Mueller has reached the tweets phase of the investigation.

For years, President Trump has used Twitter as his go-to public relations weapon, mounting a barrage of attacks on celebrities and then political rivals even after advisers warned he could be creating legal problems for himself.

Those concerns now turn out to be well founded. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Goes to intent, m’lud.

Several of the remarks came as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men — both key witnesses in the inquiry — about the investigation, and Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add up to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.

Now how could tweets sent out by the president of the United States himself possibly intimidate anyone?

Mr. Mueller wants to question the president about the tweets. His interest in them is the latest addition to a range of presidential actions he is investigating as a possible obstruction case: private interactions with Mr. Comey, Mr. Sessions and other senior administration officials about the Russia inquiry; misleading White House statements; public attacks; and possible pardon offers to potential witnesses.

In other words all that stuff we’ve been seeing for the past year and a half that looks like obstruction is in fact going to be investigated for obstruction. Fancy that.

The special counsel’s investigators have told Mr. Trump’s lawyers they are examining the tweets under a wide-ranging obstruction-of-justice law beefed up after the Enron accounting scandal, according to the three people. The investigators did not explicitly say they were examining possible witness tampering, but the nature of the questions they want to ask the president, and the fact that they are scrutinizing his actions under a section of the United States Code titled “Tampering With a Witness, Victim, or an Informant,” raised concerns for his lawyers about Mr. Trump’s exposure in the investigation.

The exposure that he created for himself by not ever shutting up for one second.

Giuliani scornfully brushed it off.

“If you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public,” Mr. Giuliani said.

If you’re a normal rational functioning person. Trump is not that.

Investigators want to ask Mr. Trump about the tweets he wrote about Mr. Sessions and Mr. Comey and why he has continued to publicly criticize Mr. Comey and the former deputy F.B.I. director Andrew G. McCabe, another witness against the president.

What can he say? “Because I’m an out of control rage-addled narcissistic goon who can’t stop himself?”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have pushed back against the special counsel about the tweets, saying the president is a politician under 24-hour attack and is within his rights to defend himself using social media or any other means.

That seems like a silly way to push back. No doubt in general he is “within his rights to defend himself” in legitimate ways, but that doesn’t mean he gets to obstruct justice.

It would be quite satisfying if his Twitter habit helped bring him down.

Where the crazy is at the moment:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that he opposes an effort by conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, as Republican leaders of the chamber sought to avert a vote on the volatile issue later in the day.

Some House Republicans want to impeach the Republican Deputy AG over the investigation of the Republican president by the Republican former head of the FBI, and other House Republicans want to hold off on that for now.

Conservative hard-liners earlier agreed to hold off on pushing for an impeachment vote Thursday after securing a commitment from GOP leaders to declare Justice Department officials in contempt of Congress if they do not deliver specified documents in the coming weeks.

That might sound kind of normal if we didn’t know that ongoing investigations are routinely carried on behind closed doors because throwing the doors open puts the investigation in jeopardy.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said earlier Thursday that he supports the effort by conservative lawmakers to impeach Rosenstein, calling it “leverage” to get the Justice Department to provide Congress with more documents related to the Russia probe.

But it’s just routine for the Justice Department not to collaborate with Congress in its investigations. That’s how they do it.

Democrats have said that House Republicans’ clashes with Rosenstein are little more than a pretext to weaken Mueller’s efforts.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the push to get more documents “really has nothing to do with oversight.”

“This has everything to do … with getting the documents to the president’s allies in Congress so (Trump lawyer Rudolph W.) Giuliani can get his hands on them,” Schiff said.

And that’s not how that’s supposed to work.

For those within reach of London, a glorious opportunity:

Sunday 25 November 2018

Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism

9:30am registration for 10:00am start

Central London

Join notable secularists and veteran women’s rights campaigners for a conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism at a spectacular venue in central London on Sunday 25 November 2018.

The conference will raise key issues surrounding religious arbitration, the veil and gender segregation at schools and universities, including as part of the religious-Right’s assault on women’s rights. It will also highlight the voices of people on the frontlines of resistance, the gains made by secularists both in the UK and internationally, and the importance of secularism as a minimum precondition for equality. Challenges that secularists continue to face and priorities for continued collective action will also be addressed.

