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Had A Market Valuation Completed Today

cryptoandcoffee — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 19:42:57 GMT

The Durban house is nearly finished and ready to go on market with the custom window frames holding things up. I see Tuesday as the final day of work with the frames expected sometime on Monday.

The boundary wall has been painted and we will get the pool blue and electric fence finished off plus the distribution board will be checked and certified as compliant so we have a COC certificate. This is working out well as my electrician overseeing all the repair work is the person who can do this and supply the certificate.

I have an idea of a valuation price and today had an agent confirm that price albeit slightly under the original target which I am happy with. One has to be realistic what the market will pay and pricing any property correctly is key to a quick sale. As expected the tenant who wants to buy the property was rather negative when showing the agent around with an ulterior motive of making the valuation as cheap as possible. This was expected and why I asked for the valuation early before we are done on Tuesday.

This gave me time to sort the tenant out and have spoken to them this evening telling them the price the property will go on the market. This was going to gauge whether they were in the ball park or not and they were nowhere near falling short by roughly 30%. I have no idea what they were thinking and there homework relied on other properties selling further down the road that were half the size. For them this is not good news meaning they need to find a new property to buy or rent and will only realize and appreciate what they had here.

Like I had feared with all the delays the window for selling properties is only 3 months and we have already burned up half that time and need this property listed next week. The aim is to have a show house on a Saturday in two weeks time and the hope is the property sells quickly. Having a depressed tenant around is not ideal and at least the estate agent is aware of this situation now. If there are any more problems then they must move out early because I can see them trying to delay any sale until after the new year which is not going to be allowed to happen.

Whatever plans or dreams they had of buying this property have been dashed and they have clearly done me no favors so they are not my concern. Their plan of trying to get a low ball valuation which was obvious has not worked and my only goal is tog et this sold as quickly as possible whilst we have buyers lined up and looking.

The plus side is the area has very little stock and from what I have been told there is only 3 properties on the market which is very good news. A larger family or an investor will be interested in this property for the accommodation it offers. I can understand an investor that rents it out as there is good money to be made in that particular market and this property would offer 3 or 4 individual rentals.

Posted Using INLEO

Wrong Direction

erikah — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 14:19:00 GMT

Last month I had to accompany my dad to the doctor, to have some medical procedure done, therefore I had to spend some time in the same waiting room, twice. We've been informed previously about what to expect, so I showed up prepared.

No one was there because they were bored at home or they had no place to go. I spent two and a half hours on two occasions, three weeks apart and tried to use my time wisely as time is a precious commodity. I had a book and managed to read half of it the first time and almost the other half the second time. It was a book about trading, not a novel that entertains you for an hour or two, so I had to focus to understand and also learn what I was reading.

It was an exercise for me as well, a training to ignore and shut out the noise. The first time I did an excellent job at it, (I have to pet myself on the shoulder for that). The second time it was a bit more difficult as the challenge was bigger.

Photo by Marco Grosso on Unsplash

People came and went, I was the only constant person in the waiting room, which is why people next to me were constantly rotating. Some of them were really disciplined and showed a respectful behavior, which I appreciate a lot, while others could not give a damn about what's going on around them.

There was a man in his early 60's who thought playing candy crush with audio set at maximum was the right thing to do. Lucky me he was up in 5 minutes and I got my focus back, but then another man in the opposite corner of the waiting room thought sharing his entire medical history with the lady next to him in a way so everyone can hear it, is what one has to do. At some point it looked like a contest of who can speak louder in the waiting room and the receptionist had to step in and ask them to lower their voice and give some respect to the others.

Photo by Elena Malinina on Unsplash

Not long ago I came across an article on X saying Singapore is going to fine people playing loud music on public transportation vehicles and they are following Poland in this regard, where this rule took effect earlier this year. Most likely such rule exist in other countries too, or it's going to be set up in the upcoming future as it looks like it is needed.

It's sad to see where we stand in this regard and I bet there are only a handful of nations where people don't need to be threatened with such fines to do the right thing.

