[tptacek]

This is a confusing headline. The judgement here is in NY state court, and pertains to employees of and in the City of New York, which enacted a vaccine requirement for employees of the city and later private employers in the city. Months later, Eric Adams was elected mayor of NYC, and he issued an executive order exempting athletes, performers, and artists from the mandate.

Petitioners sued, saying that the mandate with the exemptions was essentially arbitrary, and the courts agreed. So what happened here is that Eric Adams sabotaged NYC's vaccine mandate.

[VWWHFSfQ]

Eric Adams' "performers and sports players" exemption was specifically to allow Broadway to re-open and to allow Kyrie Irving to play in Brooklyn.

The whole thing was a farce anyway so it doesn't matter.

[gabagool]

It wasn't Kyrie, it was the Yankees. The opening came just before the start of the MLB season but well into the NBA season.

[astura]

Rumor was Aaron Judge, the Yankee's biggest star, was unvaccinated. He personally sidestepped question about vaccine status and the team had publicly said a few (two?) players on a Yankees hadn't had their shots. Before opening day there were questions about if Judge would be able to play in New York.

The whole thing ended up being a mute point, because everyone on the starting roster[1] eventually got their shots so they could travel to Canada to play the Blue Jays.

[1] they later traded for an unvaccinated player

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/sports/baseball/aaron-jud...

[dgeiser13]

moot

[astura]

Yeah, I also meant opening day roster, not starting roster. Can you tell I couldn't sleep last night?

[jgalt212]

DeBlasio was known as the "Dope from Park Slope", but this one is pretty inept thinking as well.

[spfzero]

Not merely arbitrary. From the decision: "This Court aggress that the Commissioner cannot enact a term of employment on City employees and has exceeded his scope of authority..."

[tptacek]

That part of the ruling, too, was based on the arbitrariness of the order (in particular the fact that the rule was indefinite rather than temporary, and applies only to city employees and not private employees once the private rule was rescinded).

[Spooky23]

That definitely plays into the sabotage thread. Any competent corp counsel would have been able to navigate around this issue.

[colechristensen]

Regardless of if they were the right thing to do, many of the various covid mandates being enacted through whatever form of decree really didn’t seem like they fit inside the authority of the government executives trying to enact them. Many were also made to be unenforceable so they’d never be tested in court while still influencing people.

The rule of law is important and limiting the power of “rulers” to make large sweeping regulations by themselves is important. Agreeing with what they’re trying to do doesn’t make it right. People have been cheering for authoritarianism more and more and it’s disturbing.

[curiousgal]

Us Americans are so obsessed with government overreach that you'd think our corporate overloads are actually treating us well and that the government is the bad guy.

When the government wants to fuck us over, think what the NSA has been doing, they won't look for precedents so there's no point in treating every decision they make as a potential sliperry slope.

Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so vaccines must be required. Very simple.

[senorrib]

> Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so vaccines must be required. Very simple.

This last sentence is such a massive slippery slope that an answer isn’t even necessary.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Forgive me, but what is it a slippery slope of? I immediately thought this logic was already applied to things like child toy regulation or lead paint warning regulation or food recall regulation or workplace safety regulation… it’s really common for the government to enforce people to do things (or ban people from doing other things) in certain contexts because of the danger otherwise.

[realjhol]

> Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so vaccines must be required. Very simple.

They don't though.

None of the vaccines prevent transmission - they were never even tested for that.

And only the extremely elderly or obese are in any significant danger of dieing of COVID. If you're not in either of those camps, or have natural immunity the risk is negligible.

[colechristensen]

>None of the vaccines prevent transmission - they were never even tested for that.

The popular narrative being told to people from all sources was that vaccines were to prevent transmission which was quietly toned down when it turned out not to be true and then people now say things like "we never said that" when nobody mentioned it at all in the beginning that vaccines quite possibly weren't going to prevent disease or transmission.

People just move goal posts, fail to outline risks that don't align with their advice before those risks are undeniable, and generally always pretend they were right all along.

[TurkishPoptart]

What's the best source on this? I know it's true, it's just sad and tragic that the Atlantic is still saying they prevent infection.

