Happy dampy, dreary Tuesday in New York City, where pretty soon, neither the threat of rain nor snow nor cold nor gloom of early nightfall will prevent you from eating outside at your favorite restaurant.

One of the hallmarks of the Covid-era culinary scene in New York was the rise of outdoor dining, in which some 9,000 restaurants built improvised, covered seating areas in the parking spaces beside their curbs. The dining structures became an instant hit and helped keep restaurants afloat during the slow years of the pandemic.

The outdoor dining program “created 11,720 jobs, resulting in $373 million of total annual wages, and $9.6 million of annual income tax to the City at [its] peak,” former Comptroller Brad Lander wrote in a letter last year.

The letter was addressed to Eric Adams’ Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi and Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez — an attempt to prevent the Adams administration from limiting outdoor dining permits. Lander was unsuccessful. In 2023, Adams adopted a new set of rules that restricted roadway dining to April through November while imposing stricter requirements, a formal permitting process and hefty fines for violations. This year, there were only 2,700 restaurants participating in the outdoor dining program.

“The No. 1 reason that restaurants no longer provide outdoor dining is because it is stupidly expensive to build, deconstruct and store outdoor dining structures,” Brooklyn Councilmember Lincoln Restler told The New York Times.

But the structures may be on their way back. Last October, Restler introduced legislation that would bring back year-round dining, ease some of the costs and burdens associated with maintaining them, permit restaurants to “winterize” the structures with heaters and overhead protection, and maintain the design and maintenance standards instituted under the Adams administration.

The City Council passed the legislation on Thursday. “These are the investments that strengthen our neighborhoods, support small businesses, and make New York City more affordable and more livable for everyone,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin said in a statement.

“Year-round open dining will make it financially viable for restaurants across the five boroughs to participate again, will add lots of hospitality sector jobs, and will allow all of us to enjoy more outdoor meals at our favorite spots!” Restler wrote in his newsletter today.

Applications are expected to open in September, meaning that when the frost arrives come winter, the beloved dining sheds won’t disappear with the tourists.

In the final years of his reign, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia lived inside a perfect information bubble. His courtiers softened bad news. His wife Alexandra filtered his advisors. The mystic Rasputin whispered that God was on their side.

As World War I bled Russia dry, bread lines formed in Petrograd and revolution gathered in the streets, the reports reaching the Tsar described only manageable unrest, temporary setbacks and subjects still loyal to the crown.

In July 1918, after being stripped of his throne and held under Bolshevik guard, Nicholas found himself in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, where a commander read him his death sentence. According to witnesses, the Tsar’s befuddled response was just two words: “What? What?”

Poor Tsar Nicholas, killed by the sycophancy of the people who worked for him. The Tsar had truly believed them, having no reason not to. The people around him had spent years making sure he never had reason to doubt.

Today, we are all on our way to becoming Tsar Nicholas by building our own information bubbles, and we are doing it voluntarily, even enthusiastically, one personalized algorithm at a time.

Every time you open your phone and begin to scroll, you are inside a machine that has been studying you.

Read on to learn more.

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