanics yet. Should I ungate all of them? Keep some parts of the issue gated? Decisions!
So, yes, please do support if you can afford it, but no pressure. Just know that if you do, your gesture is deeply appreciated, especially in uncertain times like these.
Sharpening the focus
One of the things I also did during my long break was to reassess my approach to this newsletter. The conclusion? I’m happy with where I am. Leaving the fiction realm was sad, but I realised that I just can’t create fiction on command like some people can. And I seem to prefer to write fiction in private. (Yes, I’m actually writing a novel for my own amusement right now! I’m not sure when I’ll share it with the public, but I’m having fun writing it for myself right now.)
In 2025, want to tighten Tai Tales’ focus even further.
This newsletter will still revolve around Chinese and Malaysian culture. I’ll be sharing more travelougues and essays on life in Malaysia, but I will also be combining Chinese learning efforts with my love for Chinese dramas. Yup, I’ll be using Chinese dramas to help you learn Chinese!
The term “comprehensive input” is something you’ll hear from me a lot. This is based on Stephen Krashen’s “Input Hypothesis”, which states that languages is best learned when learners immerse themselves in content from their target language that is slightly above their current skill level, but still understandable.
Although I’m a banana trying to learn a Chinese language other than her own native one, and thus not exactly an expert, I’m really skilled at learning things.
And that’s what I want to share—how to learn Mandarin effectively while having fun learning about Chinese dramas!
My goal is also to make each issue of Tai Tales more meaningful instead of flooding your inbox four times a month in the name of “consistency”.
So, I’ll scale back the number of issues per month to deliver higher-quality content.
I’m not sure about the number yet. ;P
Thank You
Thank you for being here, for reading, and for supporting this little corner of the internet. I’m excited about Tai Tales in 2025 and hope to create something that entertains, educates, and brings a bit of joy to your day. Let me know what you think about these changes—your feedback is invaluable.
Until next time,
Liz
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@kev I’ve detected a bit of intellectual dishonesty here. #Fosstodon used the standard default #Cloudflare configs as early as March & for months thereafter, certainly at least as late as May 29th confirmed by someone’s complaint specifically about the block screen.The timeline shows complaints about CF are littered around before & after that point. If you expand some of the threads in that timeline, it’s clear the default CF configs persisted despite Fosstodon staff being told that the default configs were resulting in users being forced to run non-free software & that the configs needed to change. That change never happened because I know I saw the block screen whenever I tried to directly visit fosstodon.
Fosstodon finally made a recent move from CF proxy to CF NS, which was just yesterday announced, a day after my post. I am not checking every day to see what fosstodon does next.
Under the current config, you can spontaneously switch on the CF reverse proxy at any moment with immediate effect without even telling users all their traffic will be seen by Cloudflare (including passwords). It’s in fact the only way that the reverse proxy can work. If you don’t use the MitM certs, CF cannot process the requests for you during an attack.
So the compromise is still in place. The only difference is that now it’s spontaneous instead of continuously ongoing. And most likely you’ve probably not fixed the CF configs, so when you flip that switch users will get a captcha that pushes #nonfreesoftware. The goal should be to get off CF entirely including nameservers.
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Salesforce’s record-triggered flows have revolutionized the automation landscape, offering a seamless, declarative approach to triggering business processes from record changes. But as every Salesforce professional knows, business requirements fluctuate, and having the agility to turn this automation on or off swiftly is crucial. Enter Custom Metadata Types, a hidden gem that can serve as an on-off switch for your automation. This post will guide you through using Custom Metadata Types within record-triggered flows to control your Salesforce automation.
Understanding Custom Metadata Types
Before diving in, it’s vital to grasp what Custom Metadata Types (CMDTs) are. CMDTs in Salesforce are similar to custom objects, but they store data that informs the behavior of your org’s processes rather than the data about your business. The beauty of CMDTs is that they allow admins and developers to create highly configurable apps that can be updated without altering code or, in our case, adjusting flows directly.
Why Use CMDTs in Record-Triggered Flows? The primary advantage is adaptability. Business rules change, and you might need to pause certain automations during certain events. Instead of deactivating the entire flow (and later remembering to reactivate it), you can use CMDTs to “switch off” the automation. When you’re ready to resume, switch it back on — all without modifying the flow.
How to Implement the On-Off Switch
Now, let’s explore how to set this up step-by-step:
1. Create a Custom Metadata Type:
- Navigate to Setup, and in the Quick Find box, enter “Custom Metadata Types.”
- Click “New Custom Metadata Type” and give it a label, such as “Flow Switch” (Switch__mdt).
- After creating the CMDT, you must add fields the flow will reference. For instance, create a checkbox field called “All Switch”, “Flow1 Switch”, “Flow2 Switch” etc. (All_Switch__c and Flow1_Switch__c)
2. Add Records to the Custom Metadata Type:
- Once your CMDT is set up, it’s time to create a new record. This record acts as the control setting for your flows. In my case, I named this single record Master.
- All Switch will turn on-off all automation while Flow1 Switch will control only Flow number 1.
3. Adjust Your Record-Triggered Flows:
- Here is the new magic: You don’t need to get your CMDT anymore in flow to use it. You can refer to the values by using the correct syntax in your start element formula conditions and formula resources. The preferred method is to add them to the start element entry formula conditions.
- The syntax you need to use here will depend on your CMDT naming and field labels, but it will look very similar to this:
$CustomMetadata.Switch__mdt.Master.All_Switch__c$CustomMetadata.Switch__mdt.Master.Flow1_Switch__c*Please note that Switch_mdt is the label of the CMDT, Master is the label of the single record followed by the field name.
4. Testing Your Setup:
- Thorough testing is crucial. Adjust the CMDT records and observe if the flows behave as expected. They should only proceed when “Is Active” is true and stop when false.
5. Maintenance and Updates:
- When you need to turn a flow on or off, update the checkbox fields in the CMDT record. There’s no need to adjust or deactivate the flows, ensuring your configurations remain intact.
Leveraging Custom Metadata Types to control your record-triggered flows is not just a smart move; it’s a strategic approach to maintain scalable, dynamic, and adaptable Salesforce automation. This method protects the integrity of your flows, reduces the risk of errors during off-and-on transitions, and saves significant admin time. Most importantly, it provides the agility your business needs to adapt to changing requirements with grace and efficiency. So, flip the switch on your record-triggered flows with confidence, knowing that Custom Metadata Types have got you covered!
Recommended offsite reading: Architecting for Flexible Automation Execution
One Big Record-Triggered Flow or Multiple?
Fast Field Updates in Record-Triggered Flows (Winter 22)
Migrate to Flow Best Practices
#Automation #CMDT #Configuration #CustomMetadata #DynamicAutomation #FlowManagement #RecordTriggered #Strategies
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Supernote A5 X2 Manta 10.7 inch E Ink writing tablet is now available for $459
The Supernote A5 X2 Manta is a new E Ink tablet with a 10.7 inch display, support for pen input for writing and drawing, and a modular design that makes it easier to repair than most devices in the ever-expanding category of E Ink tablets designed for writing.
Details about the Supernote Manta began making the rounds earlier this year when it was just known as the Supernote A5 X2. But now the tablet is available for purchase for $459, and Supernote explains that its calling the device “Manta” because of an updated design that balances thinness with full-sized USB ports and power buttons with manta ray-like sloped protrusions on the back of the device.
The A5 X2 Manta measures 251.3 x 182.6 x 6mm (9.9″ x 7.2″ x 0.24″) at the center and 3.6mm (0.14″) at its thinnest point, and weighs 375 grams (13.2 ounces), making it pretty lightweight for a 10.7 inch tablet.
In order to keep it thin and light even when you’re using a case, Supernote is also introducing an optional “Half Folio” cover that weighs just 92 grams (3.2 ounces). And instead of including a pen loop in the folio, there’s a removable elastic pen loop that can be screwed into the tablet itself, allowing users to choose from a variety of pens that can be used with the A5 X2 Manta.
The tablet’s display is a 1920 x 2560 pixel greyscale E Ink screen with 300 pixels per inch and no front light, which puts the Manta directly in competition with the $379 reMarkable 2 rather than pricier devices like the $579 reMarkable Paper Pro (which has both a color display and a front light).
Other features of the Supernote A5 X2 Manta include a Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage, a microSD card reader with support for cards up to 2TB, a USB 2.0 Type-C port and support for dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0.
The tablet chips with a custom version of Android 11 called Chauvet and features support for touch and pen navigation, as well as touch-sensitive sidebars on the left and right sides of the screen.
As for the tablet’s modular components, Supernote says that not only is the 3600 mAh battery designed to be easy to remove and replace, but so is the motherboard.
While it’s unclear if that means you’ll be able to upgrade the motherboard of this tablet the way you can with a Framework Laptop, it should at least make it cheaper and easier to repair a broken tablet since you won’t need to replace the display, case, and other components if something goes wrong on the mainboard (or vice versa). You can access the battery and mainboard without any tools – just flip a switch on the back of the tablet to remove a panel that covers those parts.
The company has also suggested in the past that you could take the motherboard from a 7.8 inch Supernote A6 X2 and put it into the body of a 10.7 inch Supernote A5 X2 Manta, since they both use the same motherboard and processor. But I don’t currently seen an option to buy the new tablet without a motherboard.
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Salesforce’s record-triggered flows have revolutionized the automation landscape, offering a seamless, declarative approach to triggering business processes from record changes. But as every Salesforce professional knows, business requirements fluctuate, and having the agility to turn this automation on or off swiftly is crucial. Enter Custom Metadata Types, a hidden gem that can serve as an on-off switch for your automation. This post will guide you through using Custom Metadata Types within record-triggered flows to control your Salesforce automation.
Understanding Custom Metadata Types
Before diving in, it’s vital to grasp what Custom Metadata Types (CMDTs) are. CMDTs in Salesforce are similar to custom objects, but they store data that informs the behavior of your org’s processes rather than the data about your business. The beauty of CMDTs is that they allow admins and developers to create highly configurable apps that can be updated without altering code or, in our case, adjusting flows directly.
Why Use CMDTs in Record-Triggered Flows? The primary advantage is adaptability. Business rules change, and you might need to pause certain automations during certain events. Instead of deactivating the entire flow (and later remembering to reactivate it), you can use CMDTs to “switch off” the automation. When you’re ready to resume, switch it back on — all without modifying the flow.
How to Implement the On-Off Switch
Now, let’s explore how to set this up step-by-step:
1. Create a Custom Metadata Type:
- Navigate to Setup, and in the Quick Find box, enter “Custom Metadata Types.”
- Click “New Custom Metadata Type” and give it a label, such as “Flow Switch” (Switch__mdt).
- After creating the CMDT, you must add fields the flow will reference. For instance, create a checkbox field called “All Switch”, “Flow1 Switch”, “Flow2 Switch” etc. (All_Switch__c and Flow1_Switch__c)
2. Add Records to the Custom Metadata Type:
- Once your CMDT is set up, it’s time to create a new record. This record acts as the control setting for your flows. In my case, I named this single record Master.
- All Switch will turn on-off all automation while Flow1 Switch will control only Flow number 1.
3. Adjust Your Record-Triggered Flows:
- Here is the new magic: You don’t need to get your CMDT anymore in flow to use it. You can refer to the values by using the correct syntax in your start element formula conditions and formula resources. The preferred method is to add them to the start element entry formula conditions.
- The syntax you need to use here will depend on your CMDT naming and field labels, but it will look very similar to this:
$CustomMetadata.Switch__mdt.Master.All_Switch__c$CustomMetadata.Switch__mdt.Master.Flow1_Switch__c*Please note that Switch_mdt is the label of the CMDT, Master is the label of the single record followed by the field name.
4. Testing Your Setup:
- Thorough testing is crucial. Adjust the CMDT records and observe if the flows behave as expected. They should only proceed when “Is Active” is true and stop when false.
5. Maintenance and Updates:
- When you need to turn a flow on or off, update the checkbox fields in the CMDT record. There’s no need to adjust or deactivate the flows, ensuring your configurations remain intact.
Leveraging Custom Metadata Types to control your record-triggered flows is not just a smart move; it’s a strategic approach to maintain scalable, dynamic, and adaptable Salesforce automation. This method protects the integrity of your flows, reduces the risk of errors during off-and-on transitions, and saves significant admin time. Most importantly, it provides the agility your business needs to adapt to changing requirements with grace and efficiency. So, flip the switch on your record-triggered flows with confidence, knowing that Custom Metadata Types have got you covered!
Recommended offsite reading: Architecting for Flexible Automation Execution
One Big Record-Triggered Flow or Multiple?
Fast Field Updates in Record-Triggered Flows (Winter 22)
Migrate to Flow Best Practices
#Automation #CMDT #Configuration #CustomMetadata #DynamicAutomation #FlowManagement #RecordTriggered #Strategies
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The First 100 Days of CMMC And What Comes Next
NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE By Ryan Heidorn
“The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Following a multi-year rulemaking process, the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program crossed the regulatory finish line on Nov. 10.
For much of the defense industrial base, that moment carried a simple question — now that CMMC had moved from concept to reality, what would change first?
In the weeks that followed, there was no sudden surge of solicitations carrying CMMC requirements and no visible disruption to contracting operations.
Immediate disruption, however, was never the signal to watch. Nov. 10 was not a switch-flip moment where every contract suddenly changed, but the final regulatory step that collapsed uncertainty into inevitability, transforming CMMC from a long-debated future requirement into a permanent feature of defense acquisition.
The absence of visible disruption in the first weeks of CMMC was not surprising. What had changed was certainty — that a verified cybersecurity posture is now a condition of doing business with the department, not a sudden wave of enforcement actions.
For organizations that had already leaned into existing cybersecurity requirements, this marked a shift from designing for compliance to collecting, validating and organizing objective evidence in preparation for assessment.
For those that had maintained a wait-and-see approach, November carried a tangible cost. Qualified service providers and third-party assessors were already in high demand, and the timeline to move from minimal readiness to assessment-ready — often 12 to 18 months — remained unchanged. Organizations that delayed action risked entering 2026 at a competitive disadvantage.
Those early weeks began to expose which organizations had established effective operational governance, and which had deferred ownership decisions or assumed accountability would come later.
By the second month, pressure began to surface. This didn’t stem from deadlines, but from supply chain dynamics.
Prime contractors began communicating expectations to their supplier bases, asking whether organizations were prepared and what actions were underway. Under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 252.204-7021, primes must ensure that subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information hold a current CMMC certificate or status at the required level prior to award.
An unprepared supplier base can undermine performance or expose the prime to risk, driving urgency well before solicitations appear. Because primes do not know in advance which contracts will include CMMC requirements or at what level, ensuring preparation for all potential suppliers must happen ahead of demand.
Organizations that move the fastest prioritize repeatable processes and clear ownership rather than one-time remediation. One-off fixes may satisfy a checklist, but repeatable processes are what stand up to verification.
By the 96-day mark, a clear divide began to emerge between organizations that could say they had implemented the requirements and those that could withstand scrutiny. Proving compliance is not a step that occurs after implementation — it is a permanent operating condition.
In practice, CMMC readiness is rarely constrained by technology. Documentation, consistency and governance are more often the limiting factors. Security tooling without evidence of governance becomes invisible during assessment.
Critics of CMMC 2.0 have pointed to its shift away from maturity levels toward more blunt enforcement of existing requirements. But demonstrating conformity to the many perform-type assessment objectives in Level 2 requires operational maturity, not just tools.
Self-attestation has repeatedly failed to produce durable cybersecurity outcomes. Verification is therefore inevitable, and it is quickly becoming the standard currency of trust.
This model is not unique to defense and will propagate into other regulated ecosystems. The scale of this shift is significant.
The next phase will test operational discipline. Rather than a single enforcement trigger, the final rule embeds CMMC into acquisition through multiple discretionary decision points exercised by program offices and requiring activities. This structure makes uniform application unlikely and accelerates urgency unevenly across the market as the rule integrates into real acquisition workflows.
Some organizations will face intense pressure quickly, while others may feel little immediate impact. That inconsistency is not evidence of failure, but it reflects a program being applied inside day-to-day acquisition activity with varying levels of risk tolerance, mission criticality and data sensitivity.
Supply chain pressure will continue to concentrate where mission impact is high, data sensitivity is significant and the pool of qualified suppliers is limited. This asymmetry determines who feels pressure first and who has time to adapt.
Demand for third-party certification assessments will continue to grow, exposing capacity constraints not only among assessors but also across the broader implementation ecosystem. Organizations that wait to see a Level 2 certification requirement in a solicitation may find themselves competing for limited resources on timelines that cannot be compressed.
