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!
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.