Desktop and Documents in Finder
It is like that because your Documents and Desktop folders are stored in iCloud. Thus, they are no longer shown in your Home folder (the folder with your username) as they are now in the iCloud one.

This mean that files in Documents and Desktop are stored both locally on your Mac and online on iCloud as long as there is enough space available on your disk.  If your computer runs out of space or for files you have not opened in a while, they are deleted from your disk but remain available online for a download when needed.

You can remove this feature at any time in system pref.

PS: I'not an expert with the terminal but I guess artifacts could be aliases to those folders or maybe your Mac shows Documents &amp; Desktop above iCloud by convenience.