Gary Ballard's Blog: The Bridge Chronicles by Gary A. Ballard

The Author Has Thoughts – Various & Sundry: GenAI Stops Hallucinating, Embraces Lies Instead

What happens when the plagiarism machines of the GenAI crowd stop hallucinating, and just start embracing random lies that they defend with absolute confidence? I examine four incidents/articles that have happened over the last few months and tell you why that should frighten you.

The Author Has Thoughts – Various & Sundry: The Algorithm is a Death Spiral

You know something is wrong with the Internet, with social media, with Amazon, Google and everything else? Cory Doctorow has labeled it the Enshittification, and I delve into the reason why – The Algorithm.

The Author Has Thoughts – Various & Sundry: The Real Dangers of Generative AI

My semi-regular vlog/podcast-y thing, i.e. my Youtube Channel, has another entry! This time, I discuss the real dangers of the generative AI hype train that we find ourselves forced to ride.

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life by Honoré de Balzac Review: A Classic Hot Mess

I am a fan of Balzac’s work since I read some of it in college, though I must admit my memory of the books of his I have read is sketchy at best. I picked up Scenes as one of those free books on Amazon and felt like rekindling my love of French naturalist lit with a random Balzac pick.

In the modern parlance, this book is an enjoyable hot mess.

Whatever the title may say, the Courtesan whose life we see is not the main character, nor is her life or the life of her sugar daddy the main focus o...

The Modern American Conservative Movement Has One Ethos – The Divine Right of Wealth

The American Conservative Movement, as defined over and over by authors, pundits, spokesmen and politicians in publications such as The National Review or The Weekly Standard, or in the alt-right Shitlord Dens like Breitbart, or in the words of politicians like Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Mitch McConnell or Sen. Lindsay Graham, is one that espouses “small government, lower taxes, military strength and deregulation of business.” This movement is and always has been a scam, to one degree or another, t...

Book Reviews: Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native

There is a temptation by the modern reviewer of classical creative works to view those works with a somewhat jaundiced eye, seeing them through the lens of modern interpretations of morality, propriety and cultural mores. I have long fallen into this trap. My first impressions of most non-genre Victorian literature like Thomas Hardy or of earlier works from authors such as Jane Austen were all colored by this modern perspective. For a long time, I considered Austen’s works as silly. After all...

Two Halves Not a Whole: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson Book Review

Readers of this all too-infrequent blog will know that I am a huge fan of Neal Stephenson’s work, especially his seminal cyberpunk work Snow Crash as well as his more esoteric fare like Anathem. You’ll also note that I was not a huge fan of what I saw as the wasted potential of his last book, Reamde. I approached his latest novel, Seveneves, with some hesitation. I knew almost nothing about the plot beforehand so I had no preconceived notions about what kind of book it was.

The Brief

To boil...

The Ten Billion Dollar Orange Gorilla in the Room – Election 2016

So welcome back to me. I haven’t blogged on here for quite a while. I have actually sat out almost the entirety of the 2016 Election except for commenting on Twitter, though anyone who knows me should know how I felt about most of it. I think there’s been some really great people who have done great jobs covering this horror show much better than I could have, particularly those at The Nightly Show (which should still be on) and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. However, given the avalanche of...

How We Start the Conversation About Race

Last week brought yet another infuriating example of America’s incessant tendency to ignore everything wrong until that wrong thing blows up in its collective face, and then ignore it again. Of course, I’m speaking of the nine African-Americans killed at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Like all of America’s best examples of ignoring problems, this one checked off two boxes on the chronic cancers that we’ve been trying hard not to address: the proliferation of guns and g...

Griftopia Review: You’ll Want to Punch a Kitten

Good non-fiction can often impart a wide-range of emotions to the reader and Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia is no exception. While the main emotion should likely be riot-inducing anger, I found myself alternately experiencing resigned disappointment as well as depression broken by gallows humor. Taibbi, a contributing editor of the magazine Rolling Stone has been writing about the Great Recession of 2008 for years and this book collects and expands of some of those original articles.

At its heart, Gr...