i did update my machine with pacman -Syu. after rebooting, i cannot login. i con see this error Failed to start Virtual Console Setup a tiny second right before log in screen. i had to capture it in slow mo to able to read it. i attach the image below.
and on the login, after i enter my username and hit enter it just hangs for a while without asking the password and asks for username again. it acts like when you enter wrong password.
Fix
turns out /bin some how got messed up. thanks to @wwwgem, i looked into system logs (journalctl) and fixed it
In the past it was the Shift button for Grub, but apparently not for UEFI setups https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB/Tips_and_tricks#Hide_GRUB_unless_the_Shift_key_is_held_down so I guess if you want the Grub menu to be visible at startup you'd do some editing. As far as I know systemd-boot does show a menu with fall-back kernel.