Blog - Page 3 of 7 - Michael Ellsberg

You Are a Contrarian Investment

Most people who haven’t already “made it” are lucky to have a few people who truly have rock-solid, investible faith in them. Maybe their parents (if they’re lucky!) Maybe a few really close friends, or a mentor they’ve been lucky to find.

But in a typical lifespan–before you’ve “made it,” however you define that– the main person who is going to have faith in you is you.

That means, before you’ve reached the level of success you desire in life, investing in yourself is a form of contrarian investing. (Investing that goes against the crowd.) And a form that I think is much more doable, valuable, and safe than contrarian investing in the markets.

February 21, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Dirty Secret of the BS Investment Industry

If you’re wondering how you will provide for you and your family’s financial security in the future, you’ve probably considered saving money in your IRA or 401(k), and investing it in broad mutual funds tracking the US markets. Or you may have already done this.

If so, you’ve probably been lulled in by the personal finance industry’s PR that, “in the long run, the US stock market has gone up 7% per year annualized, after inflation.”

Sounds great, right? 7% per year is a doubling of your assets roughly every ten years. Just stick that money in there, don’t touch it again (“buy and hold,” or “passive investing”) and watch your wealth double every 10 years! (That’s a 12-fold increase over 40 years!)

The problem is, there’s a dirty secret to the investment business–one that the people selling you this BS advice don’t want you to know, because it would put them right out of business.

February 19, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

The Key to Fool-Proof Investing

The key to fool-proof investing is truly internalizing the implications of the following unsettling fact.

Most people are fools when it comes to evaluating their own talent in many of their own skills. (Including, as we’ll see in a moment, investing.)

Unfortunately, chances are, that includes us.

Studies show that 95% of people believe they are “above-average” drivers.

February 15, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Self-Education and Self-Investment

What Socrates Knows About Investing That You Don’t Know…

There’s a strong case to be made that the two sentences I’m about to share with you are the most influential in the entire history of Western philosophy.

They were uttered during the trial of Socrates for “corrupting the youth” in Athens, 399 BC–according to the version recounted by his disciple Plato.

According to Plato, Socrates said–while commenting on a negative run-in with a supposedly wise man of Athens:

“Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is–for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.”

A basic reformulation of this, is that a fool can become wise, simply by knowing that he’s a fool. For he is then wiser than the most other people, who are also fools, but don’t realize that they are.

What does all of this have to do with investing?

February 9, 2019 by Michael Ellsberg

Persuasive Arts

How to Write a Killer Bio Story

Aside from your main headline, your bio is the single most important part of your website. But so many people completely screw this up.

You know the kind of bio I’m talking about… the one that contains many words, but manages to communicate nothing:

“Joe Blow is a passionate, heart-centered entrepreneur and creative visionary who helps bold changemakers live fearless lives and step into their full leadership. His mission is to make the world a better place by helping people align their passions with their purpose, and manifest their dreams through connecting their intentions with their vision.”

The problem with this type of bio is that anyone can say these things about themselves. For example:

–> “Entrepreneur” could mean => took a weekend course on how to be a life coach and the next Tuesday, decided he doesn’t want to “trade dollars for hours” so has just enrolled in his first course in how to create courses. Just last week, he put up his first online course so he can reach “one to many” with his weekend coaching skills.

–> “Creative visionary” could mean => took an ayahuasca journey.

December 29, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex

Understanding the Debates Around “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

Have you been hearing debates about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and wanting to understand the debate in more depth? I’ve got you covered!

I did a deep-dive on this debate last year. If you just want the net-net (and this is my concurrence with numerous feminist writers I cite, who I think make a conclusive case- not particularly original thinking on my part):

In 1944, when the song was written, it was absolutely unthinkable within “polite society” for a woman to spend the night at a man’s house if she wasn’t married to him. If you look closely (and understand the references in their historical context) this is a song about an unmarried pair on a date who want the night to continue at his place, and are coming up with reasons why she should stay over that will be acceptable to the woman’s strict family and nosy community. The song is a cheeky rebellion against what we would now call the “slut shaming” of the era, celebrating a woman’s desire to stay over at a man’s house if she wants, family and slut-shaming community be-damned.

All that said – and this is more my commentary/opinion now: the culture has changed enough in 75 years (thankfully) that what was once a cheeky rebellion against socially-conservative slut-shaming, now when heard in a ~2020 context – perpetuates tropes that play into what we see as rape culture today. Namely, the idea that, in order to defend her public virtue, a woman needs to hide her desire to sleep with a man casually and say no at first out of custom. With that idea floating in the culture, men are more likely to believe women’s no’s are her just playing “hard to get” or putting up “token resistance” in order to not seem “easy” – thus disbelieving those no’s and not taking them at face value.

