Something different. I have been using Markdown Footnotes extension [1] and found its syntax to be natural to Markdown.
Here's the same sample as OP in Markdown Footnotes syntax. There is a link to the rendered page [2].
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/richsuca/f5a14ed9cb76e7ad...
[1] https://python-markdown.github.io/extensions/footnotes/ [2] https://gist.github.com/richsuca/f5a14ed9cb76e7ad2f4f6b11361...