Good morning from Dieline’s editor-in-chief, Bill McCool. Here’s your daily side serving of design news, short musings, brand stuff, and forgotten ephemera.
Everyone knows that the 2026 midterms are about Cheesecake Factory’s design, and not, you know, war, inflation, and tariffs.
That said, boy howdy, am I stoked for all the AI videos of right-wing influencers eating at Cheesecake Factory. Where was this during the great Cracker Barrel debacle of 2025!?
I know that I rail against the kid-dults on the reg (don’t get me started on Disney adults), but even I have to admit I wouldn’t mind having some Daft Punk LEGO figurines. I have brought shame to my family’s name! Shame!
Hey, watch out for grandma’s fruit cocktail brand of choice. Related: do people still eat fruit cocktail? I haven’t had this since I was 9.
A coffee liqueur housed in a bottle shaped like an Italian moka pot? Brilliant. Someone make this real.
A woman turned to ChatGPT to help wean her off life-saving seizure medication, and the “tool” even helped her navigate fooling her doctors. As a reminder, ChatGPT is not a trained medical professional. That woman is now dead. Her parents have since filed a lawsuit. That said, there’s a world where ChatGPT might get a pass on this because the woman was chatting with an older model, and now they have some new and improved version. That this company wasn’t forced to shut down and make drastic changes—with regulatory oversight—is one of the US’s great consumer-protection tragedies, not just in recent years, but in this still-young century.
Folks are elated that General Mills and Cheerios have partnered with Ziploc to introduce the very first resealable cereal bag. Admittedly, this has never been one of my packaging pet peeves (hello, bacon, my old friend). First-world packaging problems, am I right?
Epic Games is in a bit of a pickle, as they have forced AI on employees...but won’t stand for folks using AI to vibe-code a browser-based Fortnite port. Some would say there’s some irony in this, but I would say that it’s more of an expected outcome.
I recall a bigger, brighter world, a world of books and silent times in thought.
-Bill