=========================
 "Discipline and Punish"
=========================

This month I reached Foucault's "Discipline and Punish", which I liked
and found interesting. As "Imagined Communities" and "The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions" mentioned in the previous post, it is a
historical analysis of a particular subject, exploring how and why
that aspect of modern world came about, and the subject in this case
is prison, both on its own and as a model (for schools, hospitals,
factories, army, society in general), particularly power relations it
implies. The current situation one can observe easily enough without
such an analysis, but it brings some things together, into focus,
outlines them, traces their origins and development. Some of the
interesting sub-topics it touches are the modern controlled illegality
(with a continuum from the police to criminals, which usually counts
as corruption, but apparently is an important part of such systems;
while popular and uncontrolled illegality is said to fit absolutist
monarchies of the past), knowledge-power (including surveillance and
other examination to "individualize", objectify, subject the people
upon whom power is exercised, ubiquitous labeling and structuring of
people to make the control tractable, to discipline them and make them
docile), organization of people as parts of a self-perpetuating
disciplinary machine.

Some of its parts reminded me of writings on tyranny maintenance
(complete with forced useless labor to occupy people, prevention of
self-organization or other cooperation, surveillance), but the
similarity is in methods, not necessarily in causes and goals. Other
parts sounded like inclusiveness, though of an odd kind: such as
recruiting delinquents for the police work, or otherwise extending the
system to ensure that criminals are kept within it. It also reminded
me of Ankh-Morpork (as described in Pratchett's Discworld novels),
with its official guilds of thieves, assassins, and the like:
structured and controlled, to keep in check and as a part of the
system. It was hard to not think about the current local situation,
too: likening a state to a prison seems quite common even in places
and at times that resemble it less, while following a detailed
description, which explicitly speaks of a wider use of the same model,
invites a closer comparison. The employment of people as parts of a
machine might also remind of the Kant's idea of that being immoral, or
of others, on exploitation of people.

Then I picked Solzhenitsyn's "Один день Ивана Денисовича" ("One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich"), as being related to both the previous
book's theme and the current events: the Gulag museum here is closed,
and as the government likes to do, replaced with more or less the
opposite: a museum of "the genocide of Soviet people", implying that
by Nazis. At least it is not turned into an NKVD museum. As for the
novel itself, it reminded me of the recently read Frankl's "A Man's
Search for Meaning": a nearly-constant hunger, cold, sickness, forced
labor all day long, some background theft, unfriendly guards, a faint
hope to get out. Though it did sound a little milder, with people
occasionally smoking without giving up on survival, some receiving
parcels from the outside; and without gas chambers (though there were
both mass--and large-scale--executions and gas vans around at the
time, but apparently not mixed much with the labor camps, for the most
part). Also as with the Frankl's work, it is pretty much how one may
imagine such a camp, probably from various other works and glimpses of
such places, and it is a fine novel overall. I found it to be fine, at
least; noticed that the views on that can vary considerably, possibly
being affected by readers' political views. But apparently the primary
accomplishment of this novel, along with Solzhenitsyn's other works,
is the information it conveyed to a relatively wide audience at the
time.

Then, Sakharov's "Размышления о прогрессе, мирном сосуществовании и
интеллектуальной свободе" ("Reflections on Progress, Peaceful
Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom") essay. It reads like UN
documents, calling for--as the title suggests--peace and cooperation,
for people and states to be sensible, to stop fighting each other and
oppressing others, to work together on common issues. So of course it
was banned in the USSR, and sounding quite relevant now, possibly will
be banned again here soon. A little surprisingly, lists nationalism
along with racism, militarism, fascism. Unsure whether he means
ultranationalism by that, or simply is quite radically
internationalist (which did not seem to be the case otherwise, but
maybe it will become clearer from reading his other works).

