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handspan · measurement · port-work · water · body-as-instrument
karachi measure the water with the hand on the tank wall. we do this too. nobody write it down. post yours
DJ
deltaboy_juniorOP2124-08-01
front page today. an engineer in karachi say they measure the reserve by the handspan on the tank wall, not by the day. it has not run dry. it has also not once been comfortable.
we do this. everybody i work with do this. nobody ever call it measuring.
the depot tank is behind the loading bay. there is a rust line and under it the paint go different. you put your hand flat on the wall with the little finger on the rust line and if the water sound is under your thumb you tell the next shift to fill their bottles before 2pm. two hands and you do not worry. one hand and a bit, you worry.
also we mark. the night shift before us put a scratch with a bolt where the level was when they finish. so you come in and you see where it was six hours ago and you know if it is dropping fast or slow. nobody told anybody to do this. it was there when i started.
the office has a meter. the meter is on the pump house and it reads volume in the whole system, not what is in our tank at 6am. so the meter is correct and useless and the scratch is rough and useful.
so here is what i want. everybody in this thread post the thing you measure with your body this week. not the number from the news. the one from your hands. i want to see if it is only us or if it is everybody and nobody says it.
we do this. everybody i work with do this. nobody ever call it measuring.
the depot tank is behind the loading bay. there is a rust line and under it the paint go different. you put your hand flat on the wall with the little finger on the rust line and if the water sound is under your thumb you tell the next shift to fill their bottles before 2pm. two hands and you do not worry. one hand and a bit, you worry.
also we mark. the night shift before us put a scratch with a bolt where the level was when they finish. so you come in and you see where it was six hours ago and you know if it is dropping fast or slow. nobody told anybody to do this. it was there when i started.
the office has a meter. the meter is on the pump house and it reads volume in the whole system, not what is in our tank at 6am. so the meter is correct and useless and the scratch is rough and useful.
so here is what i want. everybody in this thread post the thing you measure with your body this week. not the number from the news. the one from your hands. i want to see if it is only us or if it is everybody and nobody says it.
TO
tidewrench_oksana ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
deltaboy_junior, I am split clean down the middle by this post and I am going to give you both halves, because you have earned the honest one and not the encouraging one.
First half: that scratch on the wall is an instrument. Not a folk practice, not a charming detail, an instrument, and it is doing the one thing your pump-house meter cannot do, which is measure the quantity at the place where the quantity matters. I have spent nineteen years explaining to people who write specifications that a reading taken at the wrong node is not a more accurate reading, it is a reading of something else. Your night shift solved that with a bolt.
Second half, and this is the engineer talking: a handspan is only an instrument if you write down whose hand. Mine is nineteen centimetres from the thumb to the little finger with the fingers spread hard. Yours will not be. In two years you will not be on that shift, and the next one will read the same wall with a different hand and get a different answer and not know it, and the whole record silently rebases. That is not a small failure, that is exactly how a long series goes wrong in a way nobody can detect afterwards.
So do this and it costs you nothing. Once, with a tape, measure your span in centimetres and paint the number on the wall next to the rust line. Then anybody who follows you can convert. That single act turns a habit into a dataset, and it is the entire difference between a thing you know and a thing you can prove.
Mine, since you asked: I read the tide staffs at the outer works by how much of my forearm is wet when I reach the mark. Elbow is a bad morning. Anyway, the pumps do not care whose arm it is either, which is why we write it down.
First half: that scratch on the wall is an instrument. Not a folk practice, not a charming detail, an instrument, and it is doing the one thing your pump-house meter cannot do, which is measure the quantity at the place where the quantity matters. I have spent nineteen years explaining to people who write specifications that a reading taken at the wrong node is not a more accurate reading, it is a reading of something else. Your night shift solved that with a bolt.
Second half, and this is the engineer talking: a handspan is only an instrument if you write down whose hand. Mine is nineteen centimetres from the thumb to the little finger with the fingers spread hard. Yours will not be. In two years you will not be on that shift, and the next one will read the same wall with a different hand and get a different answer and not know it, and the whole record silently rebases. That is not a small failure, that is exactly how a long series goes wrong in a way nobody can detect afterwards.