[mcculley]

> only the extremely elderly or obese are in any significant danger of dieing of COVID

We should not make policy decisions as long as only the elderly and otherwise vulnerable are at risk?

[colechristensen]

People like government overreach when they agree with it completely forgetting that they won’t always.

Rights aren’t just for your side.

[seanw444]

Absolutely. This is why I laugh when republicans who support all republican actions try to consider themselves libertarians. I guess it's the trendy term to be now.

If you're a libertarian, you vouch for liberties across the board. Not seesawing utter power against the other side every election cycle.

[int_19h]

Speaking for myself, I'm obsessed with corporate overreach in general. It just so happens that government is the largest and the most well-armed corporation around, so it gets considerable attention as such.

[seanw444]

<insert item here> is a threat to our <choose one of: lives, democracy>, and so these regulations and encroachments must be enacted!

[bananapear]

Why would it make sense to exempt those people but not, say, firefighters?

[Wowfunhappy]

It doesn't, that's the point. The mandate presumably would have been legal if Adams hadn't added those arbitrary exemptions.

[busymom0]

Doubt it. The court also said the following (court towards the end indicates that the mandate didn’t make sense even when the order was issued):

> “”Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19. As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The Petitioners should not have been terminated for choosing not to protect themselves. We have learned through the course of the pandemic that the vaccine against Covid-19 is not absolute. Breakthrough cases occur, even for those who have been vaccinated and boosted. President Joseph Biden has said that the pandemic is over.& The State of New York ended the Covid-19 state of emergency over a month ago.? As this Court stated in its decision in the Rivicci matter, this is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic. See Rivicci v. NYC Fire Dept., Index No. 85131/2022. They worked without protective gear. They were infected with Covid-19, creating natural immunity. They continued working full duty while their exemption requests were pending. They were terminated and are willing to come back to work for the City that cast them aside. The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health: it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents. In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn't be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down. If it was about safety and public health, no one would be exempt. It is time for the City of New York to do what is right and what is just.”

Source:

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet...

[jquery]

Yikes. This reads like a gish-gallop of anti-vax talking points. I don’t even necessarily disagree with the decision to reinstate the employees, but this legal reasoning is embarrassing.

Edit: I’m happy to learn that the New York Supreme Court is not the highest court in New York, this entire thread is misleading (I think people are assuming New York’s highest court slapped down vaccine mandates). I don’t know why New York has to name their courts in such weird ways…

[tlogan]

I think it is important to understand that not all people who against vax mandates are anti-vaxers.

[xyzzy_plugh]

I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree.

Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications.

Even if you were to argue on behalf of one who is indifferent to vaccines but is against mandates, so long as those mandates encourage vaccination, they effectively are discouraging vaccination and are thus anti-vax.

It can be hard to recognize all of this without the right perspective. In isolation, it is easy to claim that one is not anti-vax; however actions speak infinitely louder than words.

[benjaminwootton]

The legal reasoning doesn’t need to go beyond the first line, which I believe is now scientific and popular consensus?

“Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19.”

[LudwigNagasena]

“A talking point” is a very sleazy turn of phrase. You don’t say it is wrong, incorrect, harmful; you just apply guilt by association even though the statement in question may have merit by itself.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19.

This was not true before Omicron. Vaccination was never a 100% protection against contracting or transmitting SARS-CoV-2, but it did significantly reduce the rate of both. People who refused to vaccinate themselves were, in fact, putting people around them at greater risk.

That protection has decreased with Omicron, though it is still not zero (and with boosters, it increases again for a few months).

[origin_path]

That's not the case. Even against Delta effectiveness dropped very rapidly and then actually went negative. The UK is one of the few countries that kept regularly publishing case stats even after this happened and it showed that once the initial vaccine 'high' wore off, vaccinated people were getting infected more frequently than the unvaccinated. Omicron didn't change this.

This sort of thing is unintuitive but has happened before. In fact Fauci cited the possibility of this effect as one of the reasons not to rush the trials. Unfortunately the trials did not detect this, probably due to bad use of statistics (the way they classify people as unvaccinated for weeks after having actually been given the shot can warp the stats).

