A Panopticon of One’s Own

Squelch, 2026

Psychologists rejoice! The Heuristic Squelch has obtained planning commission documents from 2017 pertaining to the construction of the David Blackwell Residence Hall in Berkeley, California. The blueprints for the building, designed by Dr. Jor-Jor Well, revealed that the structure of the residence hall was initially meant to emulate the design of Jeremy Bentham’s infamous penitentiary building, the Panopticon. Centered in the residence hall is a large courtyard flanked by four walls. This inaccessible courtyard was to include a large watchtower equipped with beta-stage AI detection tools, in partnership with Palantir Technologies, to ensure students avoided the use of restricted items, such as candles, that good kush, and custom-armor plated construction tools.

The builders spent hours lighting all the caves under the Hall to improve spawn rates within the chunk. Infighting occurred when the contractors were adamant that sugarcane could only grow on sand, while the redstone engineers disagreed. The crew also became more efficient after they realized they could place a bed at the site to reset their spawn location. However, none of the builders could agree when to sleep, causing phantom attacks to delay progress. Tragically, several laborers playing in Hardcore mode lost their lives to a wither spawned by protestors. Some builders did not have access to scaffolding, as they were still playing on 1.8. Yet, one project manager, with an annual salary of $600,000 was tasked to stay at y=242 at all times to keep the spawner going. This highlights the growing socioeconomic inequality in our society, as does the fact that some workers were forced to eat rotten flesh during lunch break.

In an attempt to make the AI detection tools “friendly” and “welcoming” to residents, Palantir modeled their Inteligencia Artificial after the personality of Dr. Simi: caring, yet authoritarian. He’s the girl next door, but can (and will) narc on you.

In a recent study performed by the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology, a set of current Blackwell residents were interviewed and subsequently assessed for their mental states. Excluding all conflating factors, the data is 100% pure, legitimate, no other psychological study has been so accurate, and the p value is 0.000. After reviewing the data collected, the psychologists noticed that every single resident spoke in a specific rhythm (no, it wasn’t a Blaccent), one that they could not decipher, even after multiple analyses by the UC Berkeley Linguistics Department.

A breakthrough occurred when one psychologist decided to reach out to close friends and loved ones of the interviewees, “Dude, he gets up in my ear and moans like Foucault. It pisses me OFF.” The mystery was solved—each resident had morphed their speech into one resembling that of modern French philosopher Michel Foucault. It was also noted that Blackwell residents had a 200% increase in desiring to be “disciplined and punished.” The UC Berkeley Regents were contacted for comment about this groundbreaking discovery, but they declined, stating that “Peter Thiel has it under control.”