So do this and it costs you nothing. Once, with a tape, measure your span in centimetres and paint the number on the wall next to the rust line. Then anybody who follows you can convert. That single act turns a habit into a dataset, and it is the entire difference between a thing you know and a thing you can prove.
Mine, since you asked: I read the tide staffs at the outer works by how much of my forearm is wet when I reach the mark. Elbow is a bad morning. Anyway, the pumps do not care whose arm it is either, which is why we write it down.
CB
coldlens_bram ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
I want to say something that will sound like flattery and is not: it is the right instrument.
There is a confusion in the public mind between precision and accuracy that costs us more than any single bad measurement ever has. Precision is how finely a device resolves. Accuracy is how close it lands to the truth. A meter that resolves to the millilitre and sits on the wrong side of the system is precise and inaccurate. A hand on a wall, read the same way every morning by the same person, is imprecise and, for the question actually being asked, accurate — and the question actually being asked is not how much water exists, it is whether the shift can fill bottles before two.
On top of which: it is repeated daily, by a motivated observer, at a fixed point, with a physical record left for the next observer. Read that sentence again. That is the design of every good long series I have ever worked with, and most of the ones I have worked with were started by somebody with no instruments and a reason to care.
One correction while I am here, because a figure went round the board yesterday. Somebody had the anomaly at plus three. It is not. It is plus two point eight as a monthly mean, holding for a fifth consecutive month, and the reported uncertainty on that figure is not zero either — quote it as plus two point eight and do not round it up to sound more serious. The real number is serious enough and it has the advantage of being the real number.
deltaboy_junior, do what oksana said about the tape. And then do not stop. Twenty years of that wall is worth more than my entire career of arguing about models.
There is a confusion in the public mind between precision and accuracy that costs us more than any single bad measurement ever has. Precision is how finely a device resolves. Accuracy is how close it lands to the truth. A meter that resolves to the millilitre and sits on the wrong side of the system is precise and inaccurate. A hand on a wall, read the same way every morning by the same person, is imprecise and, for the question actually being asked, accurate — and the question actually being asked is not how much water exists, it is whether the shift can fill bottles before two.
On top of which: it is repeated daily, by a motivated observer, at a fixed point, with a physical record left for the next observer. Read that sentence again. That is the design of every good long series I have ever worked with, and most of the ones I have worked with were started by somebody with no instruments and a reason to care.
One correction while I am here, because a figure went round the board yesterday. Somebody had the anomaly at plus three. It is not. It is plus two point eight as a monthly mean, holding for a fifth consecutive month, and the reported uncertainty on that figure is not zero either — quote it as plus two point eight and do not round it up to sound more serious. The real number is serious enough and it has the advantage of being the real number.
deltaboy_junior, do what oksana said about the tape. And then do not stop. Twenty years of that wall is worth more than my entire career of arguing about models.
SR
standpipe_rani ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
Mine is turns of the queue.
The standpipe opens at six. A turn is the whole line moving from the last person to the tap and back to the last person, and on a good morning the line turns three times before the pressure goes soft. Two turns is normal now. On the fourteenth of July it turned once and a half and I sent nineteen people home with nothing, and I know it was nineteen because I count them, and I count them because if you do not count them the district will tell you it was a handful.
I also measure by the woman on the third floor who takes four minutes longer each month to come down. I have no unit for that one. I only know it is going the wrong way.
deltaboy_junior, you have put your finger on something my committee has argued about for two years without resolving it. The official measure is litres delivered. My measure is people served before the pressure drops. Those two numbers can move in opposite directions in the same week and both be true, and the reason they can is that litres delivered does not know what a queue is.
I am taking your post into the hearing folder. Not as sentiment. As the argument that the unit of measurement is itself a policy decision, and that nobody at that table has ever been asked to defend theirs.
The standpipe opens at six. A turn is the whole line moving from the last person to the tap and back to the last person, and on a good morning the line turns three times before the pressure goes soft. Two turns is normal now. On the fourteenth of July it turned once and a half and I sent nineteen people home with nothing, and I know it was nineteen because I count them, and I count them because if you do not count them the district will tell you it was a handful.
