@whitequark✧✦Catherine✦✧ although, checking the posix spec, there's a lot more wtf here than expected:

first, TIL about the -s option (show the real size on disk, in blocks, of each file)

the block size was historically... implementation-defined. now fixed at 512 bytes tho, with -k added for 1024

but also:

> The total number provided when using ls -l does not necessarily correspond to the space that would be reclaimed if all the listed files were removed, because of hard links (and symbolic links if -L is present). The space for each listed file is counted in the total regardless of any relationship between the files.

unhelpful!