CMMC shifts accountability away from point-in-time compliance events toward continuous operational discipline. The pre-CMMC mindset no longer holds. Discrepancies between paperwork and practice are already the most common reason for those “Not Met” determinations during assessment.
Friction in the early rollout is already acting like a sorting mechanism, distinguishing organizations that operationalize compliance from those that rely on static documentation.
The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
Ryan Heidorn is chief technology officer at C3 Integrated Solutions.
#books #CMMCCompliance #governmentContracting #GovernmentContractors #news #technology -
The First 100 Days of CMMC And What Comes Next
NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE By Ryan Heidorn
“The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Following a multi-year rulemaking process, the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program crossed the regulatory finish line on Nov. 10.
For much of the defense industrial base, that moment carried a simple question — now that CMMC had moved from concept to reality, what would change first?
In the weeks that followed, there was no sudden surge of solicitations carrying CMMC requirements and no visible disruption to contracting operations.
Immediate disruption, however, was never the signal to watch. Nov. 10 was not a switch-flip moment where every contract suddenly changed, but the final regulatory step that collapsed uncertainty into inevitability, transforming CMMC from a long-debated future requirement into a permanent feature of defense acquisition.
The absence of visible disruption in the first weeks of CMMC was not surprising. What had changed was certainty — that a verified cybersecurity posture is now a condition of doing business with the department, not a sudden wave of enforcement actions.
For organizations that had already leaned into existing cybersecurity requirements, this marked a shift from designing for compliance to collecting, validating and organizing objective evidence in preparation for assessment.
For those that had maintained a wait-and-see approach, November carried a tangible cost. Qualified service providers and third-party assessors were already in high demand, and the timeline to move from minimal readiness to assessment-ready — often 12 to 18 months — remained unchanged. Organizations that delayed action risked entering 2026 at a competitive disadvantage.
Those early weeks began to expose which organizations had established effective operational governance, and which had deferred ownership decisions or assumed accountability would come later.
By the second month, pressure began to surface. This didn’t stem from deadlines, but from supply chain dynamics.
Prime contractors began communicating expectations to their supplier bases, asking whether organizations were prepared and what actions were underway. Under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 252.204-7021, primes must ensure that subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information hold a current CMMC certificate or status at the required level prior to award.
An unprepared supplier base can undermine performance or expose the prime to risk, driving urgency well before solicitations appear. Because primes do not know in advance which contracts will include CMMC requirements or at what level, ensuring preparation for all potential suppliers must happen ahead of demand.
Organizations that move the fastest prioritize repeatable processes and clear ownership rather than one-time remediation. One-off fixes may satisfy a checklist, but repeatable processes are what stand up to verification.
By the 96-day mark, a clear divide began to emerge between organizations that could say they had implemented the requirements and those that could withstand scrutiny. Proving compliance is not a step that occurs after implementation — it is a permanent operating condition.
In practice, CMMC readiness is rarely constrained by technology. Documentation, consistency and governance are more often the limiting factors. Security tooling without evidence of governance becomes invisible during assessment.
Critics of CMMC 2.0 have pointed to its shift away from maturity levels toward more blunt enforcement of existing requirements. But demonstrating conformity to the many perform-type assessment objectives in Level 2 requires operational maturity, not just tools.
Self-attestation has repeatedly failed to produce durable cybersecurity outcomes. Verification is therefore inevitable, and it is quickly becoming the standard currency of trust.
This model is not unique to defense and will propagate into other regulated ecosystems. The scale of this shift is significant.
The next phase will test operational discipline. Rather than a single enforcement trigger, the final rule embeds CMMC into acquisition through multiple discretionary decision points exercised by program offices and requiring activities. This structure makes uniform application unlikely and accelerates urgency unevenly across the market as the rule integrates into real acquisition workflows.
Some organizations will face intense pressure quickly, while others may feel little immediate impact. That inconsistency is not evidence of failure, but it reflects a program being applied inside day-to-day acquisition activity with varying levels of risk tolerance, mission criticality and data sensitivity.
Supply chain pressure will continue to concentrate where mission impact is high, data sensitivity is significant and the pool of qualified suppliers is limited. This asymmetry determines who feels pressure first and who has time to adapt.
Demand for third-party certification assessments will continue to grow, exposing capacity constraints not only among assessors but also across the broader implementation ecosystem. Organizations that wait to see a Level 2 certification requirement in a solicitation may find themselves competing for limited resources on timelines that cannot be compressed.
CMMC shifts accountability away from point-in-time compliance events toward continuous operational discipline. The pre-CMMC mindset no longer holds. Discrepancies between paperwork and practice are already the most common reason for those “Not Met” determinations during assessment.
Friction in the early rollout is already acting like a sorting mechanism, distinguishing organizations that operationalize compliance from those that rely on static documentation.
The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
Ryan Heidorn is chief technology officer at C3 Integrated Solutions.
#books #CMMCCompliance #governmentContracting #GovernmentContractors #news #technology -
The First 100 Days of CMMC And What Comes Next
NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE By Ryan Heidorn
“The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Following a multi-year rulemaking process, the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program crossed the regulatory finish line on Nov. 10.
For much of the defense industrial base, that moment carried a simple question — now that CMMC had moved from concept to reality, what would change first?
In the weeks that followed, there was no sudden surge of solicitations carrying CMMC requirements and no visible disruption to contracting operations.
Immediate disruption, however, was never the signal to watch. Nov. 10 was not a switch-flip moment where every contract suddenly changed, but the final regulatory step that collapsed uncertainty into inevitability, transforming CMMC from a long-debated future requirement into a permanent feature of defense acquisition.
The absence of visible disruption in the first weeks of CMMC was not surprising. What had changed was certainty — that a verified cybersecurity posture is now a condition of doing business with the department, not a sudden wave of enforcement actions.
For organizations that had already leaned into existing cybersecurity requirements, this marked a shift from designing for compliance to collecting, validating and organizing objective evidence in preparation for assessment.
For those that had maintained a wait-and-see approach, November carried a tangible cost. Qualified service providers and third-party assessors were already in high demand, and the timeline to move from minimal readiness to assessment-ready — often 12 to 18 months — remained unchanged. Organizations that delayed action risked entering 2026 at a competitive disadvantage.
Those early weeks began to expose which organizations had established effective operational governance, and which had deferred ownership decisions or assumed accountability would come later.
By the second month, pressure began to surface. This didn’t stem from deadlines, but from supply chain dynamics.
Prime contractors began communicating expectations to their supplier bases, asking whether organizations were prepared and what actions were underway. Under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 252.204-7021, primes must ensure that subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information hold a current CMMC certificate or status at the required level prior to award.
An unprepared supplier base can undermine performance or expose the prime to risk, driving urgency well before solicitations appear. Because primes do not know in advance which contracts will include CMMC requirements or at what level, ensuring preparation for all potential suppliers must happen ahead of demand.
Organizations that move the fastest prioritize repeatable processes and clear ownership rather than one-time remediation. One-off fixes may satisfy a checklist, but repeatable processes are what stand up to verification.
By the 96-day mark, a clear divide began to emerge between organizations that could say they had implemented the requirements and those that could withstand scrutiny. Proving compliance is not a step that occurs after implementation — it is a permanent operating condition.
In practice, CMMC readiness is rarely constrained by technology. Documentation, consistency and governance are more often the limiting factors. Security tooling without evidence of governance becomes invisible during assessment.
Critics of CMMC 2.0 have pointed to its shift away from maturity levels toward more blunt enforcement of existing requirements. But demonstrating conformity to the many perform-type assessment objectives in Level 2 requires operational maturity, not just tools.
Self-attestation has repeatedly failed to produce durable cybersecurity outcomes. Verification is therefore inevitable, and it is quickly becoming the standard currency of trust.
This model is not unique to defense and will propagate into other regulated ecosystems. The scale of this shift is significant.
The next phase will test operational discipline. Rather than a single enforcement trigger, the final rule embeds CMMC into acquisition through multiple discretionary decision points exercised by program offices and requiring activities. This structure makes uniform application unlikely and accelerates urgency unevenly across the market as the rule integrates into real acquisition workflows.
Some organizations will face intense pressure quickly, while others may feel little immediate impact. That inconsistency is not evidence of failure, but it reflects a program being applied inside day-to-day acquisition activity with varying levels of risk tolerance, mission criticality and data sensitivity.
Supply chain pressure will continue to concentrate where mission impact is high, data sensitivity is significant and the pool of qualified suppliers is limited. This asymmetry determines who feels pressure first and who has time to adapt.
Demand for third-party certification assessments will continue to grow, exposing capacity constraints not only among assessors but also across the broader implementation ecosystem. Organizations that wait to see a Level 2 certification requirement in a solicitation may find themselves competing for limited resources on timelines that cannot be compressed.
CMMC shifts accountability away from point-in-time compliance events toward continuous operational discipline. The pre-CMMC mindset no longer holds. Discrepancies between paperwork and practice are already the most common reason for those “Not Met” determinations during assessment.
Friction in the early rollout is already acting like a sorting mechanism, distinguishing organizations that operationalize compliance from those that rely on static documentation.
The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
Ryan Heidorn is chief technology officer at C3 Integrated Solutions.
#books #CMMCCompliance #governmentContracting #GovernmentContractors #news #technology -
The First 100 Days of CMMC And What Comes Next
NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE By Ryan Heidorn
“The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Following a multi-year rulemaking process, the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program crossed the regulatory finish line on Nov. 10.
For much of the defense industrial base, that moment carried a simple question — now that CMMC had moved from concept to reality, what would change first?
In the weeks that followed, there was no sudden surge of solicitations carrying CMMC requirements and no visible disruption to contracting operations.
Immediate disruption, however, was never the signal to watch. Nov. 10 was not a switch-flip moment where every contract suddenly changed, but the final regulatory step that collapsed uncertainty into inevitability, transforming CMMC from a long-debated future requirement into a permanent feature of defense acquisition.
The absence of visible disruption in the first weeks of CMMC was not surprising. What had changed was certainty — that a verified cybersecurity posture is now a condition of doing business with the department, not a sudden wave of enforcement actions.
For organizations that had already leaned into existing cybersecurity requirements, this marked a shift from designing for compliance to collecting, validating and organizing objective evidence in preparation for assessment.
For those that had maintained a wait-and-see approach, November carried a tangible cost. Qualified service providers and third-party assessors were already in high demand, and the timeline to move from minimal readiness to assessment-ready — often 12 to 18 months — remained unchanged. Organizations that delayed action risked entering 2026 at a competitive disadvantage.
Those early weeks began to expose which organizations had established effective operational governance, and which had deferred ownership decisions or assumed accountability would come later.
By the second month, pressure began to surface. This didn’t stem from deadlines, but from supply chain dynamics.
Prime contractors began communicating expectations to their supplier bases, asking whether organizations were prepared and what actions were underway. Under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 252.204-7021, primes must ensure that subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information hold a current CMMC certificate or status at the required level prior to award.
An unprepared supplier base can undermine performance or expose the prime to risk, driving urgency well before solicitations appear. Because primes do not know in advance which contracts will include CMMC requirements or at what level, ensuring preparation for all potential suppliers must happen ahead of demand.
Organizations that move the fastest prioritize repeatable processes and clear ownership rather than one-time remediation. One-off fixes may satisfy a checklist, but repeatable processes are what stand up to verification.
By the 96-day mark, a clear divide began to emerge between organizations that could say they had implemented the requirements and those that could withstand scrutiny. Proving compliance is not a step that occurs after implementation — it is a permanent operating condition.
In practice, CMMC readiness is rarely constrained by technology. Documentation, consistency and governance are more often the limiting factors. Security tooling without evidence of governance becomes invisible during assessment.
Critics of CMMC 2.0 have pointed to its shift away from maturity levels toward more blunt enforcement of existing requirements. But demonstrating conformity to the many perform-type assessment objectives in Level 2 requires operational maturity, not just tools.
Self-attestation has repeatedly failed to produce durable cybersecurity outcomes. Verification is therefore inevitable, and it is quickly becoming the standard currency of trust.
This model is not unique to defense and will propagate into other regulated ecosystems. The scale of this shift is significant.
The next phase will test operational discipline. Rather than a single enforcement trigger, the final rule embeds CMMC into acquisition through multiple discretionary decision points exercised by program offices and requiring activities. This structure makes uniform application unlikely and accelerates urgency unevenly across the market as the rule integrates into real acquisition workflows.
Some organizations will face intense pressure quickly, while others may feel little immediate impact. That inconsistency is not evidence of failure, but it reflects a program being applied inside day-to-day acquisition activity with varying levels of risk tolerance, mission criticality and data sensitivity.
Supply chain pressure will continue to concentrate where mission impact is high, data sensitivity is significant and the pool of qualified suppliers is limited. This asymmetry determines who feels pressure first and who has time to adapt.
Demand for third-party certification assessments will continue to grow, exposing capacity constraints not only among assessors but also across the broader implementation ecosystem. Organizations that wait to see a Level 2 certification requirement in a solicitation may find themselves competing for limited resources on timelines that cannot be compressed.
CMMC shifts accountability away from point-in-time compliance events toward continuous operational discipline. The pre-CMMC mindset no longer holds. Discrepancies between paperwork and practice are already the most common reason for those “Not Met” determinations during assessment.
Friction in the early rollout is already acting like a sorting mechanism, distinguishing organizations that operationalize compliance from those that rely on static documentation.
The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
Ryan Heidorn is chief technology officer at C3 Integrated Solutions.
#books #CMMCCompliance #governmentContracting #GovernmentContractors #news #technology -
The First 100 Days of CMMC And What Comes Next
NATIONAL DEFENSE MAGAZINE By Ryan Heidorn
“The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Following a multi-year rulemaking process, the Defense Department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program crossed the regulatory finish line on Nov. 10.
For much of the defense industrial base, that moment carried a simple question — now that CMMC had moved from concept to reality, what would change first?
In the weeks that followed, there was no sudden surge of solicitations carrying CMMC requirements and no visible disruption to contracting operations.
Immediate disruption, however, was never the signal to watch. Nov. 10 was not a switch-flip moment where every contract suddenly changed, but the final regulatory step that collapsed uncertainty into inevitability, transforming CMMC from a long-debated future requirement into a permanent feature of defense acquisition.
The absence of visible disruption in the first weeks of CMMC was not surprising. What had changed was certainty — that a verified cybersecurity posture is now a condition of doing business with the department, not a sudden wave of enforcement actions.
For organizations that had already leaned into existing cybersecurity requirements, this marked a shift from designing for compliance to collecting, validating and organizing objective evidence in preparation for assessment.
For those that had maintained a wait-and-see approach, November carried a tangible cost. Qualified service providers and third-party assessors were already in high demand, and the timeline to move from minimal readiness to assessment-ready — often 12 to 18 months — remained unchanged. Organizations that delayed action risked entering 2026 at a competitive disadvantage.
Those early weeks began to expose which organizations had established effective operational governance, and which had deferred ownership decisions or assumed accountability would come later.
By the second month, pressure began to surface. This didn’t stem from deadlines, but from supply chain dynamics.
Prime contractors began communicating expectations to their supplier bases, asking whether organizations were prepared and what actions were underway. Under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 252.204-7021, primes must ensure that subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information hold a current CMMC certificate or status at the required level prior to award.
An unprepared supplier base can undermine performance or expose the prime to risk, driving urgency well before solicitations appear. Because primes do not know in advance which contracts will include CMMC requirements or at what level, ensuring preparation for all potential suppliers must happen ahead of demand.
Organizations that move the fastest prioritize repeatable processes and clear ownership rather than one-time remediation. One-off fixes may satisfy a checklist, but repeatable processes are what stand up to verification.
By the 96-day mark, a clear divide began to emerge between organizations that could say they had implemented the requirements and those that could withstand scrutiny. Proving compliance is not a step that occurs after implementation — it is a permanent operating condition.
In practice, CMMC readiness is rarely constrained by technology. Documentation, consistency and governance are more often the limiting factors. Security tooling without evidence of governance becomes invisible during assessment.
Critics of CMMC 2.0 have pointed to its shift away from maturity levels toward more blunt enforcement of existing requirements. But demonstrating conformity to the many perform-type assessment objectives in Level 2 requires operational maturity, not just tools.
Self-attestation has repeatedly failed to produce durable cybersecurity outcomes. Verification is therefore inevitable, and it is quickly becoming the standard currency of trust.
