Merlin Mann's personal blog, with short posts on productivity, writing, tech, and the internet, including the idea Mann's Assumption.
HN commenters cite his posts on tweets used without permission and on small stories online, and note his 'Mann's Assumption' as missing from a list.
Merlin Mann is one of the people whose tweets were used without permission. He detailed his perspective in three blog posts:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/508615417/regret
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511063886/tweets-are-not-nothing
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/511314674/dollar-sign-painters
This is a mann who gives away most of his life's work. He loves fair use and believes in sharing. However, when doing so, he believes that he has control over what of his work is shared and under what terms. Publishing a book and charging money for other people's work without their permission is emphatically not fair use.
Anyway, he writes well on the subject, I would recommend reading his perspective because he is someone who makes a living giving away most of his work and had thought a lot about what that means.
"Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)" is the original title of the video. Unless you are a big fan of Merlin Mann, in which case you'll be watching the video regardless of what I say, I'd say that this is something you can skip. The 40 min video is about... well, the topics Merlin Mann tends to speak about. The content-to-time-it-takes-to-watch-the-video ratio is pretty low, so if you're a 'casual' Mann fan, just (re-)read these posts:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/48588149/better
http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/03/real-advice-hurts
I can't help but be reminded of when Merlin Mann said "little stories are the internet's native and ideal art form... little dumb stories that I never expected."
Read it all--it's worth it. Plus, that this was even written (not to mention well-received) poses a fine counterpoint to any argument stating that storytelling on the internet is dead: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/169873399/clackity-noise
This bring up a complaint about Scribd that I've heard from a few people.
Most notably Merlin Mann said: "The core of Scribd’s model is the lowest form of leeching; yoinking other people’s shit without permission, then deliberately making it a giant pain in the ass for people to use."
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/323549005/too-bad-so-i-went-with
Thoughts?
Merlin Mann made his own 'compose email' app using automator: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/45763194525/compose-gmail-message .
Basically you launch it, it jumps straight to the blank compose window (nothing else), and closes when you hit send. That's it.
I try use it for the times when I don't want to see my email, but need to email something.
Valleywag was blacklisted early on, and Gawker has been too at least as long as Valleywag has been reintegrated into it. Plenty of other domains are blacklisted too: http://infoworld.com has been for some time, http://oppugn.us/ got added fairly recently, http://www.kungfugrippe.com/ got added after a (wholly justified) rant about Scribd (YC S06!).