The conference will mark the tenth anniversary of the One Law for All Campaign for equality irrespective of background, beliefs and religions.

Confirmed Speakers (Biographies):

Afsana Lachaux, Women’s Rights Activist
@Ahlam Akram, Founder of Basira
Amina Lone, Director of Social Action and Research Foundation
Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation
Anna Zobnina, Strategy and Policy Coordinator at the European Network of Migrant Women (ENoMW)
Beatrix Campbell, Writer, Journalist, Broadcaster and Playwright
Bonya Ahmed, Activist, Writer, Blogger at Mukto-Mona
Caroline Criado Perez, Writer, Campaigner and Consultant
Cinzia Sciuto, Journalist
Diana Nammi, Founder and Executive Director of Iranian Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation
Eve Sacks, Trustee of Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance UK
Fariborz Pooya, Bread and Roses TV Producer
Gina Khan, One Law for All Spokesperson
Gita Sahgal, Founder and Director of Centre for Secular Space
Homa Arjomand, International Coordinator for One Secular School System
Houzan Mahmoud, Co-founder of Culture Project
Ibtissame Lachgar, Feminist, Human Rights Activist
Inna Shevchenko, FEMEN Leader
Marieme Helie Lucas, Algerian Sociologist, Political Theorist and Author
Maryam Namazie, Co-Spokesperson for One Law for All, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB)ms of Britain and Fitnah
Nadia El Fani, Tunisian film-maker
Nasreen Rehman, Women’s Rights Campaigner
Nina Sankari, Polish Feminist and Secularist
Peter Tatchell, Human Rights Campaigner
Pragna Patel, Founder and Director of the Southall Black Sisters
Rahila Gupta, Writer and Journalist
Rumana Hashem, Women’s Rights Activist
Sadia Hameed, Spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
Sadikur Rahman Rana, Solicitor and National Secular Society Council Member
Stasa Zajovic, Co-Founder of @Women in Black Belgrade
Victoria Gugenheim, Award-winning Body Artist

Tickets can be purchased here. Conference venue will be given to ticket holders closer to the date of the event. Please note that tickets cannot be bought at the door and must be purchased prior to the event.

Conference sponsors include: Bread and Roses TV; Center for Inquiry; Centre for Secular Space; Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB); Culture Project; Equal Rights Now; Fitnah; National Secular Society; One Law for All; Southall Black Sisters; and Secularism is a Women’s Issue.

More information on the conference is available on its website.

For more information, please contact Maryam Namazie, onelawforall@gmail.com.

Perfect.

Jennifer Rubin finds the “impeach Rosenstein” stunt warped and contemptible.

The damage here is being done not by Rosenstein, but by irresponsible, hyper-partisan congressmen. Former White House ethics counsel Norman Eisen and Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21, recently wrote about the impeachment gambit:

Key House Republicans are abusing their offices and the public trust to blindly provide protection for [President] Trump. They are doing so instead of working to get to the bottom of the worst foreign attack on American elections in our history.

They need to be called on their scandalous efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation and ignore Russia’s cyber invasion of our democracy. A bipartisan outcry greeted Trump’s Helsinki betrayals. We should be hearing protests at least as loud and bipartisan in response to this parallel — and equally unmerited — attack on American law enforcement right here at home.

It is not Rosenstein who should be removed from office, but rather, the House Republican members who are obstructing an ongoing investigation of the Republican president and his cronies. While their actions are protected (most likely) under the” speech or debate” clause (preventing criminal prosecution or civil suit for actions that would otherwise be actionable), their pattern of conduct (cooking up a misleading memo about the FISA warrant application for Carter Page’s surveillance, exposing a confidential intelligence source, smearing the FBI) amounts to multiple blatant attempts to thwart an entirely legitimate investigation. If anyone in the White House is conspiring with them to interfere with the investigation, such individuals could be investigated for obstruction of justice.

Could but probably won’t – but her point is that that’s what they’re doing. We’re watching people obstructing justice and getting away with it because they can.

