A few years ago, I read an article that changed how I think about bourbon. It wasnt about distilling or aging. It was about bread.
Bread Is Broken by Ferris Jabr explores how modern industrial farming stripped grains of their flavor and nutritional value in exchange for higher yield, longer shelf life, and cost efficiency. As I read, I kept wondering if flavor has been lost in wheat; what does that mean for the wheat in our whisky?
So, I called Dr. David Van Sanford, a wheat breeder at the University of Kentucky, to ask if anyone had studied how farming practices impact flavor. He paused and said, Youre the first person whos ever asked me that.
That one question, nearly a decade ago, reenergized our pursuit of flavor. In that time, we expanded our farm operations, benchmarked our sustainability efforts, and doubled down on new regenerative processes: no-till farming, cover cropping, and crop rotation, which we knew would create healthier soil and therefore better flavor in our bourbon, and launched Star Hill Farm Whisky.
As we approach Climate Week in New York City, where regenerative agriculture is gaining attention, I want to share three lessons Ive learned over the past 10 years that continue to guide our work.
1. Cultivate an infinite mindset
When new leaders join our team, I often hand them a copy of Simon Sineks The Infinite Game. What really struck me about Sineks book is the idea that an infinite mindset isnt about winning in the traditional sense; its about ensuring the game continues. For me, that means stewardship over short-term gains: How do we leave the land, our bourbon, our culture, and our industry stronger than we found it?
That perspective has shaped the way I lead, and it directly connects to regenerative agriculture, which is all about investing in farmland to become more nutrient-dense, flavorful, and resilient for the future. Bourbon is, after all, an agricultural product. If we want bourbon to have a future every bit as rich as its past, we have to be thinking about the long game. Increasingly, distillers are.
2. Dont go at it alone
When our team unlocked the deep connection between soil health and flavor, we knew we couldnt do this alone so we sought out scientists, farmers, researchers, and thinkers like Gabe Brown, whose work on regenerative systems helped shape our approach. We quickly found our tribe.
Weve built a lasting partnership with Regenified and its CEO, Salar Shemirani, working alongside their team to recognize and certify farmers, ranchers, and communities for their dedication to biodiversity, soil health, water quality, and ecosystem resilience.
To amplify their work and the work of Gabe Browns Understanding Ag, we launched the Makers Mark Regenerative Alliance this year, which provides education and technical support to build healthy farm ecosystemsbeginning in the greater Kentucky, New York, and London areas.
Weve already begun onboarding (and continue to invite) farms, bars, and restaurants to adopt regenerative practices in their sourcing, operations, and menu storytelling. You can nominate a farm or restaurant that is already practicing regenerative agriculture to join our alliance and help amplify their work.
3. Be uncompromising about what matters
When my grandparents, Margie and Bill Samuels Sr., founded Makers Mark, they chose outlying land in Loretto, Ky, because of its natural water source and proximity to growers. They challenged convention to create a balanced handmade spirit rooted in the land.
Now more than ever, people want the products they enjoy and brands they buy to have a higher purpose, be transparent, and authentic to who they are. For us, that translates to an unreasonable commitment to quality made with respect for the land.
And its encouraging to see distilleries adopting practices that go beyond business as usual, pursuing certifications like B Corp and Regenified and collaborating through initiatives like the Estate Whiskey Alliance (EWA).
As a founding member of the EWA, were working alongside whiskey producers, farmers, academic institutions, and suppliers who believe transparency and traceability in ingredient sourcing and production methods are essential for both business and consumers. In just one year, EWA has nearly tripled its membership, certified its first products, and funded groundbreaking research. These are all important steps toward making regenerative farming the expectation rather than the exception.
For businesses ready to take similar steps, B Corp offers a clear framework and pathway to embed social and environmental responsibility into the heart of operations. Getting involved begins by completing the B Impact Assessment to measure your current impact and chart a course toward certification. Like joining the EWA, its an opportunity to be part of a broader movement where collective action accelerates change.
These efforts demonstrate that the industry can create a more resilient and sustainable future for bourbon, agriculture, and future generations.
