Carter Kalchik
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carterkalchik.bsky.social
Carter Kalchik
@carterkalchik.bsky.social
5.7K followers 870 following 1.4K posts
Typically terrific. 🏳️‍🌈

Books, the gayer the better
Politics, the gayer the better
Political books, the gayer the better

All the links: https://linktr.ee/carterkalchik
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carterkalchik.bsky.social
Was pretty disappointed with The Fort Bragg Cartel by Seth Harp. Seems to be solid investigative reporting but also a whole lot of bizzaro conspiracy shit. It’s hard to say if it’s leftist or conservative conspiracism, too, it fits either side (although it feels pretty dirtbag left to me).
5 stars for on the ground reporting, 1 star for the every so often baffling shit. There clearly is a deep and undermining rot inside U.S. special forces. And even if there wasn't, there clearly is an absurdly large amount of drug dealing and using in and around Fort Bragg. And suicides. And murders. Harp did frankly heroic work reporting on it, although he never really did get to the bottom of everything, mostly because the military wants to sweep all this under the rug. Although, the existence of this book does seem to belie the omnipotent power of special forces to suppress their misdeeds. And then, like every dozen pages or so, you'll walk over these weirdo land mines. Harp credulously reports that U.S. special forces have technology that can "view you through your TV." That Muammar Qaddafi was merely an "idiosyncratic Arab nationalist." That Assad's only crime was being a foe of Israel. That the U.S. provoked Russia into invading Ukraine as a pretext for "forever war". This is after the U.S. perpetrated a "coup" against the "democratically elected" President Viktor Yanukovych. Oh, and that COVID "escaped from a U.S.-funded biolab in Wuhan, China!" Maybe I can forgive the tech stuff because I'm not sure how savvy Harp is given that he referred to documents that were "leaked to a server called Discord." Taken as a whole, though, this is a particular conspiracist worldview with which I'm deeply familiar and calls into question much of the rest of the book. If you just take the investigative reporting, this is good stuff and even brave. The on the ground reporting is pretty thorough and Harp has extensive quotes and sourcing. But any time he strays into interpretation or analysis, I'm left to wonder how this worldview has potentially slanted things.
October 31, 2025 at 11:30 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
“How long, you think?”
Text says "Caption this with the 2nd to last text you sent." Image is the corner of a room that looks like a murder scene with blood on the walls and a chest with a lamp and a small TV which has, on its screen, an image that looks very much like a naked butt.)
October 26, 2025 at 4:37 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
The final lines are:

“Love is more than a candle.

Love can ignite the stars.”

And, in a final coup de grâce, what is the final image of RotS and the most iconic image of Luke Skywalker?
Binary sunsets across the Star Wars movies: the final image of RotS, Star Wars classic binary sunset scene, and TLJ.
October 26, 2025 at 1:35 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
If you need a break from… all of this… boy can I recommend Breakout Year by KD Casey. I’m about 60% through and it’s a treat. Highly recommend even if you’re not super into baseball or sports romance, it’s more of a fake dating and gay awakening story anyway.
The cover of Breakout Year by KD Casey. Yellow text on a green background with kitschy baseball and Judaism artwork
September 18, 2025 at 10:58 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
Reminder that this is my view every morning when I leave my apartment to go to the gym 🫨
A blood. Red. Hallway.
September 17, 2025 at 9:48 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
At Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport. The Friends of Desoto seem to run maintenance here? @greatesttrek.com @benjaminahr.mobi
A yellow trash can with the letters FOD on it
September 6, 2025 at 4:13 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
My ottoman right now. These are here because 1) they’re cool, 2) I’m watching the movies and it’s nice to have reference mailers nearby, and 3) I gave away my original Essential Chronology to my godson and needed a replacement and it arrived and I haven’t shelved it yet.
Blue ottoman with the Star Wars Essential Chronology and Essential Atlas sitting on it.
April 28, 2025 at 12:50 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I didn’t explicitly tell my barber “give me the Captain Pike” but we’re getting there.
Selfie, white dude with a Chambray shirt opened one button down showing a white V-neck tee. Pretty tall side part hair that’s visibly graying.
April 24, 2025 at 12:04 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I’ve seen a few people argue that “Sinners isn’t horror.” Kindly fuck off with that take. Sinners is a great horror movie. It’s so annoying anytime we get a great genre film critics rush to say “but it’s not really because they all suck.”

