ideonode

I love the heady mix of politics, mercantile inventiveness, religious factionalism and great art that informs the Dutch Republic. Are there any books that evoke a similar set of themes, or which take the historic backdrop of 17th century Northern Europe as an inspiration?

BBC News - 'Rare' Tolkien books with author's signature fail to sell - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l234dz5gdo?app-referrer=deep-link

What do people think about the Colossus trilogy by DF Jones? Most people will know of Colossus via the film from 1970 about a rogue AI government AI that has access to nukes.

I read the whole trilogy recently. Whilst the first book is quiet tightly scoped and covers some interesting concepts around superintelligence and geopolitics, the second and third books introduce some surprising antagonists. I thought they were somewhat well conceived apart from one big issue - hugely unnecessary subplot involving sexual violence. Really quite surprised by it given the tone of the rest of the book.

Anyway, what did you think? It's not a series of books that gets mentioned much here.

Has anyone read Nick Harkaway's follow up to Titanium Noir, Sleeper Beach? I've just finished it. It sort of flew under the radar a bit. Not quite as hard boiled as TN, but still a gritty detective procedural. With the weird immortals thrown in. The prose is superlative.

What do people think of it?

I'm a fan of Nxtpaper - my daily driver phone is the TCL 50 Pro, and I also have a Nxtpaper 11.

I'm thinking of upgrading my tablet. Does the Xiaomi Pad Pro 7 matte display have the same experience as Nxtpaper, or is Nxtpaper special?

I'd like to consider the Huawei tandem Oled matte tablet but it's not Android and that would mean hard work getting the apps I want on it.

I know that we're not meant to be speculating on future policy in this sub, but it is prudent to do some forward planning. As such, I was trying to work out how to calculate what a tax relief cap of 30% would look like to a higher rate taxpayer.

For example, taking an indicative salary of £80,000, and an employee contribution of 10% - would the impact be a 25% hit to the pension, or a 10% hit?

What about for defined benefit contributions (e.g. teachers or local government) - would the impact be 10% additional tax on the pension contribution, or 25% additional tax (as it would mean losing a quarter of your tax benefit).

Are there any calculators online that could help?

I know that this is a subreddit about collecting books rather than selling them, but I'm curious as to opinions on selling at auction (not ebay but an actual auction house). I've bought through auction houses in the past, but have just had my first sale.

Whilst the final hammer price (including buyers premium) was a little over £4000, I only took home £2600 due to sellers fees, insurance, photography fees (!!) and taxes. Yes, I did sell it, and the auction house will have had international reach (it's one of the big three London houses), but I was wondering whether it was a usual route for sale here. What do people think?

Recently, I've had to return two relatively expensive items (to difference vendors). On both occasions, even though the company has had the goods back for quite a while, they've not conducted the refund. Only when I've contacted them via customer support have they suddenly moved the process on and instantly refunded me - the immediacy of them doing so suggests that they were sitting on it.

I don't recall it always being like this. I was wondering whether the comparatively high interest rates incentivises them to hold on to cash for longer.

Do you have the same experience?

Just been chatting to my SO about scrambling marbles, whereby in the schoolyard (often on the last day of the academic year) you'd shout 'Scramble!!' and hurl your marbles at the younger year minions. They'd then fight amongst themselves for these scraps.

Turns out my SO hasn't heard of this at all. Was this just a local practice, then?