Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, April 28, 2026, and Great Poetry Reading Day. Here’s Dylan Thomas’s “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines,” written when he was only nineteen. He died at 39 of lung ailments exacerbated by alcoholism.

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter’s robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics dies,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

Here’s Thomas’s simple grave in Wales, which I photographed in 2010:

It’s also National Blueberry Pie Day, and National Kiss Your Mate Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. agrees to peace under certain conditions, which include no stipulations about nuclear enrichment or weapons.

Iran has offered to end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its blockade on the country and ends the war in a proposal that would postpone discussions on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, two regional officials said Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump seems unlikely to accept the offer, which was passed to the Americans by Pakistan and would leave unresolved the disagreements that led the U.S. and Israel to go to war on Feb. 28.

With a fragile ceasefire in place, the U.S. and Iran are locked in a standoff over the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passes in peacetime. The U.S blockade is designed to prevent Iran from selling its oil, depriving it of crucial revenue while also potentially creating a situation where Tehran has to shut off production because it has nowhere to store oil.

Oy, how many times have I heard that 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Strait? Doesn’t everyone know that by now? But I digress.

The Iranian proposal would push negotiations on the country’s nuclear program to a later date. Trump said one of the major reasons he went to war was to deny Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

The two officials with knowledge of the proposal spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations between Iranian and Pakistani officials this weekend. Iran’s proposal was first reported by the Axios news outlet.

The offer emerged as Iran’s foreign minister visited Russia, which has long been a a key backer of Tehran. It’s unclear what, if any, assistance Moscow might offer now.

Clearly Iran is a bit desperate, but given that Trump made the non-production of nukes the prime object of America’s war with Iran, this offer is a non-starter. And I can’t imagine what kind of offer would be.

*The WSJ reveals how ridiculously easy it was for people to gain access to the venue where Trump and other government officials were present at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

At the same hotel where then-President Ronald Reagan was shot 45 years ago, it was remarkably easy for a shooter to charge toward a ballroom where President Trump—along with his cabinet members and the reporters who cover his administration—were dining Saturday night.

The sprawling Washington Hilton, located about 1½ miles north of the White House, for decades has been home to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner because of its capacity to host a large crowd and the Secret Service’s familiarity with securing it. More than 2,500 people attended the event, including five of the top six officials in the presidential line of succession. Hundreds more gathered for parties that media outlets hosted on site before the main festivities began.

Despite a visible security perimeter and warnings of tight security, guests said they could enter the hotel through checkpoints on the surrounding streets by simply showing a dinner ticket or a copy of an invite to one of several predinner receptions. The tickets were reviewed by staff but weren’t scanned and there were no identification checks, attendees said.

“Upon entering nobody asked to visibly INSPECT my ticket nor asked for my photo identification. All one had to do was flash what appeared to be a ticket and they were fine with that,” said Kari Lake, a former Republican gubernatorial and Senate nominee in Arizona now serving as senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, in a social-media post.

Guests were able to access the Hilton’s lobby and lower levels without going through security scans, and only passed through magnetometers before they entered the ballroom where the dinner was held. It was easier to get into the dinner than many big sports events and concert venues.

With 1,107 guest rooms and suites, 47 meeting rooms and four on-site dining venues, the facility in the heart of the nation’s capital can’t be fully sealed off for a high-security event.

One of those rooms was booked by the 31-year-old gunman, who checked in the day before the shooting, law-enforcement officials said, giving him an even deeper awareness of the Hilton’s contours.

“He didn’t beat the security plan the night of the dinner. He beat it the day he made the reservation,” said Jason Pack, a former FBI official. “They built that perimeter to stop an army. Turns out all he needed was a room key.”

I wonder if the dinner will be held there in future years. If so, you can bet that security will be way amped up.  I’m wondering whether the suspect could have killed Trump if he had some kind of super-weapon, like a grenade launcher. (I’m not wishing that Trump had been killed, of course, but I’m also surprised that I haven’t seen people wishing that he was.) One could get all the way to the ballroom entrance without being checked for weapons (the shooter is accused of having a shotgun, a pistol, and several knives).

*Apropos, the suspect appears to have been compelled to travel across the country with an assassination plan out of hatred of Trump and his administration. It does not look like a set-up planned by Trumpites, as some blockheads have argued.

Before he embarked on a cross-country journey, Cole Tomas Allen offered the people in his life a series of explanations for his absence, according to writings that the authorities say he left behind.

He had a personal emergency, he told his colleagues and the students he was tutoring. He told his parents simply that he had an interview.

