Thanks @treyb for raising the question, @luceos for writing/providing the extension and Orion browser for opening up their customization for tags-under-discussion. (I am now aware of and trying out Orion browser as a result. Great so far!)
I know beggars can't be choosers, but my installation of it looks great except on Safari where the tops of all the tag characters are cut off a bit, and on Firefox most of the tags are perfectly rendered, but a percentage of them are cut off in the same way, albeit less severely.
I figured out to go into forum.css in the Access folder and I made some arbitrary changes to elements inside ".TagsUnderDiscussion" entries.
These changes all showed up (as a test I removed the switch to all uppercase, decreased the font size from 13px to 10px, and reduced the margin-bottom), but they did not solve the problem (tops of lettering in tags still cut off, even with a smaller font).
I have only very basic css understanding. Can someone please suggest a simple css element that I could change to provide more space somewhere so that the tag text is not crimped at the top?
The extension is such a nice addition I may keep it even if the tops are crimped, but it would be better of course to learn how to tweak it and have my Flarum be at its best look.
Here is the Firefox example -- the first listing is crimped and the next one is perfect.
Thanks very much.
Safari example: