That's great to hear!

One thing I've heard is that for crispy outsides, after parcooking you want to shake 'em up aggressively so that there's a pasty substance on the outside like in this image. It provides more surface area for browning.

This post from Serious Eats has some other tips that you might be interested in.

There are some other things that I wanted to say but struggled to fit in to the OP. I'll mention them here (in a rather brain-dumpy manner):

• I think an important question is, like, why is it important to understand these things when you can just google a recipe for any given food item you're cooking? The recipe will tell you exactly what to do and following those instructions isn't exactly rocket science.
  
  Well, the words aren't really coming to me here but nevertheless, I'll give it an initial stab. 1) Often times you'll need to improvise and do things different from what the recipe says. 2) Sometimes you might want to cook something without a recipe.
• When I said that this stuff is something you could learn in minutes-to-hours rather than days-to-weeks, I should probably clarify some things. I think a lot of learning does still happen at the days-to-weeks point in the timeline. What I mean is that I think the 80-20 principle applies and that in the minutes-to-hours phase, I expect that a very useful and worthwhile of learning will take place.
• When I propose that the benefit is large, to be clear, it's because I'm multiplying a relatively small amount of utility across a pretty large period of time. When you improve you enjoy your meal a bit more than you otherwise would I don't think that's yielding a massive amount of utilons. But when you eat three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year... it adds up. Technology could end up changing this though.
• Even if you currently are someone who currently doesn't get much utility out of eating, I think that can change for reasons similar to how someone who doesn't appreciate art can learn to appreciate art and subsequently get a lot of joy out of art. And since we eat every day, learning to appreciate food seems plausibly worthwhile. Hm, maybe I'll write a post about that some time. For now I'll note that this path also has downsides. Off the top of my head: being tempted to spend more time cooking than you should, to eat less healthily than you should, to spend more money than you should, not enjoying food you otherwise would.
• I worry that I wasn't clear enough about the fact that I don't think the goals of a crispy exterior and tender interior are as common as... I made them sound? The important point is just that they are relatively common, common enough that if there's a technique for accomplishing those goals, that technique would be worth learning.
• I was hoping to spend more time explaining what exactly the adjacent techniques are, why I think they are adjacent to the reverse sear, and how you might apply them when improvising in the kitchen, but I kinda ran out of steam (no pun intended).

Yes, traditionally people would sear and then put in the oven so the "reverse" in "reverse sear" is alluding to the fact that you're switching the order by going oven first and sear second.

Some other comments:

1. I've never heard anything about the origin of the reverse sear being related to food safety, or better food safety is part of the reason to use it now.
2. Not that Vanvier is saying anything in conflict with this, but since food safety was brought up I want to say that food safety thing with chicken (as an example) is kinda annoying. I think this video does a good job explaining it.
   
   Basically, you want to kill salmonella and other bacteria. The heat needed to accomplish that is a function of both temperature and time, not just temperature. See page 37 of this USDA guide. At 165℉ salmonella is killed instantly. At 160℉ it takes 13.7 seconds. At 155℉ it takes 44.2 seconds.
   
   Conventional wisdom says that you need to cook it to 165℉ to be safe, but that's just the guidelines being dumbed down because nuance leads to mistakes. In reality you can (and probably should!) cook it to a lower temperature if you hold it there long enough.
3. To me, the big reason to reverse sear rather than to the traditional sear-then-finish-in-the-oven is because of the better browning you get with the reverse sear. After taking it out of the oven with the reverse sear, the exterior is nice and dry, and since moisture is the enemy of browning, this dryness helps you get particularly good browning.
   
   The other thing is that for physics reasons I don't quite understand, the reverse sear is supposed to get you more even cooking with less of a temperature gradient. 

This is illustrated well in this Seinfeld clip.

Ah I see. Thanks for clarifying. I see now that it was mentioned but yeah, I lost sight of it while reading.

I'd be interested to hear more about how governments currently deal with it. It seems kinda obvious to me that we wouldn't want to trust that there is no state-level hacking going on, and that we'd want something like what you propose in the post where you can know it's random without having to trust people. I always assumed they had some sort of fancy math-y solution, but from what you're saying it sounds like maybe they don't.

What if instead of one sources of randomness, we have each candidates provide their own?

Maybe instead of one person-with-a-hat randomizer, we could have each candidate be their own randomness source. We just need a way for candidates' randomness to be merged in a way that determines the winner.

I got a little confused here. If you have a source of randomness available to you, why move forward to something like Rock-Paper-Scissors? Why not just say "we'll generate a random number between 0 and 1. I win if it's between 0 and 0.5, you win if it's between 0.5 and 1, we re-run if it's exactly 0.5"?

Is it because both parties can't agree that the source of randomness is fair?

The paper's in a hat discussion made me think back to this from Probability is in the Mind:

I believe there was a lawsuit where someone alleged that the draft lottery was unfair, because the slips with names on them were not being mixed thoroughly enough; and the judge replied, "To whom is it unfair?"

Not that I don't think there can be legitimate problems with the degree of randomness. Just that in the absence of legitimate problems, people still might have problems with it that aren't legitimate.

I want to push back on the idea of needing a large^[1] place if you have a family.

In the US a four person family will typically live in a 2,000-2,500 square foot place, but in Europe the same family will typically live in something like 1,000-1,400 square feet. In Asia it's often less, and earlier in the US's history it also was much less than what it is today.

If smaller sizes work for others across time and space I believe it is often sufficient for people in the US today.

1. ^{^}

   Well, you just said "larger".

This resonates with me. I've always been a fan of Mr. Money Mustache's perspective that it doesn't take much money at all to live a really awesome life, which I think is similar to the perspective you're sharing.

Some thoughts:

• Housing is huge. And living with friends is a huge help. But I think for a lot of people that isn't a pragmatic option (tied to an area; friends unwilling or incompatible; need privacy), and then they get stuck paying a lot for housing.
• Going car free helps a lot. Unfortunately, I think most places in North America make this somewhat difficult, and the places that don't tend to have high housing costs.
• Traveling is expensive. Flights, hotels, Ubers, food. I find myself in lots of situations where I feel socially obligated to travel, like for weddings and stuff, and so end up traveling maybe 4-6x/year, but this isn't the hardest thing in the world to avoid. You could explain to people that you have a hard budget for two trips a year.
• Spending $200/month or whatever on food means being strategic about ingredients. Which I very much think is doable, but yeah, it requires a fair amount of agency.

Cool simulation!

I also have to add that I find the idea that a cyclist wouldn't cycle on a road absurd. I don't think I know a single person who wouldn't do this, presumably a US vs EU thing.

You mean the "No Way No How" group? If so, yeah, it feels implausible to me as well. I have a feeling that for people who were surveyed and said this, it wouldn't match their actual behavior if they were able to experience an area with genuinely calm roads.