It’s the most conservative, farthest right Republicans who are pushing the impeachment of Rosenstein ploy, and what I’m wondering at the moment is what, exactly, is conservative about their lust to sabotage Mueller’s investigation.

After all, Mueller is a Republican, and a former Marine who fought in Vietnam, and a former head of the FBI. You would think all three of those descriptors would place him way the hell up there on the Conservative Checklist. Conservatives and Republicans generally favor other conservatives and Republicans, and men who enlisted voluntarily to fight in Vietnam, especially Marines. (I say “men” because the same doesn’t apply to women: conservatives and Republicans prefer the women to stay home and wait for their men to return.) As for the head of the FBI – come on now, you can’t get a better conservative Republican credential than that.

Yet these guys (I think they are all guys) who pride themselves on being to the right of most House Republicans (which makes them very far right indeed, do admit) are hell bent on discrediting Mueller and his investigation and the (Republican) Deputy Attorney General who is supervising both.

Why? What is conservative about that as a cause?

The explanation we see is entirely pragmatic – it’s worth it to them because Trump is destroying everything “liberal” he can get his hands on.

Maybe that’s all the explanation that’s needed, but it still niggles at me. Trump is a crook. He tells constant obvious lies. He’s mean. He fucks around and always has, including during all his marriages. He sexually assaults women and brags about it. He was a terrible father when his children were young. He hates our European allies and loves Russia. He’s a vulgar bullying asshole. You would think all those things would put extra-conservative conservatives way off, so way off that even the destruction of environmental and financial regulations wouldn’t be worth it.

It’s a puzzle; I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to not understanding it.

Act 732 of the melodrama:

Conservative lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a resolution calling for the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, in a move that marks a dramatic escalation in the battle over the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The effort, spearheaded by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also sets up a showdown with House Republican leaders, who have distanced themselves from calls to remove Rosenstein from office. But Meadows and Jordan stopped short of forcing an immediate vote on the measure, sparing Republican lawmakers for now from a potential dilemma.

They used to be the lawnorder party, but now they’re the party of protect the sleazy corrupt rapey gangster from Queens from the FBI and law enforcement in general.

Meadows and Jordan are leaders of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a bloc whose members have been among the most persistent critics of Rosenstein.

Because they’re to the right of everything. They’re the right wing of the right-wing Republicans, who are to the right of nearly everybody else on the planet. They’re so far to the right they’re coming back via the other side. Fire all the Attorneys General! Get rid of the investigators and prosecutors! Turn them all loose!

Not the peasants though. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t want them to have freedom. Life in prison for smoking a joint is good enough for them.

Steve Almond was doing a reading last week, and during the q and a afterwards a guy delivered an aria of rage about Hillary Clinton.

I thought about this guy as I watched a video clip of Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaking to a group of young conservatives on Tuesday. The high schoolers spontaneously start chanting “Lock her up” and Sessions — our nation’s top law enforcement official — repeats their words and chuckles fondly.

As you may remember, “Lock her up” was the central rallying cry at the Republican National Convention. Forget policy proposals aimed at helping working Americans, or hopeful slogans. Instead, the most salient message from one of our two major political parties was simply that the opposing candidate should be imprisoned.

At the time, I figured this chant was a way of unifying the party behind a divisive candidate, one who barely understood the precepts of traditional conservatism and who had few real policy positions.

Ah the luxury of being a man. I never figured that. I figured it was classic unhinged misogyny. Textbook. Unmistakable.

But as I listened Tuesday to the bellowing of those mostly male teenagers, something finally clicked in my mind: “Lock her up” isn’t really a political rallying cry. It’s an attempt to criminalize female ambition and autonomy.

Why yes, of course it is.

Mind you, I have the advantage of years of watching unhinged misogyny spraying itself all over Twitter and Facebook and blogs and other bits of the internet. I’ve had many thousands of lessons on the theme of “Enraged Hatred of Women Has Not Gone Away.”

I can hear now much more clearly, in this despotic chant, the desire to create a culture in which men have legal dominion over women and girls.

Sometimes this desire is overt. Women and girl migrants who come to America fleeing danger? Lock them up. Women who want to exercise their reproductive rights? Lock them up. Woman who dare to speak about sexual harassment and abuse? Well, if we can’t lock them up, we can at least shut them up.

