it wants my email address but that's fine because I have one for just such circumstances. But then the log in section of the screen won't scroll down and then I can't get past it. I'll just assume it's poignant and move on......
Oh dang, I didn't realize that. Supposedly NYTimes articles re Covid19 are all free (normally they give you 10 a month for free). At 7:00 pm every night people in NY open their windows and lean out and clap and cheer for all the medical workers - all over the city. It's really something. The link went to several phone videos catching this.
NYT will give each IP address several free articles a month. It may be that Tom had exhausted the free ones whereas you had not. Local cookie policies and ad blocking also seem to effect when things are shown for free or not. WaPo, for example has a lot of COVID-19 content that is supposedly free but since their site (incorrectly) thinks I am running an ad blocker, they insist on an email address anyway.