That is exactly the type of example/article/blog OP didn't wanted, too technical, TC article is about AMP for email but first its describes what AMP is and does, why is bad and why google is pushing AMP for literally everything it can. It's less technical more down to in tone for less technical savvy readers.
You can't understand any of those things unless you understand what AMP does, and (despite what you claim) the TC article doesn't explain what AMP does. Not understanding what AMP does leads you to make nonsensical statements like that AMP can be replaced with a CSS stylesheet, so users continue to prefer AMP because there remains no better alternative for doing what it does.
You are looking at the problem from a developer perspective, not from a user/reader or content creator, your article just gives tops 1 paragraph to the issue at start talking about syntactic validation and micro-optimizations that the user/reader doesn't care.
The point is we don't need AMP, we can deal with caches and the bullshit micro-optimizations ourself, ppl don't care if the page loads instantly or in 4s-6s, despite any claim Google does.
On the contrary, the user cares that the article loads instantly, and my article explains how AMP achieves that. Since you do not understand the problem that AMP solves, you think you can solve the same problem with micro-optimizations, but micro-optimizations can't achieve instant loading.
It is not just Google (and Microsoft and the other companies that implement AMP caches) that believes users want instant loading. Apple and Facebook have products competing with AMP that give users instant loading but that are far more restrictive on the publisher and on the reader. The only reason that publishers and readers put up with that is instant loading.