So, what does bourbon have to do with the future of farming? More than you might think.
Rob Samuels is managing director and 8th-generation whisky maker at Star Hill Farm.
Reports Wednesday that Apple has held talks with Intel about a possible strategic investment sent shockwaves through the stock market. Intel shares shot up. Apple, the reports said, had begun the talksinitiated by Inteleven before the Trump administration made its controversial announcement that it would buy an $8.9 billion share in the chipmaker.
The governments move had the effect of attracting more investment in Intel, however. U.S.-based Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion and Japans Softbank said it would invest $2 billion.
Intel is a special case. The storied U.S. chipmaker has fallen on hard times after missing the chance to supply the chips of the mobile revolution. Now its far behind in having the technology to design and/or manufacture best-in-class chips that are good at training and running AI models.
The de facto alternative to a U.S. fabricator of AI chips, meanwhile, is TSMC. At the moment, the AI Revolution depends on advanced chips (most of them Nvidia designs) that are manufactured almost exclusively by TSMC, which is based in Taiwan, a small island 81 miles from mainland China, the U.S.s fierce rival in AI global dominance.
The U.S. is in a big hurry to find ways to de-risk that geopolitical situation. Washington has worked with TSMC to build advanced fabrication facilities on U.S. soil, and the company is now in the process of spending $65 billion on building three giant factories in Arizona.
But the chipmaker has found that setting up fabs in the U.S. is far slower than in Taiwan. Thats thanks to a challenging regulatory and administrative environment, a thorny struggle to acquire permits, and big cost overruns. The company said in January that most of its chip manufacturing would remain in Taiwan, especially for the most advanced chips.
Its one thing to work with TSMC to build fabrication facilities on U.S. soil, but its even better to help a U.S. company become a viable second-source option. And Intel, it seems, is Americas best hope for that. But it will require lots of money and expertise.
And the company with that expertise is TSMC. In January, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick even approached TSMC to take over Intels chip foundry (fabrication) business, which would be divorced from Intels chip design business. Those overtures apparently didnt bear fruit.
Apple and Intel have a rocky history
With an Apple investment in Intel, it now seems more possible that Apple (and Nvidia) would try to work closely with Intel to bring its fabrication game up to speed. Both of those companies have lots of expertise designing chips, and both have deep relationships with TSMC, which fabricates the designs.
Apple has a history with Intel. The company used Intel processors inside its MacBooks from 2006 through 2020, but discontinued the partnership after disappointment with the performance of the processors.
Apple also bought Intel modem chips for the iPhone for a time, but again struggled to work with Intel to get the performance it wanted. Apple bought Intels modem chip business in 2019, which gave it a foundation for designing its own modems. It put the first custom modem system-on-a-chip, called C1, into the iPhone 17 this year.
Apple and Intel have very different corporate cultures, and have struggled to work well together in the past. During the work on the Intel modem, Intel engineers said that Apple wanted first priority for its projects, demanded to dictate all modem specifications, and insisted on tight timelines with little tolerance for error. Apple found Intels culture to be slower and less agile than its own.
But a lot has happened at both companies since then. Markets have changed. Intel is far weaker, and Apple is, arguably, somewhat slower in its innovation. And the two companies would be working together for a greater cause than just partnering on phone or laptop components. Theyd be central players in helping the U.S. keep pace with China in AI and defusing a potentially dangerous geopolitical situation with regard to TSMC.
Along the White Houses West Wing Colonnade, portraits of every U.S. president since George Washington hang side-by-side in gilded frames. Every president, that is, except Joe Biden, whose visage has been swapped for an image of an autopen.
The new portrait display was unveiled on September 24, when the White House posted images of the updated West Wing to X. The post included a header image zoomed in on Bidens spot in the lineup, which shows a black-and-white image of an autopen signing the words Joseph R Biden Jr. Its in reference to a controversy, ignited earlier this year by members of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, who claimed that Bidens team signed several important documents with an autopen due to the former Presidents alleged cognitive decline.