December 25, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex

“Luminous Lust” Premieres at HUMP! Film Festival

Michael Ellsberg Dylan Ryan Madison Young

I am thrilled to announce that a short indy docu-porn I co-produced, “Luminous Lust,” is premiering at Dan Savage’s HUMP! Film Festival – indy porn festival – in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Screenings of the entire festival go through November 17th.

Here’s our description of our film: “Luminous Lust is an erotic short film directed and written by the 2018 class of Madison Young’s Erotic Film School. In this sizzling short film, real-life couple – Dylan Ryan and T. Pfister [in photo] – boldly bring the audience into the most intimate parts of their lives, sharing with the camera how the couple fell in love, what about their partner turns them on, and how they first met. This intimate sexual portrait of this passionate couple gets steamy when they open the door and let the viewer into their lustful and luminous sex life.”

Madison Young‘s Erotic Film School was one of the greatest educational experiences of my life. Over 2 days in Oakland, CA in August, four of us beginning film students–a diverse mix of genders, nationalities, races and orientations–gathered under the guidance of master feminist porn producer Madison to create a concept, develop a shotlist, and shoot a short “erotic portrait” based around this amazing real-life couple and their love and passion. (Dylan has been a pro performer for many years. This was her girlfriend T’s first time on camera for adult, though that’s hard to believe from her razzling performance!)

November 9, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

Videos

Freudian Kink

I got a vasectomy. My first-ever comedy performance explains why.

[Content advisory: verbal descriptions of extreme taboo role-play between consenting adults.]

Performed 7/8/18 in Oakland, CA as part of Alicia Dattner’s Solo Showdown comedy workshop.

September 15, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

Persuasive Arts

This guy turned a piece of trash into $100,000…

In 2005, Kyle MacDonald was a 25-year-old unemployed guy in Montreal, being supported by his girlfriend, a dietician. She was close to ending things with him, because she was so tired of him mooching off her for rent and other expenses. He had to think of something fast. He applied for a few more jobs (again), and heard nothing (again.)

What he really wanted was to own a home, free and clear, so that he and his girlfriend could live there, without worrying about paying rent or getting kicked out.

But, as a guy who was barely making ends meet, working itinerant gigs promoting products at trade shows, that seemed a far-off dream.

Pondering what he should do, he remembered a game he played as a kid, called “Bigger, Better,” where you trade a small, common object, for something else better, and trade that for something else, and on and on, and see what you can get. He remembered some kid in his town started with a penny one day, and ended up with a couch by the end of the day.

In a spark of genius, or madness–is there a difference?–he decided he would try to realize his dream of getting a house. By playing the game. “I would become the greatest Bigger, Better player the world had ever seen, bar none,” he wrote of his plan.

July 13, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

Sex Work

CA is About to Pass a Law Criminalizing Speech That Encourages Sex Work: An Open Letter Opposing SB 1204

[If you’re a CA citizen reading this, and you’re outraged by what you read, please contact any/all of the CA State Senators listed at the bottom of this Open Letter before 9AM, Tues 4/24 and explain to they why you oppose SB 1204. You don’t need to be their constituent to contact them, though if you’re a constituent of one of them, let them know that when you call.]

Summary: California is about to pass a bill that severely criminalizes all speech that “encourages” sex work. This is a brazen encroachment on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and all citizens should rally against it, no matter what their opinions are on sex work. If this bill passes, as an author who cherishes my First Amendment rights, I will openly break the law with my speech, in an act of principled noncooperation with a clearly unconstitutional law—risking jail time of necessary—and will not stop breaking it until the law is overturned for the unconstitutional mess that it is.

Dear Members of the California Senate Committee on Public Safety (including Nancy Skinner, Joel Anderson, Steven Bradford, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Holly Mitchell, Jeff Stone, and Scott Weiner),

I am writing to you as an author or co-author of three published books, and a life-long resident of Kensington, CA, in the district represented by your chair Nancy Skinner. As an author, I take legislative threats to free speech very seriously, and I am writing to express my strong opposition to Senate Bill 1204, on free speech grounds.

SB 1204 radically re-defines the long-standing definition of “pandering,” which has historically been conceived as providing financial inducement to someone to begin engaging in prostitution. The new definition, under SB 1204, will expand the felony to include any “encouragement” whatsoever towards engaging in prostitution, even if that “encouragement” takes place only in words and opinions, with no financial inducement.

This is an obvious violation of my First Amendment right to express my opinion as to whether a person should become a sex worker or not.

April 15, 2018 by Michael Ellsberg

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