Finally, Dovlatov's "Зона. Записки надзирателя" ("The Zone: A Prison
Camp Guard's Story"). This one has actual criminals for prisoners, it
is dirtier than Solzhenitsyn's and Frankl's works mentioned before,
perhaps with slightly overdone artistry. I have not found it that
interesting, but it does follow the theme of this month's books,
complete with likening of a prison to a state (particularly Soviet
one), of emigrants to freed prisoners (who have no idea what to do
with the freedom, as depicted in "The Shawshank Redemption"), of cave
paintings to Soviet posters (attempting to summon good things by
drawing them), of guards to prisoners. Those are the sorts of images
that one may expect to spot in biased news media or discussions, I
think: catchy, but not informative or insightful on their own.


Other news
==========

- In addition to the ongoing partial Internet blackout, a mobile
  Internet blackout has reached Moscow (but it is practiced for months
  in other cities by now), though for now it is spotty, and in some
  places there is the regularly-crippled mobile Internet still, but in
  others -- only government services are available, whitelisting is
  used. So even local communication is further complicated now. The
  official explanation that followed is, as always, "for security".

- Among other local government innovations, there was a bill to charge
  for use of local ("import-substituted", "fatherland") NTP servers,
  which are mandatory to use in some cases, fitting the practices
  employed for cryptography, software, and hardware, though then it
  disappeared. Also the antimonopoly agency now claims that
  advertisement on blocked resources is illegal; given that the
  remaining major non-blocked ones are owned by a few oligarchs, the
  agency seems to join the others seemingly engaging in the opposite
  of what they should be doing according to their names. I used to
  think that those ministry names in Orwell's "1984" were an
  exaggeration, mocking "ministry of defense" in particular, but
  apparently this is how things work. Also the University of
  California, Berkeley, is declared to be an "undesirable
  organization" now, joining Yale and George Washington universities,
  and many other organizations. There is plenty of silliness, madness,
  and cruelty happening in the world, and the local and current news
  are probably not even that prominent, but they provide an example of
  the mess people can put and find themselves in. And likely those are
  adult people, many of whom do not act particularly insane in
  everyday life, at least in public, who are doing that.

- Thought to transfer a domain name to porkbun.com (since even proxy
  payments would be problematic with its current registrar), which
  seemed amusing and generally nice, but it was not the advertised
  "oddly satisfying experience". Registered there, but as with
  hotmail.com, linkedin.com, and indeed.com recently, after
  registration they have requested an ID verification "for security"
  and via a third party, at which point I gave up. It seems that a
  fraudster could easily send another person's or simply fake ID in
  such a case, but an honest user would not want to share and endanger
  their private information, especially given that it can be used by
  scammers in such a setting then. As for the domain name, now I am
  considering letting it to expire, or possibly transferring to a more
  expensive local registrar. I used this domain name for email, and
  already changed most services to other addresses; discovered that a
  few websites do not allow to change email at all (even if you still
  have access to the old one), but those are okay to abandon, likely
  letting domain squatters and adjacent scammers to take possession
  of.

- Not entirely happy with Python for the small web service where I am
  trying it out: had a few bugs that would not have happened in
  Haskell. But then I have not found any suitable lightweight GraphQL
  libraries for Haskell, and GraphQL is more or less required
  here. Maybe could write a custom library for that, but it seems
  excessive, and possibly more error-prone. If it was up to me, I
  would probably simply avoid GraphQL altogether, and stick to more
  widely supported technologies. Although Python is quite usable
  overall; the difference between using it and Haskell does not seem
  as notable as that between different approaches to programming and
  software designs, system architectures. Probably like most
  programmers, I can engage in long rants on those, but will leave
  that until potential better days, when there will be no more
  prominent issues to rant about.

- The spring is almost here: no plants visibly growing yet, and there
  is snow lying around still, but it is thawing, the days are notably
  longer. I hope to see a figurative spring someday, but the literal
  one, even its early stage with merely brighter days and
  above-freezing temperatures, is enjoyable despite the circumstances.


----

:Date: 2026-03-14