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But I believe the point is: if you were writing HTML by hand, you would never have written the above.

Yes you used HTML to design a website in a way that was the opposite of semantic. Semantic HTML is about just writing your content and then using CSS and js for everything else (as far as possible).

Also: the meaning of the word semantic is that the used elements give you context about the contents. So if you place text in an <aside> that tells you that this is additional information as opposed to the stuff in <content> for example.

If you use a hundred nested divs, there is probably a better way to do it.

This is not semantic HTML.