This model is not unique to defense and will propagate into other regulated ecosystems. The scale of this shift is significant.
The next phase will test operational discipline. Rather than a single enforcement trigger, the final rule embeds CMMC into acquisition through multiple discretionary decision points exercised by program offices and requiring activities. This structure makes uniform application unlikely and accelerates urgency unevenly across the market as the rule integrates into real acquisition workflows.
Some organizations will face intense pressure quickly, while others may feel little immediate impact. That inconsistency is not evidence of failure, but it reflects a program being applied inside day-to-day acquisition activity with varying levels of risk tolerance, mission criticality and data sensitivity.
Supply chain pressure will continue to concentrate where mission impact is high, data sensitivity is significant and the pool of qualified suppliers is limited. This asymmetry determines who feels pressure first and who has time to adapt.
Demand for third-party certification assessments will continue to grow, exposing capacity constraints not only among assessors but also across the broader implementation ecosystem. Organizations that wait to see a Level 2 certification requirement in a solicitation may find themselves competing for limited resources on timelines that cannot be compressed.
CMMC shifts accountability away from point-in-time compliance events toward continuous operational discipline. The pre-CMMC mindset no longer holds. Discrepancies between paperwork and practice are already the most common reason for those “Not Met” determinations during assessment.
Friction in the early rollout is already acting like a sorting mechanism, distinguishing organizations that operationalize compliance from those that rely on static documentation.
The first 100 days of CMMC were never meant to be dramatic. The signal lies not in what happened immediately, but what is now unavoidable.
In its first year, expect imperfect translation, conservative interpretation and inconsistent execution. These are not signs of failure; they are signs that CMMC has moved from policy theory into operational reality.”
Ryan Heidorn is chief technology officer at C3 Integrated Solutions.
#books #CMMCCompliance #governmentContracting #GovernmentContractors #news #technology -
‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant
Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.
Think about what that speed means. If you could travel at ‘c’, you could zip around the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in a single second—literally faster than your neurons can process the act of blinking itself. This incredible velocity is why, in our everyday lives, light appears instantaneous. Flip a switch, and the room is lit. There’s no perceptible delay. But the universe is vast, and on cosmic scales, even light takes its sweet, observable time.
One of the most profound insights, largely attributable to Albert Einstein, is that ‘c’ isn’t just the speed of light; it’s the speed of causality. It’s the universe’s ultimate speed limit for any information or influence to travel. Nothing with mass can reach it, and anything massless, like photons or gluons — the force carriers of the strong nuclear force –must propagate at this speed in vacuum. However, unlike photons, gluons are confined within atomic nuclei and never observed traveling freely through empty space. This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental rule woven into the fabric of spacetime. If you could break it, you could, in theory, send information back in time, leading to all sorts of paradoxical headaches. So, the constancy of the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer, is a cornerstone of Special Relativity, with bizarre and beautiful consequences like time dilation and length contraction. Essentially, the universe conspires to keep ‘c’ constant for everyone, and it does so by manipulating space and time themselves.
Here’s something many people miss: the speed of light isn’t just about seeing things. It’s about interaction. When you look at the Sun, you’re seeing it as it was about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago because that’s how long it took the light to travel the ~150 million kilometers to Earth. But it’s not just photons; any gravitational influence from the Sun also propagates at ‘c’. If, hypothetically and impossibly (since this would violate fundamental conservation laws), the Sun were to vanish instantaneously, we wouldn’t know it — either by sight or gravitational pul — for those same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This interconnectedness, this speed limit for all fundamental forces, is what makes ‘c’ so much more than just how fast light travels. One could metaphorically think of it as the propagation speed of the universe’s fundamental interactions, akin to the operating system that governs cosmic processes.
Another layer of complexity to consider is how ‘c’ dictates our perception of “now.” When astronomers observe a galaxy billions of light-years away, they literally look billions of years into the past. The light hitting their telescopes began its journey when the universe was much younger. Telescopes become time machines. But it also means there’s no universal “now.” This reflects the profound insight known as the “relativity of simultaneity,” meaning your “now” differs fundamentally from the “now” of distant observers, such as those in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light-years away), because any information exchange between you is inherently delayed by at least 2.5 million years. This fundamentally undermines the classical Newtonian concept of absolute simultaneity across the universe. Instead, we have an intricate web of cause and effect, all governed by the finite speed of light.
Perhaps one of the most subtle yet profound implications is how ‘c’ acts as a conversion factor between mass and energy in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Here, ‘c²’ (the speed of light squared) is an enormous number, highlighting just how much energy is locked away in even tiny amounts of mass. This isn’t an arbitrary constant; it’s the constant that reveals the fundamental equivalence of mass and energy, reshaping human history — from nuclear power to our understanding of stellar evolution. Thus, the speed of light isn’t just a velocity; it’s a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of matter and energy.
So, while its sheer velocity is difficult to internalize, the speed of light is far more than just “fast.” It’s a fundamental constant shaping our reality, defining our ability to observe the universe, limiting the speed of all interactions, and bridging the concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. It’s the universe’s ultimate traffic cop, ensuring cosmic order is maintained. Understanding it isn’t just about comprehending a big number; it’s about appreciating the intricate and elegant rules governing the cosmos.
Okay, let’s keep unraveling the implications of this cosmic speed limit. We’ve discussed its foundational role in physics and how it governs our perception of the universe. Now, let’s bring it closer to home and then stretch our minds to the very edges of what’s knowable.
Consider the technology powering our modern world. The global positioning system (GPS) in your phone or car relies critically on the constancy and finite speed of light. GPS satellites send signals to your receiver, and by precisely timing these signals’ arrivals, your receiver calculates distances from multiple satellites, pinpointing your location. But here’s the kicker: those satellites move rapidly and exist in weaker gravitational fields than Earth’s surface. Special Relativity predicts GPS satellite clocks tick about 7 microseconds per day slower due to their speed, while General Relativity predicts clocks tick about 45 microseconds per day faster due to weaker gravity. Without accounting for these relativistic effects (a net difference of about 38 microseconds daily), GPS would accumulate significant errors within hours. Thus, every time you navigate, you’re benefiting from our understanding of ‘c’ and its deep connection to space and time.
The finite speed of light also imposes real limits on our ambitions in the digital realm and space exploration. That slight delay in video calls across continents results largely from the time signals take traveling thousands of kilometers. Similarly, supercomputer performance is increasingly limited by the “light-travel time” across microchips. When NASA communicates with Mars rovers, there’s an unavoidable delay ranging from about 3 to 22 minutes each way, dependent upon the varying orbital positions of Earth and Mars around the Sun. Mission controllers can’t “joystick” a rover in real-time; they must patiently await results after sending command sequences.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between the speed of light in a vacuum (‘c’) and its speed in other materials. When light travels through water, glass, or air, it slows due to photon interactions with atoms. While individual photons always propagate at ‘c’, their interactions with atomic structures — absorption and re-emission processes at the quantum level—result in an effectively slower average speed of the wavefront through the medium. This causes refraction, explaining phenomena like a straw appearing bent in water. The fundamental cosmic speed limit, ‘c’, always refers specifically to propagation in a vacuum.
Lastly, to reiterate a subtle point often missed: ‘c’ is the speed of all massless particles and fundamental force fields. When gravitational waves were directly detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2015 — and spectacularly corroborated with electromagnetic observations of a neutron star collision (GW170817) in 2017 — it confirmed gravitational waves indeed travel at precisely the speed of light, as Einstein predicted.
This brings us to the observable universe’s edge. Because light travels at a finite speed and the universe has a finite age (about 13.8 billion years), there’s a boundary, known as the “particle horizon,” marking the maximum distance from which light has traveled since the Big Bang. It differs subtly yet importantly from the “event horizon,” beyond which events occurring now can never become observable due to cosmic expansion. This boundary humbles us; we are surrounded by a vast, potentially infinite reality, yet can access only a finite portion, thanks entirely to the universe’s ultimate speed limit. It makes the light we do receive from distant quasars and ancient galaxies all the more precious.
#c #delay #egocentrism #einstein #fundamental #galaxy #light #speed #stars #time #universe #vacuum
-
‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant
Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.
Think about what that speed means. If you could travel at ‘c’, you could zip around the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in a single second—literally faster than your neurons can process the act of blinking itself. This incredible velocity is why, in our everyday lives, light appears instantaneous. Flip a switch, and the room is lit. There’s no perceptible delay. But the universe is vast, and on cosmic scales, even light takes its sweet, observable time.
One of the most profound insights, largely attributable to Albert Einstein, is that ‘c’ isn’t just the speed of light; it’s the speed of causality. It’s the universe’s ultimate speed limit for any information or influence to travel. Nothing with mass can reach it, and anything massless, like photons or gluons — the force carriers of the strong nuclear force –must propagate at this speed in vacuum. However, unlike photons, gluons are confined within atomic nuclei and never observed traveling freely through empty space. This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental rule woven into the fabric of spacetime. If you could break it, you could, in theory, send information back in time, leading to all sorts of paradoxical headaches. So, the constancy of the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer, is a cornerstone of Special Relativity, with bizarre and beautiful consequences like time dilation and length contraction. Essentially, the universe conspires to keep ‘c’ constant for everyone, and it does so by manipulating space and time themselves.
Here’s something many people miss: the speed of light isn’t just about seeing things. It’s about interaction. When you look at the Sun, you’re seeing it as it was about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago because that’s how long it took the light to travel the ~150 million kilometers to Earth. But it’s not just photons; any gravitational influence from the Sun also propagates at ‘c’. If, hypothetically and impossibly (since this would violate fundamental conservation laws), the Sun were to vanish instantaneously, we wouldn’t know it — either by sight or gravitational pul — for those same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This interconnectedness, this speed limit for all fundamental forces, is what makes ‘c’ so much more than just how fast light travels. One could metaphorically think of it as the propagation speed of the universe’s fundamental interactions, akin to the operating system that governs cosmic processes.
Another layer of complexity to consider is how ‘c’ dictates our perception of “now.” When astronomers observe a galaxy billions of light-years away, they literally look billions of years into the past. The light hitting their telescopes began its journey when the universe was much younger. Telescopes become time machines. But it also means there’s no universal “now.” This reflects the profound insight known as the “relativity of simultaneity,” meaning your “now” differs fundamentally from the “now” of distant observers, such as those in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light-years away), because any information exchange between you is inherently delayed by at least 2.5 million years. This fundamentally undermines the classical Newtonian concept of absolute simultaneity across the universe. Instead, we have an intricate web of cause and effect, all governed by the finite speed of light.
Perhaps one of the most subtle yet profound implications is how ‘c’ acts as a conversion factor between mass and energy in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Here, ‘c²’ (the speed of light squared) is an enormous number, highlighting just how much energy is locked away in even tiny amounts of mass. This isn’t an arbitrary constant; it’s the constant that reveals the fundamental equivalence of mass and energy, reshaping human history — from nuclear power to our understanding of stellar evolution. Thus, the speed of light isn’t just a velocity; it’s a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of matter and energy.
So, while its sheer velocity is difficult to internalize, the speed of light is far more than just “fast.” It’s a fundamental constant shaping our reality, defining our ability to observe the universe, limiting the speed of all interactions, and bridging the concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. It’s the universe’s ultimate traffic cop, ensuring cosmic order is maintained. Understanding it isn’t just about comprehending a big number; it’s about appreciating the intricate and elegant rules governing the cosmos.
Okay, let’s keep unraveling the implications of this cosmic speed limit. We’ve discussed its foundational role in physics and how it governs our perception of the universe. Now, let’s bring it closer to home and then stretch our minds to the very edges of what’s knowable.
Consider the technology powering our modern world. The global positioning system (GPS) in your phone or car relies critically on the constancy and finite speed of light. GPS satellites send signals to your receiver, and by precisely timing these signals’ arrivals, your receiver calculates distances from multiple satellites, pinpointing your location. But here’s the kicker: those satellites move rapidly and exist in weaker gravitational fields than Earth’s surface. Special Relativity predicts GPS satellite clocks tick about 7 microseconds per day slower due to their speed, while General Relativity predicts clocks tick about 45 microseconds per day faster due to weaker gravity. Without accounting for these relativistic effects (a net difference of about 38 microseconds daily), GPS would accumulate significant errors within hours. Thus, every time you navigate, you’re benefiting from our understanding of ‘c’ and its deep connection to space and time.
The finite speed of light also imposes real limits on our ambitions in the digital realm and space exploration. That slight delay in video calls across continents results largely from the time signals take traveling thousands of kilometers. Similarly, supercomputer performance is increasingly limited by the “light-travel time” across microchips. When NASA communicates with Mars rovers, there’s an unavoidable delay ranging from about 3 to 22 minutes each way, dependent upon the varying orbital positions of Earth and Mars around the Sun. Mission controllers can’t “joystick” a rover in real-time; they must patiently await results after sending command sequences.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between the speed of light in a vacuum (‘c’) and its speed in other materials. When light travels through water, glass, or air, it slows due to photon interactions with atoms. While individual photons always propagate at ‘c’, their interactions with atomic structures — absorption and re-emission processes at the quantum level—result in an effectively slower average speed of the wavefront through the medium. This causes refraction, explaining phenomena like a straw appearing bent in water. The fundamental cosmic speed limit, ‘c’, always refers specifically to propagation in a vacuum.
Lastly, to reiterate a subtle point often missed: ‘c’ is the speed of all massless particles and fundamental force fields. When gravitational waves were directly detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2015 — and spectacularly corroborated with electromagnetic observations of a neutron star collision (GW170817) in 2017 — it confirmed gravitational waves indeed travel at precisely the speed of light, as Einstein predicted.
This brings us to the observable universe’s edge. Because light travels at a finite speed and the universe has a finite age (about 13.8 billion years), there’s a boundary, known as the “particle horizon,” marking the maximum distance from which light has traveled since the Big Bang. It differs subtly yet importantly from the “event horizon,” beyond which events occurring now can never become observable due to cosmic expansion. This boundary humbles us; we are surrounded by a vast, potentially infinite reality, yet can access only a finite portion, thanks entirely to the universe’s ultimate speed limit. It makes the light we do receive from distant quasars and ancient galaxies all the more precious.
#c #delay #egocentrism #einstein #fundamental #galaxy #light #speed #stars #time #universe #vacuum
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‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant
Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.
Think about what that speed means. If you could travel at ‘c’, you could zip around the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in a single second—literally faster than your neurons can process the act of blinking itself. This incredible velocity is why, in our everyday lives, light appears instantaneous. Flip a switch, and the room is lit. There’s no perceptible delay. But the universe is vast, and on cosmic scales, even light takes its sweet, observable time.
One of the most profound insights, largely attributable to Albert Einstein, is that ‘c’ isn’t just the speed of light; it’s the speed of causality. It’s the universe’s ultimate speed limit for any information or influence to travel. Nothing with mass can reach it, and anything massless, like photons or gluons — the force carriers of the strong nuclear force –must propagate at this speed in vacuum. However, unlike photons, gluons are confined within atomic nuclei and never observed traveling freely through empty space. This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental rule woven into the fabric of spacetime. If you could break it, you could, in theory, send information back in time, leading to all sorts of paradoxical headaches. So, the constancy of the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer, is a cornerstone of Special Relativity, with bizarre and beautiful consequences like time dilation and length contraction. Essentially, the universe conspires to keep ‘c’ constant for everyone, and it does so by manipulating space and time themselves.
Here’s something many people miss: the speed of light isn’t just about seeing things. It’s about interaction. When you look at the Sun, you’re seeing it as it was about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago because that’s how long it took the light to travel the ~150 million kilometers to Earth. But it’s not just photons; any gravitational influence from the Sun also propagates at ‘c’. If, hypothetically and impossibly (since this would violate fundamental conservation laws), the Sun were to vanish instantaneously, we wouldn’t know it — either by sight or gravitational pul — for those same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This interconnectedness, this speed limit for all fundamental forces, is what makes ‘c’ so much more than just how fast light travels. One could metaphorically think of it as the propagation speed of the universe’s fundamental interactions, akin to the operating system that governs cosmic processes.
Another layer of complexity to consider is how ‘c’ dictates our perception of “now.” When astronomers observe a galaxy billions of light-years away, they literally look billions of years into the past. The light hitting their telescopes began its journey when the universe was much younger. Telescopes become time machines. But it also means there’s no universal “now.” This reflects the profound insight known as the “relativity of simultaneity,” meaning your “now” differs fundamentally from the “now” of distant observers, such as those in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light-years away), because any information exchange between you is inherently delayed by at least 2.5 million years. This fundamentally undermines the classical Newtonian concept of absolute simultaneity across the universe. Instead, we have an intricate web of cause and effect, all governed by the finite speed of light.