Throughout his second term, President Trump has repeatedly used art inside the White House to meticulously edit his personal image, trading in convention to airbrush his own legacy in real time. However, this seems to be the first time that the President has moved beyond primping his own portraits to actively disparaging his political adversaries through his home decor.
Why has Bidens portrait been replaced with an autopen?
Trumps choice to replace Bidens portrait with an image of an autopen is likely a move intended to insult his predecessor on an international stage.
The image refers to a controversy that cropped up back in March. At the time, Trump declared via social media that some of Bidens presidential pardons, including members of the January 6 Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of Bidens family beyond his son Hunter, were void because they were signed by an autopen device.
The accusation came despite the fact that autopens, which are robotic devices used to duplicate signatures, have been used in the White House since Harry Truman. Trump himself likely used an autopen during his first term. A Republican committee, led by U.S. Representative James Comer, is currently investigating the idea that the autopen was used as a cover-up for Bidens cognitive decline.
Regardless of what the committee may find, the concept of a current President using the very walls of the White House as a canvas to target a former President is essentially unheard of. For Trump, though, it’s reflective of a broader pattern.
Why this represents a concerning escalation
Immediately after taking office in January, Trump foreshadowed how he planned to rebrand his image during his second term through the reveal of his official portrait. Trump chose to scrap all previous conventions around presidential portraiturelike genial expressions and down-to-earth posinginstead choosing to model his headshot after his mugshot. Since then, the President has embarked on a months-long campaign to adopt a sterner, darker personal brand that aligns with his desired image of control.
In February, reporters spotted a framed image of a New York Post magazine spotlighting Trumps mugshot posted just outside the Oval Office. That same month, his administration took down a minimalist portrait of former president Barack Obama in the East Room for a pop-art painting of President Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign trail. In April, a portrait of Trumps face featuring a superimposed American flag appeared between a portrait of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan. In May, a painting of Trump edited together with Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan showed up in the West Wing.
And in August, deputy assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka took to X to share another new painting of Trump walking through a line of American flags with his coat billowing behind him, alongside the caption: One of the new @WhiteHouse paintings of President @realDonaldTrump. More to come.
Outside of art, Trump is also making several more permanent changes to the White House itself. Currently, the President is in the process of redesigning the White Houses Rose Garden in the image of his Mar-a-Lago resort and imposing his opulent, Rococo-inspired design aesthetic on a new 90,000-square-foot ballroom. In a move that almost feels closer to parody than reality, the Trump administration also recently announced plans to convert the White Houses South Lawn into a UFC arena for a 2026 match.
All of these aesthetic decisions point back to Trumps general attitude around the White House: that it is less a historical site, and more a stage for his own personal endswhether that means molding the building to his narrow view of good architecture, or using its decor to squeeze in a last jab at Biden.
Most people do not put New York City and golf together, nor do they consider the game to be a team sport.
The 2025 Ryder Cup is challenging these views. The competition will be held just outside of the Big Apple at Bethpage State Parks Black Course in Farmingdale, New York.
From Friday, September 26, through Sunday, September 28, 12 Americans and 12 Europeans will go head-to-head. Let’s take a look at the history and format before covering how to tune in for every stroke and birdie.
The history of the Ryder Cup
The Ryder Cup is named after its patron, Sam Ryder, a British businessman and golf enthusiast. He fell in love with the sport after taking it up to help him recover from an illness and wanted to help the game gain international acclaim. The first official event took place in 1927 at the Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts.
Originally, the competition was just between American and British men, with the United States taking home the first trophy. U.S. captain Walter Hagen led the Americans to victory over the team from Great Britain supervised by Ted Ray.
The Americans dominated the early years of the competition, so in 1979, Great Britains team began allowing other Europeans to participate in order to even the playing field. The U.S. still has the upper hand, though, with 27 wins to Europes 15.
The format of the Ryder Cup
The competition takes place every two years. The teams play 28 matches total, with each match being worth one point. The first team to 14.5 wins. In the event of a tie, the defending champion keeps the cup.
