Man, I was the same way! Thought it was a scam to sell water by the pound. But I tried it on a couple pork butts last summer and now I keep a 5 gallon bucket in the fridge pretty much all the time, 1 cup salt to 1 gallon water plus a little sugar and it does wonders on chicken too. Whole birds go about 12 hours in that and they come out so juicy it's silly. You're not overthinking it, just keep the salt under 6% or it gets hammy.

Grid power isn't cheaper, that's the part you got wrong.

That line about the homeowner not noticing until the neighbor pointed it out is the story of everything, isn't it. Nobody sees the crooked shelf until a guest bumps into it, nobody smells the weird thing in the fridge until company comes over, nobody hears the squeaky stair until someone spends the night. We stop seeing our own work after a while, good or bad, because we walk past it every day. Then one outsider says one thing and suddenly it's all you can see. Go figure.