Eight Secrets to a (Fairly) Fulfilled Life

By Jay Torres

I came across a great read, with an admittingly clickbait-y title, but it’s totally worth the click. All eight points are great but this one resonates with me loud and clear.

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one.

Humanity is divided into two: on the one hand, those who are improvising their way through life, patching solutions together and putting out fires as they go, but deluding themselves otherwise; and on the other, those doing exactly the same, except that they know it.

It was through this same site that I realized that everyone is totally winging it, all the time. Once I learned this, and then now adding this corollary regarding imposter syndrome, I can hopefully put to rest any debilitating fear I have about getting “found out”.

It is also completely ridiculous that when I first introduce myself to customers, I will always throw in, “I don’t know everything, but I’m really good at finding the answer” which is literally the best anyone could ever do at anything, but my mind will always find a way to talk itself into thinking I’m an imposter.

This is a great reminder that everyone is doing the best they can at everything. It’s just that some have been doing it longer.

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Hamilton on Disney+

By Jay Torres

I’ve been enjoying Hamilton as soon as it was released on Disney+ and after the third or fourth viewing, I started to wonder how they got those tight shots at a live Broadway musical. Michael Paulson in the New York Times:

Declan Quinn, the director of photography, spent two months watching performances and reading the script, trying to suss out the best angles to capture key dramatic beats. He installed nine cameras around the Richard Rodgers Theater — one with a view toward the audience through a hole cut into the back of the stage set, one fixed on the balcony rail for a wide shot, and seven hidden behind black drapes so they would be less distracting to theatergoers — to shoot a Sunday matinee and a Tuesday evening show. Between those performances, the cast ran through 13 of the 46 numbers, but this time with onstage equipment — a Steadicam, a crane and a dolly-mounted camera — for close-ups and overheads.

Originally planned for a theater release, Covid–19 changed all that. While it would have been nice to watch in a theater, I’m glad that those who are subscribers are now able to enjoy it without going into one.

Proceeds from the sale, Seller said, will be shared with the beneficiaries of the Broadway production, including the nonprofit Public Theater, where the Off Broadway production was staged, and members of the original cast, who in 2016 won a hard-fought battle to share in the profits of the stage production. “The actors are absolutely reaping the benefits of our financial rewards,” Seller said.

The cast welcomed the arrangement.

Also glad that those who deserved it, got paid.

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Sports Are Back

By Jay Torres

Professional sports leagues are back into play and the New York Times put together a list of some rule changes that they feel would make the different sports more interesting.

If you own a team that finishes last in the division three years in a row, you and your family must divest entirely.

But the team stays put.

I like this one too.

If leagues can have a salary cap, they can have a concessions cap, too.

Tie ticket and concessions prices to the team’s current record or its last championship. Last place? Your beer is a buck.

Would have made the Chargers’ season last year a lot more fun.

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On Facebook

By Jay Torres

John Gruber on Anne Borden King’s experience of getting pseudoscience cancer ads after she posted about her breast cancer diagnosis.

They don’t advertise on legitimate media because legitimate media won’t have them, and because Facebook makes it affordable by doing all the hard work of targeting for them. Facebook is a criminal enterprise fully and knowingly complicit in all of this — from the spread of bigotry to the spread of pseudoscience.

Conversely, legitimate advertisers are abandoning Facebook because they want nothing to do with any of this. To remain on Facebook is to be complicit by association.

I deleted my Facebook account at least over a year ago. I am very close to deleting my Instagram account. Facebook is a terrible, horrible corporation.

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Why Time Feels So Weird

By Jay Torres

The global coronavirus pandemic has heightened our awareness that time is subjective. For some people who enjoy working from home, the days have whizzed by. For others desperate to travel or visit a loved one, time has slowed to a crawl.

I’ve noticed that my sense of time is all messed up since the pandemic started. In the middle of March, when shelter in place was first implemented, the rest of the month took forever. Then April flew by. We’re halfway through July and I can’t believe all of our family’s May birthdays were two months ago. It seems longer.

For those of us with kids, we can relate. There’s a saying, which I’m paraphrasing, “The days are long, but the years are short.” Each day, especially now, seems long with keeping them entertained, fed, and, most of all, healthy and safe. But it’s nuts to see our youngest one is now 5 years old. The passage of time is weird.

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Street Fighter I: An Oral History

By Jay Torres

Street Fighter II turns 30 years old next year, but Polygon is starting its celebration early by documenting everything leading up to it. The first part documents the original Street Fighter.

When Street Fighter arrived in arcades, it came in a crescent-shaped “deluxe upright” cabinet with a joystick and two large pneumatic, pressure-sensitive buttons on each side — one for punches and one for kicks. Capcom was attempting to move into the high-end arcade cabinet business, where it could sell a bigger machine with a custom interface for more money, and the gimmick of pressure-sensitive buttons set the game apart from the hundreds of games using standard control setups.

When I was younger, my family spent Sundays at the 32nd Street Naval Base bowling alley. I loved going there, not only because we got to bowl, but there was an arcade there. The arcade had both the original Street Fighter and Street Fighter II. SFII was always crowded and when I got my chance to play, I always got my butt kicked. I ended up playing on the original SF game just because I wanted to play. It was the standard cabinet with the 6 buttons. I would have loved to played on the cabinet with the pressure sensitive buttons.

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Where To Blog

By Jay Torres

Ben Thompson at his newly launched personal blog.

That led to a number of questions as to where one should create a blog; helpfully, I now have a blog where I can answer exactly these sorts of questions!

Although I’m pretty familiar with how to launch a site and where to host, I’m always interested to learn how others do it. Ben’s post is what pushed me to relaunch this site. Pretty great explanation on how he put his site together.

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Life As A Working Parent During Covid-19

By Jay Torres

Our struggle is not an emotional concern. We are not burned out. We are being crushed by an economy that has bafflingly declared working parents inessential.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about a few weeks after shelter in place started. And here we are, almost 4 months into this, and it is only now being written about.

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I’m Back

By Jay Torres

Hello and welcome back to my site. By url count, this is the third iteration of this site. After absolutjay.com and humblenerd.com, I was able to secure jaytorres.net for, probably, my final url for my online presence. And luckily, it’s something that is memorable and won’t go out of style. I’ll admit, I thought my previous urls were cool at the time, but looking back, I cringe. And after using Blogger, WordPress, Squarespace, and now back to WordPress, I’ve settled back into a CMS that is flexible, powerful, and where I can easily take control of my content if I choose to go elsewhere.

My goal for this site hasn’t changed: I want to post my thoughts and interesting links I come across. Thanks for reading and I’m excited to get back into this!