The first two days involve team-based play in foursomes and four-balls formats. In foursomes play, two players from each team join forces and share a ball, alternating shots. The lowest score wins the hole.
Four-balls play is similar, but each team member uses his own ball and the lowest of the two scores counts for the team. The team with the lowest score wins the hole.
The third day of competition is much simpler. There are singles matches with players facing off one-on-one.
Who is playing in the 2025 Ryder Cup?
There are two ways to make the American or European team. The first six players automatically qualify based on past performance and rankings. The next six are picked by the team captains.
Keegan Bradley, while not playing himself, will oversee the Americans. He named Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Ben Griffin, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, and Cameron Young. They will join Scottie Scheffler, J.J. Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English, and Bryson DeChambeau.
This year, the Americans have an extra incentive to participate. They will be awarded $500,000 each for their efforts, with $300,000 going toward charity and the players walking away with a $200,000 stipend. The Europeans do not have this payday and are in it for the bragging rights.
Luke Donald is the team captain on the European side. Rory McIlroy, Robert MacIntyre, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Rasmus Hjgaard, and Tyrrell Hatton automatically qualified. They will be joined by Shane Lowry, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick, Jon Rahm, Sepp Straka, and Ludvig berg, who were appointed by Donald.
How to watch the 2025 Ryder Cup
There are many ways to catch all the action. For the visually minded, the drama will be spread out on multiple television networks.
The opening ceremonies will be broadcast on the Golf Channel on Thursday, September 25, from 4 to 7 p.m. ET.
The following day, the USA Network gets the honors, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. NBC will air the final two days of competition.
On Saturday, the action takes place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. On Sunday, you can sleep in, because the coverage goes from noon to 6 p.m. ET.
Those who prefer radio can tune in to Ryder Cup Radio on SiriusXM during the same broadcast hours as the televised versions.
Cord-cutters can see some selective matches on RyderCup.com, the Ryder Cup app, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.
If you just cant get enough coverage, Peacock will have a morning pre-show hosted by SNL‘s Colin Jost.
Amazon reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday over whether the e-commerce giant used “deceptive methods” to sign up consumers for Prime subscriptions, then made it “exceedingly difficult” to cancel.
The agency argued Amazon enrolled millions of customers in Prime subscriptions without their consent, and knowingly made it difficult for consumers to get out of the agreement.
That settlement, which comes just three days into the civil trial in federal court in Seattle, included a whopping $1 billion civil penalty, the highest in history, and a $1.5 billion fund to refund Prime users harmed by the deceptive enrollment practices. The e-commerce giant must also create an easier way for users to cancel, which includes modifying its interface, and “cease unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices.”
“Today, we are putting billions of dollars back into Americans pockets, and making sure Amazon never does this again,” FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in a statement.
The FTC case charged Amazon and several company executives with knowingly misleading millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime, violating the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA). Documents in the lead-up to trial were cited to show Amazon executives and employees “knowingly discussed these unlawful enrollment and cancellation issues”making comments such as, subscription driving is a bit of a shady world, and stating that leading consumers to unwanted subscriptions is an unspoken cancer.
Amazon did not admit to or deny the FTC’s allegations about misleading customers in the settlement. The company told the Wall Street Journal in a statement: “We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world.”
Industry experts react
Reactions to the settlement have been mixed.
After defrauding tens of millions of people with an intentionally labyrinthine cancellation process, the FTC is allowing Amazon and its executives to walk away scot-free, said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, a non-profit that advocates for corporate accountability legislation. That double standard is why so many Americans have lost faith in this administrations willingness to hold corporate lawbreakers accountable.
Others said the settlement may have made Prime easier to cancel, but the program will continue to remain in many American households.
“The settlement with the FTC may streamline Primes cancellation process, but it wont dent the programs dominance,” Emarketer analyst Zak Stambor told Fast Company. “Prime brought in $44 billion in subscription revenue last year aloneso the payout represents just 5.6% of that total. With more than 200 million global members, including three-quarters of U.S. households, Prime is the backbone of Amazons business model.”
