== A little twitch I have in X Windows

Every so often, one of the places I read will have the 'what's in your
clipboard?' meme pop up. I never take part, because I have a really
boring answer: nothing.

One of my little twitches is that I reflexively scrub my X selection
unless I'm actively using it for something, to the point where it makes
me actively nervous to have a 'loaded' selection. In fact, selecting a
space in _xterm_ and then canceling the selection is one of my little
fidget activities. (In a pinch I'll do it in other applications too.)

In X Windows this makes a fair amount of sense, because in many programs
pasting in the current selection only takes a mouse click. And in an
_xterm_ (most especially an _xterm_ where you're root), pasting in some
random text may do quite a bit of damage. (The longer the selection the
higher the danger, especially if it includes newlines, but even short
sequences can be dangerous if you're doing something like editing in
_vi_.)

I can't remember if I ever blew my own foot off this way, but the mere
possibility of it has clearly been making me nervous for long enough
that preventing it has become a conditioned reflex. Besides, it goes
well with my [[other twitches ../sysadmin/ASysadminTwitchIII]].

(I have a related twitch about what window gets keyboard focus if I'm
idle in my X session, for example because I'm talking to someone in
my office; I want it going somewhere that doesn't respond to keyboard
input, so that accidental keypresses don't do anything.)