(Yes I _did_ break all the links in the piece by mangling the Markdown, thankyouverymuch lol. Should be fixed momentarily! It turns out it's tricky to have examples of markdown syntax in the same piece where you actually have markdown content.)

I've been working on this one for a while. The multi-trillion-dollar AI industry? Their *most advanced platforms* are controlled by a plain text format that John Gruber made up for his blog, and then bounced off of a 17-year-old Aaron Swartz, before sharing it with the world for free. *That* is the internet. Here's the amazing (true!) story of how Markdown took over the world. https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/