Meanwhile, some consumer watchdog groups were pleased by the settlement, and called on the FTC to resurrect “click-to-cancel” rules to make it easier to cancel auto-renewing agreements such as streaming subscriptions and gym memberships.
This is a great day for consumersnot just Amazon customers, but everyone who gets roped into any kind of subscription or agreement in questionable ways,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director at U.S. PIRG Education Fund. In the meantime, we hope this Amazon settlement sends a strong message to any company operating in ways that could conceivably confuse customers or thwart their efforts to not be customers any more.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said it was extending an order limiting operations at Newark Liberty International Airport through October 24, 2026.
The order, which limits the rate of arrivals and departures, follows comments from the New Jersey airport’s operator and airlines on extending flight limits to help address congestion at one of three main airports serving New York City.
Newark is a major hub for United Airlines.
Jasper Ward, Reuters
Despite years of congressional hearings, lawsuits, academic research, whistleblowers and testimony from parents and teenagers about the dangers of Instagram, Meta’s wildly popular app has failed to protect children from harm, with woefully ineffective” safety measures, according to a new report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups.
Metas efforts at addressing teen safety and mental health on its platforms have long been met with criticism that the changes dont go far enough. Now, the report published Thursday, from Bejar, the Cybersecurity For Democracy at New York University and Northeastern University, the Molly Rose Foundation, Fairplay and ParentsSOS, claims Meta has chosen not to take real steps to address safety concerns, opting instead for splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.
Meta said the report misrepresents its efforts on teen safety.
The report evaluated 47 of Meta’s 53 safety features for teens on Instagram, and found that the majority of them are either no longer available or ineffective. Others reduced harm, but came with some “notable limitations, while only eight tools worked as intended with no limitations. The report’s focus was on Instagram’s design, not content moderation.
This distinction is critical because social media platforms and their defenders often conflate efforts to improve platform design with censorship, the report says. However, assessing safety tools and calling out Meta when these tools do not work as promised, has nothing to do with free speech. Holding Meta accountable for deceiving young people and parents about how safe Instagram really is, is not a free speech issue.
Meta called the report misleading, dangerously speculative and said it undermines the important conversation about teen safety.
This report repeatedly misrepresents our efforts to empower parents and protect teens, misstating how our safety tools work and how millions of parents and teens are using them today. Teen Accounts lead the industry because they provide automatic safety protections and straightforward parental controls, Meta said. “The reality is teens who were placed into these protections saw less sensitive content, experienced less unwanted contact, and spent less time on Instagram at night. Parents also have robust tools at their fingertips, from limiting usage to monitoring interactions. Well continue improving our tools, and we welcome constructive feedback but this report is not that.
Meta has not disclosed what percentage of parents use its parental control tools. Such features can be useful for families in which parents are already involved in their childs online life and activities, but experts say thats not the reality for many people.
New Mexico Attorney General Raśl Torrez who has filed a lawsuit against Meta claiming it fails to protect children from predators said it is unfortunate that Meta is doubling down on its efforts to persuade parents and children that Metas platforms are saferather than making sure that its platforms are actually safe.
The authors created teen test accounts as well as malicious adult and teen accounts that would attempt to interact with these accounts in order to evaluate Instagram’s safeguards.
For instance, while Meta has sought to limit adult strangers from contacting underage users on its app, adults can still communicate with minors through many features that are inherent in Instagrams design, the report says. In many cases, adult strangers were recommended to the minor account by Instagrams features such as reels and people to follow.”
Most significantly, when a minor experiences unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate contact, Metas own product design inexplicably does not include any effective way for the teen to let the company know of the unwanted advance, the report says.
Instagram also pushes its disappearing messages feature to teenagers with an animated reward as an incentive to use it. Disappearing messages can be dangerous for minors and are used for drug sales and grooming, and leave the minor account with no recourse, according to the report.
Another safety feature, which is supposed to hide or filter out common offensive words and phrases in order to prevent harassment, was also found to be largely ineffective.