Perhaps one of the most subtle yet profound implications is how ‘c’ acts as a conversion factor between mass and energy in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Here, ‘c²’ (the speed of light squared) is an enormous number, highlighting just how much energy is locked away in even tiny amounts of mass. This isn’t an arbitrary constant; it’s the constant that reveals the fundamental equivalence of mass and energy, reshaping human history — from nuclear power to our understanding of stellar evolution. Thus, the speed of light isn’t just a velocity; it’s a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of matter and energy.
So, while its sheer velocity is difficult to internalize, the speed of light is far more than just “fast.” It’s a fundamental constant shaping our reality, defining our ability to observe the universe, limiting the speed of all interactions, and bridging the concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. It’s the universe’s ultimate traffic cop, ensuring cosmic order is maintained. Understanding it isn’t just about comprehending a big number; it’s about appreciating the intricate and elegant rules governing the cosmos.
Okay, let’s keep unraveling the implications of this cosmic speed limit. We’ve discussed its foundational role in physics and how it governs our perception of the universe. Now, let’s bring it closer to home and then stretch our minds to the very edges of what’s knowable.
Consider the technology powering our modern world. The global positioning system (GPS) in your phone or car relies critically on the constancy and finite speed of light. GPS satellites send signals to your receiver, and by precisely timing these signals’ arrivals, your receiver calculates distances from multiple satellites, pinpointing your location. But here’s the kicker: those satellites move rapidly and exist in weaker gravitational fields than Earth’s surface. Special Relativity predicts GPS satellite clocks tick about 7 microseconds per day slower due to their speed, while General Relativity predicts clocks tick about 45 microseconds per day faster due to weaker gravity. Without accounting for these relativistic effects (a net difference of about 38 microseconds daily), GPS would accumulate significant errors within hours. Thus, every time you navigate, you’re benefiting from our understanding of ‘c’ and its deep connection to space and time.
The finite speed of light also imposes real limits on our ambitions in the digital realm and space exploration. That slight delay in video calls across continents results largely from the time signals take traveling thousands of kilometers. Similarly, supercomputer performance is increasingly limited by the “light-travel time” across microchips. When NASA communicates with Mars rovers, there’s an unavoidable delay ranging from about 3 to 22 minutes each way, dependent upon the varying orbital positions of Earth and Mars around the Sun. Mission controllers can’t “joystick” a rover in real-time; they must patiently await results after sending command sequences.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between the speed of light in a vacuum (‘c’) and its speed in other materials. When light travels through water, glass, or air, it slows due to photon interactions with atoms. While individual photons always propagate at ‘c’, their interactions with atomic structures — absorption and re-emission processes at the quantum level—result in an effectively slower average speed of the wavefront through the medium. This causes refraction, explaining phenomena like a straw appearing bent in water. The fundamental cosmic speed limit, ‘c’, always refers specifically to propagation in a vacuum.
Lastly, to reiterate a subtle point often missed: ‘c’ is the speed of all massless particles and fundamental force fields. When gravitational waves were directly detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2015 — and spectacularly corroborated with electromagnetic observations of a neutron star collision (GW170817) in 2017 — it confirmed gravitational waves indeed travel at precisely the speed of light, as Einstein predicted.
This brings us to the observable universe’s edge. Because light travels at a finite speed and the universe has a finite age (about 13.8 billion years), there’s a boundary, known as the “particle horizon,” marking the maximum distance from which light has traveled since the Big Bang. It differs subtly yet importantly from the “event horizon,” beyond which events occurring now can never become observable due to cosmic expansion. This boundary humbles us; we are surrounded by a vast, potentially infinite reality, yet can access only a finite portion, thanks entirely to the universe’s ultimate speed limit. It makes the light we do receive from distant quasars and ancient galaxies all the more precious.
#c #delay #egocentrism #einstein #fundamental #galaxy #light #speed #stars #time #universe #vacuum
-
‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant
Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.
Think about what that speed means. If you could travel at ‘c’, you could zip around the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in a single second—literally faster than your neurons can process the act of blinking itself. This incredible velocity is why, in our everyday lives, light appears instantaneous. Flip a switch, and the room is lit. There’s no perceptible delay. But the universe is vast, and on cosmic scales, even light takes its sweet, observable time.
One of the most profound insights, largely attributable to Albert Einstein, is that ‘c’ isn’t just the speed of light; it’s the speed of causality. It’s the universe’s ultimate speed limit for any information or influence to travel. Nothing with mass can reach it, and anything massless, like photons or gluons — the force carriers of the strong nuclear force –must propagate at this speed in vacuum. However, unlike photons, gluons are confined within atomic nuclei and never observed traveling freely through empty space. This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental rule woven into the fabric of spacetime. If you could break it, you could, in theory, send information back in time, leading to all sorts of paradoxical headaches. So, the constancy of the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer, is a cornerstone of Special Relativity, with bizarre and beautiful consequences like time dilation and length contraction. Essentially, the universe conspires to keep ‘c’ constant for everyone, and it does so by manipulating space and time themselves.
Here’s something many people miss: the speed of light isn’t just about seeing things. It’s about interaction. When you look at the Sun, you’re seeing it as it was about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago because that’s how long it took the light to travel the ~150 million kilometers to Earth. But it’s not just photons; any gravitational influence from the Sun also propagates at ‘c’. If, hypothetically and impossibly (since this would violate fundamental conservation laws), the Sun were to vanish instantaneously, we wouldn’t know it — either by sight or gravitational pul — for those same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This interconnectedness, this speed limit for all fundamental forces, is what makes ‘c’ so much more than just how fast light travels. One could metaphorically think of it as the propagation speed of the universe’s fundamental interactions, akin to the operating system that governs cosmic processes.
Another layer of complexity to consider is how ‘c’ dictates our perception of “now.” When astronomers observe a galaxy billions of light-years away, they literally look billions of years into the past. The light hitting their telescopes began its journey when the universe was much younger. Telescopes become time machines. But it also means there’s no universal “now.” This reflects the profound insight known as the “relativity of simultaneity,” meaning your “now” differs fundamentally from the “now” of distant observers, such as those in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light-years away), because any information exchange between you is inherently delayed by at least 2.5 million years. This fundamentally undermines the classical Newtonian concept of absolute simultaneity across the universe. Instead, we have an intricate web of cause and effect, all governed by the finite speed of light.
Perhaps one of the most subtle yet profound implications is how ‘c’ acts as a conversion factor between mass and energy in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Here, ‘c²’ (the speed of light squared) is an enormous number, highlighting just how much energy is locked away in even tiny amounts of mass. This isn’t an arbitrary constant; it’s the constant that reveals the fundamental equivalence of mass and energy, reshaping human history — from nuclear power to our understanding of stellar evolution. Thus, the speed of light isn’t just a velocity; it’s a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of matter and energy.
So, while its sheer velocity is difficult to internalize, the speed of light is far more than just “fast.” It’s a fundamental constant shaping our reality, defining our ability to observe the universe, limiting the speed of all interactions, and bridging the concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. It’s the universe’s ultimate traffic cop, ensuring cosmic order is maintained. Understanding it isn’t just about comprehending a big number; it’s about appreciating the intricate and elegant rules governing the cosmos.
Okay, let’s keep unraveling the implications of this cosmic speed limit. We’ve discussed its foundational role in physics and how it governs our perception of the universe. Now, let’s bring it closer to home and then stretch our minds to the very edges of what’s knowable.
Consider the technology powering our modern world. The global positioning system (GPS) in your phone or car relies critically on the constancy and finite speed of light. GPS satellites send signals to your receiver, and by precisely timing these signals’ arrivals, your receiver calculates distances from multiple satellites, pinpointing your location. But here’s the kicker: those satellites move rapidly and exist in weaker gravitational fields than Earth’s surface. Special Relativity predicts GPS satellite clocks tick about 7 microseconds per day slower due to their speed, while General Relativity predicts clocks tick about 45 microseconds per day faster due to weaker gravity. Without accounting for these relativistic effects (a net difference of about 38 microseconds daily), GPS would accumulate significant errors within hours. Thus, every time you navigate, you’re benefiting from our understanding of ‘c’ and its deep connection to space and time.
The finite speed of light also imposes real limits on our ambitions in the digital realm and space exploration. That slight delay in video calls across continents results largely from the time signals take traveling thousands of kilometers. Similarly, supercomputer performance is increasingly limited by the “light-travel time” across microchips. When NASA communicates with Mars rovers, there’s an unavoidable delay ranging from about 3 to 22 minutes each way, dependent upon the varying orbital positions of Earth and Mars around the Sun. Mission controllers can’t “joystick” a rover in real-time; they must patiently await results after sending command sequences.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between the speed of light in a vacuum (‘c’) and its speed in other materials. When light travels through water, glass, or air, it slows due to photon interactions with atoms. While individual photons always propagate at ‘c’, their interactions with atomic structures — absorption and re-emission processes at the quantum level—result in an effectively slower average speed of the wavefront through the medium. This causes refraction, explaining phenomena like a straw appearing bent in water. The fundamental cosmic speed limit, ‘c’, always refers specifically to propagation in a vacuum.
Lastly, to reiterate a subtle point often missed: ‘c’ is the speed of all massless particles and fundamental force fields. When gravitational waves were directly detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2015 — and spectacularly corroborated with electromagnetic observations of a neutron star collision (GW170817) in 2017 — it confirmed gravitational waves indeed travel at precisely the speed of light, as Einstein predicted.
This brings us to the observable universe’s edge. Because light travels at a finite speed and the universe has a finite age (about 13.8 billion years), there’s a boundary, known as the “particle horizon,” marking the maximum distance from which light has traveled since the Big Bang. It differs subtly yet importantly from the “event horizon,” beyond which events occurring now can never become observable due to cosmic expansion. This boundary humbles us; we are surrounded by a vast, potentially infinite reality, yet can access only a finite portion, thanks entirely to the universe’s ultimate speed limit. It makes the light we do receive from distant quasars and ancient galaxies all the more precious.
#c #delay #egocentrism #einstein #fundamental #galaxy #light #speed #stars #time #universe #vacuum
-
‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant
Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.
Think about what that speed means. If you could travel at ‘c’, you could zip around the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in a single second—literally faster than your neurons can process the act of blinking itself. This incredible velocity is why, in our everyday lives, light appears instantaneous. Flip a switch, and the room is lit. There’s no perceptible delay. But the universe is vast, and on cosmic scales, even light takes its sweet, observable time.
One of the most profound insights, largely attributable to Albert Einstein, is that ‘c’ isn’t just the speed of light; it’s the speed of causality. It’s the universe’s ultimate speed limit for any information or influence to travel. Nothing with mass can reach it, and anything massless, like photons or gluons — the force carriers of the strong nuclear force –must propagate at this speed in vacuum. However, unlike photons, gluons are confined within atomic nuclei and never observed traveling freely through empty space. This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a fundamental rule woven into the fabric of spacetime. If you could break it, you could, in theory, send information back in time, leading to all sorts of paradoxical headaches. So, the constancy of the speed of light, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer, is a cornerstone of Special Relativity, with bizarre and beautiful consequences like time dilation and length contraction. Essentially, the universe conspires to keep ‘c’ constant for everyone, and it does so by manipulating space and time themselves.
Here’s something many people miss: the speed of light isn’t just about seeing things. It’s about interaction. When you look at the Sun, you’re seeing it as it was about 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago because that’s how long it took the light to travel the ~150 million kilometers to Earth. But it’s not just photons; any gravitational influence from the Sun also propagates at ‘c’. If, hypothetically and impossibly (since this would violate fundamental conservation laws), the Sun were to vanish instantaneously, we wouldn’t know it — either by sight or gravitational pul — for those same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This interconnectedness, this speed limit for all fundamental forces, is what makes ‘c’ so much more than just how fast light travels. One could metaphorically think of it as the propagation speed of the universe’s fundamental interactions, akin to the operating system that governs cosmic processes.
Another layer of complexity to consider is how ‘c’ dictates our perception of “now.” When astronomers observe a galaxy billions of light-years away, they literally look billions of years into the past. The light hitting their telescopes began its journey when the universe was much younger. Telescopes become time machines. But it also means there’s no universal “now.” This reflects the profound insight known as the “relativity of simultaneity,” meaning your “now” differs fundamentally from the “now” of distant observers, such as those in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light-years away), because any information exchange between you is inherently delayed by at least 2.5 million years. This fundamentally undermines the classical Newtonian concept of absolute simultaneity across the universe. Instead, we have an intricate web of cause and effect, all governed by the finite speed of light.
Perhaps one of the most subtle yet profound implications is how ‘c’ acts as a conversion factor between mass and energy in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². Here, ‘c²’ (the speed of light squared) is an enormous number, highlighting just how much energy is locked away in even tiny amounts of mass. This isn’t an arbitrary constant; it’s the constant that reveals the fundamental equivalence of mass and energy, reshaping human history — from nuclear power to our understanding of stellar evolution. Thus, the speed of light isn’t just a velocity; it’s a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of matter and energy.
So, while its sheer velocity is difficult to internalize, the speed of light is far more than just “fast.” It’s a fundamental constant shaping our reality, defining our ability to observe the universe, limiting the speed of all interactions, and bridging the concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. It’s the universe’s ultimate traffic cop, ensuring cosmic order is maintained. Understanding it isn’t just about comprehending a big number; it’s about appreciating the intricate and elegant rules governing the cosmos.
Okay, let’s keep unraveling the implications of this cosmic speed limit. We’ve discussed its foundational role in physics and how it governs our perception of the universe. Now, let’s bring it closer to home and then stretch our minds to the very edges of what’s knowable.
Consider the technology powering our modern world. The global positioning system (GPS) in your phone or car relies critically on the constancy and finite speed of light. GPS satellites send signals to your receiver, and by precisely timing these signals’ arrivals, your receiver calculates distances from multiple satellites, pinpointing your location. But here’s the kicker: those satellites move rapidly and exist in weaker gravitational fields than Earth’s surface. Special Relativity predicts GPS satellite clocks tick about 7 microseconds per day slower due to their speed, while General Relativity predicts clocks tick about 45 microseconds per day faster due to weaker gravity. Without accounting for these relativistic effects (a net difference of about 38 microseconds daily), GPS would accumulate significant errors within hours. Thus, every time you navigate, you’re benefiting from our understanding of ‘c’ and its deep connection to space and time.
The finite speed of light also imposes real limits on our ambitions in the digital realm and space exploration. That slight delay in video calls across continents results largely from the time signals take traveling thousands of kilometers. Similarly, supercomputer performance is increasingly limited by the “light-travel time” across microchips. When NASA communicates with Mars rovers, there’s an unavoidable delay ranging from about 3 to 22 minutes each way, dependent upon the varying orbital positions of Earth and Mars around the Sun. Mission controllers can’t “joystick” a rover in real-time; they must patiently await results after sending command sequences.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between the speed of light in a vacuum (‘c’) and its speed in other materials. When light travels through water, glass, or air, it slows due to photon interactions with atoms. While individual photons always propagate at ‘c’, their interactions with atomic structures — absorption and re-emission processes at the quantum level—result in an effectively slower average speed of the wavefront through the medium. This causes refraction, explaining phenomena like a straw appearing bent in water. The fundamental cosmic speed limit, ‘c’, always refers specifically to propagation in a vacuum.
Lastly, to reiterate a subtle point often missed: ‘c’ is the speed of all massless particles and fundamental force fields. When gravitational waves were directly detected by LIGO and Virgo in 2015 — and spectacularly corroborated with electromagnetic observations of a neutron star collision (GW170817) in 2017 — it confirmed gravitational waves indeed travel at precisely the speed of light, as Einstein predicted.
This brings us to the observable universe’s edge. Because light travels at a finite speed and the universe has a finite age (about 13.8 billion years), there’s a boundary, known as the “particle horizon,” marking the maximum distance from which light has traveled since the Big Bang. It differs subtly yet importantly from the “event horizon,” beyond which events occurring now can never become observable due to cosmic expansion. This boundary humbles us; we are surrounded by a vast, potentially infinite reality, yet can access only a finite portion, thanks entirely to the universe’s ultimate speed limit. It makes the light we do receive from distant quasars and ancient galaxies all the more precious.
#c #delay #egocentrism #einstein #fundamental #galaxy #light #speed #stars #time #universe #vacuum
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Short Story Review: Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)
Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the sixth installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s ruminative “Wanderers and Travellers” in International Science Fiction, ed. Frederik Pohl (November 1967).
