From trolling OpenAI to crashing on the biggest stage: the complete, absurd history of the internet’s most fought-over two letters
Press enter or click to view image in full size
This one’s free to read via this link. If you want these landing in your inbox regularly, subscribe to my newsletter.
On the evening of 8 February 2026, somewhere in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LX, a slick 30-second ad flashed across NBC. The call to action was simple: visit ai.com.
Millions of people did exactly that.
And millions of people saw this instead:
Browser: ✅ Working
Cloudflare (San Jose): ✅ Working
Host (ai.com): ❌ Error
Press enter or click to view image in full size
A 524 timeout. The origin server, wherever it lived, had simply given up. Cloudflare’s edge network was fine. The viewer’s browser was fine.
The only thing that…