Grossly offensive and misogynistic phrases were among the terms that we were freely able to send from one Teen Account to another, the report says. For example, a message that encouraged the recipient to kill themselves and contained a vulgar term for women was not filtered and had no warnings applied to it.
Meta says the tool was never intended to filter all messages, only message requests. The company expanded its teen accounts on Thursday to users worldwide.
As it sought to add safeguards for teens, Meta has also promised it wouldn’t show inappropriate content to teens, such as posts about self-harm, eating disorders or suicide. The report found that its teen avatars were nonetheless recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.
We were also algorithmically recommended a range of violent and disturbing content, including Reels of people getting struck by road traffic, falling from heights to their death (with the last frame cut off so as not to see the impact), and people graphically breaking bones, the report says.
In addition, Instagram also recommended a range of self-harm, self-injury, and body image content on teen accounts that the report says would be reasonably likely to result in adverse impacts for young people, including teenagers experiencing poor mental health, or self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviors.
The report also found that children under 13 and as young as six were not only on the platform but were incentivized by Instagrams algorithm to perform sexualized behavior such as suggestive dances.
The authors made several recommendations for Meta to improve teen safety, including regular red-team testing of messaging and blocking controls, providing an easy, effective, and rewarding way for teens to report inappropriate conduct or contacts in direct messages and publishing data on teens’ experiences on the app. They also suggest that the recommendations made to a 13-year-old’s teen account should be reasonably PG-rated,” and Meta should ask kids about their experiences of sensitive content they have been recommended, ncluding frequency, intensity, and severity.
Until we see meaningful action, Teen Accounts will remain yet another missed opportunity to protect children from harm, and Instagram will continue to be an unsafe experience for far too many of our teens, the report says.
Barbara Ortutay, AP technology writer
As the dust settles on a botched logo redesign that turned it into a political and cultural flashpoint this summer, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store is no doubt looking to put 2025 behind it.
In the meantime, the restaurant company has also trimmed its physical footprint as it looks to 2026.
Reporting its fourth-quarter financial results earlier this month, Cracker Barrel revealed the planned closure of 14 Maple Street Biscuit Company locations. That amounts to roughly 21% of its company-owned stores for the fast-casual brand, which Cracker Barrel acquired in 2019 for $36 million.
The company is projecting revenue for fiscal 2026 of $3.35 billion to $3.45 billion, and a comparable store traffic decline of 4% to 7%, in part due to the closures. Cracker Barrel also plans to open two new locations for its flagship Cracker Barrel brand during the period.
Julie Masino, the restaurant chains CEO, addressed the logo controversy in an earnings call on September 17, saying it underscored deeply held feelings and a love for the brand among fans. The company reverted back to its old branding and halted a planned remodeling of some of its restaurants in the wake of intense backlash that followed the logo change.
Maple Street Biscuit Company, founded in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2012, largely escaped getting swept up in the negative publicity. The brand has locations mostly centered around the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas.
Which Maple Street locations are closing?
Cracker Barrel did not provide a list of impacted locations. Although it disclosed the closures as part of its outlook for fiscal 2026, a spokesperson confirmed with Fast Company that the locations it cited have in fact already closed.
Based on a Fast Company review of Maple Street’s store locator tool and review websites such as Yelp, the 14 recent store closures span six states, with the most located in Texas. The full list, which Cracker Barrel confirmed, appears below:
Florida
2233 Gulf to Bay Blvd Clearwater, FL 33765
7756 113th St N Ste E Seminole, FL 33772
Kentucky
2270 Nicholasville Rd Ste 120 Lexington-Fayette, KY 40503
Ohio
9711 Sawmill Pkwy Ste A Powell, OH 43065
South Carolina
965 Wood Duck Dr Ste 108 Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
1739 Maybank Hwy Ste U Charleston, SC 29412
Tennessee
10837 Hardin Valley Rd Knoxville, TN 37932
Texas
967 Keller Pkwy Keller, TX 76248
4836 Waterview Town Center Dr Ste 300 Richmond, TX 77407
14999 Preston Rd Ste 226 Dallas, TX 75254
3288 Main St Ste 111 Frisco, TX 75034
3040 E FM 544 Ste 400 Wylie, TX 75098
8801 Eldorado Pkwy McKinney, TX 75070
4020 W University Dr, McKinney, TX 75071
A Cracker Barrel spokesperson pointed out that Maple Street Biscuit Company still has more than 50 locations.
