Greed, hatred and ignorance

Evil eventually defeats itself. It over-reaches. It is ugly, corrupt, incompetent, and weak. It is powered by greed, hatred and ignorance.

It underestimates the decency, courage and strength of ordinary people. Yes, many people might suffer. But generosity, love and truth will prevail, again.

Addendum: Yes, “eventually” is doing a lot of work here. And so is “itself” — part of evil’s undoing comes when it gives rise to opposition from ordinary, decent people.

How to mass-delete your tweets

I mostly stopped using Twitter, now X, in the fall of 2023, after Elon Musk instituted changes to verification and the algorithm to make the site less useful to me. I had been on the service for 17 years and had more than 35,000 follower at one point. Of the X alternatives, I currently use BlueSky, Mastodon and Threads, although I will probably start phasing out my presence on the latter.

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Zen Talk: Showing Up

Text of a talk given on Oct. 19, 2023, at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan, where I am a senior student.

Good evening. As I understand it, these senior student talks are meant to be words of encouragement about our practice. While I’m talking to you, I’m also talking to myself. This is my first talk, and I’m a little nervous, so thanks for showing up. In fact, that’s the title of this talk: “Showing Up.”

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Dancing With the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation

I’ve had the honor and pleasure to meet the self-taught Buddhist scholar Bill Porter, who has been translating and writing for decades under the name Red Pine, at events sponsored in recent years at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan. I own and recommend his books, particularly his translation of the heart sutra. A new documentary, “Dancing With the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation,” is streaming online for $12 through Nov. 25.

Some audiobook hacks: OpenAudible and Libro.fm

First, a hat tip to Jordan Harbinger, who mentioned Openaudible, a free audiobook conversion and management app, on his podcast. If you want to convert your Amazon audiobooks into files that can be used on any device, this is the app for you. Harbinger converts his then uploads them to Overcast.fm, my preferred podcast player (iOS only, sorry). You can use Overcast to remove dead air and speed up your listening to cut the time it takes to get through a book. And if you’re tired of giving your money to the bald devil’s website, and want to skip the need for a conversion app, Jason Kottke recommends the service libro.fm, where you can download DRM-free audiobooks.

New 401k Contribution Limits for 2025

I am always amazed when I learn that people do not save as much as they can in their workplace 401K, at least enough to get their company match, if any. Deferred contributions lower your income tax bill, and the money compounds free of taxes until retirement. In some cases, as with a Roth 401K or IRA, you can pay the tax now and then the gains compound without taxes in perpetuity.

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Farewell to The New York Times

I retired in July 2024 after 27 years as an editor at The New York Times. Here is the draft of the remarks I gave at a newsroom toast in my honor.

Everyone leaves The Times sooner or later. No exceptions. The only question is whether you get to choose when and how. I’m choosing to leave at the top of my game. People have asked what I’m going to do. The short answer is: whatever I want.

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A ginormous list of good speculative fiction

The writer Paul Graham summed up the problem: searching for the good books. “There are a huge number of books and only a small percentage of them are really good, so reading means searching,” he notes. “Someone who tries to read but doesn't understand about the need to search will end up reading bad books, and will wonder why people who read a lot like to do something so boring.”

I like speculative fiction, sometimes called “science fiction” or SF. I like to think about the future. One problem is that a lot of SF books are badly written. In fact, that’s a problem with books in general. Most of them are terrible.

So I am delighted when I find a really thorough list like this one: Reactor magazine’s list of the “most iconic speculative fiction books of the 21st century.” (I’ll even forgive that absurd phrase “most iconic.”)