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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 VP of Product at Smarter Apps. 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 threads 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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Welcome to The Matrix (The Research Paper)

"This is the world that you know; the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix." &emdash; Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix
I have to imagine that quote has inspired countless sci-fi enthusiasts, researchers and technologists. Actually, I don't have to imagine it because this research paper directly cites it. They go on to ask the question: How close are we to realizing the vision of The Matrix (1999), where AI crafts a fully immersive, interactive world, blurring the line between reality and illusion?

Then it goes into some details and examples about a new interactive, realtime, AI model that they've built that lets you steer an object through a limitless 3D space. They primarily use a car through familiar terrain but the examples further down the page get much more wild. I recommend making sure you scroll all the way down and watch them all. There's no interactive demo yet but you get the gist.

Clearly, here in 2024, we are nowhere near the reality shown in The Matrix (as far as I can tell) but the question the researchers pose does contain a phrase worth pondering a bit. We do not have "fully immersive, interactive worlds," but we do seem to be edging into examples that "blur the line between reality and illusion." It's all about escalation from there, no?
Thu. November 21st, 2024, 6:51am

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