Photo by Becky Sherburn on Unsplash

Honestly I will never understand this selfish behavior. It's incomprehensible how can people speak about their private life and most intimate details of their health knowing everyone can hear them. Even worse if they do this on purpose and find joy in it. Privacy is an unknown term to them it seems and if they don't value theirs, at least they should give some respect to the other participants in the room.

I was sitting in my chair and whenever someone new set down next to me, I could see from the corner of my eye that they were looking at my book, trying to figure out what I was reading. The funny thing was it was and English book, so they gave up staring at it the next second as I bet none of them spoke the language.

Photo by Mavis Hopper on Unsplash

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Chinese Cars Are Cheaper For A Reason

cryptoandcoffee — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 16:22:36 GMT

source

Chinese Cars Are Cheaper For A Reason

A direct clone or mirror image of the Land Drover Discovery with the only subtle difference being the payload. This 7 seater has a payload of only 475 kilograms and the Land Drover Discovery has 645 kilograms. The 70 liter fuel tank removes 70kg from the payload so you have 405 kilograms remaining for passengers and luggage and heaven forbid items on the roof.

Those that follow my posts know that I am no fan of Chinese products and especially their motor vehicles. I think this all stems down to having no trust in the way they do business and also knowing how they operate.

I have been dealing directly with Chinese factories on and off for the last 20 years and each one is no different from the next with the tricks they try and pull. When the Chinese started exporting on mass in the late 1990's the Chinese factories were not in any shape or form ready to support their products. The focus at the time was on the product and never about servicing that product.

This was obvious at the time as they never even had the part numbers categorized or even coded because in order to supply spares they needed to obtain and apply for a new business license. We used to receive product with some spares thrown in for free and this was always the cheap parts left lying around after production and not the moving parts either. This took about 10 years to change and was more of a gradual process.

The quality would vary per batch and as steel prices climbed the product reflected that with the spec changing accordingly with less metal than the original spec that was signed off. There is no trust as the Chinese will find a way to make profit and they will never tell you what they have done.

One of the Chines auto brands has come into the spotlight in the last few weeks being the Jetour and for good reason. The load capacity registered for the SUV 4 x 4 is 300 kilograms and this was highlighted as a concern by the AA in South Africa.

When asked about this the Chinese Jetour came back saying this was incorrect and it is now 475 kilograms. There was no spec changes and the paperwork was adjusted to the new number. Jetour then said the old and new specs will all be valid for the new load capacity even though no new testing had happened.

For those that do not know the the payload is used by calculating the vehicle mass subtracting the revised gross vehicle mass which varies depending on the model. All Jetour models had 300 kilograms as their pay load and now is 475 kilograms which even after testing and calculations came out at 455 kilograms.

This 20 kilograms light was excused away on the fuel tank not being full and needed topping up after going on the weighbridge. These weights are important and cannot be excused away due to the safety implications.

A family going away for the weekend with a full tank of fuel and some luggage would never be under the 300 kilograms. Just think of 5 adults and luggage plus 57 or 70 liters of fuel plus all the other lubricants and fluids required to run an engine. If we just use the smaller models with the 57 liters (57kg) of fuel we would be down to 243 kilograms for the passengers and luggage. If there was even 4 adults and not 5 in the vehicle each one would have to be less than an average of 60 kilograms with no luggage to be legal.

Just to give an example my current car being a Nissan Qashqai has a load capacity of 545 kilograms and is no off roader. The latest revised 475 kilograms for the Jetour is still a low number for a family going away for the weekend. An average group of 4 adults in South Africa with no luggage would possibly squeak under the 475 kilogram number with no luggage.

The AA highlighting this problem has created an issue for all Jetour owners with the issue being if they are now stopped in a road block that 300 kilograms payload still is the legal number as this has not been officially rectified.

what i find amazing is the Chinese were in such a rush to launch their motor vehicles they did not look at the details. This is worrying as what other details were overlooked because those are all hidden away in the build. We all know now the specifications vary on which country the vehicle is being exported to and they are not all built to the same safety standards. Having one specification for Europe and another for Africa sends the alarm bells ringing for myself as if no one pays attention these specs will be the same within a few years time. This is how China works and it has taken me 20 years of experience to know how they think and operate.

