For decades, the emperor had been complaining about tinfoil hats and their ability to block the imperial mind reading machines. In ever increasing bouts of frustration he even had his lawyers claim that Big Foil were <i>directly responsibly</i> for child abuse and terrorism, instead of the abusers and terrorists themselves.<p>Then one summer the emperor’s alchemists discovered a way to get radio vapors to pass through sheet metal, unabated. They kept their discovery top secret and patched their mind reading machines with the new technology. Once again the emperor could hear everyone’s thoughts and it no longer mattered if you were wearing a tinfoil hat or not.<p>Now that his problem had gone away, was the emperor so naive as to have his lawyers — expensive lawyers — stop their litigation against Big Foil? Should he pretend he had changed his mind and everything was fine now? Maybe even peddle some “anti-mind reading” hats of his own?<p>That would be silly and very suspicious. In fact, the emperor was so paranoid of any suspicion arising that he <i>increased</i> the intensity of the crackdown on foil hats, even going so far as to arresting the CEO a popular hat maker when he flew into the country on business.<p>He wouldn’t outright ban foil of course. Not only could the emperor now read everyone’s minds, but by comparing the new machines output with the old he could tell who was wearing a secret layer of tinfoil under their hats. It was these people that had the most fiendish thoughts, thinking that no one was listening.