But Mr. Allen appears to have had a much different and much darker plan when he set out on a train from California to Washington, according to two senior law enforcement officials who say he is now in custody, accused of charging through security outside the White House Correspondents’ dinner, setting off a flurry of gunfire.

. . .The suspect, who the authorities have not publicly named but who was identified by the two officials as Mr. Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., is expected to be charged with multiple crimes in a court appearance on Monday.

The writing the authorities attributed to Mr. Allen bounced between remorse for the deception of friends and family and gratitude for a lifetime of love and support. In it, he displayed outrage at the policies put in place by the White House, and alluded to allegations of sexual misconduct, saying that he is “no longer willing” to allow a “traitor to coat my hands with his crimes” — an apparent reference to President Trump, though the writing does not mention him by name.

. . . The writing said the suspect had come to the Washington Hilton looking for members of the Trump administration.

“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” the writing reads, apparently referring to Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. It was not clear from the writing why Mr. Patel was mentioned by name.

. . . The suspect is initially expected to be charged with two counts of using a firearm and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Saturday. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday in Federal District Court and additional charges are expected, she said.

Frankly, I’m surprised that, given that Allen shot a law enforcement officer (who luckily survived thanks to a bulletproof vest), he wasn’t himself killed by security. Or perhaps he was also trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

*Hezbollah has declared that it won’t disarm, which of course puts a serious wrench in the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, besides violating UN Security Council Order 1701.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah declared on Monday that it would not lay down its weapons, a day after the authorities in Lebanon said 14 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Sunday, one of the deadliest days since a truce was declared this month.

Naim Qassem, the leader of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group, said in a written statement that it would not “relinquish its weapons or its defenses.” Israel has demanded Hezbollah’s disarmament as a precondition for ending its invasion of southern Lebanon.

But it is still far from clear whether the Lebanese government can rein in Hezbollah, whose devoted Shiite Muslim supporters and battalions of fighters have long made it Lebanon’s dominant military power.

In another sign of strains on the truce, the Israeli military said on Monday that it had attacked the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Those strikes were some of the deepest since President Trump declared a cease-fire in the country earlier this month.

Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade attacks almost daily, although the fighting has mostly been confined to southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are razing Lebanese border towns there, part of an effort that could lay the groundwork for a longer occupation in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah has also fired rockets and explosive drones at Israeli communities, as well as at invading Israeli forces. On Sunday, the Israeli military said a soldier had been killed in Lebanon, raising the death toll in Israel’s ranks in the current conflict to at least 16.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the 14 people killed in the Israeli attacks on Sunday included two women and two children, but did not give many other details, state media reported.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, accused Hezbollah on Sunday of “essentially disintegrating the cease-fire.” But while Israel has repeatedly bombarded south Lebanon, it has refrained from attacking Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

Were Israel to buck the truce entirely, it could run afoul of Mr. Trump, who personally announced the agreement and says he wants to invite both Mr. Netanyahu and Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, to Washington for further talks.

Let’s face it: Lebanon has no control over Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has no taste for disarming.  As with Iran vs. the U.S. and Israel, it looks like an impasse.  I wonder what things will look like a year from now. Of course I asked that same question when Russia attacked Ukraine, and things are pretty much the same.

*A while back the Trump Administration based on advice of the CDC’s new “vaccine advisors,” dropped a recommendation that infants be vaccinated against hepatitis-B within 24 hours after birth. Two new studies now predicts that this dumb recommendation, part of RFK Jr.’s anti-vax crusade, will lead to a rise in infections and a substantial number of deaths. The paper, in JAMA Pediatrics, can be found here and here.

The Trump administration’s decision to drop the long-standing recommendation that newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth will likely lead to hundreds of additional infections among children, along with more cases of liver cancer, deaths and millions in added health care costs, according to studies published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

Federal vaccine advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted in December to replace the universal birth dose with a recommendation to delay the first shot until at least two months of age for infants born to mothers who test negative for the virus — a change later approved by the then–acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pediatricians and dozens of medical groups strongly opposed the move, saying it was not based on evidence, and warned it could harm children and their families. Although medications can control hepatitis B, there is no cure for chronic infection.

The JAMA studies are the first to model the policy’s potential impact. One estimated that delaying the first hepatitis B vaccine dose by two months for babies born in a single year to mothers who tested negative — about 80 percent of the 3.6 million U.S. births annually — would increase lifetime health-care costs by at least $16 million.

“These 2 studies were exceptionally well done and rigorous in their approach, assumptions, calculations, and conclusions,” wrote Arthur Reingold, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, in an email.