Please note that Rachel and I are interested in learning about a large range of authors and works vs. only tracking down the best. That means we’ll encounter some stinkers. Thankfully, not this time! We got a powerful one.
Unfortunately, Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021) does not exist online. Thankfully, a large range of her SF stories were translated and published in two volumes by Verso books with various translators. You can acquire Terminal Boredom (2021) and Hit Parade of Tears (2023) at relatively inexpensive prices online. Recommended.
“Terminal Boredom” dose double-duty as the 35th installment of my review series on media landscapes of the future.
Previously: George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966).
Up Next: TBD
Enjoy!
Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review
In an article on the “iconoclast” Japanese sf writer Izumi Suzuki, Andrew Ridker distills her stories down to three words: “Ambivalence, disappointment, resignation: Suzuki’s stories speak so eloquently to our burnt-out moment that it’s easy to forget the importance of her cultural context” (LitHub, 5/7/21). We are indeed burnt out, more burnt out even than when Ridker was writing just four years ago. It’s now 2025 and time to face the fact that Facebook and YouTube have been around for over twenty years. The iPhone has been around for nearly that long, and for an entire year, the world was turned upside down during a pandemic, during which time we were even more closely connected to our devices. We’re burnt out by phones, by the rapidly-developing world of AI, by the streaming services that offer us so many choices that it’s nearly impossible to pick something to watch.
It’s almost as if Suzuki foresaw this moment, for her story “Terminal Boredom” is about this addiction to technology, though since her piece was written in the 1980s, it’s television—not the smartphone—that has snared everyone. The protagonist/narrator, a nameless young woman (everyone is nameless in this story) leads a dreary life, with very few job prospects and only television to keep her company. In fact, everyone is very connected to their tvs—so connected, that they’ve started having devices wired into their brains to make the watching experience more immersive. As the narrator’s mother explains, “When the monitor is turned on, it begins to stimulate the brain. The subject no longer has to flip the switch each time; instead, a weak electrical current is transmitted automatically at appropriate intervals” (204).
Despite the ubiquity of tv, real conversations do happen. Three of these conversations make up the bulk of “Terminal Boredom”–two are with the narrator’s sometime “boyfriend,” while the other is the aforementioned talk with her mother. Only referred to as “HE” and “HIM,” the boyfriend talks to the narrator about another girlfriend he has who actually wants to have a baby the “old fashioned way.” The narrator marvels at this and both think about how the people of their parents’ generation seem to have so much energy and drive, while their generation has none of that—the tv has taken over everything. Now, with these devices connected to their brains, people can feel as if they are participating in the story they’re watching, which is more interesting than their boring, real lives.
During this conversation, the two witness a man beat a woman to death on the street. Capturing it on film, the boyfriend later tells the narrator that he finds it thrilling and plays it over and over again in his room. As he explains “I end up putting a frame around everything I see…It makes it seem fresh, helps me relax as a viewer” (200). This eruption of violence into a tv-addicted, tightly-constrained society, where one isn’t allowed to linger in a public place for more than twenty minutes, is what makes this story so unnerving. The narrator finds herself thinking about her parents’ divorce and her father’s remarriage, only to then find out from that second wife that her father committed suicide. At the end of the story, her boyfriend asks her to help him kill his pregnant girlfriend because he doesn’t want the responsibility—he just wants to “slip quietly into oblivion, all by myself.” He tries to convince the narrator with “[t]hink of it as a TV show. Pretend you’re an actor” (216). Only violence ultimately gets a reaction out of the narrator, since she winds up crying for the first time in her life.
The constant stimulation from the TV has wound up dulling the narrator’s mind (as it has everyone else’s), such that the tendency toward a sedentary lifestyle has made them all weak and tired. And yet, the fact that the narrator has extended conversations with the two main people in her life (despite her brief, dull answers), offers a spark of hope—that she, as someone who hasn’t yet adopted the brain device, might still be able to think for herself and do something—anything—that might make life have meaning again. One gets the sense that what has happened to the larger society wasn’t an accident—the brief glimpses of an oppressive police state suggest that a passive society is an easily-patrolled one. Breaking out of her boredom would require the narrator to rebel against more than just her tendency to sit and watch tv.
Suzuki’s story is part of a larger collection that offers us a window into unusual worlds. Her work fits into the larger, complex, and wonderfully varied universe of Japanese science fiction, which blossomed after World War II, energized by the American sf that flooded it during the US occupation. Some of the best translated science/speculative fiction to come to American readers over the past 60 years, in my opinion, has been Japanese, including that by Yoshiki Tanaka, Yoko Ogawa, Mariko Ohara, Hoshi Shinichi, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Kobo Abe, Koji Suzuki, Taiyo Fujii, and so many more. Here one can find everything from space opera and body horror to har science fiction and surrealism. For Anglophone readers, Izumi Suzuki can take her place alongside these writers, with two collections now out in English.
A work of simmering horror and technological dystopia, “Terminal Boredom” will make you want to read more Izumi Suzuki and explore her grim, dark worlds.
- Cover photo by Nobuyoshi Araki for the 1st edition of Terminal Boredom (2021)
Joachim Boaz’s Review
4.5/5 (Very Good)
A Preliminary Note about the Verso edition that I wish I didn’t have to make: It’s a shame that the editors of Terminal Boredom (2021) did not commission an introduction about Izumi Suzuki and her place in the larger Japanese literary/SF world or even include the original Japanese publication dates for seven stories included. I identified the date for “Terminal Boredom” (1984) and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (1979) from a Japanese-language website and “Women and Women” (1977, rev. 1978) from SF Encyclopedia. It’s embarrassing/lazy that this information isn’t included in the edition. If you know of the rest of the publication dates for “You May Dream”, “Night Picnic”, “That Old Seaside Club”, and “Forgotten” in the collection let me know. As the organization appears to be chronological, I assume they were published between 1977-1984.
I imagine you’ve heard of the Japanese hikikomori, reclusive individuals withdrawn from social life, seeking “extreme degrees of isolation and confinement” often due to the pressures of modern Japanese society. Izumi Suzuki, more than a decade before psychiatrist Tamaki Saitō researched and popularized the term, imagines a similar phenomenon facilitated by new patterns of media consumption on an epic, and destructive, scale. There are a lot of angles to approach “Terminal Boredom” (1984), and its place within Suzuki’s work (both fiction and film). I imagine someone far more immersed in Japanese society and culture could tackle her take on gender and society in a more adept manner than myself! With that in mind, I will, as always, engage with an element that particular spoke to me: Sukuzi’s rendering of the media landscape of the future.
First a few words about the basic plot. A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions with “HE,” her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room (“or something”) in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him (193). She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the “aboveground” (191). Both youth find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.
One of the recurrent patterns illustrating societal change Suzuki deploys is the TV frame (“ultravision”) as the new way of engagement with the world. Elections, if you can call them that, seem to be conducted via TV celebrities–people vote for a celebrity who then somehow chooses from a slate of candidates (195). Restaurants brag about their TV programs instead of their food. She confesses “it’s hard to relax without something to look at” (193). HE mixes up the real and the unreal. In one instance he watches a woman being beaten: he poses, in front of the bloody woman, as if an actor in a scene from a TV show (199). He purchases an illegal copy of the beating, recorded by an observer, to relive the experience. And, as the horrifying finality of the tale sets in the appearance of a futuristic tech to connect with a program, ultravision becomes the only way seeing and feeling.
It’s punchy yet quiet. And like a Michael Haneke film, I found it possessed an unnerving ability to get under the skin.1 Suzuki has an adept ability to render the conversation, mentalities, and actions of the disaffected and deeply depressed: “Come on, how often do you think I can do something like that? It’s exhausting” (192) (a conversation about sex). Highly recommended.
Notes
- I’m thinking The Lost Continent (1989) and Benny’s Video (1992). Both rank amongst my most disquieting filmic experiences. ↩︎
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#1980s #avantGarde #bookReviews #IzumiSuzuki #Japan #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology
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Article SpeedsterGallery Speedster Espresso Machine Orman Dial Speedster and GS3 Shot Pull Speedster Badging User Angles Speedster Drip Tray First Peek Speedster Crate Speedster, Day One Shot Pull Early Shot Pulls on the Speedster Speedster Service Speedster Shifter Preinfusion Piston Chopped Portafilter PID Control Whereto Buy Manufacturer Website Buy from Supplier coffeegeek advertisers make this website possible.
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Back in 2001, a fellow by the name of Kees van der Westen had already made a big name for himself as an artist with metalwork and someone who loved espresso and the technology behind it. He’d designed one-off machines for some of the top echelon of the espresso world for almost two decades by that point, including machines showcased at La Marzocco, used at Espresso Vivace, and dreamed of by a yet to be started up roastery in Portland known as Stumptown. He was well into the run of building his fabled Mistral lineup of machines, using La Marzocco parts; mainly from Lineas.
van der Westen had spare machine parts in ample supply because he was the distributor and service agent for La Marzocco in Holland at the time. Lineas were La Marzocco’s sole machine during that period, but van der Westen also had a collection of old GS/2 machines – single and double groups – at a time when La Marzocco had long ceased production of the machine. As he puts it himself on his website,
“Through the years we acquired some of the old type paddle-groups from the GS machines. As we could not bring ourselves to dump these we eventually decided to use these in a fun-project: building a small series of one-group machines, especially designed to use these groups for their proper purpose. This machine was called Speedster.”
The Speedster of that era was about as old school inside as you could get. It featured the original GS’s same-size boilers used for both brewing and steaming. It was almost entirely mechanical, with no temperature stability or state of the art electronics. It did however feature three key things – the iconic and revolutionary La Marzocco paddle group; the aforementioned dual boiler setup; and the complete uniqueness of van der Westen’s design skills.
Original Speedster
One of the six original Speedsters built in 2001; features La Marzocco boilers, paddle group.
Only six were built. I first saw the Speedster back in 2002 when I was at La Marzocco’s Seattle office for a meeting about developing the machine that would eventually become the GS/3. Kent Bakke was one of the purchasers of those Speedsters and had it proudly on display in his showroom at La Marzocco. I still remember my first glimpse of the machine, and this was after I’d been wow’ed by another van der Westen artwork piece Bakke owned and had on display: the Zizi lever group machine. As impressive (and big) as the Zizi was, the Speedster almost seemed on a different plane. Where the Zizi was huge and a lever and a complete work of art (definitely forsaking a certain amount of usability for the art), the Speedster encompassed art, design, style, and usability. It was small. It had dual boilers. It had a GS/2 paddle group. It was completely unique. I’d never seen a machine like it before.I even got a chance to pull shots on it, and immediately felt this was a singular moment in my coffee and espresso career (and to put that into perspective, I was at a meeting for the development of the GS/3!). Everything “clicked” – the machine felt comfortable. It steamed exceptionally well. The paddle group put you, as a barista, in direct connection with the machine. It was tight, light, solid, beautiful, industrial, exceptional all at the same time. From that very moment onward, I had it in my mind that, if I ever won a million dollars, I’d make an offer on this machine so I could own my own – and the offer wouldn’t be cheap. After all, van der Westen built only six of these and by 2002, was already saying that was that – there were six and there would be no more.I finally met van der Westen in 2004 at a trade show and we immediately hit it off. He’s a dynamic, energetic fellow (who ironically enough does not like to be photographed); and there’s a clear passion for espresso, espresso technology and art within the man. My first questions to him were “so when are you going to build the Speedster again?” and I got a surprise answer: “find me the guts to a well working GS/2 and I’d be happy to build one!”. I’m not sure if he was joking or not, but I do know two things – I did in fact search for a reasonably priced GS/2 I could salvage and send to van der Westen (hint: I never found one), and secondly, he never did build another paddle group Speedster as far as I know.Over the years, I stayed in contact with van der Westen, and the subject of the Speedster would always come up – are you building them again? Send me a GS/2 and I will. How about a lever Speedster? Oh, you’re a crazy man, Prince.Then in early 2008, during an email conversation with him, van der Westen dropped a bomb: he decided he needed a one group machine to complement and supplement his current line up of state-of-the-art and exceptionally beautiful Mirages and (licensed to La Marzocco) Mistrals, and that one group machine would be a next generation Speedster.It was right at that moment I started socking away $200 a month into a special savings account. And some 18 months later, I became the proud owner of a next-generation Speedster espresso machine from Kees van der Westen.AboutThe Machine
There’s not much I could write about the technological innards of the Speedster that van der Westen hasn’t already fully detailed himself on his website – but I’ll give it a go, at least from a third party perspective. It’s also important to note that the machine has already seen upgrades and will continue to do so.
The Speedster ships quite complete. In the crate you’ll find:
- all necessary tubing, pressure tubes, connections, etc.
- water softener machine.
- the pump.
- single spout and double spout portafilter (or a chopped portafilter if you ordered one), teflon lined (chopped PFs are not teflon lined).
- Kees van der Westen custom tamper, height adjustable. Heavy, beautiful, mirror polish finish.
- custom Speedster espresso cups – two. These are ltd edition though.
- a cleaning brush (a clone of the Pallo design) in aluminum.
- spare gaskets, filter baskets, blind filter.
- aluminum tamping stand.
- Speedster t-shirt (again ltd item, once gone, no more).
- Speedster instruction manual including setup instructions.
- cleaner.
Little things like the brush, cups, t-shirt, and bigger things like the way-cool tamper make a big difference to the overall package. Seems complete. About the only thing missing is the grinder. By comparison a La Marzocco GS/3 comes with a plastic tamper, bottle of cleaner, two PFs and little else. And no grinder either.
The Speedster Espresso Machine is about as state of the art inside as you can get in today’s espresso world, and is quite different from the 2001 era Speedster, at least inside. The machine is built around a dual boiler, dual PID (proportional–integral–derivative) controller setup to deliver brewing water, heating water and steam.
The boilers feature the latest go-to technology in espresso: the 3.5 litre steam boiler is fitted with a heat exchanger to provide pre-heated water for the smaller 2.3 litre brew boiler. This technology was initially developed for the GS/3 to help with power consumption but it was also found to increase temperature stability, especially shot-to-shot-to-shot performance in all machines, Along with the Speedster, some of the most technologically advanced machines in the world feature this design, including the La Marzocco FB80 and GB/5 series, and the Synesso machines.
Both boilers are controlled via solid state relays, a much more reliable and efficient way to control the heating elements over the old mechanical relays. They are also virtually silent, and much less prone to break down (or wearing down) compared to the older style of relays most machines have.
Taking a peek inside the Speedster takes all of two minutes: four side bolts and three hex bolts in the back and both the side panels and top panel slide off easily. If you’ve seen earlier interior photos of the Speedster (2008 version), things have changed a bit. There are no less than four electronic Parker solenoid valves controlling everything from steam boiler refill to water mix, to injecting the preinfusion chamber unique to the Speedster (and Mirage line from van der Westen). Initially, the Speedster had the steam boiler PID on the right side of the machine, accessible through a maze of copper tubing, but that has since moved to the more clean left side. Also gone from the initial 2008 version is the internal adjustable mix valve the Speedster offered for hot water dispensing; instead there’s a very unique dual mode hot water option available via a front panel rocker switch.
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There is so much to the design of this machine that is unique and ground breaking.
Let me focus on that one bit for a second. The Speedster’s two ginormous dial handles up front were traditionally for steam (the left side) and hot water (the right side). But on the 2009 edition of the Speedster, the right side dial handle is for show and aesthetics only because accessing hot water on this machine is accomplished via a rocker switch on the right front panel.
Why a rocker switch? van der Westen heard feedback from many professional baristas regarding hot water from a machine. Some wanted a mix valve, pulling both water from a steam boiler (above boiling, usually 275F) and line water (72F) so the resulting water pulled into a cup could be below boiling or usually around 200F. Others wanted steam boiler only water (275F but “flashes” to 212F as it comes out of the tap) for the heat.
van der Westen devised a system in 2009 that provided both, via microswitches, solenoids and computer control and the result was the rocker switch activation for hot water. Flip the switch upward and the hot water tap feeds steam boiler-only water. Flip it down, and you get mixed water – steam boiler and line water – for approximately 200F water at the tap head. Quite ingenious.
Here’s a few more visual features.
