(…nail Markdown to a plank.)
Dear everyone: Please Stop Using Markdown For Absolutely Fucking Everything.
In 1984, the first Macintoshes shipped with MacWrite. To get bold text, you pressed command-B, and it appeared bold on-screen. To get italic text, you pressed command-I, and it appeared italic. And so on.
This was pretty much a universal standard until Markdown came along. Now, you press shift-8 to get an asterisk. Then you press shift-8 again. It doesn’t appear bold on-screen, it appears like, well, something with two asterisks next to it.