I'm not nice

and that's OK

Readers—This is a modified version of a “note” I put out on Substack after a typical encounter in which my interlocutor urged me to be “nicer” about something. This is not aimed at anyone personally, and I ask you, readers, please not to personalize it.

But I do also ask you to please contemplate it. Social norms today favor artificial and unhelpful “ni…