Posted Using INLEO

Seasons Change

bozz — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:06:27 GMT

![PXL_20251101_213905907.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/244ofBi8xGbjsjch4QnrKYBrrRUuhq6m7bsGsjQdsSJ35hzioFX7wmByhENR7GCjN9hGU.jpg)

Just like that, we find ourselves in October. It's hard to believe we have entered the fourth quarter of the year. While the unofficial (meteorological) start of Fall is after Labor Day in the US, and astronomical Fall starts on September 22, for me the real start of Fall is probably October 1st. That's when the weather really starts turing here in Michigan and it really feels like Summer is finally fading into the distance.

Oddly enough, we also have a recent Splinterlands season end that I am going to talk a little about today as well. I've actually got a bunch of different things for you today, so check your focus and try to stay with me!

It's nice to see BTC pushing back up towards the $90,000 mark again. I don't know as though we will actually hit it, but up is always a good thing in this case. I expect by the end of the day or after the weekend it will be back down in the $83,000 range, but who really knows.

![PXL_20251108_152201596.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/23zkiUxaN9ejEwmKr8KBF1Mb9cELjGjdgnyisuvz3Mq8ZtPLEFJ5N1znih9N3ZHiXpn15.jpg)

Splinterlands

If you remember, I have been contemplating whether or not I want to keep paying @monstermarket for them to host my SPS Node. I know it is something I could do on my own, but I just don't have the time or ambition to deal with it right now. With the cost of the service going up, and the returns I am getting from it going down, I was considering just cutting my losses and stopping the service. As I said before, if I could get back what I paid for the license in the first place, I would sell it in a heartbeat, but I think we all know that isn't happening.

I'm currently sitting in 86th place, and if you feel so inclined, I would love it if you gave me your vote.

The cost of the node per month ends up being something like 140 HIVE which I can totally handle from my account, so I think I am going to keep supporting the chain, I will just pay for the rental out of my blog earnings versus my Splinterland earnings.

![splinterlands season end.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/23tkmq6KAdDNQdVJPfQPW6qeHZ6csnR7JpFZoRNZ2a96q2orERaSpkXJtqFydx8a5R1i7.jpg)

I tried something new this season and along with the bot I use that runs in the Wild part of things, I played some manual Modern battles as well. I was able to work my way up to Silver II, but I quickly found myself running out of energy. I didn't realize the pool was shared between all the modes, so the bot was using up most of the energy and only leaving about 5 per day for me to do a handful of battles.

The good news is, I have more cards that work in Modern that I thought I did and as you can see from the winrate, I can do a pretty good job of holding my own. If I had more cards along with the time and energy, I might even be able to be competitive in Modern.

I really feel like the bot used to have a better win rate than that in the past. I'm not sure what that is an indication of. Are there better bots other people are using? Are there fewer bots and they just can't compete with human players? Does everyone else just have better cards than me? I don't really know.

That Wild winrate is going to bug me for a while though.

NuScale

My favorite nuclear power stock is still plugging along. The price is sitting around $7.80 right now which is a few dollars below where I bought in at with the IPO. I'm not mad about it though. As myself and many others have indicated, NuScale is definitely a long term investment. Obviously, I wish it was still near the high of $57 per share, but I think we are still really early in this new nuclear tech, and if AI continues to be a big thing, it will pull these nuclear stocks along with it simply due to the power requirements.

Analysts are still placing it in the high risk high reward category, but personally, I am willing to take that gamble.

You should do whatever you feel is right after doing your own research!

![PXL_20241024_165940260.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/23zknRNq55prKiW3hNjj2wsSB1UK3KdFa8kwyJWAuSZEUHoGFoPCQo1GSJkhCyHT57ThD.jpg)

GoMining

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I hyped on HYPE way before the next bull run

behiver — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:50:54 GMT

Even if I might a little bit late to the party, I have still joined it and hyped on HYPE. Sometimes when I need to take a decision it takes more time than needed. Why do I say that? Let's remember that Trump made some comments during August 19, 2026, at the Crypto and Technology Summit at the White House: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Mike Selig is working to bring the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid (HYPE) into the United States in a "fully compliant and legal fashion". And my decision to jump on the wagon came after 1.5 months since that, thus I would call it a delayed decision.

