This has nothing to do with the content of the article, but is anyone else annoyed by that link style, or is it only me? To me, the link style where the underline partially overlaps the baseline of the text (not just characters with descenders like g and q and y, but the actual baseline so that it overlaps nearly all characters) harms readability.

I'm also not a huge fan of the way hovering over the link turns it into a highlight on the word, but that's not a huge readability issue because the highlight covers the entire character. But having the non-hovered link underline be fat, so that it partially overlaps the baseline of the characters, means that those characters are superimposed on two different backgrounds, pale blue and pale red, and that harms readability.

This site isn't the only one that does this, or I might not be complaining. It's a style that seems to be popular, and I really don't know why. It's a bad idea and people should stop doing it.

Agreed. I would not have realised they were links if I had not read your comment.