We appreciate the continued patronage of the many guests who have dined with Maple Street at these 14 locations over recent years and thank our team members for their passionate dedication to Maple Street and focus on delivering delivered fantastic guest experiences day in and day out,” the spokesperson said. “We hope our loyal guests will continue to dine with us at our many other Maple Street locations.
Shares of Cracker Barrel (NASDAQ: CBRL) are down roughly 5% since its earnings report. The stock has fallen around 30% since late August.
Want to switch to Apple Music because you can’t find your favorite indie band on Spotify? Or maybe you’re on Amazon Music but saw a new subscriber offer on Tidal that’s too good to pass up.
There are a variety of reasons to change music providers. But if you’re thinking about it, and you’re worried about losing your library of saved songs and personalized playlists, fear not: there are ways to bring all of it with you.
Many music streaming services dont make it obvious often burying instructions deep in FAQs and making the process arduous but they do offer options to help migrate your collection.
Apple made it easier last month when it quietly rolled out a new feature allowing users to import libraries from rival sites. Having Apple officially incorporate the feature might give reluctant users the confidence to move.
Some pointers to help you along with your musical migration.
Importing into Apple Music
The iPhone maker recently published a help page to walk users through the process of importing libraries into Apple Music.
The feature, buried in your settings, is provided by a third-party service called Songshift. It’s currently available to users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
To use it, you’ll need an Apple Music account and the latest version of iOS or the Android Apple Music app.
On iPhone, go to Settings, then Apps, then Music. Tap Transfer Music from Other Music Services to pop up a list of various streaming services. Android users can follow a similar process. Transfers can also be done through a web browser at music.apple.com.
After choosing a service, another screen appears, prompting you to log into the target account.
Now you get a menu with options to import All Songs and Albums” as well as All Playlists.” If you don’t want all your playlists, you can untick the ones you don’t want. However, you can’t pick individual songs and albums.
Apple Music will then replicate your library based on your choices.
Importing my Spotify library, with about 150 playlists, went fairly smoothly, although the process took about half an hour because the service also downloaded around 1,230 songs and albums to my iPhone.
I had assumed that ticking All Songs and Albums meant that Apple Music would mirror the handful of music I had downloaded to my Spotify app, but it also downloaded all 63 albums in my Spotify library and the 440 songs on my Liked Songs list, which I normally listen to via streaming. If you dont want to download everything, unselect that option before you start.
Also note that Apple says playlists “created by the music service can’t be transferred, so I couldn’t bring Spotify-curated lists like This is Taylor Swift or Alternative 80s with me.
It also meant that my Liked Songs list, which Spotify generates for every user and a list I’ve been adding to over the years couldn’t be replicated. Any downloaded songs were just dumped into Apple Music’s library.
After this story was first published, reader Linda Feaster wrote in with a workaround: create your own playlist and then add all the tracks from the Spotify playlist. It could be tedious if there are hundreds of songs but should do the trick.
If you’re tempted to try out the tool, note that it probably won’t work the same way with every service. Apple warns that what can be transferred is up to the source platform. Playlists made by others, such as BBC Musics The Sounds of 1994, for example, did make it over.
After the move is done, you’ll have 30 days to review songs that aren’t available or don’t have an exact match in Apple’s catalog, and choose from any alternate versions.
Working with other music platforms
Most of the other big music streaming platforms offer ways to transfer your library to their site. They mostly rely on standalone third-party services that have been around for a while, are free to use, and don’t need app integration to work.
Tidal and Deezer both direct users on their websites to one such service, Tune My Music, which works with popular platforms like Spotify as well as a host of lesser known sites.