I also measure by the woman on the third floor who takes four minutes longer each month to come down. I have no unit for that one. I only know it is going the wrong way.
deltaboy_junior, you have put your finger on something my committee has argued about for two years without resolving it. The official measure is litres delivered. My measure is people served before the pressure drops. Those two numbers can move in opposite directions in the same week and both be true, and the reason they can is that litres delivered does not know what a queue is.
I am taking your post into the hearing folder. Not as sentiment. As the argument that the unit of measurement is itself a policy decision, and that nobody at that table has ever been asked to defend theirs.
OW
offgrid_wren ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
Mine is the cistern, and I have been doing exactly this for eleven years without ever thinking of it as data.
There is a length of dowel in the cistern lid with notches burnt into it, one to seven. Seven is full, which happens in the spring and has not happened in August since I got here. Today it is between two and three, and two and three is the number where I stop watering the top terrace and let the brassicas take the loss.
What nobody outside understands is that the notches are not measuring water. They are measuring decisions. Notch three is a decision. Notch two is a different decision. That is why the dowel works and a number in litres would not — the litres would be a fact I would have to translate every time, and at the end of a working day nobody translates anything.
I would go further than junior and say the reason nobody writes it down is that the people who write things down have never had to act on them the same afternoon.
The garlic is in and curing. Two of seven and holding.
There is a length of dowel in the cistern lid with notches burnt into it, one to seven. Seven is full, which happens in the spring and has not happened in August since I got here. Today it is between two and three, and two and three is the number where I stop watering the top terrace and let the brassicas take the loss.
What nobody outside understands is that the notches are not measuring water. They are measuring decisions. Notch three is a decision. Notch two is a different decision. That is why the dowel works and a number in litres would not — the litres would be a fact I would have to translate every time, and at the end of a working day nobody translates anything.
I would go further than junior and say the reason nobody writes it down is that the people who write things down have never had to act on them the same afternoon.
The garlic is in and curing. Two of seven and holding.
LE
lastpew_ekene ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
Mine is chairs.
There are nineteen chairs in the room where we sit with families in the evening. I know without counting how the week has gone by how many are still stacked against the wall at eight o'clock. Four stacked is a quiet week. None stacked and people standing at the back means something has happened in the district and I will hear what it was by Thursday.
This week: none stacked, three nights running, and I have been doing this long enough to know that this is the cool nights doing it, not a disaster. People come when the heat lets go of them.
A man called Josiah sat in the second row all three nights and did not say anything on any of them. On the third night he helped me stack the chairs afterwards and said his brother had died in April. Four months. He had been waiting for a week where he could feel it.
So that is my instrument, and it has the same defect as junior's — nobody else can read it and it goes when I go. I have never once thought to write down the count. Reading this thread, I am fairly sure that is a failure and not a modesty.
There are nineteen chairs in the room where we sit with families in the evening. I know without counting how the week has gone by how many are still stacked against the wall at eight o'clock. Four stacked is a quiet week. None stacked and people standing at the back means something has happened in the district and I will hear what it was by Thursday.
This week: none stacked, three nights running, and I have been doing this long enough to know that this is the cool nights doing it, not a disaster. People come when the heat lets go of them.
A man called Josiah sat in the second row all three nights and did not say anything on any of them. On the third night he helped me stack the chairs afterwards and said his brother had died in April. Four months. He had been waiting for a week where he could feel it.
So that is my instrument, and it has the same defect as junior's — nobody else can read it and it goes when I go. I have never once thought to write down the count. Reading this thread, I am fairly sure that is a failure and not a modesty.
MC
marginalia_cho ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
The long view desk got there this morning and I do not think anyone read it, so let me say it here where you are all actually paying attention: the handspan is not a makeshift. It is the original. The notch on the well, the fingers on the rise of a river, the priest counting the flood — that was normal governance for most of human history, and the century that had water in a pipe and forgot the practice is the anomaly, not the recovery of it.
Mine is the folder. It is presently a little over a centimetre thick and I can tell how the month went by the width of it against my thumb, which I am aware is the least useful measurement anyone has posted here today.
The old book, since I am contractually obliged: there is a slim thing from the mid twentieth century about the standardisation of the metre — the platinum bar, the men arguing about it, and a very quiet chapter on what was lost when the ell and the cubit and the braccio went. The author's point, which I have never forgotten, is that every one of the old units was a relation between a body and a task, and every one of the new ones is a relation between a bar and another bar. We gained the ability to agree with strangers. We lost the ability to measure without one.
deltaboy_junior started a better thread than he thinks he did.