An elongated "acorn" tip, this is easily one of the best tips we've ever used in the CoffeeGeek Lab. The tip has four small holes; the other included tip (the "Mistral Tip") is the same design with bigger holes. The Speedster uses top-of-the-line Fuji PID controllers for both boilers; the one up front is for the brew boiler, but the K1/K2 are indicators for both PIDs (K1 is front boiler PID). Programming the temperatures is as easy as pressing P for a second and adjusting up or down. Offset can be programmed in (as it is here). The maze of tubing you see is primarily the heat exchanger tubing, running outside the boilers to cool down HX water before it gets to the brew boiler. This is the drip tray mount (there's one on each leg up front). It can be slid up or down to give an extra inch in tray height. This is the up / down rocker switch for delivering two temperatures of hot water. The screwless dispersion screen; note the centre doesn't have the hole-perforations - that is to further disperse water (which can drain in the middle from the dispersion block) Flipped up for photographing, the hot water tap's wide articulation of motion and well engineered flow dispersion is top of the line.I focused on the hot water delivery to prove a point about this machine and about the person who builds it: Kees van der Westen is a details man. Pretty much every aspect of this machine, from the aesthetics, to the usability, to the technology inside shows a supreme attention to detail by an artist and engineer who “gets” modern day espresso.
This isn’t a machine designed by someone who’s building for 10,000 units sold in Spain, or 25,000 units sold in China, where niceties such as temperature stability, steaming ability or manual controls are not valued much. This is machine designed by someone who gets what the modern day professional barista demands from a state of the art espresso brewer. It shows in every single aspect of the machine’s design and function.
SpeedsterPreinfusion System
This is where the Speedster really starts to stand out. When it was first announced that the machine was going to be built again in limited numbers, the prototype machines that van der Westen showed at the Copenhagen World Barista Championships in 2008 were missing something obvious – it was no longer a paddle group machine. Instead, brewing was done via a three-position shift lever on the right side of the front panel.
Preinfusion Piston
Piston is fully engaged (sticking out of the machine) showing full preinfusion.
Here is another example of van der Westen’s brilliance in engineering design – two areas actually. He fully understands the allure and hands-on control that La Marzocco’s 20+ year technology known as the paddle group offered to a professional barista for crafting a shot of espresso. So do Synesso and Slayer – their machines feature paddles for hands on control of preinfusion. van der Westen also believes that the lever group design (for spring piston lever espresso machines) offers the best form of preinfusion and coffee saturation today, which is why his Mirage machine line up includes the Idrocompresso variant.
van der Westen found a way to marry three key desired methodologies in espresso machines – dual boilers, manual preinfusion, piston lever enabled preinfusion – into one machine controlled by solid state relays and PIDs – and this is what makes the Speedster entirely unique. The Mirage lineup are heat exchanger machines (single boilers with heat exchangers for the groupheads); the Speedster is a dual boiler machine that still encompasses all the best from two other machine technologies.
How it works is a bit difficult to explain but we’ll try here. When water for brewing first comes into the machine it actually goes through a heat exchanger in the steam boiler. It gets heated up quite a bit – hotter than what is adequate for brewing in fact – but the machine’s design takes that into account. The brewing water exits the steam boiler heat exchanger and goes through over 50cms (almost 2 feet) of copper tubing that snakes around the back-right side of the machine. The tubing eventually makes it into the brew boiler, where the water is now just slightly below usual boiler water temperature settings.
The brew boiler’s PID is constantly turning on and off the heating element to manage the temperature to 0.1F / 0.1C ranges. At this point the water is approximately 3-4F hotter than your customised brewing temperature (if you’ve programmed the front PID to have a pre-programmed offset).
When you move the shift lever away from its off position, a microswitch is disengaged and one of the machine’s two brewing water solenoids is re-engaged (the one right behind the groupcap) to keep the pressure-release path closed, and the other brewing water solenoid on the right front of the machine is disengaged, allowing water flow from the line pressure (3bar usually) to start flowing into a preinfusion chamber which sits just behind the right front panel.
While this small chamber (not unlike the size and shape of a lever piston’s water chamber) starts filling up with water, the water also flows at normal atmospheric pressure to the grouphead where your coffee is sitting. For approximately 5 to 6 seconds, if you don’t engage the machine’s pump, the coffee is saturated with water being pushed by nothing more than gravity. You also get a visual indication of this via the preinfusion chamber’s most notable design feature – there is a spring-loaded piston that starts to jut out from the front panel of the Speedster as the chamber fills up. As it fully extends, pressure in the grouphead ramps up from normal pressure to 3bar (about 60psi). It will hold steady at this point as long as you don’t move the brewing shift lever to its third position – the pump position.
Shifting the machine into ‘second gear’ means ratcheting the shift lever down to the lowest position and slotting it left into the locked position. At this point, a second microswitch is engaged and the pump starts, delivering 9bar through both the preinfusion chamber and solenoid to start the true espresso brewing process.
Shifting off the second gear lock position does one thing, and one thing only – it disengages the pump. If you don’t put the shift lever back up into the neutral or starting position, the machine keeps the group cap solenoid engaged (ie back pressure is not released) and the preinfusion chamber solenoid disengaged (ie, open flow to grouphead from boiler water); what this means is you can do a preinfusion, brewing via pump, and a post brew using line pressure, if you want. Whether this is a boon or not for espresso brewing quality is not for deciding here – instead, I mention it to show the possibilities a hands-on barista has for fully manipulating water flow and pressure during the entire shot process.
Putting the shift lever back into the neutral position does two things – it closes the brew boiler / preinfusion chamber solenoid, and opens up the back pressure solenoid to instantly relieve the pressure in the brewing group.
On last thing about this preinfusion system. There’s actually two ways it works. If you ratchet the brewing shift lever into the first position (first gear we call it here), you as the barista control the preinfusion and the preinfusion is quite slow since it is entirely based on line water pressure (60psi, 3bar), and not pump pressure (135psi, 9bar). But you can use the van der Westen-designed “programmed” preinfusion by simply ratcheting the shift lever directly into position two (second gear) and letting the preinfusion chamber fill up via pump pressure. It is a faster preinfusion, but a neutral pressure preinfusion none-the-less.
Let’s have a visual look at some of these features.
One of the things that makes the Speedster so special - it's shift lever brewing activation system. The shift lever arm is perforated, and can ratchet into the first position, right onto that metal bracket sticking out midway - ratcheting below that moves it into pump position. A lot of people ask what this is. You show them by brewing a shot. The interior of the shift lever system. Here, at the neutral or off position, it is depressing the top metal microswitch (with a roller-wheel ending for smooth control) Here, in "1st Gear", the arm is not pressing any microswitch - at this stage, the pressure relief solenoid is closed, but the line water solenoid is open, preinfusing the bed of coffee. Here, in the "2nd gear" position, the second microswitch is pressed, which engages the machine's pump. It also does other things, like tell the machine's brains to not auto-fill the steam boiler at this time (to make sure 100% of the attention and power of the machine goes to shot brewing) Here, before starting a shot, the preinfusion piston is flush with the rest of the mounting. As the preinfusion commences, the chamber behind this piston is filling up, and the piston itself starts to extend out. Preinfusion continues; if the machine is in 1st gear, it is fairly slow as line pressure slowly builds up. If it were in 2nd gear, this would come out approximately 40% faster. At this stage (about 6-7 seconds in on line preinfusion, or 3-4 seconds in on pump preinfusion), the chamber is almost full. Water on the bed of coffee is still below 3bar pressure. Once the piston stops moving, the puck is then saturated with a full 3bar of pressure (or will ramp up to 9bar if you're direct into second gear). I ordered the machine with an optional chopped portafilter. The finish on it is quite nice - not re-chromed, but polished, buff and smooth at the chop. Connect with us on Social Media MastodonFacebook-fInstagramYoutube SearchSearch coffeegeek advertisers make this website possible.
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The Speedster features three 900 watt heating elements – two in the steam boiler (left and right) and one in the brewing boiler. It runs on 220V, 20amp service, and requires special electrical hookup in N. America in a home environment – you cannot plug this machine into a standard 110V 15amp (or 20amp) plug.
The Speedster also requires plumbing in. You could run it off a water bottle setup with a Flo-jet handling the preinfusion, but to get the full benefits of the multi-preinfusion systems, running a cold water line from a T-valve off your kitchen’s sink is a requirement, not an option.
Little niceties about the machine include the use of POM plastic for the dispersion block inside the grouphead – something I don’t think any other espresso machine uses (at least that I know of). POM is extremely durable, temperature neutral, and very resistant to any kind of oils contamination from the coffee. The dispersion screens are a screwless design (similar to E61 machines) and the grouphead itself is a fully saturated design – the grouphead is in effect part of the brewing boiler – its volume of water is part of the brewing boiler’s overall volume.
There are so many more technological things to talk about with regards to the Speedster but the last we’ll discuss is something that is both elegantly simple and painfully obvious but you have to wonder why something like this is rarely done by other machine builders. The Speedster has a very simple and accessible boiler draining system. If you take the left panel off the machine, you can see two beefy pipes extending out from the two boilers at the bottom of each. These pipes come to the right border of the machine’s frame and have caps on the front and shiny red levers on top. When the machine is cooled down all you need to do to completely drain the boilers is remove the caps, attach hoses to the pipes and open the valves. No bendy-twisty actions to get to a bottom-capped boiler drain. No flipping the machine this way and that to access them. Simple. Elegant. Efficient.
You'll find the dual-ball design of this gear lever for activating brewing to be very comfortable once you use the machine for a few shots. The Speedster next to a La Marzocco GS3 The switch is huge, and easy to access. I never turn this thing off though. The drains on the right side of the machine. Clear. Big. Accessible. And very bright candy-red turning dials.These water drains are a perfect example of what this machine is all about – a complete, state of the art espresso machine designed by a company that pays attention to the smallest most minute details.
SpeedsterAesthetics
It was evident the moment this machine was taken out of its crate – the Speedster is something special, and part of that special-ness comes from the absolute attention to details this machine has been given by the manufacturer.
From the business side of the machine (the operational front), you feel like you’re operating a 1950s roadster, or perhaps even a racer-airplane and facing the dash or control panel. The portafilter evokes feelings of a joystick in a retro plane. The shifter on the right side is super slick and tends to catch most new users by surprise.
Speedster First Day
The Speedster (before offset was programmed in) from the user angle.
From the side, the roadster and retro-aeronautic feelings continue, but as you get around to the back of the machine, it feels like a 1950s flying wing or slight-steam-punk alien bug ship. All very cool.
The side panels. What really can I say, except to say photos don’t even do them justice. In person, they are a major wow factor. The high gloss polish on the aluminum panels is broken up by the carved out powder-coated yellow stripes and red lettering. Just stunning. Polish is inside as well as out.The plating on the machine, known commercially as “perlage” or engine tuned plating is first rate, and blemish free.
I own a a fair bit of hand built products. I had a locally hand built mountain bike for some time. I have a variety of hand built coffee and espresso machine products. I feel I can safely say this: There is no product I’ve seen that is hand built, one a time that has the level of fit and finish the Speedster has. Heck, even where there are metal and plastic washers (like on the drip tray frame bar mounts), the plastic washers are lined up perfectly with the metal washers – I know because when I went to go adjust the height of the drip tray and re-tightened the bolts, I put the plastic washers slightly out of alignment (easy to do).
There is not a single dirty /scorched weld on this machine. There are no gaps. Every single seam, angle, joinery, weld, curve and physical part on the outside of the machine is flawless. I noticed it right away in the drip tray’s design and build: given the angular, “floating on air” nature of the drip tray and drip tray cover, I half expected to see weld scorch marks in hidden areas or where metal has been joined with metal, but there are none. All the bends are precise. All the welds are flawless and polish-finished. All the pieces align perfectly.
You can see it from every angle on the machine – for as much attention that has been given to the internal construction of the Speedster, at least as much (if not more) has been given to the fit and finish. In preparation for this first look I scoured the machine front to back, side to side and top to bottom to find one flaw, no matter how small, in the build quality.
I found none.
Compare this to the GS/3. We have a paddle group model in the CoffeeGeek Lab and it is an amazing machine technologically, but the aesthetics are very meh, and the fit and finish is questionable at times. You can see weld scorch marks on the upper cup tray of the GS/3 for example. You can wiggle around the cup tray and drip tray because the fit isn’t terribly precise. The side panels on my original GS/3 paddle group had misaligned mounting bolts making it quite difficult to remove the left side panel.
The Speedster has none of these issues. It is in a completely different league when it comes to aesthetics, quality of build and fit and finish. I cannot say it enough: I have never seen an espresso machine with such a complete attention to every minute detail as I have with the Speedster. It sets a completely new standard.
SpeedsterUsability
Usually aesthetics and usability in an industrial product are mutually exclusive – or at the very least, a case of 60% one way, 40% the other way. Usually something has to give. On the Speedster, there’s very little give in the usability department when compared to the aesthetics. Let’s get the usability quirks out of the way first.
The drip tray is a gorgeous piece of the artwork puzzle on the Speedster. From the user viewpoint, it hangs in mid air with seemingly no supports. It cuts a wide arrow shape out from the body towards one of the Four “M”s (that’d be you), and is wide and spacious. But the top tray, the perforated part, is only held in place by gravity, a small “lip”overhanging the back end of the tray, and by virtue of the sides sitting on the angled basin of the tray. In short, it kind of slides around, mainly when you’re cleaning the tray. It is not an issue when brewing shots. This is an entirely minor thing and to show you how good this machine is, probably my biggest gripe.
The gauges are also a bit hard to read from the user’s standpoint. They are on the front panels of the machine but seem angled downward somewhat and you have to drop lower to fully read them.
The rocker switch for the multi-choice hot water gives the appearance of being flimsy (it actually isn’t – its more of a perception) and very minutely out of place on the machine. Most other elements are beefy (the steam and hot water handle dials, the shift lever), so the long narrow rocker switch seems different.
The grouphead and portafilter position is quite low – at the factory-setting, the drip tray is in its uppermost position (it is height adjustable by about an inch) and the spouts on the double portafilter barely clear an illy espresso cup by 3cm; cappuccino cups clear it by maybe 1cm. For my use this is perfect – I rarely brew into anything larger than a latte wide-bowl cup, but for some it may be an inconvenience – you won’t be fitting your 16oz mug under a spouted portafilter.
Probably the last thing to mention in the negative column isn’t really a negative at all – it is the result of something very positive about the machine. The steam boiler’s intake is fed by a 0.6mm gicleur valve to slow down the boiler refill and keep the temperatures rock steady solid in the steam boiler. This is by design. It makes the machine even more temperature stable than even the best from Synesso and La Marzocco (at least those without a 0.6mm gicleur on the steam boiler). The downside is when you first fill the machine it takes quite a bit longer than other similar sized boilers and when you access steam boiler hot water, the refill via the pump runs a bit longer. A very minor thing and an excellent tradeoff for amazing temperature ability.
The drip tray with portafilter in place. From the user perspective it appears the drip tray floats in air without any visible support. Also note the angled back plate - it's a "poor man's" mirror, showing an exposed portafilter pour without needing to bend underneath. The fit and finish is very visible here - special bends, polishing rough edges, intricate cuts. Nothing is missed on the build of this machine. bends, polishing rough edges, intricate cuts. Nothing is missed on the build of this machine.There's a weld in there!In the drip tray basin, there are welds, but you'd be hard pressed to find some of them. They are polished, finished off, and no scorch marks. Here, the top trip tray sits on the drip tray basin. You're dealing with angles, bent metal, slopes and such, but it all fits perfectly. The machine's batching details, including serial number. Kees' has a super sweet logo The dials are very retro, black, white lettering, fire engine red dials. the machine plating is first rate. Note no gaps at all between the front plate and side aluminum panels - though they are not attached at all to each other. This is the pump pressure dial. It shows status of preinfusion and pump pressure.Onto the positives in usability. Well, just about everything! The grouphead’s gasket accessibility is literally the best I’ve ever worked with. Accessing the PID for the brew boiler is a breeze – it is right up front, dead centre on the machines lower front panel. Use the shift lever for a week and it feels like the most natural way to control brewing espresso that has ever existed. The machine is quiet, rattle free, and extremely solid on the counter.
The hot water wand articulates into the middle of the machine – a very good design which at first may seem to go against the machine’s aesthetic look. But trust me, you want the hot water over the drip tray, not over the side of the tray. Articulation is quite extensive too – you can rotate it on a near 180-360 degree plane on both vertical and horizontal axis (and other axis too, I guess). What I’m trying to say is you can point the water wand almost anywhere on the right side of the drip tray. It is hot touch, but has a rubber grabber on it that is nice and big but not ugly (nothing on this machine is ugly).