Beside Trump creating buzz on HYPE which reacted right after that and saw a jump in price, I knew about this asset (as you've also probably known) for quite a long time. But for some reason it didn't click or maybe I had already quite a bit of tokens in my portfolio that I didn't react on it. I chose to invest into NEAR instead of HYPE and I said it was enough for me. And that wasn't a bad choice as I am pushing 100% ROI on NEAR token. But in the corner of my mind HYPE was still there and had an inception thought planted for me to find at some point. And these days that just happened as I've seen a bit of decrease of the token up to $85 and I told myself that it is not a bad price point considering that we are nowhere in a bull market cycle.

While I haven't done much DYOR about it as I have been following the token for a while and observed its performance in time, I will leave bellow some cons and pros for it. I found them myself a bit surprising and maybe if I knew them before I wouldn't have jumped right now with the investment, but in the same as I plan to HODL long on it, I think the pros will overpower the cons. Nobody can say that for sure, but up until now HYPE has proven its worth.

Cons (The Downside) 👎

Upcoming dilution: Hyperliquid is scheduled to conduct a significant $856 million token unlock on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, primarily releasing team and core contributor supply.
Regulatory target: The platform is currently the center of a major U.S. House oversight about alleged insider trading and a $1.1 billion short position, which could spark sudden regulatory crackdowns.
Volatility risks: Because its buyback mechanism relies entirely on trading volume, a prolonged crypto bear market or a drop in platform activity would instantly diminish the token's buying support.
Centralization realities: Despite its "DeFi" branding, core contributor tokens, foundation budgets and future emissions still dominate the total 1-billion token supply cap, raising holder concentration risks.

Pros (The Upside) 👍

The "Fee Flywheel" buyback: The protocol funnels 97% to 99% of its trading fee revenue directly into continuous, open-market buybacks of HYPE, adding regular buying pressure.
True revenue backed value: Unlike speculative assets, HYPE's value is heavily tied to a functioning business processing over $200 billion in monthly trading volume.
Organic distribution: Launched via a massive user airdrop with zero initial Venture Capital (VC) allocations, reducing early dumping pressure from private institutions.
Deep utility: Serves as the L1 network gas token, offers tiered trading fee discounts (up to 40%) and acts as a mandatory stake for builders wanting to launch new markets.
U.S. expansion potential: High speculative upside remains if the Trump administration successfully allows it to function under the CFTC.

The primary catalyst driving investor hype on hype 😆 is its revenue-backed buyback model: Hyperliquid routes 97% to 99% of its massive trading fee revenue directly into an automated "Assistance Fund". This fund continuously buys HYPE tokens from the open market and permanently burns 🔥🔥🔥 them, heavily reducing the supply based on real platform utility rather than hype. While the Max Supply = 1 Billion tokens, the Total Supply = 955.307 Millions (already 5% decrease from the max supply) just because of that.

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New Purpose for an Outdated Desktop

bulliontools — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:40:33 GMT

I've been cleaning stuff up around the house and decided to clean behind the couch. My boys tend to launch toys, shoes and clothes and sometimes they clear the top of the couch, not to be seen again for many months. While cleaning things out I repositioned the subwoofer for our home theater system so it's not up against the wall to their bedroom.

While cleaning, I realized I had left my old desktop tower back there. At the time it was decent, but that was 10 years ago. It's still running Windows 7 Home Premium with 4GB of RAM. It's beyond outdated!

I loaded it up to see what photos and other sentimental files I should pull off of it before getting rid of it. As I explored, I realized getting rid of it would be a waste. It still ran perfectly fine. Sure, it's not smart to do anything online with it due to vulnerabilities, but it could still be useful.

I found an old copy of Starcraft on it. It loaded up and played without issues. It was fun!

Then I saw Plants vs Zombies.

