A few powerful people independently acting in their own (aligned) interest is functionally indistinguishable from a grand conspiracy.

I agree with your overall argument and agree that the current trend will kill our republic, but there are people who are benefitting from this strife. They don't want to see it resolved and will act to maintain it.

The law you quoted states that the laws of Member States apply to data handling within those Member States, which I don't think anyone was arguing against. Of course EU/Irish law applies to Microsoft's Irish subsidiary, who is operating in Ireland on Irish data. In fact, sections (56) to (66) describe the exceptions to the prohibition on transfer to third countries, including transfers for settling contracts or legal claims.

Secondly, as a US corporation, Microsoft and all of its wholly own subsidiaries are also subject to US law. This is the same in the EU, as shown in the directive you quoted above. The directive you quoted does not say that "that US law does not apply to US entities operating in Ireland".

You're a little overeager there, sport.

European law does not specify that US law does not apply to US entities operating in Ireland, and I challenge you find a reference for that. The closest you'll find is the vague concept of national sovereignty, which limits the US from carrying out governmental operations on foreign citizens or in foreign territories.

Really, Microsoft, a US company with foreign subsidiaries, is responsible for following US law and Irish/European laws simultaneously. If they conflict, then it's up to Microsoft (the entity who entered into a situation where they're violating some country's laws) to deal with the consequences. This whole situation is a result of Microsoft voluntarily maintaining US incorporation, wholly owning foreign subsidiaries, and wading into muddy international law.

Are you arguing that under European law, European companies (through wholly owned foreign subsidiaries) could engage in any activity at all outside of Europe and have no accountability for their actions in Europe? That a European company could engage in human trafficking, summary executions, child prostitution, etc and Europeans would not pursue legal remedies if the actions were legal in the foreign countries?

[In fact, under EU law, European citizens can be criminally charged for actions committed outside of Europe which are legal in the visited country (see child sex tourism laws). So you're saying that the US applying its laws to overseas US entities is overreach, while being alright with the EU doing the same.]

He missed out on the experience of feeling an earthquake and feels let down about that. If you're not from southern California, an earthquake is a novel experience. I felt one in St Louis a few years ago and it was cool and worth experiencing. Of course, having a building collapse on you would be horrible, but that's not too likely in most of the US.

Somehow I'm not surprised.
Asperae facetiae, ubi nimis ex vero traxere, acrem sui memoriam relinquunt.

It's just more blatant to you because you're not one of their idiot constituency. Democrats seem to be less blatant about it because you are one of their idiot constituency.

That you see one as being more blatant than the other says more about you than the politicians.

This entire article is about directly paying for content, instead of having ad supported content. (Well, the article is arguing in favor of ad supported content, but the premises are the same.) This $230/year is, specifically, paying for content. There's no realistic way to collect and distribute this money, so it's posed as an addition to your ISP bill, but this isn't about paying for delivery.

Likewise, the charges for cable TV include their payments to the networks and studios for content. Local ads in the cable feed to your house don't directly pay for content. Just as your ISP injecting ads into your internet connection doesn't pay for content.

If there was a way to directly pay for content and ads were still used in addition, as the GP suggested, the motivator there would be greed. The content was already paid for and this has nothing to do with delivery.

That's just a standard disclaimer. Who doesn't own shares of Tesla Motors? The Motley Fool probably owns some shares of almost every company they'd report on. That doesn't make it an ad.

She carried two phones all of the time, which is why she succeeded. Who's the lunatic now?

Road trains sound like an awesome idea and would be fantastic for efficiently using already available highway space. But without stricter, and strictly enforced, vehicle condition inspections, participating in them could be extremely dangerous. As the driver's interaction with the car becomes more and more passive, people are less likely to notice issues with the car's function. Adding more and more sensors to watch vehicle condition may be a solution, though issues with the reliability and longevity of the sensors in rough environments will piss people off.

The state I live in now doesn't have any vehicle inspections and I've seen several tire blowouts on the highway since moving here. Even with fast computer reflexes, I'd imagine one of those could wipe out several other cars in a train. Without some sort of unified inspection code, your train will have a patchwork of cars from different states in different states of repair.

As the other poster mentioned, and as described in this page, obstructing traffic and driving the speed limit are entirely orthogonal legal concepts.

Almost as important, and exceedingly disturbing, is that this connection (between handling corpses and starting infections during surgery) was only made in 1847.

An arms race between the police and who else? Crimes in the US are not committed with the "latest and greatest assault rifles". They're committed with handguns (mostly crappy old Saturday night specials). The last arms race between US police and citizens was in the 1920's, when assault rifles were banned (as they still are).

"Ex-military" doesn't mean "unhinged violent psychopath". If an overwhelming show of force isn't necessary, like when you're serving a warrant for a nonviolent crime, kicking in doors and invading homes is more likely to cause a bad outcome than just knocking on the door. If the person who's home you're invading has been trained to deal with a similar situation and invading their home isn't necessary, you shouldn't go in with SWAT unless you really want a bad outcome.