Using the three position shift lever for brewing is something that at first seems weird, but quickly becomes natural for brewing espresso and as you fine tune your preinfusion and brewing technique, you’ll wonder why this kind of brewing system isn’t on every machine. It actually works quite similar to the way a paddle group operates – move to one position and the line valves to the grouphead open up. Move to another position and you engage the pump. After one week, the Speedster’s brewing control seemed incredibly natural.
Viewing a shot as it develops is extremely easy on this machine – there are no blocked ‘sight lines’. Because of the nature of the exposed grouphead and groupcap, the portafilter spouts sit out in the open, not obscured in any way by other parts of the machine. People sitting to the side of the machine can see a shot develop just as well as the operator or people standing in front.
Let me focus on one particular aspect of usability – steaming. This machine is of course a manual steamer, meaning you control the steam through a variable control dial handle, and there are no gizmos or froth aiders to help impede things. The steam boiler is rated to handle 3.0+ bar of pressure (most commercial machines top out at 1.8 or 2.2bar) meaning that it is a complete steam monster in terms of power – it comes factory preset to run at around 2.3bar, and you can easily modify the steam boiler’s PID up or down by removing the left side panel and accessing it.
The machine ships with two steaming tips – the stock one (the “Speedster tip”) is a bit of a limiter in that the four holes are small and restrict the full steaming pressure somewhat, making it easy to steam 12oz pitchers. The other included tip (the “Mirage tip”) has four bigger holes and will fully utilize the steam boiler’s ample steam production.
I definitely do not need the bigger-hole tip. With the slightly restricted tip, I was steaming and frothing in 24oz pitchers (starting with about 12oz of milk) in under 15 seconds. Doing 5oz of milk in a 12oz pitcher takes less than 10 seconds (I haven’t timed it yet, but it is closer to 7 seconds than 10). What amazed me was that, even for all that power (the GS/3 takes twice as long), I was creating beautiful microfoam and had great control over the steaming from the very first pitcher. Part of it is the valve system the Speedster uses – there’s actually quite a bit of control over the amount of steam you use via the dial. Where most steam knob dials go from nothing to full power with very little turn, you have a radius of at least 2 hours (ie from noon to 2pm on a clock face) adjustment possible on the Speedster to fine tune how much steam you’re releasing down the pipe. I have not found another machine with more fine tuning control over the volume of steam.
The machine is also extremely serviceable. As mentioned previously, 4 side bolts (twist off by hand) and three hex bolts at the back of the machine are all that are needed to remove before you can take off the side panels and top plate. I’ve done it in under 1 minute. Almost everything is accessible at this point, save for the water line connections. For me this is a huge usability gain.
Ordering aSpeedster
If you want a Speedster you can order it direct from Kees van der Westen, or order one through a local distributor.
Two things to factor in. This machine costs 4,975 Euros (approximately $7,800 Canadian dollars, or $7,200 US dollars as of this writing), and you will have to pay shipping ($350 sea, $620 air), duties and taxes (9% duty in Canada plus your local PST and GST), bringing the cost close to $10,000 Canadian dollars, or around $9,000 US once it is set up in your home, office, cafe or roastery.
EDIT 2024: Things sure have changed. This machine now costs between $12,900 and $15,000USD in the United States. It is close to $20,000 in Canada.
The second thing to factor in is a waiting list – a long one. You may have to wait up to six months to get a Speedster. van der Westen only builds a few each month and the waiting list last time I checked was over 4 months long.
Some distributors may charge a premium over van der Westen’s 4,975 Euro price + shipping + taxes, some may not, but it is best to go through a distributor because they usually include installation as part of the price, and local servicing and warranty is included.
If you order direct, they will take your name and put you into the queue. You may have to put a deposit down at that time. Once the machine is being built, they will ask for the full amount paid via wire transfer. The machines are shipped COD for delivery costs, so expect to pay the full delivery charge when it arrives. Machines are well crated (82kg incl. crate) and will ship to your nearest Intl’ airport, or if coming by sea, to a major shipping destination (again usually an airport).
There are plenty of variants you can order when getting the Speedster. They include, but are not limited to the following:
- Black powder-coated side plates (black where you see red and yellow on our model)(
- Chopped portafilter instead of spouted model
- Wide cup rail instead of narrow one
- Mirror finish body work instead of perlage style
- All black body panels, powder coated finish matching the legs
In addition, van der Westen debuted a lever version (yes!!!) at the Cologne World of Coffee Expo during the Summer of 2009. It is a prototype, but may go into production for 2010.
EDIT 2024: The Lever Speedster was never realised. But they did make an Idromatic version. See it here.
Here’s what a shot looks like with the Speedster, including preinfusion time.
This video shows a HD rendition of an espresso shot on a Speedster espresso machine, using a factory-modified chopped portafilter.
This particular shot was done using manual preinfusion, which does tend to muck up the shot timing overall – with pump pressure, it was around 22 seconds, but I’d call it about 30 seconds total including the preinfusion time. One thing I’d love to see on the Speedster in the future is one or two speedometer style gauges that show shot times for both full shot (including manual or pump driven preinfusion) and pump “on” time.
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I don’t know if I’ll ever post a full detailed review on the Speedster or not – hence this super long “first look”. It’s quite an exclusive machine and a major expense – possibly the biggest expense someone would make for their home outside of actually buying the home or buying a car.
At the start of this First Look I hinted this may be the best espresso machine in the world. Of course that is a subjective opinion and not rooted in any fact, but here are some real world things about the machine: The Speedster has been installed and operating for five weeks now and has been viewed, used and experienced by at least 30 people, including many professional baristas, restaurant owners, sommeliers, bartenders and cafe owners.
One thing all had in common – to a one they all felt it was the most beautiful and intriguing espresso machine they’d ever seen. At times I had them observe and use both the Speedster and GS/3 Paddle Group and while the more technologically savvy baristas recognized the GS/3’s ground breaking design and electronics, the Speedster was the constant first pick.
Usability is first rate. It’s obviously a hands on machine allowing a certain amount of latitude in how shots are brewed, but where you want automated control (in temperatures and pressures and stability), the machine has very few equals.
What could be better? At this point, only the addition of a few niceties might improve the machine, but they’d be minor things. I’d like to see a shot timer incorporated into the machine – perhaps, keeping with the retro feel, an analog stopwatch / speedometer kind of dial that engages as soon as the pump does, perhaps even two such devices – one on the left for overall shot time, and one on the right showing just the pump activation time. It would keep with the automobile / racing plane theme of the front and sides of the machine.Other than that, the machine is just about perfect. For us at least, it is the best espresso machine in the world. Nothing else, save for perhaps other Kees van der Westen machines, come close.
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Implementation science for planetary health
Remarks about implementation science for planetary health by Reda Sadki, Executive Director, The Geneva Learning Foundation at the Centre for Planetary Health’s research corner meeting, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on December 17, 2025.
Pauline Paterson (LSHTM): We are really delighted to welcome Reda Sadki. Reda is the Executive Director of the Geneva Learning Foundation, a non-profit research organization developing new epistemological and methodological approaches for complex global health challenges. Welcome, Reda.
Reda Sadki (TGLF): Warm greetings from Geneva, Switzerland. I am very pleased to share with you what we have been learning about climate change and health – in particular, how we can move from ground truth to local action on a global scale.
Since 2021, we have been running an initiative called Teach to Reach, led by community-based health professionals from all over the world. It connects people across countries and job roles, supporting the journey from local insight to global health initiative.
The scale of this network has grown significantly. In March 2021, we started with 2,604 participants. By December 2024, at the eleventh meeting of Teach to Reach, we had 24,610 health workers participating.
Who are they? Most work in health facilities and districts. Half work for government and half for civil society organizations.
Where are they? They serve in the most fragile contexts: 62% work in remote rural areas; 47% with the urban poor; 25% with refugees or internally displaced populations. And one in five work in areas of active armed conflict.
Alongside these individuals, we are nurturing the REACH Network, a coalition of more than 4,000 locally-led organizations. This is the backdrop for how we think about leadership as the key to driving change in climate and health.
The “dark matter” of implementation science
As a community working on climate change and health, we are strong – and getting stronger – on diagnosis. But we must be candid: we are weak on delivery. The science keeps getting better, but there is a gap when it comes to translating science into action.
When it comes to formal research, we see what I call the ”dark matter”, a blind spot around hyperlocal adaptation and how implementation actually happens at the local level.
This dark matter includes environmental, behavioral, and systemic signals that formal research might miss: social and economic disruption, hidden mental health burdens in communities with no formal services, community coping mechanisms, and subtle changes in vector behaviors.
Now, I know that for many of you trained in epidemiology, the word “anecdote” sets off alarm bells. We are taught to devalue it for good reason: it is prone to recall bias, selection bias, and lacks denominators. A nurse in Bangladesh noticing “more heatstroke” is a signal, not a prevalence study. We are not claiming it is.
However, we have two ways to answer the questions these signals raise. We can carry out long-term, rigorous academic studies over decades. Or – given that we are past several climate tipping points – we can recognize that aggregate patterns formed by thousands of these signals offer a speed and granularity that traditional studies cannot match. This functions as a massive, distributed sentinel surveillance system. It may be “imperfect” compared to a controlled trial, but is it riskier than the alternative? The alternative is often waiting years for definitive answers while communities suffer damage that may make those findings moot.
This requires a new epistemology. Our hypothesis is that we can build a system where an anecdote becomes an eyewitness report. A health worker, traditionally seen as a “knowledge recipient” presumed ignorant of climate science, becomes a “knowledge creator”. They know things about local impacts that no one else knows, simply because they are there every day.
In July 2023, Charlotte Mbuh, TGLF’s director who started over a decade ago as a sub-national health worker from Cameroon, stood at COP28 and said:
”What we know, we know because we are here every day. We are already managing the impacts of climate change on health. We are doing the best we can, but we need your support.”
Read Charlotte Mbuh’s full statement at COP28: Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28
Turning experience into evidence: the global climate change and health survey
To operationalize this, we built a living laboratory powered by a global human sensor network.
In 2025, in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and a group of 50 global funders (including Gates, Wellcome, and Rockefeller), we conducted what I have been told is the largest-ever climate and health survey, and the one with the highest level of responses from local communities in the most climate-vulnerable regions
We received responses from 6,436 health workers, primarily from the sub-national level. Because of the trust we have built over years, the Teach to Reach network contributed over 60% of these responses, ensuring we heard from the most climate-vulnerable regions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67nYqq-hP0
Most importantly for funders, we asked about barriers to action. The top barriers were not just resource shortages, but structural issues.
Pending their formal publications, I am not yet able to share results.
These findings are signals. They generate hypotheses. Here are three examples of hypotheses grounded in health worker experirences:
- Geh Raphaela Agwa, a midwife from Cameroon, told us: “During this unfavourable weather period, people who can paddle canoes come in and help…”. Could community-led transport solutions improve maternal health access during floods?
- Solace Jewel Morgan, a disease control officer in Ghana, told us: “The dry season… results in dust particles known as harmatan. This leads to a high incidence of respiratory illnesses… encourage… free distribution of personal protective masks.” Could prophylactic mask distribution reduces respiratory morbidity during the harmatan season?
- Victoire Odia, a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told us that during extreme weather events, maternity “stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.” Could micro-financing networks increase facility-based deliveries in climate-vulnerable areas?
Of course, we must distinguish between generating a hypothesis and validating an intervention. We do not claim every local idea is safe or effective immediately. But we do claim that listening is the prerequisite to testing them.
From insight to impact: the Accelerator model for implementation science
We do not just extract data. We give it back to the community to prompt action. Since 2016, we have developed an “Accelerator” system that moves from listening to implementation. It works on a simple rhythm: participants set a specific, practical goal on Monday, and on Friday, they report on what happened, receiving feedback from peers.
This brings us to a critical tension: the balance between context and content. Critics might argue that prioritizing “context over content” carries risks. What if health workers implement unproven or suboptimal strategies? That is a valid concern. However, we see this mechanism not as a way to bypass evidence, but as the most effective tool to operationalize it.
In The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Accelerator, every participant commits to work toward their countries’ goals, and to do so by using the best available global knowledge.
Learn more: What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?
This actually supports effective adoption and use of global guidelines, which otherwise may linger on shelves.
In fact, we have shown in the past that this mechanism increases adherence to proven protocols (e.g., WHO guidelines on heat stress or malaria control). That is one important reason why it is a powerful implementation science tool. It transforms adherence from a wish expressed in the capital city into a reality in local communities.
Furthermore, if national planners and international experts are willing to listen, they may hear back ways to improve and strengthen the global standards, as well as gain new insights into the “how” of local implementation that defies easy generalization.
When we compared this model to conventional technical assistance or “cascade training,” the results were stark :
- Speed: Implementation was 7x faster.
- Cost: The cost was 90% lower.
- Sustainability: In a Ministry of Health initiative in Côte d’Ivoire, 82% of participants continued using the model without further support. 78% explicitly stated they needed no further external assistance.
These results give us confidence. We are not starting from zero. We are building on prior work in immunization and other areas of work where supporting implementation led to exactly these kinds of validated outcomes.
Here are two examples of local solutions in action.
- Côte d’Ivoire: Communities identified stagnant water as a malaria risk and organized youth-led cleanup committees to clear gutters. This resulted in a drastic, locally measured drop in malaria cases.
- Cameroon: In response to frequent floods, communities voluntarily cleaned gutters to ensure water did not stagnate, directly impacting disease vectors.
No one in the capital city – and certainly no one in Geneva or Seattle – knew about these initiatives.
This leads to our most ambitious projection. If we can grow this network from 80,000 to 1 million health workers by 2030, we estimate we could save 7 million lives through simple, locally resourced projects, at a cost of less than $2 per life.
I acknowledge this is an aggressive claim. It is a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation based on our pilot data. It assumes that local projects remain effective at scale and that we can attribute outcomes to the network. But I ask you: if there is even a glimmer of a chance that this is true – that we can save lives at a fraction of the cost of traditional interventions – isn’t it worth investing in the rigorous research to find out?
Discussion
Do you think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are dead?
Reda Sadki: MOOCs have become primarily marketing tools for higher education. From a pedagogical perspective, they remain transmissive, expert to learner. I do not see how that model can deliver against complex problems. We need a two-way street. We need new ways to organize the production and circulation of knowledge.
Thank you, Reda. I noticed in your results that food security is a major concern. Have you identified local actions focusing on food, given the challenges of working with healthcare workers who might not see this as their primary remit?
Reda Sadki: That is a critical question. Food insecurity is one of the most worrying consequences we are tracking. We often see a mismatch where local actors tasked with, say, immunization, do not see nutrition as their lane. However, at the community level, the approach is naturally integrated – the health worker knows the vet, who knows the farmers. Those connections exist.
We are currently preparing a major insights report that includes a specific chapter on food security. We are also designing an accelerator specifically around this topic to bring together the right set of partners, because the consequences we are documenting are dire.
You mentioned that 78% of participants eventually said “no thank you” to further support. Ideally, shouldn’t these peer networks become self-sustaining, bypassing Geneva or London entirely?
Reda Sadki: That is the goal. We have shown that more than half of each cohort stays in touch to continue leading local action. However, as long as resources and decision-making power remain concentrated in global centers, we cannot just “flip a switch”. We need to build bridges that facilitate that transformation. The goal is autonomy, but the reality requires us to actively dismantle the dependencies that current funding structures create.
Are there new capabilities that we in academia need to develop urgently to support this?
Reda Sadki: It is about moving away from being the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side”. For example, in our recent work, global partners and experts joined Teach to Reach sessions not to present the latest guidelines, but to listen to the challenges local practitioners faced. They then had to figure out how their expertise could be useful in response to those specific needs.
For researchers inside academic institutions, this can be difficult. It requires starting not with a research question, but with a willingness to listen to the needs of local actors and let the research questions emerge from that reality. We know this challenges the incentive structures of academia, but we are open to partnering with researchers willing to work in this emergent, demand-driven way.
It is a fascinating dilemma – we want to be guided by needs, but funding requires pre-set hypotheses. Reda, this has been truly impressive. Thank you for sharing these refreshing perspectives.
Reda Sadki: Thank you. We look forward to exploring how we can collaborate. Best wishes for the holidays and the new year.
