Interesting mix of western and eastern calligraphy in the title. They do connect strokes within characters and also between characters (especially in kana shodo), but those flourishes are definitely western.

I have had mine (Kuretake No. 13) for over a year and it never dripped on me. The more I write the shorter the brush becomes and the tip loses its point a bit. However I can still get hairlines and when I don't it's usually a skill issue. After a year of daily writing the tip does split sometimes. You just have to reset its shape once in a while on the edge of your paper or on scrap paper.

Mine only does that the first day when I write after filling it.

Ooh very good! I like the minimalistic sea and the texture on her coat is beautiful. The watercolour texture and colours are so fitting for Ghibli. If I remember correctly they do use watercolours for some of their backgrounds.

It is possible that the previous owner flashed firmware that doesn't bind that key to anything. So the first thing to try would be flashing firmware that does bind the key. If that doesn't work, the switch might be the problem. You could check on the back of the pcb if the soldering looks any different from the other keys. Even if it doesn't you could reflow the key. If that doesn't work you can unsolder the key and pull it out, open it up to see if anything is messed up like the contact leaf. You could try a different switch in that spot. If you put in a fresh key that works in the old spot and it still doesn't work it might be the pcb. Maybe you need to reflow or replace the diode. If that doesn't work it might be the contact pads on the pcb for the switch or the diode. When unsoldered and with the solder removed you should see a metallic ring around where the switch pin goes. If that is (partially) missing it will be trouble. It could also be the 'wire' that is etched into the pcb that goes from the pad to the controller. Either fixing the pad or jumping the wire is a bit more advanced (and a pain in the ass). I don't have experience with that. Hopefully the problem is earlier in the chain. Good luck!

Me realizing I will be gin-chan's age not so far into the future (where did the time go):

Also don't you dare be single if you are a day older than 25 in anime lol.

433 packages, impressive :) I'm stuck on 474 while keeping a working environment where I can do my things nicely. And that doesn't count some hand compiled/written programs I have. Also, 175MiB of memory! I used to boot at around 400MB into my WM but over time it has gone up to a fat 600MB without changing anything :| Just nice to see someone going for a minimal system.

I'm not a thinkpad guy, but I thought one reason for people liking old thinkpads is that the old ones came with cpu's that predate the intel management engine.

As a "sicko" (lol) I must say I don't really futz around much if at all anymore. There are some differences but all in all I don't think the Artix experience is much different from the regular Arch one.

I always log in to my TTY. Have you tried setting your colour scheme before login? I have a mega janky setup where I add an OpenRC sysinit service that calls setvtrgb. The first lines of the startup log aren't affected but most of them are. That way I can log in with a colour scheme consistent with that which comes after the login.

Interesting, I never heard of setting your shell in the emulator config. I just used 'chsh' once when I setup the install.

The biggest difference will be between binary packages and packages that compile from source. Yes, big binary packages like browsers take longer but it really doesn't take that long. You should be able to quit the compilation without problems. Only after the compilation is done will the package manager be invoked to install the resulting binary.