And for an extra added bonus there’s the endless war on “TERFs.”

As the mid-term elections approach, you can be sure we’ll be seeing more Republican rallies, and hearing crowds roar “Lock her up.”

This speaks to the moral and intellectual poverty of the modern GOP, of course. But it also speaks to a vicious misogyny that extends far beyond an election. The “her” has become universal at this point.

If you’re a woman in America, they’re talking to you. They’re talking about locking you up.

I know. We know.

Trump and his pimps continue his war on the press.

The White House took retaliatory action against Kaitlan Collins, a White House reporter for CNN, after Collins asked President Trump questions at an Oval Office photo op on Wednesday.

Collins was representing all the television networks as the “pool reporter” in the room during the early afternoon meeting between Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission.

It is customary for the press pool to lob a few questions at the president. Sometimes Trump responds; other times he does not.

Collins asked him some questions about Putin and Cohen, and he didn’t answer. Later the White House told the press about an unexpected press availability with Trump and Juncker in the Rose Garden, open to all the press as opposed to the small pool.

A few minutes later, Collins was asked to come to Bill Shine’s office. Shine, a former co-president of Fox News, is the new deputy chief of staff for communications. Shine and press secretary Sarah Sanders met Collins there.

“They said ‘You are dis-invited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today,'” Collins said. “They said that the questions I asked were inappropriate for that venue. And they said I was shouting.”

There’s a clip that shows she was talking the way reporters generally do talk.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the matter.

In a statement, CNN disputed the White House’s assertion that Collins’ questions were inappropriate.

“Just because the White House is uncomfortable with a question regarding the news of day doesn’t mean the question isn’t relevant and shouldn’t be asked,” the network said. “This decision to bar a member of the press is retaliatory in nature and not indicative of an open and free press. We demand better.”

What Collins described — telling a well-known and well-respected reporter that she can’t attend a presidential event — is another serious escalation against the press by the Trump administration.

Reporters from the major networks take turns as the TV “pool reporter.” Wednesday happened to be CNN’s day.

On some days, there’s only one opportunity to ask the president questions.

So Collins felt she should ask about two of Wednesday’s biggest stories when journalists were let inside the Oval Office for a portion of Trump and Juncker’s meeting.

And the White House decided to punish her for that.

They’ll be arresting reporters for lèse-majesté soon at this rate.

Trump loses big: the emoluments case is going ahead.

This is the nightmare — or one of them — that Trump has long feared, namely litigation in which his business operations, perhaps even his tax returns, are laid bare. Norman Eisen, who is co-counsel with the District and Maryland, tells me, “It is another major crack in the dam that has so far been holding back accountability. [Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III] is closing in; [Michael] Cohen is about to cut a deal; and now we have taken another leap forward in being able to understand how Trump is profiting off the presidency, including possibly from Russia.” He adds, “‘Follow the money,’ the old adage goes, and we are going to do exactly that thanks to this decision.”

The decision, running over 50 pages, is an impressive, detailed analysis of the Constitution and 18th century language. This is a judge who did his homework. The ruling is the inevitable result of Trump’s decision to maintain ownership of his far-flung business operations and to continue to reap the benefits, foreign and domestic, resulting from his presidency.

Trump claims that “emoluments” means an exchange, like people stay in his hotel and he gives them Hawaii or something. The judge says nah.

Laurence Tribe, who along with Eisen has been making the emoluments argument in court and in the court of public opinion, says, “It’s an extremely significant ruling, the first federal judicial decision addressing — and endorsing — the theory we have been advancing on the Emoluments Clause ever since the start of the Trump administration.” On that, Trump would no doubt agree. You can be sure Trump will try to appeal the ruling.

And maybe he’ll explode with rage.

What actually happened with that transcript and video, according to Philip Bump in the Post:

Here’s the thing: That’s also how The Post’s transcript of the news conference initially read, too. Ours came from Bloomberg Government and ours, too, excluded the first part of the reporters question in which he begins, “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election”.

What happened? If you watch the videos, it’s pretty clear. At some point in the middle of that question, there’s a switch between the feed from the reporters and the feed from the translator. In the White House version of the video, you can hear the question being asked very faintly under the woman who is translating saying “president.”

