Markdown - All the Way Down

--- title: Markdown - All the Way Down layout: post format: markdown secretly_also: yaml turtles: all the way tags: - formats - hubris - tracksuits warning: this file is wearing another file as a hat --- Markdown - All the Way DownThere is an old story, possibly apocryphal and therefore perfect, in which a scientist explains the cosmos to an elderly woman, who informs him that he is wrong and that the world actually rests on the back of a giant turtle. When asked what the turtle stands on, she replies that it is turtles all the way down. The modern version of this woman runs a large language model. Ask it what the world is made of and it will tell you, with great confidence and a nicely nested bullet list, that it is Markdown all the way down. She is, annoyingly, more right than the scientist. Every revolution ships with a file formatCivilizations are remembered by what they wrote on. Clay tablets, papyrus, vellum, the cheap acidic paper of the twentieth century that is currently…