I just did "ls -al" in X Terminal and noticed that the last character in every line was missing. E.g. what should read ".thumbnails" with "bnails" in a new line is shown as "thubnails", with "bnails in a new line (as should be, but instead of the "m" as the last character in the first line, there is a blank character.

I then did "ls" and then "ls -al" again, and now all the characters are there! No, I am not insane, I scrolled back and checked and the last characters were indeed missing.

Any possible explanations?