There are different versions and they vary depending on what was turned up or down in which ear piece…And yet, the Post has corrected its transcript but the White House has not corrected its.

The Guardian runs an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from the parents of one of the children murdered at Sandy Hook:

Since that day, we, as well as the parents, family, and friends of the 25 other victims, have been embroiled in a constant battle with social media providers, including Facebook, to protect us from harassment and threats.

Almost immediately after the massacre of 20 little children, all under the age of seven, and six elementary school teachers and staff, the attacks on us began. Conspiracy groups and anti-government provocateurs began making claims on Facebook that the massacre was a hoax, that the murdered were so-called “crisis actors” and that their audience should rise up to “find out the truth” about our families. These claims and calls to action spread across Facebook like wildfire and, despite our pleas, were protected by Facebook.

While terms you use, like “fake news” or “fringe conspiracy groups”, sound relatively innocuous, let me provide you with some insight into the effects of allowing your platform to continue to be used as an instrument to disseminate hate. We have endured online, telephone, and in-person harassment, abuse, and death threats. In fact, one of the abusers was sentenced to jail for credible death threats that she admitted in court she had uttered because she believed in online content created by these “fringe groups”. In order to protect ourselves and our surviving children, we have had to relocate numerous times. These groups use social media, including Facebook, to “hunt” us, posting our home address and videos of our house online. We are currently living in hiding. We are far from alone in our experiences, as many other families who have lost loved ones in mass shootings and other tragedies have reported the same continuing torment.

Our families are in danger as a direct result of the hundreds of thousands of people who see and believe the lies and hate speech, which you have decided should be protected. What makes the entire situation all the more horrific is that we have had to wage an almost inconceivable battle with Facebook to provide us with the most basic of protections to remove the most offensive and incendiary content.

Facebook tells us things like that don’t violate its “community standards” – which makes one wonder very seriously about what “community” they have in mind.

In your recent interview with Kara Swisher of Recode, you were asked why Facebook would allow an organization to post a conspiracy theory claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged. While you implied that Facebook would act more quickly to take down harassment directed at Sandy Hook victims than, say, the posts of Holocaust deniers, that is not our experience. In fact, you went on to suggest that this type of content would continue to be protected and that your idea for combatting incendiary content was to provide counterpoints to push “fake news” lower in search results. Of course, this provides no protection to us at all. It would require people writing articles and making posts about our family and the massacre in the same quantity and read and spread by the same numbers as those who post and publish the hoax content. Since few are writing about a school shooting from six years ago, especially when other mass shootings have followed, only the Sandy Hook “hoax” information appears and is spread, giving increased credence to the hateful, dangerous content.

That “answer speech with speech” bromide drives me crazy. Do the people who trot it out so cheerfully not understand that sometimes – indeed, often – the bad speech wins? That people can – all too easily – be talked into anger and then hatred and then violence? That riots are a thing, massacres are a thing, genocide is a thing?

Facebook plays a mammoth role in exposing the world’s masses to information. That level of power comes with the tremendous responsibility of ensuring that your platform is not used to harm others or contribute to the proliferation of hate. Yet it appears that under the guise of free speech, you are prepared to give license to people who make it their purpose to do just that.

It more than appears; it is all too clear.

Jonathan Freedland points out how each new disclosure simply slides off Trump:

…late on Tuesday, the lawyer for Michael Cohen – Donald Trump’s personal attorney, fixer and keeper of his secrets – released a tape in which he and Trump are heard discussing how exactly to fund the silencing of a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal. Cohen apparently wanted it be handled legally, while Trump seemingly had other ideas.

“We’ll have to pay,” Cohen says. Trump’s reply: “Pay with cash.”

Put aside the impact an equivalent revelation about Clinton would have made in 1992. Just imagine the storm this would have caused if it had come out at the time Cohen and Trump had that conversation, just two months before the 2016 election. The entire political class would have assumed it would be devastating.

But now they know better, because nothing is devastating to Trump. There is a new story, there is outrage, then there’s a new story. It’s a pattern.