[DiogenesKynikos]

> Even against Delta effectiveness dropped very rapidly and then actually went negative.

Effectiveness against Delta did not go negative. Protection against infection decreased, but was still quite significant. A single booster also greatly increased protection against Delta, which is why many countries initiated booster campaigns in the Fall of 2021.

> Unfortunately the trials did not detect this, probably due to bad use of statistics

The trials were always designed to test protection against symptomatic disease, severe cases and death. They were not designed to test protection against infection. Everyone who read the trial registrations and the studies knew this from the beginning. The fact that this has recently been presented as a big revelation in the media just shows how uninformed the public (and much of the media) is. It's also a reflection of the revisionist narrative (i.e., we shouldn't have done anything about CoVID) taking hold.

[colinmhayes]

Because athletes and performers are irreplaceable and bring in tourist revenue which the city wants. Firefighters are more easily replaceable and have no effect on tourism. Having competing priorities is common enough, I don't see what doesn't make sense here. The city wants everyone to be vaccinated but it also wants broadway and basketball to be happening more, so they came up with this policy.

[akira2501]

> Because athletes and performers are irreplaceable and bring in tourist revenue which the city wants. Firefighters are more easily replaceable and have no effect on tourism.

I believe this is the most cynical thing I've read yet today.

> I don't see what doesn't make sense here

If the Athletes and Performers are so irreplaceable, then wouldn't you demand they be the most protected by the vaccine, and thus require them to have it before you would require the firefighters? They are so replaceable, afterall...

> so they came up with this policy.

They wanted to force compliance, but then realized there are some people who see themselves as above compliance, so they carved out their own policy in a telling way to kowtow to them.

Dollars are replaceable. People aren't. You can't actually be happy to wrap this cynicism around this, can you?

[kortilla]

> you demand they be the most protected by the vaccine, and thus require them to have it

No, because they will just refuse. That’s the whole problem.

[themitigating]

People are replaceable, resources aren't.

[slaw]

Are there athletes or performers older than 55 so covid vaccination would have positive effect?

[viridian]

There are certainly some stage performers over 55, but it's a small minority. Patti LaPone is 73 and is still on the stage.

[chitowneats]

This is the reason they did it. It's also the reason that most firefighters and others like them do not vote for politicians like Eric Adams. Despite the fact that he's a former police officer.

[spaetzleesser]

Why do firefighters have no effect on tourism? Without them you can not run a city. Same for many other jobs like garbage collection.

[sky_rw]

Well clearly there is an elite class to whom body autonomy is granted, and an underclass who must follow arbitrary and capricious rules. OP appreciates that celebrities and entertainers are our betters and should not be held to the same standard.

[faeriechangling]

Yes exactly. You are allowed to infect people with a deadly pandemic if you're rich, but if you're poor you have to risk personal medical consequences or lose your remote job.

[colinmhayes]

Reality is that not letting Kyrie play basketball cost New York millions, and firing a firefighter doesn’t. Tons of people lose their jobs when entertainment acts close because the performers aren’t vaccinated. Money talks, does that mean celebrities should not be held to the same standard? Not really, it just means that holding them to the same standard would cost more than adams was willing to pay, whether it was the right thing to do or not.

[refurb]

This is the issue. Politicians claim it about health and saving "grandma", but when the number of dollars get big enough, all that goes out the window.

So apparently getting vaccinated is critically important, but not more important than money.

[hotpotamus]

I don't think this mandate had much to do with body autonomy, but job autonomy, which yes, rich people have quite a bit more of.

[throwawaylinux]

An attitude which I've found to be curiously pervasive amongst self-proclaimed egalitarians and socialists.

[VagueMag]

FWIW, there was a vocal contingent of Marxists on Twitter who saw the mandates for the erosion of worker power and rights that they were, and vigorously opposed them. Richard Wolff even came around eventually, as well as Jimmy Dore after having his own personal run-in with the nasty side effects which are all too common with these vaccines.

Sadly, though, some of the most awful scapegoaters of the unvaccinated were indeed on the "left." Noam Chomsky even said they should be excluded from society completely, and if that meant they couldn't even obtain food, well, that would be their problem.

