The NY Times has a habit of running themes of headlines for a while; I've noticed this one too. The other big one from about a year ago was the, "X is the Y, except when it's not" - they had (what seemed to me like) one article a month like that.

Yes this is such a NY Times style headline - I don't know exactly how to classify them but they seem to always run headlines which fit this mold. I find them extremely odd.

NYT has been doing this for years. It is their way of making their audience feel smart without thinking deeply.