Centralization of media was a mistake.

We live in a world now where our media outlets are owned by a small number of conglomerates. And while this is possibly a more profitable set up for the corporations that own these outlets, it also makes it easy for them to be manipulated by billionaires and governments.

Our distribution channels are corrupted as well. Social media and newsletter platforms are controlled by a small number of players all motivated by advertising profits. We find sites through search engines that increasingly favor AI summaries over original content.

It shouldn’t be like this. No venture-capital-funded start up is going to provide a solution. No existing player is going to erode their own platforms. Instead, it’s going to be a grassroots effort to embrace the open standards we have (for example, RSS). We need to promote discussion by sharing stories that are meaningful and powerful. We need to support platforms and creators who...

F1 Qualifying is sometimes more exciting than a regular race. Today’s quali was incredible. Going to be tough to beat Max tomorrow.

Home today for a warranty repair to our AC unit that developed a slow leak over the summer. Service is expected to take 3-5 hours. Goodness, they must be disassembling the whole thing.

I think I’ll likely stick with the base model iPhone 17 this year. It will be a massive upgrade from my iPhone 12 Pro. I’ll probably pick up a new Apple Watch, too, to replace my ancient Series 4, which I still wear every day.

Looking forward to the iPhone event tomorrow. I’m in the market for an upgrade… and whatever they announce will be a big step up from my iPhone 12 Pro.

Scout Motors partnered with local coffee shops to buy coffee for Columbia today. Pretty cool event, and we are happy to have Scout in our community. Thanks for the free drink today! (And the stickers.)

A coffee cup with an orange sleeve and a "Scout" sticker is placed on a wooden table in a cozy café setting.

Some thoughts on the Cracker Barrel rebranding fiasco from a visual identity researcher

My Ph.D. research is focused on consumer response to logos and visual identity, so as you can imagine, I’ve talked about Cracker Barrel1 a lot over the last few weeks. Everyone has an opinion and is eager to share it. I held off writing this because the social media chatter was just chaotic, but now that things have calmed down, I wanted to share some quick thoughts based on my research.

People care about logos.

In my forthcoming study on logo attitudes with a sample of 1,000 American consumers2, over 60% of respondents agreed that if their favorite brand changed their logo, they’d want to know why. Cracker Barrel did a really poor job of explaining why they were changing their logo. It seemed to consumers like change for the sake of change and when challenged by consumers (plus a really strange political...