Wi-fi: "Device not managed" in Network Manager

[gfoty]

ifconfig = net-tools (why, oh why)
rfkill list
wicd and networkManager conflict, purge wicd
tell systemd to restart?

command line?? set up wpa_supplicant.conf
Make a little script so you don't have to remember
It is good to be able to set up cli networking, for when
screw-ups happen

Thanks, I forgot about rfkill. I see two devices ("phys0" and "brcmfmac-wifi") soft blocked. I can unblock them and set up wlan0 using `ip link set wlan0 up` (which puts it in state UNKNOWN), but both entries in rfkill list get soft blocked again every time `network-manager` restarts. Trying to figure out why these are getting soft-blocked.

Checking into the network-manager logs (journalctl -f -u NetworkManager) shows some stuff going on with radio killswitches that I'm now trying to understand. There's also
/var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state, which shows wifi being disabled, but editing this file to enable it doesn't do any good (it also toggles back to disabled after restarting Network Manager).

I'm pretty sure the Pine + F11 killswitch is disabled (but can anybody tell me if 2 blinks means "wifi enabled" or "wifi disabled"? The wiki is ambiguous on this.)