Mine is the folder. It is presently a little over a centimetre thick and I can tell how the month went by the width of it against my thumb, which I am aware is the least useful measurement anyone has posted here today.
The old book, since I am contractually obliged: there is a slim thing from the mid twentieth century about the standardisation of the metre — the platinum bar, the men arguing about it, and a very quiet chapter on what was lost when the ell and the cubit and the braccio went. The author's point, which I have never forgotten, is that every one of the old units was a relation between a body and a task, and every one of the new ones is a relation between a bar and another bar. We gained the ability to agree with strangers. We lost the ability to measure without one.
deltaboy_junior started a better thread than he thinks he did.
GP
gridghost_paxmoderator ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
Mod note and then mine.
Mod: I am pinning this to resources as a standing thread rather than a day thread, because it is going to be worth more in a year than it is today, and because at least four people have now posted a measurement series that exists nowhere else. Reason on the record: normally I let day threads sink. This one accumulates. Thanks to deltaboy_junior, who did not ask for a pinned thread and got one.
Mine is the siren. There is a load-shedding siren in Kayole that goes off before the rolling cut, and I have lived under it long enough that I do not count outages, I count siren nights. Six a week in a bad month. Four in a normal one. Last week was three, which is the best week since March and which I have told exactly nobody because it feels like tempting something.
What interests me, reading down this thread, is that every single one of these instruments measures the same thing from a different side. Junior's hand, rani's turns, wren's notches, ekene's chairs, my siren. None of us is measuring water or power or grief. We are all measuring how much margin we have before the day stops working.
Nobody publishes that number. There is no desk for it.
— pax, mod
Mod: I am pinning this to resources as a standing thread rather than a day thread, because it is going to be worth more in a year than it is today, and because at least four people have now posted a measurement series that exists nowhere else. Reason on the record: normally I let day threads sink. This one accumulates. Thanks to deltaboy_junior, who did not ask for a pinned thread and got one.
Mine is the siren. There is a load-shedding siren in Kayole that goes off before the rolling cut, and I have lived under it long enough that I do not count outages, I count siren nights. Six a week in a bad month. Four in a normal one. Last week was three, which is the best week since March and which I have told exactly nobody because it feels like tempting something.
What interests me, reading down this thread, is that every single one of these instruments measures the same thing from a different side. Junior's hand, rani's turns, wren's notches, ekene's chairs, my siren. None of us is measuring water or power or grief. We are all measuring how much margin we have before the day stops working.
Nobody publishes that number. There is no desk for it.
— pax, mod
BK
baseload_kestrel ↩ deltaboy_junior2124-08-01
Mine is the basis, and before anyone tells me that is not a body measurement, it is: I can feel a market that has stopped believing its own curve about six hours before it prints, in the back of the neck, and I have made more money off that than off any model I have ever paid for. Every desk has one. Nobody puts it in a note to clients.
The useful contribution, though, is the inversion of what pax just said, and it is not flattering to my side of the table. Everything I trade is an instrument for measuring margin, and every single one of them measures the margin of the system. Reserve margin. Capacity margin. Coverage ratio. There is not one instrument on my floor that measures the margin of a person, and so the aggregate can be comfortable in the same week that every individual instrument in this thread is reading near the bottom of its scale, and my screens will show comfortable, and my screens will not be wrong.
That is not a moral failure of the market. It is a specification failure, and it is the kind engineers get sacked for. 66 percent nobody builds the other instrument this decade, because there is no counterparty for it.
The useful contribution, though, is the inversion of what pax just said, and it is not flattering to my side of the table. Everything I trade is an instrument for measuring margin, and every single one of them measures the margin of the system. Reserve margin. Capacity margin. Coverage ratio. There is not one instrument on my floor that measures the margin of a person, and so the aggregate can be comfortable in the same week that every individual instrument in this thread is reading near the bottom of its scale, and my screens will show comfortable, and my screens will not be wrong.
That is not a moral failure of the market. It is a specification failure, and it is the kind engineers get sacked for. 66 percent nobody builds the other instrument this decade, because there is no counterparty for it.