[colinmhayes]

Because they can be replaced by vaccinated people I guess and if one or two can’t that’s ok because they’ve still got all the other ones. Kyrie and the Yankees can’t be replaced.

[koolba]

I’d be willing to bet I could more easily find a team full of people to swing a bat or throw a ball than a couple thousand people willing and able to rush into a burning building.

[colinmhayes]

Can you get people to pay to watch them?

[vineyardmike]

> Same for many other jobs like garbage collection.

Spoken like someone who hasn't been to New York. I love the city, its a fun and vibrant place. But they have some unusual trash policies (primarily they don't have alleys so trash has to be dumped on the main sidewalk) and wherever you go its not uncommon for the sidewalks to be lined with trash waiting for pickup.

[spaetzleesser]

I have been to New York and I have also seen Paris during a strike of garbage collectors. It gets ugly very quickly once collection stops.

The number one thing I have noticed in New York was they seem to make trash collection as loud as possible ideally at 3 in the morning :)

[themitigating]

How would they collect trash efficiently during the day when many streets are packed. Not to mention the extra traffic a slow moving often stopping garbage truck would cause

[throwawaylinux]

Aren't NYC's financials a basket case though? Surely its politicians don't care much about bringing revenue to the city, rather bringing profit to their friends and families and lobbyists. That is what makes more sense here.

[colinmhayes]

My understanding is that a significant number of Yankees were unvaccinated and would not have been able to play home games. There are a significant number of New Yorkers that would’ve been very upset had that come to pass, so politicians acted according to public will and gave them an exception. Does that mean this wasn’t also corruption? No, but it is a reasonable thing to do even without corruption imo.

[throwawaylinux]

You just said it was for revenue to the city though.

I'm not really convinced about this new explanation either. I've seen little to no evidence that upsetting significant numbers of people factored into any other decisions around covid response, including the significant number who were upset by the creation of these double standards.

I'm going to have to stick with pure and simple corruption as the simplest and most likely explanation, unless there is some extraordinary evidence supporting some other less likely one.

[colinmhayes]

I meant revenue that went to businesses/people in the city, like the general ecosystem not just the government. And a large part of the backlash was from people whose jobs were eliminated until full scale entertainment came back. It was a big deal to tons of people.

[tedunangst]

Kyrie Irving isn't a firefighter.

[rrdharan]

No, he a chimney since he gets swept

[selimthegrim]

In Cleveland we still call him the bus driver

[CobrastanJorji]

You could probably make a pretty good argument. A firefighter deals closely with the population in non-voluntary situations. An athlete or performer is likely quite a bit separated from the crowd watching them, and they're choosing to be there anyway. I don't know if there was actually an attempt to justify the decision, though.

And I imagine someone could also make a pretty good argument in the other direction. A firefighter is probably going to be wearing a mask. Performers by their nature are yelling into a crowded indoor space.

[cantSpellSober]

The argument at the time was that it was "creating a double standard that disadvantaged local artists and athletes" compared to performers that were not residents of NYC (but commuted in for work).

https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/153-22/transcr...

[neither_color]

Stuff like this and allowing certain events while vilifying others as "superspreader events" killed a lot of people's belief in mitigation strategies IMO. A virus is a virus and doesn't recognize human needs or wants. Either there are no exceptions for anyone or we shouldn't bother.

[spaetzleesser]

The same happened in CA with some stores being open and others closed. Why was Home Depot open? It made no sense in terms of spreading the disease . It was just arbitrary BS.

Closing the beaches was stupid too. If there ever was a safe place then it was the beach or state park wheee uou are in the open and the window blows.

[triceratops]

Home Depot was open because people need to fix shit around their house if you want them to stay home. What's arbitrary about that?

I agree with you about the beaches. But in the early days, we didn't really know what worked and what didn't. People said 6 feet apart was safe enough indoors because "droplets containing the virus fall to the ground".

