This is the bi-weekly visible open thread. There are hidden threads every few days here. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Arbital has made an interactive page with my predictions where you can add your own guesses and automatically get graded and compared to everyone else at the end of the year.
Try it! A while ago, I tried to predict various aspects of the Trump administration and made bets with a couple of readers. Comment of the week is Vidur Kapur on studies of saturated fat and the Mediterranean Diet. To mark the end of winter and the anticipated lengthening of daylight hours and improvement in the weather, we have the usual seasonal gales of wind and torrential downpours flooding in Cork city today!
Reality is currently at such a pitch, I no longer am entirely sure what is real or really real or literally literal. My understanding is that the main reason the Irish government is protesting is that they are very upset that the EU is essentially destroying their competitiveness as an international tax haven, a status which is tremendously more lucrative in the long run than collecting taxes would be in the short run.
Accepting the enforced judgment of tax collection sets the precedent that the EU can come in and meddle with their future tax arrangements, something which the high-tax jurisdictions of the EU would very much like, since they do not want to be out-competed and yet also do not want to lower their tax rates.
Seems to me that sovereignty is the key issue here. Remember how UC Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks made a principled stand that free speech applies even to nasty internet trolls if the Republican students choose invite them?