Amazon Music’s webpage has dedicated buttons for Tune My Music and two similar services, Songshift and Soundiiz.
Google also advises third-party services for YouTube Music users who want to import or export playlists, albums, artists and tracks. However, for Apple Music users who want to move to YouTube Music, the process is different. You’ll have to sign in to Apple Music and request a transfer a copy of your data, then export it directly to YouTube Music.
The transfer process may take several hours if you have many playlists,” Google warns on its support page.
Spotify says it’s currently testing a way for users to transfer their libraries and expects to provide more details soon.
Using a third-party service to migrate between platforms
It was super easy to move my Spotify library to Deezer using Tune My Music.
I clicked a button on the Deezer website that got the process started by prompting me to log in to my Spotify account. Then a menu came up with pre-ticked options on what I could migrate: my entire library, favorite songs, favorite albums, favorite artists and any or all of my 150 playlists.
I decided to move it all over, which amounted to more than 16,359 items. It took about five minutes. Unlike Apple Music, Deezer didn’t download any files, it just copied lists.
A few dozen songs went missing, Tune My Music said.
It usually happens because the song doesn’t exist on the new platform, or it’s named a bit differently and couldn’t be matched, it said, but added that I could download a list of missing tracks to look for them on the new platform.
After you finish transferring your music library, don’t forget that it’s still on the original platform and hasn’t been deleted.
Most third-party transfer services are free, but also offer premium levels with more features, such as instant syncing of libraries between multiple streaming sites.
____
Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.
Kelvin Chan, AP business writer
AP Business Writer James Pollard contributed to this report.
If you think Jimmy Kimmels return to late-night television this week spells the end of that whole saga, well, think again: A group of investors is demanding that the Walt Disney Co. share information about why he was suspended in the first place.
Lawyers representing the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Reporters Without Borders, and other groups of Disney shareholders sent a letter to the entertainment giant on Wednesday requesting internal documents and communications related to the decision to remove Kimmel from the air. Kimmel was suspended by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) indefinitely last week for comments he made about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The group of shareholders is seeking to learn whether the decision to yank Kimmel was driven by politically fueled threats from federal regulators and broadcast affiliates, and if Disneys board and executives didnt live up to their fiduciary dutiesto act in the best interest of shareholders.
The group said that, given the Trump administrations threats to free speech, it was writing to seek transparency about the initial decision to suspend Kimmel and his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!
There is a credible basis to suspect that the board and executives may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and good faith by placing improper political or affiliate considerations above the best interests of the company and its stockholders, the letter said.
DISNEYS SELL-OFF
The group of shareholders is requesting a broad range of information from Disneyfrom financial information to estimate the effect of Kimmels suspension on Disneys revenue to any communications that board members, including CEO Bob Iger, had with political organizations and federal regulators.
Though Kimmel returned to the air Tuesday night and his opening monologue has racked up 20 million views on YouTube, Disney shares have yet to recover from last weeks suspension. Whats more, his show still isnt being aired to about one-quarter of U.S. households served by Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group stations.
Disney shares fell 3.3% during the time when Kimmel was suspended, and the move triggered a consumer boycott of Disney-owned streaming services, including Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN.
QUESTIONS REGARDING ROLE OF FCC
The group of investors linked Kimmels suspension with threats from Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The sell-off in the stock illustrates fears of brand damage and concerns that Disney was complicit in succumbing to the government overreach and media censorship, the group said, while negative repercussions on Disney and its shareholders remain, given President Donald Trumps continued threats to ABC.
Nexstar currently requires the approval of the FCC for its planned $6.2 billion merger with Tegna.
Disney shareholders deserve the truth about exactly what went down inside the company after Brendan Carr’s threat to punish ABC unless action was taken against Jimmy Kimmel, AFT president Randi Weingarten said in a statement from Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit watchdog group that helped organize the shareholder letter.
The Disney board has a legal responsibility to act in the best interests of its shareholdersand we are seeking answers to discover if that bond was broken to kowtow to the Trump administration, Weingarten said.