[db48x]

It was arbitrary because small hardware stores had to close, while big ones could stay open. Also, because in most states someone in the governor’s office just went down a random list of professions or business types and decided on the spot whether to shut them down or not. That’s the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. It also fails the rational basis test, since the government hadn’t even come up with a rationale for why certain businesses have to close while others can stay open. Or why a Walmart could have a 500 people in it, while churches were limited to 10 people at a time (regardless of the size of the church’s building, even), etc.

[spaetzleesser]

A small hardware store in town went out of business because they were forced to close. Same for a lot of other small stores. I could understand reducing number of people in the store but closing totally while keeping others open simply didn’t make sense. I think the exceptions had more to do with successful lobbying than with health reasons.

[throwawaylinux]

People were rabidly cheering it on too. Police going around shutting playgrounds and arresting parents for playing outdoors with their children, while at the same time the politicians they voted for were constantly and egregiously shown to be flouting the rules on frivolities, parties, travel, fun. And there were excuses for the politicians and bloodlust for the commoner trying to exercise or raise their child. Absolutely flabbergasting.

I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it. Covid has been a really amazing learning experience for me.

[spaetzleesser]

“I used to wonder how on earth nazis and communists and the like were able to seize power and control of a population, and now I've seen it”

That’s how the US has worked for a long time. See the war on drugs and mass incarceration, laws against black people and extreme political polarization. There was always a group of “others” that people wanted to get punished.

I bet if Trump had been a little smarter he would have got away with a lot more while people cheering him on. But it seems a lot of political institutions are eroding so maybe the next strongman will be able to go way further.

[scatters]

You've got cause and effect backwards. Societies have to overreact to pandemics, because those that didn't got wiped out - eventually. Enforcement of quarantine and similar measures through extreme social norms is a necessary adaptation to the threat of plague; civilization wouldn't be able to exist without it.

[tinus_hn]

> fun.

Its an amazingly corrupting kind of power, the ability to dictate the way others can have fun.

[thatguy0900]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cYPm__73XI I still remember this video that was widely circulated. The bans were never more than politicians wanting to look like they were doing something.

[jesuscript]

Because it doesn’t matter who has Covid in a fire.

[nomel]

By that logic, firefighters should have been exempt.

[Rebelgecko]

Dunno how it is in NY, but in my city, the fire department spends way more time on paramedic duties than on actually fighting fires (around 40 EMS calls for every fire call). IMO if you're getting a ride to the hospital from someone it matters if they have COVID. And even though the vaccines don't guarantee that you won't get infected, the government does have an interest in preventing severe infections. COVID was the #1 killer of first responders

[rainbowzootsuit]

I am perfectly happy to have a COVID spewing firefighter get me to the hospital after a car accident and let me take my chances there, than to be left without a first responder. 100% of the time.

[Rebelgecko]

I would rather have a live and vaccinated firefighter take me to the hospital than have to wait at home because an unvaccinated firefighter died of COVID or is hooked up to a vent

[CaptWillard]

Someone healthy enough to be a firefighter has a near-zero chance of being hospitalized because of Covid.

[nobody9999]

>I am perfectly happy to have a COVID spewing firefighter get me to the hospital after a car accident and let me take my chances there, than to be left without a first responder. 100% of the time.

Except that doesn't apply to this situation. IIRC, ~95-97% of cops, EMTs and firefighters in NYC were already vaccinated and those that weren't were given ample time (extended several times) to get vaccinated.

As such, that was never an issue.

That said, there certainly was an arbitrary and capricious standard applied in this case.

[andrewem]

I found https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... which says “there were 70 non-COVID-19 on-duty firefighter deaths and 78 firefighter deaths resulted from COVID-19 in 2021”.

Also “In 2021, 1,353,500 fires resulted in 3,800 civilian deaths and 14,700 injuries”. By comparison, Wikipedia says there were 42,915 deaths due to motor vehicles in 2021, more than 10x. So it makes sense that even if fire department only dealt with road crashes they would spend more time on that than on fires.

[chrisseaton]

> the fire department spends way more time on paramedic duties than on actually fighting fires

Why does the fire department do medical stuff in the US? Why isn’t it medical people providing paramedics? Seems like something that should be left to professionals?

[pc86]

Most common example is probably motor vehicle accidents where firefighters (in concert with police officers) will secure the scene, gain access to the vehicle(s) if necessary, etc.

