[talos]

This is true, but the workaround proposed in the article is not a change to the query at all. It's adding another index, which is a pretty classic case of "proper" usage of query analysis (as opposed to confusing/hacky mutations of the query itself).

[shock-value]

Unless I'm misreading they didn't add another index. They actually just reduced the original index by removing an indexed expression and excluding rows that didn't match that expression instead.