References
- Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
- Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
- Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
- Sadki, R., 2024. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
- Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., et al., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
- Jones I, Mbuh C, Sadki R, Eller K, Rhoda D. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report [Internet]. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2023. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10204660
Images: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025
#CharlotteMbuh #climateAndHealth #epistemology #globalHealth #ImpactAccelerator #implementationResearch #LSHTM #MassiveOpenOnlineCourses #PaulinePaterson #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation -
Implementation science for planetary health
Remarks about implementation science for planetary health by Reda Sadki, Executive Director, The Geneva Learning Foundation at the Centre for Planetary Health’s research corner meeting, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on December 17, 2025.
Pauline Paterson (LSHTM): We are really delighted to welcome Reda Sadki. Reda is the Executive Director of the Geneva Learning Foundation, a non-profit research organization developing new epistemological and methodological approaches for complex global health challenges. Welcome, Reda.
Reda Sadki (TGLF): Warm greetings from Geneva, Switzerland. I am very pleased to share with you what we have been learning about climate change and health – in particular, how we can move from ground truth to local action on a global scale.
Since 2021, we have been running an initiative called Teach to Reach, led by community-based health professionals from all over the world. It connects people across countries and job roles, supporting the journey from local insight to global health initiative.
The scale of this network has grown significantly. In March 2021, we started with 2,604 participants. By December 2024, at the eleventh meeting of Teach to Reach, we had 24,610 health workers participating.
Who are they? Most work in health facilities and districts. Half work for government and half for civil society organizations.
Where are they? They serve in the most fragile contexts: 62% work in remote rural areas; 47% with the urban poor; 25% with refugees or internally displaced populations. And one in five work in areas of active armed conflict.
Alongside these individuals, we are nurturing the REACH Network, a coalition of more than 4,000 locally-led organizations. This is the backdrop for how we think about leadership as the key to driving change in climate and health.
The “dark matter” of implementation science
As a community working on climate change and health, we are strong – and getting stronger – on diagnosis. But we must be candid: we are weak on delivery. The science keeps getting better, but there is a gap when it comes to translating science into action.
When it comes to formal research, we see what I call the ”dark matter”, a blind spot around hyperlocal adaptation and how implementation actually happens at the local level.
This dark matter includes environmental, behavioral, and systemic signals that formal research might miss: social and economic disruption, hidden mental health burdens in communities with no formal services, community coping mechanisms, and subtle changes in vector behaviors.
Now, I know that for many of you trained in epidemiology, the word “anecdote” sets off alarm bells. We are taught to devalue it for good reason: it is prone to recall bias, selection bias, and lacks denominators. A nurse in Bangladesh noticing “more heatstroke” is a signal, not a prevalence study. We are not claiming it is.
However, we have two ways to answer the questions these signals raise. We can carry out long-term, rigorous academic studies over decades. Or – given that we are past several climate tipping points – we can recognize that aggregate patterns formed by thousands of these signals offer a speed and granularity that traditional studies cannot match. This functions as a massive, distributed sentinel surveillance system. It may be “imperfect” compared to a controlled trial, but is it riskier than the alternative? The alternative is often waiting years for definitive answers while communities suffer damage that may make those findings moot.
This requires a new epistemology. Our hypothesis is that we can build a system where an anecdote becomes an eyewitness report. A health worker, traditionally seen as a “knowledge recipient” presumed ignorant of climate science, becomes a “knowledge creator”. They know things about local impacts that no one else knows, simply because they are there every day.
In July 2023, Charlotte Mbuh, TGLF’s director who started over a decade ago as a sub-national health worker from Cameroon, stood at COP28 and said:
”What we know, we know because we are here every day. We are already managing the impacts of climate change on health. We are doing the best we can, but we need your support.”
Read Charlotte Mbuh’s full statement at COP28: Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28
Turning experience into evidence: the global climate change and health survey
To operationalize this, we built a living laboratory powered by a global human sensor network.
In 2025, in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and a group of 50 global funders (including Gates, Wellcome, and Rockefeller), we conducted what I have been told is the largest-ever climate and health survey, and the one with the highest level of responses from local communities in the most climate-vulnerable regions
We received responses from 6,436 health workers, primarily from the sub-national level. Because of the trust we have built over years, the Teach to Reach network contributed over 60% of these responses, ensuring we heard from the most climate-vulnerable regions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67nYqq-hP0
Most importantly for funders, we asked about barriers to action. The top barriers were not just resource shortages, but structural issues.
Pending their formal publications, I am not yet able to share results.
These findings are signals. They generate hypotheses. Here are three examples of hypotheses grounded in health worker experirences:
- Geh Raphaela Agwa, a midwife from Cameroon, told us: “During this unfavourable weather period, people who can paddle canoes come in and help…”. Could community-led transport solutions improve maternal health access during floods?
- Solace Jewel Morgan, a disease control officer in Ghana, told us: “The dry season… results in dust particles known as harmatan. This leads to a high incidence of respiratory illnesses… encourage… free distribution of personal protective masks.” Could prophylactic mask distribution reduces respiratory morbidity during the harmatan season?
- Victoire Odia, a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told us that during extreme weather events, maternity “stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.” Could micro-financing networks increase facility-based deliveries in climate-vulnerable areas?
Of course, we must distinguish between generating a hypothesis and validating an intervention. We do not claim every local idea is safe or effective immediately. But we do claim that listening is the prerequisite to testing them.
From insight to impact: the Accelerator model for implementation science
We do not just extract data. We give it back to the community to prompt action. Since 2016, we have developed an “Accelerator” system that moves from listening to implementation. It works on a simple rhythm: participants set a specific, practical goal on Monday, and on Friday, they report on what happened, receiving feedback from peers.
This brings us to a critical tension: the balance between context and content. Critics might argue that prioritizing “context over content” carries risks. What if health workers implement unproven or suboptimal strategies? That is a valid concern. However, we see this mechanism not as a way to bypass evidence, but as the most effective tool to operationalize it.
In The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Accelerator, every participant commits to work toward their countries’ goals, and to do so by using the best available global knowledge.
Learn more: What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?
This actually supports effective adoption and use of global guidelines, which otherwise may linger on shelves.
In fact, we have shown in the past that this mechanism increases adherence to proven protocols (e.g., WHO guidelines on heat stress or malaria control). That is one important reason why it is a powerful implementation science tool. It transforms adherence from a wish expressed in the capital city into a reality in local communities.
Furthermore, if national planners and international experts are willing to listen, they may hear back ways to improve and strengthen the global standards, as well as gain new insights into the “how” of local implementation that defies easy generalization.
When we compared this model to conventional technical assistance or “cascade training,” the results were stark :
- Speed: Implementation was 7x faster.
- Cost: The cost was 90% lower.
- Sustainability: In a Ministry of Health initiative in Côte d’Ivoire, 82% of participants continued using the model without further support. 78% explicitly stated they needed no further external assistance.
These results give us confidence. We are not starting from zero. We are building on prior work in immunization and other areas of work where supporting implementation led to exactly these kinds of validated outcomes.
Here are two examples of local solutions in action.
- Côte d’Ivoire: Communities identified stagnant water as a malaria risk and organized youth-led cleanup committees to clear gutters. This resulted in a drastic, locally measured drop in malaria cases.
- Cameroon: In response to frequent floods, communities voluntarily cleaned gutters to ensure water did not stagnate, directly impacting disease vectors.
No one in the capital city – and certainly no one in Geneva or Seattle – knew about these initiatives.
This leads to our most ambitious projection. If we can grow this network from 80,000 to 1 million health workers by 2030, we estimate we could save 7 million lives through simple, locally resourced projects, at a cost of less than $2 per life.
I acknowledge this is an aggressive claim. It is a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation based on our pilot data. It assumes that local projects remain effective at scale and that we can attribute outcomes to the network. But I ask you: if there is even a glimmer of a chance that this is true – that we can save lives at a fraction of the cost of traditional interventions – isn’t it worth investing in the rigorous research to find out?
Discussion
Do you think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are dead?
Reda Sadki: MOOCs have become primarily marketing tools for higher education. From a pedagogical perspective, they remain transmissive, expert to learner. I do not see how that model can deliver against complex problems. We need a two-way street. We need new ways to organize the production and circulation of knowledge.
Thank you, Reda. I noticed in your results that food security is a major concern. Have you identified local actions focusing on food, given the challenges of working with healthcare workers who might not see this as their primary remit?
Reda Sadki: That is a critical question. Food insecurity is one of the most worrying consequences we are tracking. We often see a mismatch where local actors tasked with, say, immunization, do not see nutrition as their lane. However, at the community level, the approach is naturally integrated – the health worker knows the vet, who knows the farmers. Those connections exist.
We are currently preparing a major insights report that includes a specific chapter on food security. We are also designing an accelerator specifically around this topic to bring together the right set of partners, because the consequences we are documenting are dire.
You mentioned that 78% of participants eventually said “no thank you” to further support. Ideally, shouldn’t these peer networks become self-sustaining, bypassing Geneva or London entirely?
Reda Sadki: That is the goal. We have shown that more than half of each cohort stays in touch to continue leading local action. However, as long as resources and decision-making power remain concentrated in global centers, we cannot just “flip a switch”. We need to build bridges that facilitate that transformation. The goal is autonomy, but the reality requires us to actively dismantle the dependencies that current funding structures create.
Are there new capabilities that we in academia need to develop urgently to support this?
Reda Sadki: It is about moving away from being the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side”. For example, in our recent work, global partners and experts joined Teach to Reach sessions not to present the latest guidelines, but to listen to the challenges local practitioners faced. They then had to figure out how their expertise could be useful in response to those specific needs.
For researchers inside academic institutions, this can be difficult. It requires starting not with a research question, but with a willingness to listen to the needs of local actors and let the research questions emerge from that reality. We know this challenges the incentive structures of academia, but we are open to partnering with researchers willing to work in this emergent, demand-driven way.
It is a fascinating dilemma – we want to be guided by needs, but funding requires pre-set hypotheses. Reda, this has been truly impressive. Thank you for sharing these refreshing perspectives.
Reda Sadki: Thank you. We look forward to exploring how we can collaborate. Best wishes for the holidays and the new year.
References
- Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
- Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
- Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
- Sadki, R., 2024. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
- Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., et al., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
- Jones I, Mbuh C, Sadki R, Eller K, Rhoda D. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report [Internet]. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2023. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10204660
Images: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025
#CharlotteMbuh #climateAndHealth #epistemology #globalHealth #ImpactAccelerator #implementationResearch #LSHTM #MassiveOpenOnlineCourses #PaulinePaterson #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation -
No one is saying Signal's intentions aren't good — or that the team behind it isn't committed to privacy. That's not the issue.
The issue is this: trust isn't only about how a system is designed. It's also about who controls it, and who has legal authority over it. And in Signal's case, that authority is the United States government.
You can admire Signal's efforts while still recognizing a hard truth: U.S. law allows for secret court orders, compelled cooperation, and legally mandated silence. Even if Signal does everything right, it can still be forced — under penalty of law — to comply with demands behind the scenes, and to never tell you.
And here's the part that matters most: you'd never accept a privacy tool in Russia or China using this same argument. You wouldn't say, “Well, they designed it not to collect anything, so I trust them.” You'd say, “It doesn't matter — they're under a regime that could flip the switch any time.” That exact logic applies here.
So it's not about saying “don't trust Signal.” It's about not putting blind trust in any tool that operates under a regime with broad surveillance powers and secret courts. Especially when you are depending on it for sensitive communications.
Signal is technically strong — but it's still part of a system where trust can be legally weaponized. That's the risk. That's the point.
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My experience ‘going paid’ on Subastack in 2024
Well, has it been a while! And here am I, back to overwhelm your inbox with a girnomous essay! Just kidding – I hope?
Anyway, recently, in a moment of weakness, I subscribed to a popular newsletter about increasing Substack paid subscriptions. I wondered if there was a “magic formula” for Substack success.
Turns out, there isn’t any.
Subscriber Content
Add content here that will only be visible to your subscribers.
You see, I’ve worked in content marketing for years, so the writer didn’t tell me anything new. If anything, the advice felt simplistic.
The biggest takeaway?
Substacks that revolves around personal essays and fiction are incredibly tough sells … unless your brand is strong.
And your brand is essentially your personality or your persona. You must be dramatic, magnetic and, yes, famous enough for people to pay for content that doesn’t fulfil an urgent need.
The easiest way for Substackers to get more paid subscribers is to offer a service that isn’t easily replicable. News about China perhaps. Top tips to earn a million bucks in a year, that kind of thing.
This shouldn’t have surprised me.
Personal essays and fiction have always, always, always been challenging to monetize, no matter the medium.
My experience of going paid
I introduced paid subscriptions sometime this year, when Tai Tales was mostly a newsletter sharing fiction. And when I did, it was on a whim. Someone told me to flip the switch on because who knows, I may get subscribers! Since I’ve got nothing to lose, I did just that, all the while thinking who in the world would pay me for my blatherings.
To my surprise, some of you did end up being my paid subscribers, and for that, I’m endlessly grateful.
I’ll be honest: paid subscriptions do come with guilt and pressure. I constantly wonder if my work is worth your hard-earned money. And since I’ve pivoted Tai Tales away from fiction, and have stopped writing fiction for a while, the guilt is immense!
For those of you who’ve deigned to become paid subscribers, I want to assure you that every penny goes toward my survival fund which I save and invest. As a worker in the tech industry, the reality is that I’m always one moment away from a pink slip. (As I recently shared with paid subscribers, who will know what I’m talking about.) So, your generosity will literally feed me, and I’m deeply, deeply grateful for your generosity.
When I think about Tai Tales, I can’t pinpoint a solid reason why anyone should pay for it. Does that mean I’m being too hard on myself? Not really. I’m simply looking at things through a content marketer’s lens. If your content doesn’t offer something people can’t find elsewhere, its value becomes harder to justify. And, yeah, I don’t think I’m famous.
Last time I checked anyway.
But maybe newsletters is more than just value?
Staying paid, but patronage style
Photo by SHAYAN Rostami on Unsplash. You’re probably thinking, why all the ballerina photos? Well, as a writer I feel that I’m always having to dance to algorithms or platforms. Is it a good thing? Not sure!
I recently watched a video from a YouTuber I deeply admire. A scientist by trade, he shares incredibly valuable content to improve your health without any strings attached—no courses, no upsells.
He only recently opened a Patreon account to let people support him because they begged him to. He said that he was told that his approach to sharing content was “unique”, but he doesn’t want to do any sponsorships, content marketing or advertising, because that’s not his way.
His approach—the “patronage model”—really resonates with me far more than the aggressive content marketing approach that that popular Substacker recommends.
I will still keep the TMI category, where I share private or personal updates, exclusive to paid subscribers. It feels right to reserve those private moments only for them. I also have a tip jar where you can tip me whatever you like.
Recently, some Substackers I follow have been ungating their content, such as Lily Pond in I’m Calling This a Blog.
I’m thinking of doing the same, but I haven’t figured out the mechanics yet. Should I ungate all of them? Keep some parts of the issue gated? Decisions!
So, yes, please do support if you can afford it, but no pressure. Just know that if you do, your gesture is deeply appreciated, especially in uncertain times like these.
Sharpening the focus
One of the things I also did during my long break was to reassess my approach to this newsletter. The conclusion? I’m happy with where I am. Leaving the fiction realm was sad, but I realised that I just can’t create fiction on command like some people can. And I seem to prefer to write fiction in private. (Yes, I’m actually writing a novel for my own amusement right now! I’m not sure when I’ll share it with the public, but I’m having fun writing it for myself right now.)
In 2025, want to tighten Tai Tales’ focus even further.
This newsletter will still revolve around Chinese and Malaysian culture. I’ll be sharing more travelougues and essays on life in Malaysia, but I will also be combining Chinese learning efforts with my love for Chinese dramas. Yup, I’ll be using Chinese dramas to help you learn Chinese!
The term “comprehensive input” is something you’ll hear from me a lot. This is based on Stephen Krashen’s “Input Hypothesis”, which states that languages is best learned when learners immerse themselves in content from their target language that is slightly above their current skill level, but still understandable.
Although I’m a banana trying to learn a Chinese language other than her own native one, and thus not exactly an expert, I’m really skilled at learning things.
And that’s what I want to share—how to learn Mandarin effectively while having fun learning about Chinese dramas!
My goal is also to make each issue of Tai Tales more meaningful instead of flooding your inbox four times a month in the name of “consistency”.
So, I’ll scale back the number of issues per month to deliver higher-quality content.
I’m not sure about the number yet. ;P
Thank You
Thank you for being here, for reading, and for supporting this little corner of the internet. I’m excited about Tai Tales in 2025 and hope to create something that entertains, educates, and brings a bit of joy to your day. Let me know what you think about these changes—your feedback is invaluable.
Until next time,
Liz