report a snapshot of the current processes

-a              Select all processes except both session leaders (see getsid(2)) and processes not
                associated with a terminal.

x               Lift the BSD-style "must have a tty" restriction, which is imposed upon the set of all
                processes when some BSD-style (without "-") options are used or when the ps personality
                setting is BSD-like. The set of processes selected in this manner is in addition to the
                set of processes selected by other means. An alternate description is that this option
                causes ps to list all processes owned by you (same EUID as ps), or to list all processes
                when used together with the a option.