Yeah, dude copy/pasted the logo with the R and everything. What did he expect to happen?

the blog post made it clear he is a teenager. I don't think he thought about any of this. Hopefully he reads this thread, learns a bit more about trademarks, and tries again in a proper way.

If it's really true that there's no true Waffle House index, that would have some value for the world. Though I also suspect that there is something that exists for that (maybe part of a paid data subscription, e.g. from Bloomberg or something), since it isn't clear that the author did rigorous research for this fun side project.

Author here - I absolutely do have more to learn about trademarks and appreciate everyones comments :) I was attempting to go for a good faith representation but (obviously) now know that wasn't the best way to go about it.

As far as rigorous research, I looked semi-heavily and couldn't find anything in relation to it. I'm sure it's not a foreign concept to use local area data in this way for disaster planning though!