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dianacao.bsky.social
Diana Cao
@dianacao.bsky.social
220 followers 290 following 9 posts
poet/lawyer. she/they.
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dianacao.bsky.social
Diana Cao @dianacao.bsky.social · Feb 2
new poem—thank you @yalereview.bsky.social
Sometimes you have to be still and suffer, my teacher says about writing, but I have an active suffering that calls me to run after it. Keep up, says the feed of bad news. It's dangerous to see others as an abstraction. I don't need to hate anyone as an abstraction because I have my mother—I hate my mother. She who keeps stealing the car keys is very real. I see her; I know Terror. What does it mean that I know just where to find a sugar baby but not a nice companion for my Terror? What does it say about me that I'd rather be a sugar baby than a nice companion for my mother? I don't actually know if that's true. But when I'm in a car chasing my mother down I-95, wind slicing through the papers in the backseat, I'm not thinking about writing, or about suffering, even if that's what this is.
Reposted by Diana Cao
legroff.bsky.social
It has been hard to breathe under the weight of despair about the genocide in Gaza and my complicity as a citizen and taxpayer in the USA. I gave, and hope others will, also.
July 26, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
kjavadizadeh.bsky.social
You can also find my conversation with Joyelle and Notley’s Descent of Alette on Spotify—do listen, and share! open.spotify.com/episode/01Dj...
Joyelle McSweeney on Alice Notley (The Descent of Alette)
Close Readings · Episode
open.spotify.com
June 11, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
profchander.bsky.social
columbia, brown, georgetown, cornell and now tufts — they’re taking our students, our colleagues, our kin
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/international-student-tufts-university-reportedly-taken-into-federal-custody/2VK55QMAOZFIDBR2A6XNKC5XOU/?outputType=amp
International student at Tufts University reportedly taken into federal custody – Boston 25 News
Tufts said they were told the student’s visa had been terminated.
www.boston25news.com
March 26, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
marcelias.bsky.social
It is a sad day for the legal industry. Paul Weiss, didn't just bend a knee, it set a new standard for shameful capitulation. This is a stain on the firm, every one of its partners, and the entire legal profession.
March 20, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
esqueer.net
Finland and Denmark have issued official warnings to their trans citizens from traveling to the US. This follows Germany issuing a similar warning.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Denmark and Finland urge caution for US-bound transgender people
Travel advice updated amid reports of ordeals at US border after Trump said country would only recognise two genders
www.theguardian.com
March 21, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
peoplesparity.bsky.social
“As we look to the courts to protect us from the Trump administration’s abuses, many have overlooked or forgotten how SCOTUS got us here in the first place.”

@mollycoleman.bsky.social on how we got to this moment
@commondreams.org.web.brid.gy
Trump ‘Won’t Forget’ the Roberts Court Helped Him Win—Neither Should We | Common Dreams
As people harmed by this flood of illegal actions turn to the courts for relief, we must be clear that the Supreme Court helped bring about this crisis by helping Donald Trump win the 2024 election.
www.commondreams.org
March 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
esqueer.net
The EEOC has launched investigations into 20 Big Law firms for the bs reason of supposedly having DEI. This is clear retaliation for these firms bringing lawsuits against the Trump administration's unconstitutional actions.

content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USE...
Press release dated March 17, 2025, from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The release states that Acting Chair Andrea Lucas sent letters to 20 law firms requesting information on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employment practices. The letters express concerns that some DEI-related employment policies may involve unlawful disparate treatment or discrimination based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics, potentially violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lucas emphasizes the EEOC’s commitment to addressing discrimination, including in elite law firms." A list of 20 law firms that received letters from Acting Chair Lucas. The firms listed include A & O Shearman, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, Cooley LLP, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, Goodwin Procter LLP, Hogan Lovells LLP, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, McDermott Will & Emery, Milbank LLP, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Perkins Coie, Reed Smith, Ropes & Gray LLP, Sidley Austin LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, White & Case LLP, and WilmerHale."
March 17, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
naomiaklein.bsky.social
Fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay the public trillions in damages for the costs of their planetary arson. Instead they are trying to shut down one of the most important and storied environmental groups in the world. It's shameless - and it's not over. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury
Non-profit said in statement lawsuits like this aimed at ‘destroying the right to peaceful protest’
www.theguardian.com
March 19, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
mayacpopa.bsky.social
I love this quiet little poem so much:
March 16, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
donikakelly.bsky.social
My new book THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS comes out October 7 and is available for pre-order! If you order from @prairielights.com I'll sign your copy! www.prairielightsbooks.com/book/9781644...
@graywolfpress.bsky.social
The cover of donika kelly's poetry collection The Natural Order of Things. Open and translucent cicada wings on the left side of a white background with the title and author name toward the right.
March 14, 2025 at 3:44 PM
dianacao.bsky.social
new poems in @diodeeditions.bsky.social today, including a new sonnet crown written during residency @justbuffalolit.bsky.social 🤍🌕

diodepoetry.com/cao_diana-2/
The Reason Branches partition the sky each night I set shadows skittering their small bodies in the under brush and above me one brilliant eye regards me no no many eyes regard me else why skitter I’m the reason for their flight from the groomed hedge I never get a moment alone Headlights tremble because they are hiding the humans hurtling by in their machines there is sometimes a baby in the machine capable of nothing except its next meal biting the cheek of the preferred mother but any wire monkey could do Let's be "ourselves" right up to the end I was circling the block pretending we were a tragedy and then we were so something out there must be listening it's embarrassing to be caught pretending but from where I stand Star Market is brighter than both the moon and the sun rising now ushering another sane day well time’s healing Is that yesterday's rain
March 14, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
amywestervelt.bsky.social
yes! I ran the reporting & production team for this project: nativenewsonline.net/currents/sea...