Reingold and other public health experts said the federal vaccine advisory committee should have considered this type of evidence before making its decision in December.

Instead, the panel departed from well-established standards, according to an accompanying editorial in JAMA Pediatrics. The committee failed to weigh key evidence, focusing on “theoretical risks of vaccines” while omitting data on the benefits of preventing chronic disease and death, the editorial said.

Eric Hall, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Oregon Health and Science University and a co-author of the cost study, said researchers shared a preliminary version of their findings in public comments ahead of the December meeting so committee members could review the data.

“We noticed that the committee did not have the evidence they needed to inform their decision,” Hall said. “But this group kind of blew past all that and didn’t make any effort to fill the evidence gaps that they might have had. They just went ahead anyway.”

Yes, these figures are based on data. I’ve been vaccinated against Hep-B for various overseas travels, and I am a firm believer in immediate vaccination after birth for this disease.  I don’t understand why the CDC doesn’t favor that at-birth vaccination—do they want people to die or something? Do they have hidden data that contradicts the results of these new papers?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems to be becoming a “progressive”:

Hili: We are all oppressed.
Andrzej: I’m afraid you’re creating a critical theory of oppression.

In Polish:

Hili: Wszyscy jesteśmy uciskani.
Ja: Obawiam się, że tworzysz krytyczną teorię ucisku.

*******************

From Stacy:

From Terrible Maps:

From CinEmma:

From Masih. The English translation of the Farsi is this:

Every time I talk about the regime’s crimes, either I cry afterward, or I get a severe feeling of nausea, and from the psychological pressure, I start trembling. Lately, I have trouble breathing, and someone next to me has to remind me to take deep breaths. Sometimes I lose my words, especially in English, and I keep repeating to myself: Be strong! If you get so psychologically overwhelmed just from recounting these crimes, imagine how the victims must feel. Be strong and keep going for the voiceless ones whose hopeful eyes are on us. When I spoke behind the scenes of the Fox News interview about Salohe and Ahmad, 3-4 women from the news team cried and were shocked by the horrific scale of this crime. I was invited to a university to speak to students about Iran. Just this one crime was enough for the audience in the hall to realize, with wide-eyed and tearful stares, the dire and emergency state of the Iranian people. #Iran #DigitalBlackOutIran

هر بار كه در مورد جنايات رژیم حرف ميزنم يا بعدش گريه ميكنم و يا حالت تهوع شديد ميگيرم و از فشار روانى شروع به لرزيدن ميكنم. جديدا نفسم ميگيره و كسى كنارم بايد بهم يادآورى كنه نفس عميق بكش. گاهى كلمات رو گم ميكنم مخصوصا انگليسى ومدام به خودم تكرار ميكنم قوى باش!
اگر تو با بازگو… pic.twitter.com/DJcqjDLjE6

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 27, 2026

From Luana, who says that this is the future of Left media:

A photo of the summer 2025 interns at the Los Angeles Times should look relatively familiar to those of you who have seen similar photos of interns at other legacy media outlets.

Zero white males. pic.twitter.com/LpwwnMXbDq

— i/o (@avidseries) April 27, 2026

From Malcolm; cat chaos (I can’t guarantee its reality):

Cats are chaos.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/NAONAHOhOZ

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 7, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a stupendous voice:

Snow Raven is a member of the shamanic Sakha people from Arctic Siberia.

Her amazing voice takes its breath from traditional Sakha culture and is truly an instrument. pic.twitter.com/zkGCLILfX0

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 27, 2026

A playful orphaned elephant:

I will never tire of watching this beautiful video ❤️.

There is always one child that can’t behave!

Happiness is remembering when a baby Elephant tickled reporter Alvin Maunda with his trunk during a piece to camera for a report from Elephant ophanage @SheldrickTrust for a… pic.twitter.com/Q4fgiB6HTk

— PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE (@Protect_Wldlife) April 27, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial.

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 11 years old. https://t.co/v6uYHKp4iJ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 28, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb, soon to return from Chile. The butterflies below are astounding; I had no idea they existed. Matthew says this is an example of sexual selection, but Wikipedia says that “the sexes are alike” except for a slight color difference.

This is NOT AI. These are green dragontail butterflies (Lamproptera meges), native to S & SE Asia.They compensate for undersized wings with long 'swallowtails' to generate lift.Butterflies that fly in cursive, swimming like fish through the air.(📷: Center for Biological Diversity)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-04-23T23:58:51.052Z

And Matthew made the New Scientist crossword (5 down). Now this is fame!

This week’s New Scientist crossword. 5 Down

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-19T11:57:49.356Z