It didn't take long for me to get sucked into playing it. I already had the hardware to convert the VGA and output the audio into an HDMI cable, so I got to play it in surround sound. I'll be continuing to whittle things down, uninstall programs I don't use, etc., but I think I'm going to keep it and turn it into a retro game tower. Maybe I'll load some emulators on here and run other games, since I still have a PC game controller sitting around for it. This is going to be a fun project!

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![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmQXTEY3Qr4S8LM6TpCpXYL1a4V4616ntyTdTXUduAMB5G/1705367923743.png) Do you like stacking gold and silver? - [Join us at SGS](https://peakd.com/c/hive-136819) - [Chat with us in our Discord!](https://discord.com/channels/355978573124861952/355980784198352897)

A Really Crazy Story And It Is True

cryptoandcoffee — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 19:41:27 GMT

source

The other day I mentioned we had no water and that in our area we had water trucks offering relief to those that needed water. When I saw this story with regard to the Ethekwini Municipality (Durban) I had to read up some more to understand the problems.

Durban is the third largest metropolitan area in South Africa by population and has been having a water crisis which is actually an understatement. The ageing infrastructure with broken pipes due to neglect or intentional vandalism has seen the water loss rise from 49% in 2021 to a now gob smacking 65%. For every liter of water you receive via a tap the municipality has lost 650ml. The estimated amount of water being lost monthly is 21 billion liters of water as of June this year.

The water losses has a value of around R3.2 billion each year which is slightly more than $200 million. The interesting part is the municipality was paying via tenders for water tankers R106 million in 2021 and last year R816 million.

The fleet of 361 Mercedes Alto water tankers would cost roughly R800 million to purchase new and is a once off payment so no annual tender required. Over the last 5 years the infrastructure has deteriorated rapidly leaving the residents paying more for their utilities whilst receiving far less. This is a typical African story that is repeated over and over as nothing is ever repaired until it is broken due to little or no maintenance.

I know this all too well as over the last 10 years my Durban property has had so many burst pipes and this is all down to fluctuating water pressure and the water has to find a way out by picking the weakest pat of the pipes. We have had at least two burst pipes annually with the last one being in March this year. This has cost me a small fortune in water bills which are fractionally covered by the municipality insurances.

Since 2021 the municipality debtors bill has swelled from R16 billion till present at around R50 billion. The irregular expenditure by the municipality has also grown by nearly 500% sitting at R400 million per month. Irregular is another African term term for unaccountable or in normal terms stolen.

The tender entrepreneurs will not be happy the municipality has bought their own trucks because this is not how this game works. You would like to think instead of blowing all this money on a large fleet of trucks that they would actually start replacing the infrastructure so they do not need the fleet of trucks. That would be common sense, but I do agree with purchasing the fleet first and then doing the repair work afterwards.

[source](google)

Why I say this is the infrastructure has deteriorated at such a rate due to tampering and vandalism by those who benefit from the water truck tenders. By removing them as direct beneficiaries there is no benefit to tampering with the infrastructure anymore. New pipes would have just been broken and nothing would ever improve due to the mafia style run tender business.

The budget for this and next year to repair and replace the infrastructure is at around R1.8 billion which is literally 4 months of irregular expenditure. This may improve things, but a well run city is never going to happen as then it reduces the opportunities of irregular spend.

Posted Using INLEO

Which One Would You Go For?

erikah — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:02:48 GMT

Almost two weeks ago we had a major family event that was celebrated in one of our favorite place and I wrote about it here. It wasn't a big event like a wedding or an engagement, but it was important and because we had guests from far as well, some previous planning was needed. The venue was almost instantly decided as everyone attending the event knew and liked it, but as we like to explore new options as well, a few other options also came into discussion.

There's a new restaurant near the venue we had the event organized at, ran by a well known and respected company, which should be an extra guarantee in itself, but my brother said he wouldn't choose it and I wanted to know why.

Photo by Rumman Amin on Unsplash

In order to understand my post better, if you haven't already, please check out my post about the dishes we had, here. Judging by the portion size, you can probably guess that no one left the event hungry. At some point I felt like I could not finish what was on my plate, but made an effort and finished it at the end, but there were quite a few who took half of the serving home. This is absolutely fine in this area of the world, no one is going to judge you for it. You paid for it, it's yours, you do as you please.

