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yewknee
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An internet waystation.

it me - michael eades

👋 Hi, I'm Michael Eades; a long time Internet dweller, design dabbler, dangerously amateur developer, online social experimenter and frequent curator.

Currently working as a Product Manager at Mosaic. I also keep the lights on at a boutique record label called yk records, a podcast network called We Own This Town and a t-shirt shop called Nashville Galaxy. Previously, I built things for Vimeo OTT, VHX, KNI and Spongebath Records.

This site is an archive of ephemera I find entertaining; tweets, videos, random links, galleries of images.

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find me elsewhere

 

contact

Reach out via twitter or good ole email if you have anything to discuss. I do my best to reply in a timely manner.

for the record: "yewknee" is a nonsensical word with no literal meaning but a unsurprisingly nerdy etymology. It is pronounced, "yoo • knee."

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ongoing projects

yk Records →
started in 2009 as a conduit for music that friends had no plans on releasing. now it's a full fledged boutique label focused on releasing quality music from a variety of styles. you know, like a label does. Here's a sampler on Soundcloud and a different one on Spotify. Options.

We Own This Town →
Originally a Nashville area music blog, this site has grown into a full blown podcast network as of 2018. It's an attempt to bring together creative folks about a variety of interesting topics.

I host this show all about Nashville local music outside the expectations of the city. I'm biased but all the shows are good.

Nashville Galaxy →
An online t-shirt shop featuring beloved and defunct Nashville area businesses. Very niche audience on this one but I tend to think niche is good.

some noteworthy other things

Chris Gaines: The Podcast →
published along with co-host Ashley Spurgeon; a limited series podcast that takes an absurdly researched deep dive into the time that Garth Brooks took on a fictional personality named Chris Gaines.

Garth Brooks Chris Gaines Countdown →
to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the time Garth Brooks took on the fictional personality Chris Gaines and appeared on Saturday Night Live in character, I GIF'ed the entire episode. It's a lot of GIFs; please use them.

Whiskerino →
a social network built around communal beard growing for four months. yes, it was as weird as it sounds but equally fascinating and enjoyable.

Moustache May →
an offshoot of the beard growing contest mentioned above. equal amounts of oddball fun but only a month long.

Summer Mix Series →
before all music was streaming everywhere, Internet music fans would swap zip files of music. it was truly a strange and wonderful time.

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Let's Talk About Facebook

Before you immediately close your browser, know that this post isn't some screed against Facebook or a call to arms in the forthcoming Privacy Revolution! I'm not eloquent enough for any of that. However, I do want to post some articles that I found interesting as of late in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. So, here they are:
  • ReCode transcript with Zuckerberg - a quality interview with Mark Zuckerberg in which the journalists ask some decently hard questions. The answers are disappointing at best and bafflingly ignorant at worst.
  • What the F*** was Facebook thinking? - a good read on the historical context of the data share and what else was going on at the time; lest you forget other data breaches like the huge one at Target. Moreso, it gives some insight on how far reaching and pervasive the data scraping could be from any company at that time.
  • Facebook scraped call, text messages for years from Android phones - Facebook denies this one but I'm not really prone to fully believe them, given that in several other interviews they've openly stated that they don't know where all their data went. This collection was clearly happening and shows the depth of information that was gathered.
  • The Cambridge Analytica Data Apocalypse was Predicted in 2007 - going back eleven years, MIT Media Lab predicted that such a massive data share was imminent unless measures were taken to prevent it. Clearly, an MIT Media Lab study didn't make it to the masses.
As I stated at the top, I'm not going to try and synthesize all that into some grand theory against Facebook. I'm actually shocked that the #DeleteFacebook movement has come up again - as none of this seems the least bit surprising to me. Social media networks make their money off your data. Furthermore, Facebook and Instagram and Google and everywhere else are pieces of code written by humans that are driven by profits and growth (see: "Move Fast and Break Things").

This fallout is a nice eye-opener for a large audience but I can't imagine this will really change anything. As we move into a more AR / VR driven world, even more granular data will be collected and sold. Imagine what happens when your eye movements can be tracked and what sort of re-targeting ads can be served to you simply based on lingering for awhile on a product.

This isn't all doom and gloom but, frankly, just a reality that we need to get more accustomed to. If you are a part of a social network, you are volunteering that information and taking that risk. Do I think there should be some regulation and safe keeping? Of course but I do think we're seeing the definition of "privacy" change extremely quickly and I'm fascinated to see where it will land.
Tue. March 27th, 2018, 7:19am

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