Always seemed to me to go hand in hand with their work against Indigenous protest too in a very sick and twisted way. Limited characters to describe their limitless evil 🙃
Season 2 of ‘This Land’ Uncovers Rightwing Efforts to Dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act
LOS ANGELES — The second season of the award-winning “This Land” podcast, hosted by Native American journalist Rebecca Nagle , returns today.
nativenewsonline.net
February 4, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
dialogist.bsky.social
"every day i prove my humanity to robots"

Refractory Period & the algorithm moves toward an average by Diana Cao.

dialogist.org/poetry/2025-...
dialogist.org
February 2, 2025 at 5:23 AM
dianacao.bsky.social
new poem—thank you @yalereview.bsky.social
Sometimes you have to be still and suffer, my teacher says about writing, but I have an active suffering that calls me to run after it. Keep up, says the feed of bad news. It's dangerous to see others as an abstraction. I don't need to hate anyone as an abstraction because I have my mother—I hate my mother. She who keeps stealing the car keys is very real. I see her; I know Terror. What does it mean that I know just where to find a sugar baby but not a nice companion for my Terror? What does it say about me that I'd rather be a sugar baby than a nice companion for my mother? I don't actually know if that's true. But when I'm in a car chasing my mother down I-95, wind slicing through the papers in the backseat, I'm not thinking about writing, or about suffering, even if that's what this is.
February 2, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
pronounced-ing.bsky.social
Hey! If you have access to a printer, a thing you could do is print up some of these Know Your Rights flyers and cards (in languages spoken in your area) and post them around your neighborhood. miracoalition.org/news/know-yo...
Know your rights - MIRA Coalition
Whether you’re a U.S. citizen, a green card holder, a student on a visa, or undocumented, you have legal rights. … More
miracoalition.org
February 2, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to participate by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

a special one today, one of my favorite small poems of all time by James Schuyler:
Closed Gentian Distances A nothing day full of wild beauty and the timer pings. Roll up the silver off the bay take down the clouds sort the spruce and send to laundry marked more starch. Goodbye golden- and silver- rod, asters, bayberry crisp in elegance. Little fish stream by, a river in water. 1969
January 26, 2025 at 3:22 PM
dianacao.bsky.social
i loved working with this team before law school—learned so much from them and from the work
mitelectionlab.bsky.social MIT Election Lab @mitelectionlab.bsky.social · Jan 9
ICYMI: We're looking for a research associate to join our team! Spread the word, or learn more and apply:
Research Support Associate 2
MIT - Research Support Associate 2 - Cambridge MA 02139
careers.peopleclick.com
January 28, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
marcelias.bsky.social
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case challenging Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for individuals with certain felony convictions, which the state enshrined in its 1890 constitution with the express purpose of denying Black men the right to vote.
SCOTUS Declines To Review Mississippi’s Jim Crow-Era Felony Disenfranchisement Law
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
January 27, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
karenhao.bsky.social
As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread. 1/
January 27, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
galvinalmanza.bsky.social
Let me get this straight. Petro calls for dignified transit. Trump threatens tariffs. Petro smacks Trump in a post threatening his own higher tariffs. And Trump agrees to what Petro asked for. And yet NYT is calling this *Petro* backing down?
January 27, 2025 at 6:29 AM
dianacao.bsky.social
thanks to @dialogist.bsky.social for my first two poems of the year—both, sort of, about robots

(dialogist.org — also worth reading all their previous weeks' poems)
Refractory Period I listen to a robot pronounce coitus in three accents, to prepare for a class on the history of marriage. Nothing kills the mood faster than terminology. What's on your mind? M asks me after. Sometimes it's tedious to be a social animal. A class on the laws of marriage is a class on the story of disgust, which I learn is sometimes justified and sometimes not. Which is this? I tell M I'm thinking of mnemonic arbitrage. It's not romantic but it's more romantic than saying that sex with M has reminded me of sex: clicking teeth, smooth obstruction, fingers catching— what. Has my body been this strange before? I could guess what we might do to one another. When I want to transform distance into tenderness, I imagine my subject listening for their name in classroom attendance. I can hear them calling present. Which reminds me of the nostalgia in old photographs of legendary despots: still boys and already the world we might have known is gone.
January 24, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
swapnakrishna.com
If you are a visa holder/temp resident in the U.S., and your child was born here and doesn't have a passport, GET A PASSPORT FOR THEM IMMEDIATELY. Like, make the appointment this week.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/u...
Mr. Trump’s executive order indicates that in 30 days, all federal agencies will be required to confirm the immigration status of the parents before issuing documents like a passport.
January 22, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Diana Cao
clintsmithiii.bsky.social
As we see these images of people crying at the border after the asylum system shut down, it is again worth considering how indescribably desperate a person must feel to travel with their children through the desert, across the water, or through the Darien Gap simply for the *possibility* of safety.
January 21, 2025 at 10:06 PM