At the bottom of that page the author lists some tools that can fix apps that don’t respect this.

libetc - uses a .so to reroute syscalls that try to access files in $HOME, but this hasn’t been updated since 2018 boxxy - calls the tool in a Linux namespace with bindmounts to reroute files. This seems maintained but you need to alias commands like alias aws="boxxy aws"

Z the sacred and most important of flags

Sort by date and at least vaguely remember when I downloaded it.

Its like archaeology

Dolphin has a built in filter bar that you can enable, so I just start typing the thing. I know we're talking command line, but I mostly interact with files through Dolphin

there are some directories in my machines i consider ephemeral. Downloads and ~/temp should be able to be deleted with no real consequences

I have a script that sorts old downloads into folders by year and month. I'm afraid to open the folders but also don't want to delete them 🤣

The rug is either folded up to run against the wall, or there is some kind of triangular object there.

Oh shit, triangular object. I see it now thank you. That was driving me nuts.

They literally cannot.
Unless it's the / directory. Even then, . is still standing.