I have a couple recent articles out. First up in Slate, I look at Trump, vaping, and how Democrats keep getting the issue wrong:

Thankfully, courting the “We Vape, We Vote” movement was insufficient to return Trump to the White House. Vapers are a relatively small demographic—estimates vary, but it’s probably around 15 million Americans—and restrictions on nicotine and tobacco use are broadly popular. It may be the case, however, that among adults who vape, the threat of e-cigarette bans is highly motivating, and that even a few thousand votes in the right places could end up mattering to an extraordinary degree. That was the theory that swayed Trump in 2019, and it’s likely his motivation for appealing to vapers now. The fact that Trump is suddenly paying attention to the niche issue of flavored e-cigs is a sign that the campaign is desperate for any potential wedge against Harris.

Still, Democrats should take the concerns and needs of vapers more seriously. On the merits, Democrats have been getting tobacco harm reduction consistently wrong for years, calling for bans on lower-risk nicotine products that are helping drive rates of smoking to historic lows. Taking a less prohibitionist stance toward reduced-risk nicotine products would be both a smarter approach to public health policy and consistent with Democrats’ recent efforts to brand themselves as the party of personal freedom.

On a lighter note, my latest for Inside Hook takes a look at three new tools for making pizza at home, including the awesome new 24-inch outdoor oven from Ooni:

This thing is a beast. When I assembled the review model, I just had to laugh because it was such an absurdly large oven to have sitting on the floor of my one-bedroom apartment. I could neither cook with it there, where I lack the outdoor space, nor fit it into my sedan to take it somewhere else. Unless your name is “The Mountain,” carrying this anywhere is realistically a two-person job. Testing the oven required loading it into the back of my girlfriend’s SUV and hauling it around Portland to a series of backyard pizza gatherings.