I’ve made a fair amount of pizza in my cast iron, and it took some trial and error to get the pizza to not stick.

Either preheat the pan fully before adding the oil or fat and (carefully) drop in the dough, or use a generous amount of butter and shape the dough in a cold pan.

When spreading toppings, cheese along the edge is fine, but try not to get much sauce on the sides of the pan. That will burn and eat away at the seasoning more.

My pan doesn’t have great seasoning, though - I mostly just use it for pizza every other week or so.

My spouse says that they LIKE the way I smell.

Did you know Kids in the Hall made a sketch about you?

It’s possible that a nuclear response would have prevented the ground warfare that dragged on in the war on terror. Possible, in the way that it’s possible that a meteor will land on my head tonight.

One of the reasons the wars in the Middle East dragged on for so long is that for every terrorist we took out in an attack, multiple more civilians were killed. And every dead civilian potentially creates another person with nothing to lose to turn to terrorism.

Nuclear weapons are even more indiscriminate, and they have the additional problem of risking alienating basically all of our allies. Plus it drastically changes the nuclear calculus for near peer enemies.

If we’re willing to launch a nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear nation with no ability to threaten us militarily, then why wouldn’t we launch against Russia, China, etc the second we see an opportunity to take them out? That’s what they’d be thinking, anyway, and so their motivation for launching a first strike against us if the opportunity arises goes up dramatically.

There’s a reason Russia has only talked about nukes in their invasion of Ukraine. They know that actually pulling the nuclear trigger is crossing a line that sets them on a dangerous and irreversible course.

If you’re good at building hype and have some connections, you can attract all sorts of investors hoping to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing.

Dan Olsen’s NFT video from a year ago summed it up well, I think (link). People with money to invest today want to repeat the insane growth in wealth brought about by computers, the internet, social media, etc. So they will basically gamble on any new ideas that have an air of plausibility to kick off the next boom.

Plain butter has a low smoke point because the milk solids burn easily. Clarifying the butter removes those solids, leaving behind just the butter fat (and some water), which has a smoke point around 480°F. It also gives the butter a much longer shelf life, as those solids are what go rancid more quickly. To clarify butter, you just heat it up until the solids settle to the bottom, then skim off the foam and pour the fat off the top (a fine mesh sieve makes this easier).

Alternatively, you can continue to heat the butter for long enough to boil all the water off. Doing so will brown the milk solids sitting at the bottom, which imparts a nutty flavor to the butter, even though you will filter out the browned solids. This is ghee and is what I make and use.

It is my go-to cooking fat anytime I use my cast iron or carbon steel. It’s nice to be able to get a bit of buttery flavor when searing at high heat.