This is not an isolated case, where portions are maybe a bit oversized, compared to one's needs. Even if maybe other restaurants have smaller portions, you won't leave hungry, they make sure of that.

Photo by Alexandru-Bogdan Ghita on Unsplash

The other restaurant I mentioned above is very different in this regard. I was told you are served a very appetizing dish, very pleasant to the eye and your taste buds, but chances to leave hungry after finishing your meal(s) are extremely high. In simple terms, the dishes are more for tasting and not for getting full. The emphasis is on the art of serving the dishes and less on portion size.

This is not a new phenomenon, you meet such restaurants all over the world, where you get two small pieces of something, sprinkled with a little something else and decorated with a few drops of something different from the other two as flavor goes. I'm not particularly against it, it's a nice experience and you get to know new dishes and flavors this way, the problem is, it costs double or three times of what you pay for traditional dishes and you also leave hungry.

Photo by Martin Widenka on Unsplash

Last year we had some guests from Germany and the lady shared a story about his brother's wedding. They were invited to a restaurant of a Michelin star chef, as part of the wedding. The funny thing was the invite was only for a handful of people, close family members only, because the menu was so expensive they could not afford to invite more people. They arrived hungry and curious as it was their first time in such a place, just to leave just as hungry and disappointed too. The amazing taste and the artistic servings could not compensate the extremely small position sizes and the high price.

The venue I was taking about as potential second option is far from Michelin level and I'm certain prices are way below those of such a restaurant, but still, you need to pay much more than the food itself worth.

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Lucky: A Tale of Two Formats

bozz — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:04:42 GMT

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/Eou7hdtPxgfEBbVXEwTLoVLZoGSk94XF5GHWFH1XM4p33NDneHP2eSaVp41T1QFWyfb.png)

It was my intent to write this post with @scrobble on the @scrobble.life platform, but there seem to be some limitations with that front end which forced me to write it in PeakD instead. Let me cover those first so that @acidyo might see them and make the necessary adjustments if he feels they are necessary.

You see, there is a book called Lucky by Marissa Stapley, but there is also a show right now on Apple TV+ that is called Lucky. While they both focus on the same character, as you will read in my post, they are two very different stories. I know this might be a fringe case, but in the Scrobble front end I wasn't able to pick both a book and a tv show as the format.

Which isn't a huge deal, but then when I tried to just pick a book, the book I am referencing wasn't available in the list of books to pick from. Which leads me to believe whatever database that drop down is pulling from, it isn't very current or thorough.

I don't intend this to be a criticism, just an explanation for why I didn't use the front end. If it costs me an upvote, so be it.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/EoCh5KJydpBaXZQmjWCw4AiDC4bZZJrSvKDCWMnjK747WLdPDELX8sNHhb7vqLSzFGk.png)

You see, this all happened because I noticed there was the show on Apple TV+ starting Ana Taylor Joy. I remembered her from The Queen's Gambit and I rather liked her, so I thought it might be a good show to watch. I mentioned it to @mrsbozz and she suggested that I read the book first. It turns out she has purchased the book a while ago on our shared Kindle account and while she had read it, I had not.

So I added it to my rotation and finished it in about a week or two. Which for a normal person would probably be a couple of days, but I read slow. The book focuses on a young con-woman named Lucky who finds herself in a bit of a predicament. I'm not going to give away too much of the plot because that would ruin the fun, but the basic premise of the book is she is trying to extract herself from said predicament.

The book is one of those where it bounces back and forth from the present to the past highlighting Lucky's youth and her relationship with her grifter father that took her all across the United States as a child working whatever scam they could here and there.

I found the characters well developed if not frustrating at times, but I think that was part of the point. The frustration you felt as a reader was some of the same frustration that Lucky was feeling growing up in the situations she was describing to us.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/Eo4B4jq8Zva3PXb77td5h1QmZEqRdS3EGhyKNYCv6GdPLsuxB8yZw368ALqBJfEUe1g.png)

Then we have the limited series on Apple TV+. Like I said, Ana Taylor Joy was enough to pique my interest. Then the fact that Timothy Olyphant was in it as well had me totally sold. He was absolutely fantastic in Justified and if you haven't watched that show yet, do yourself a favor and go do so.