Note this month’s revelations by BBC’s Panorama programme that Trump behaved like a “predator” at parties packed with teenage girls in the 1980s and 1990s. It included the testimony of Barbara Pilling, then a young model, who recalled Trump asking her age. On hearing that she was 17, Trump said: “Oh, great. So you’re not too old and not too young. That’s just great.” Pilling added that she “felt I was in the presence of a shark”. Again, imagine what similar revelations would have done to the standing of Clinton or any previous president. Yet for Trump, they made barely a dent.

Grab one pussy, grab them all – what’s the difference?

For this reason, we shouldn’t be hoping the Mueller inquiry will make any difference.

Even if Mueller produces jaw-dropping evidence against Trump, the president’s base is unlikely to be impressed. For a flavour of the likely response, note Alex Jones’s latest Infowars broadcast, making the wild, evidence-free allegation that Mueller was involved in a child sex ring and fantasising about shooting Mueller. (Predictably, Facebook, which carries Infowars, said the broadcast did not breach its rules.)

We have to face the grim reality that in our post-2016 world few of the previous norms and standards apply. In Britain, too, we can see how things have changed. There was a time when a government admission that it was having to plan for the possibility that food and medicine would run out – not through natural disaster, but because of a policy it was pursuing – would have been terminal. Now it’s just another day in Brexit.

So that’s cheery.

Today Trump went to give the annual address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which is a thing presidents do.

“Don’t believe the crap you hear from these people — the fake news,” Trump told the crowd of veterans. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Raising the issue of immigration, Trump claimed many Democratic politicians are “disciples of a very low IQ person,” Rep. Maxine Waters, a frequent Democratic critic of the President’s. He also falsely accused Democrats of being “OK” with crime in the US.

“They want open borders, and crime’s OK,” Trump said. “We want strong borders and we want no crime.”

The usual vulgar lies and abuse, in short. Thanks for your service.

Oliver Burkeman explains how it can be true both that things are overall getting better and that we still run around with our hair on fire because of all the things that are getting worse. There’s this study…

In the experiment, participants were shown hundreds of dots in shades from deep purple to deep blue, and asked to say whether each was blue or not. Obviously, the bluer a dot, the more likely people were to classify it as blue. But what’s interesting is what happened when researchers began reducing the prevalence of the blue dots they displayed. The fewer dots that were objectively blue, the broader people’s definition of “blue” became: they started to classify purplish dots that way, too. Their concept of blue expanded, a phenomenon the study authors label “prevalence-induced concept change”. Which clearly has nothing to do with social problems such as poverty or racism – except that, actually, it might.

Of course it might…and that’s not even necessarily wrong (as he goes on to say). A social evil may be ameliorated but we still want to do more, and that’s a good thing. Yes, many Jim Crow laws were repealed, but there are still all those Confederate statues sending their messages about violent subordination of former slaves so let’s not quit yet ok?

But then again sometimes that finding The New Burning Injustice can get…warped.

It’s been argued that we live in an era of “concept creep”, in which concepts like “trauma” or “violence” have stretched to encompass things no previous generation would have worried about. Hence the idea that certain forms of speech are literally violence. Or that letting an eight-year-old walk to school alone is actual child neglect. Or – to pick an example from the current contentious debate over gender identity – that to question someone’s preferred explanation for their experience of gender is to deny their right to exist. Subsequent stages of the blue-dot study showed that prevalence-induced concept change affects this kind of issue, too. For instance, if you ask people to classify faces as threatening or non-threatening, then reduce the incidence of threatening ones, they’ll define more neutral faces as threatening. Ask them to classify research proposals as ethical or unethical, then reduce the unethical ones, and they’ll expand their definition of “unethical”. As co-author Dan Gilbert put it, “When problems become rare, we count more things as problems.”

Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times not so much. The expansion of human rights into the claim that one’s subjective ideas about oneself are both infallible and To Be Respected has a lot of absurd implications that bear no great resemblance to social justice.

The challenge when it comes to social problems – or your personal problems – is to ask whether the thing you’re worrying about is more like the former or the latter: a serious problem in its own right, or one you’ve essentially invented? If it feels like nothing’s improving, it might be because your brain keeps shifting the goalposts.

Exactly so.