Not to mention that Coogler himself calls it a horror movie.
Screen grab of Ryan Coogler (from the Kodak YouTube video he did about aspect ratios and film formats for Sinners which is a must watch!) saying “Our movie is a horror movie” with “horror movie” circled in red.
April 22, 2025 at 10:24 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
This is a normal way to read books, right?
HIGHLIGHT (YELLOW) • PAGE 4 He's a pro athlete, I'd bet money on it. I've spent too long in the industry not to know a player when I see one. I'm guessing football. Defense. It's not just the body, it's the confidence, the look of luxury, the sucks-all-the-air-out-of- the-room effortless swagger. NOTE • PAGE 4 Someone needs to learn Bayes' Theorem
April 16, 2025 at 4:32 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I fear Coachella Gaga has become my whole personality
My phone home screen which is an ✨artistic shot of Gaga lying next to a skeleton during her 2025 Coachella performance of Disease. The performance is known to cure many ailments.
April 13, 2025 at 11:46 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
🫠
Why "Constitutional Crisis" Fails to Capture Trump's Attack o... The way litigation works is it adjudicates discrete controversies between particular parties. It's not set up to adjudicate the basic premises of our constitutional system being attacked in a significant way. Here we have a broad assault that is made up of many discrete decisions put together. It's really an assault on the prerogatives of Congress, which is the people's branch. Well, they don't give a shit. Right. That's where I was going to go. Isaac Chotiner
March 22, 2025 at 11:52 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I won’t say what my semi-dyslexic ass thought this title was at first glance.
Cover of “Just the Nicest Couple” by Matt Kubica
March 19, 2025 at 4:02 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
HOW!? HOW!?!?!!!!??!?!!!?
Trump Lawyer Refuses to Answer Judge's Questions ... "We cannot allow Trump to flout the rules and due process," the Senate Democrats said in a statement on Monday. "All of us, including the courts, must continue to hold this administration accountable, and prevent the Trump administration from taking us down a dark and dangerous road." Zolan Kanno-Youngs
March 18, 2025 at 1:08 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
Isaac Chotiner is the greatest interviewer of all time and it’s 10% his depth of preparation and 90% his comic timing.
Why John Mearsheimer Thinks Donald Trump Is Right on Uk... Yes, that is basically what they point to, but that is not evidence that he thinks it is desirable to conquer Ukraine, that he thinks it's feasible to conquer Ukraine, or that he's going to conquer Ukraine. He's giving you his view of history, and nothing more. But six months after the article came out he invaded Ukraine.
March 14, 2025 at 9:49 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I’m sorry what
Elon's mother, model and dietician Maye Musk, is a huge star on local social media with nearly 700,000 followers on Xiaohongshu, a video-sharing platform where she posts regular updates promoting her memoir, wearing gipao dresses, collaborating with Chinese brands and offering Lunar New Year wishes. At New York Fashion Week last month, the 76-year-old walked down the catwalk wearing an outfit by Taoray Wang, a Chinese designer popular in Trump world.
March 10, 2025 at 12:21 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
Hey Louis Vuitton, quick question: what the fuck are you doing?
Louis Vuitton add with 17 people arrayed in a line based on skin color
March 9, 2025 at 1:18 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
Once every quarter I do a data debunk on the bad site. This quarter: people being wrong about 2024 union vote choice. Did union members mostly support Trump? It certainly FEELS true, but reality begs to differ.
Tweet from Armand Domalewski: Biden said yes to every single ask made by labor unions and their membership mostly voted Trump anyway because they do genuinely care about stuff like immigration and LGBT issues and you can't just handwave that away 9:31 PM • 3/8/25 Tweet from Carter Kalchik: Not only is this false, union member support for Harris was higher than for Biden. Great vibe based analysis, certainly true *of some members*, but overall just wildly wrong. Chart from Center for American Progress: Harris continued the trend of strong union support for Democrats started by Biden in 2020 Vote shares for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates by union membership, 2020 and 2024
March 9, 2025 at 11:55 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
I did a 5 second Tiktok to test something out with captions. I said “TikTok captions what.” Now, I’ll admit that I sometimes stutter and have marble mouth, but how did it get this as the caption?
TikTok caption edit field that says “c'est toi qui a un pénis”
March 8, 2025 at 2:02 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
More shirts should have cats on them.
Me in a white t shirt (and khaki pants) and the shirt has cats on it! One is in a box all curled up for a nap and the other is also in a box and is reading a book! I do that!!
March 2, 2025 at 3:41 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
What did the Emoji people know and when did they know it?
Screenshot of a text chain. Image of a chart from The Economist showing the decline in the global democracy index. Reaction emoji of a chart that looks a lot like the actual chart. Reply (with name and PFP blacked out): “wow it really does match the emoji”
February 27, 2025 at 12:32 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
“The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important things to remember about the coming revolutions.
The first is that we will get our asses kicked.The second is that we will win.”

Photo from ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

#lgbtq #booksky
Full page spread. Quote: “The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important things to remember about the coming revolutions. The first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win.” ANONYMOUS QUEERS, 1990 adapted from Larry Mitchell, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, 1977 Photo of two older men marching in a parade, one holding a sign that says “TAKE OFF YOUR HETERO-IMITATIVE FROSSKIN AND DANCE TO A LESBIAN/GAY SPIRIT” Harry Hay (right), cofounder of the radical Mattachine Foundation, the organizational precursor to the better-known- and distinctly more conservative - Mattachine Society, and his lover, John Burnside, Christopher Street West. West Hollywood, June 27, 1982. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries (CSW collection; 2012-135).
February 25, 2025 at 11:32 AM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
“If you think gays are revolting… we are!”

Photo from Botts Collection of LGBT History

#lgbtq #booksky
Queer activists lead a citywide demonstration against ongoing police brutality, Houston, Apr. 1979. Photographer unknown. Botts Collection of LGBT History.
February 24, 2025 at 10:11 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
“I don’t mind straight people as long as they act gay in public” Photo from Riemer & Brown.

#lgbtq #booksky
I don’t mind straight people as long as they act gay in public pin
February 24, 2025 at 4:27 PM
carterkalchik.bsky.social
Page 27. Gay Activists Alliance-D.C. members, Arlington, Virginia, Jan. 5, 1972. Photo by John Bowden.

#lgbtq #booksky
Gay Activists Alliance-D.C. members, Arlington, Virginia, Jan. 5, 1972. Photo by John Bowden. A Black man holding a Gay Power sign marching with Black and white people dressed for colder weather.
February 24, 2025 at 2:06 PM