I was also happy to see that the author of the book Marissa Stapley was one of the executive producers of the show. Which normally would be a good thing, as we have seen far too many book adaptations where the author wanted nothing to do with it and it ended up turning into a burning pile of crap.

However, in this case, Stapely seems to have been wanting to flex her creative muscles and the show while entertaining, was about as far from the book as you could possibly imagine. One of the key plot points from the book was absolutely missing from show. In addition to that, numerous key characters were also completely missing from the show, while other characters who were never even mentioned in the book seem to be major players in the TV show.

The plot in general, is quite a bit removed from the book, and the frequent flashbacks I mentioned earlier are virtually non-existent. Which is a shame, because they really help you understand who Lucky is along with her father and how/why they got to the point they are.

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bozz/EogLumCtYG6KDGsP2vU246hVfs3hPHKGSAxHZgnMujig9kZxrsnBNG9wfF9xcZ4s3uK.png)

I had a small amount of hope that things would circle back around at the end and sort of come in line with how the book ended, but that never really happened. In fact, the series ended pretty much the exact opposite of how the book did. This is definitely one of those cases where I feel the book is much better than the tv show. However, I feel like they are both worth reading or watching, just don't expect one to be anything like the other.

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They Know Life Is Tough But They're Skating Anyway

chris-chris92 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:49:15 GMT

Last week, after leaving a cultural event in San Blas, Valencia, I walked past a skatepark that seemed almost deliberately forgotten. The event had taken place in a public museum, strangely disconnected from everything around it, while only a few streets away the city showed another face. The skatepark had ramps, rails, stairs, and walls, enough to show that somebody had once imagined this place as useful. Yet parts of it were covered with dirt and mud, as if nobody had cared about them for years. It was not beautiful or well maintained. Then came the boards hitting concrete, the wheels, the voices, the laughter. The sound made the contrast sharper. The place looked neglected, but the kids were not treating their lives as neglected.

What stayed with me was the seriousness with which they inhabited it. They skated, fell, tried again, watched one another, and laughed at mistakes. Boys and girls moved through the same place without turning that coexistence into a statement. Nobody needed to explain who belonged there. I do not romanticize this. These are children growing up in a country where poverty, uncertainty, broken infrastructure, and daily difficulty are not abstract subjects. They know that life can be hard. Yet for those hours, the important things were balance, movement, friendship, and the next attempt. That moved me more than the skatepark itself. Deprivation does not become beautiful because children can laugh inside it. What is beautiful, if anything, is their ability to create a small world of their own without pretending the larger one is easy.

Perhaps that is why the skateboards stayed with me. There was something quietly defiant in their ordinariness. A child on a skateboard cannot repair public infrastructure or change a country. But that child can claim a piece of the afternoon and become better at something simply because it feels good to learn. Adults tend to measure difficult lives through what is missing: money, security, opportunities, functioning institutions. Those absences matter, but they are not the whole story. People also build friendships, develop skills, and find pleasure wherever there is room for it. Watching those kids made me think about how much of adulthood is made from concerns they have not yet inherited: bills, status, political exhaustion, fear about the future, the constant calculation of what might go wrong. They had not disappeared; they simply were not in charge for a while.

It was equally moving to watch girls skate alongside boys without treating the difference between them as a rule. Children can sometimes refuse categories that adults have spent years teaching them to accept. They were not making an argument about gender or society. They were sharing a place, learning, competing, joking, and having fun. That does not erase the inequalities around them, and it would be dishonest to pretend everything is fine. But there is value in noticing what survives without turning survival into a sentimental story. Talent, curiosity, and friendship survive. So does the desire to learn something difficult for no practical reason at all. Maybe adulthood makes us suspicious of that pleasure because we become accustomed to interpreting life through problems. We see a neglected place and immediately think about everything that should be different. The kids saw the same place and found something they could do.

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