A lot of firefighters are also EMTs and paramedics. Both because in places with volunteer firefighters they can just work as EMS, and also because there's quite a bit of overlap in that if you need a firefighter there's a decent chance having EMS around would be beneficial as well.

Firefighters who aren't trained in EMS are not providing medical care, so saying "leave it to the professionals" is pretty dismissive in this context.

[sokoloff]

What makes you think the fire department's medical staff aren't professionals? My city FD has 148 EMTs and 88 paramedics and are assigned to every station and unit in the city.

[Rebelgecko]

My county is kind of weird, but only firefighters are allowed to be paramedics here. They are considered professionals, they have to take the same classes and get the same certs as paramedics in other areas

[rasz]

Because professionals will charge you second house mortgage.

[whiddershins]

because they travel into the state from elsewhere to work.

[jmyeet]

This is 100% correct [1]:

> Mayor Eric Adams plans to announce on Thursday that professional athletes and performers working in New York City will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19, according to a person familiar with his plans.

> This means that Kyrie Irving, the Nets’ star point guard who has refused to get vaccinated, will be able to take the floor at Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the first time this season.

Adams is awful. NYC mayors exist to further the interests of property developers, corporations and the police unions. If that means that a public health measure needs to be sabotaged so some anti-vaxxer can play for the Nets, so be it.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/sports/kyrie-irving-nyc-v...

[throwoutway]

Sabotaged is a politically biased way of describing the events here. The reality is different as my sibling comment pointed out

[robocat]

Confusing: you haven't written a sibling comment? What are you talking about? Did you use a second account?

[throwoutway]

Did I use the term incorrectly? A sibling comment is someone else’s comment that shares a parent comment, is it not? I’ve seen others use this term

[_nhynes]

I think that the confusion is with the word my. If you had said a sibling comment, it would likely have been immediately clear. Linking or quoting the sibling comment would avoid linguistic ambiguity altogether.

[throwoutway]

I see. I will try that next time

[programmarchy]

Are you your own sibling?

[_nhynes]

> sibling (n.) (computing theory) A node in a data structure that shares its parent with another node.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sibling

> share (v.) To have or use in common

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/share

> another (det.) Not the same; different

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/another

Being one’s own sibling is incompatible with the accepted definitions, so no.

[up2isomorphism]

Vaccine mandate is unlawful to begin with so there is nothing to sabotage.

[ls15]

I think that the headline describes the ruling better

[KennyBlanken]

My state's republican governor sued mayors closing down construction sites during the peak of the pandemic, and also exempted a dizzying number of industries and sectors.

For example: if you sold an ATV to a town police department, you were deemed an essential business and thus got to ignore the closure orders and keep your entire business, both offices and showrooms/repair centers, open.

...but then his administration also went around shutting down bicycle shops in the city. Guess what a lot of medical staff and "essential" blue-collar workers depend upon for transportation, particularly since the public transit system was largely shut down, dangerous to be on public-health-wise, and doesn't operate at hours useful for some shift workers?

Eventually he got the message, but not after a lot of very cringe comments to the press about the pandemic being "real" and implying that bike shops were just frivolous luxury stores.

[faeriechangling]

Nothing says luxury like riding a few hundred dollar used bike through the pissing rain.

The poor blue collar working man has a truck for every family member, and a heavy duty truck for the old man.

[midislack]

Can you explain what's confusing about it? Seems perfectly crystal clear to me.

[tptacek]

This whole thread sprawled! I just meant that it wasn't clear who the ruling applied to, because New York City is easy to confuse with New York State.

[quadrifoliate]

It's confusing because it makes it's technically correct [1], but doesn't really get at the heart of the matter. If 'tptacek hadn't pointed out the subtlety that it was the arbitrary nature of exceptions added later that was the reason for this judgement, I would not have understood or noticed it.

It's like saying "On-call developer fixes problem caused by program written in Java" – correct, but doesn't point out, for example, that it was caused due to a commit pushed to production on Friday evening after overriding the failing CI tests.

----------------------------------------

[1] Which, as they say, is the worst kind.