Tag: Nice

The Problem With Being Nice. Most nice people are merely signaling their niceness. They aren’t good people in reality, they are just great at signaling. We are so good at it that we don’t realize we do it until it’s brought to our attention. Here is a test from the trolley pr...

In Oregon, where I live and practiced elder law, you can’t disinherit your spouse. If you try, your spouse can choose to have your will or trust ignored and instead receive a percentage of what you owned at death, with the percentage determined by how long you were married. An old woman cam...

I returned from a trip last week to Amsterdam after a forty-year absence from that city, which is too long to have been away. The visit renewed my faith in what is possible in public life. The city was still as clean and running as efficiently as I had left it, but this time around I photographed...

A month ago, my sister visited. It marked a year since I moved to Vancouver. Reddit forums called it « the hardest city in the world to make friends », and more than one kind soul warned me of the untenable loneliness crystallized by damp grey winters. Luckily, I don’t need many...

I am many identities. Most of them make people uncomfortable. I’m a feminist and I’m an Arab. First of all, these can actually coexist. I actually just wrote a whole damn book about it. But that’s not the point right now. I’ve noticed that I’m onl...