Times are Europe/Prague (CET), the same as Rome.

Mon 9 Nov · today

• Nothing timed.

Tue 10 Nov

• Nothing timed.

Wed 11 Nov

• Nothing timed.

• Alza 1066619256 (Vraždoku book, Vilgain Coenzyme Q10, TEPE Compact Tuft, Jamieson Zinc) · AlzaBox P3 Žižkov – Fibichova (Žižkovská věž), Fibichova 1586/11 · code 830645 · paid · pickup deadline Sun 8 Nov 23:59 has passed · no pickup confirmation by email · if still in the box, check the Alza app

The Strait of Hormuz from orbit (NASA, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

• Ukraine power grid hit. Russia struck the grid hard over the weekend. Zelensky counted 172 drones and 36 ballistic missiles on Friday night; on Sunday about 850,000 people lost power in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions. Guardian · Al Jazeera
• Abu Dhabi talks Tue–Wed. US-brokered Russia–Ukraine talks are set for 10–11 Nov, the first round since February. France says Europe will be there despite the Kremlin’s objection. NPR
• Ukraine strikes back. Drones damaged the Mius River bridge on Russia’s R-280 supply road in Rostov Oblast. The death toll from last Monday’s glide-bomb strike on the Komyshuvakha aid site has risen to at least 55. Kyiv Independent
• Iran and Hormuz. The IRGC Navy keeps hitting ships, and the US disabled the blockade-running tanker M/V Huda on 7 Nov. Iran says it has lifted its self-imposed 2,000 km missile-range cap. ISW · ABC
• Diplomacy. Trump says new strikes are “highly unlikely” if the Qatar-mediated talks progress. Tehran insists Hormuz stays shut until its seven demands are met. Separately, the Houthis damaged an Aramco office building in Riyadh. Reuters

Garlasco, the castle tower (Alessandro Vecchi, CC BY-SA 3.0). Wikimedia Commons

• State of play. Nothing new over the weekend. Pavia prosecutors have asked for Andrea Sempio to stand trial, and GUP Luigi Riganti has the file. Sempio’s lawyers (Cataliotti and Taccia) plan to ask for a pause or a referral to the Constitutional Court, because Stasi is already definitively convicted. ANSA
• What to watch. Stasi’s lawyers (Bocellari and De Rensis) are expected to file the revision request at the Brescia Court of Appeal between 10 and 20 Nov. A ruling on admissibility could come in early 2027. Rai News
• On TV. Sempio told Quarto Grado (6 Nov), «Paura no, tensione sì», and said he hopes to get into court as soon as possible.

• Bitwig. No new release; 6.1.4 (13 Oct) is still the latest. No worthwhile tutorial from the last two days; closest are Bitwig’s short “Using The Grid for live performance” (6 Nov) and Polarity’s “Building Weather Memory from Scratch” Grid post (4 Nov). Bitwig
• Traktor. No new release; Pro 4.5.1 is still current, and no new tutorial worth flagging. NI
• Ubuntu tip: journal size. Check how much disk the system logs use with journalctl --disk-usage. Trim them with sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=2weeks, which keeps only the last two weeks.
• Package: tldr. sudo apt install tldr gives short, example-first cheat sheets. Run tldr --update once, then try tldr tar or tldr rsync before opening a long man page.

Execution on this computer. Open Settings → Computer → Execution on this computer. It controls how freely your bots can run things on your own Mac: Always allow, Ask every time, or Never allow. Ask every time is the sweet spot if you want to see each command before it touches your files.

Weekly changelog (2–8 Nov) Grok Bot changelog

• Phone calls. Grok Bot can now place phone calls. The official @bot account announced it on 4 Nov with a demo of the bot cancelling an internet plan and turning down a retention offer. TeslaNorth
• New plans. Unified X Subscription plans are rolling out. @grok describes X Subscription Premium ($30/month) as bundling the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, and existing SuperGrok plans stay available. Plenty of users on X are complaining about tighter usage since the switch.
• The official changelog has no entries after 27 Oct.

Devils Hole pupfish (Olin Feuerbacher / USFWS, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

• 🐟 America’s rarest fish doubled. The fall count at Devils Hole in Death Valley found 137 Devils Hole pupfish, up from 69 a year ago. Most of them hatched in the wild hole itself. Las Vegas Review-Journal

A Eurasian otter (Alexander Leisser, CC BY-SA 4.0). Wikimedia Commons

• 🦦 Otters are back in Kashmir. Eurasian otters, nearly wiped out by fur poaching, have recolonised the Lidder, Rambiara and Sindh streams of the Jhelum basin. Researchers confirmed it through field surveys, spraints and NGO checks (Biological Diversity). EurekAlert
• 🦌 Animals that collar themselves. NMBU’s Richard Bischof showed red deer and red foxes putting GPS collars on themselves at baited stations in Norway, with no capture or sedation. The collars self-adjust, drop off after weeks and break away if snagged — an early proof of concept in BioScience. report

East German border guards as crowds gather during the Wall’s opening, November 1989 (SSGT F. Lee Corkran, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

The Berlin Wall opened 37 years ago tonight, partly by mistake. On 9 November 1989, at an evening press conference, East German spokesman Günter Schabowski read out new travel rules. Asked when they took effect, he shuffled his notes and said “sofort, unverzüglich” (immediately, without delay). Crowds headed straight for the checkpoints, and by midnight the guards at Bornholmer Straße had opened the gates.

Lorenzo Lotto, Annunciazione (about 1534), Recanati. Public-domain reproduction.

Lorenzo Lotto, Annunciazione (1534) · Museo Civico Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati

An Annunciation unlike any before it. The angel lands in Mary’s ordinary bedroom, and God the Father dives in through the arch outside. Mary doesn’t wait demurely: she spins away from the angel towards us, hands raised, and a tabby cat arches its back and bolts across the floor. Lotto worked far from Venice’s centre of power, in Recanati and the Marches — an anxious, devout outsider, eclipsed in his own time by Titian and rediscovered by Berenson in 1895. Sacred painting usually showed the event; Lotto paints how a frightened girl reacts to it, and the cat makes it human and a little funny.

«Maria è tanto turbata, o meglio disturbata, che volta le spalle all’angelo, con un movimento istintivo e felino, sottolineato dall’analogo scatto del gattino che mette la gobba e scappa.»

«Lotto invece ci proietta nella psiche della giovane donna, il cui “io” prende per intero la scena… E noi siamo nella mente di Maria.»

Vittorio Sgarbi, Amare l’arte, iO Donna, 20 Sep 2026. He also compares the scene to a page of Kafka’s diary (25 June 1914), where an angel falls into a room and turns into a wooden figurehead. iO Donna

sanguine (adj.): calmly optimistic, especially when things look bad.

• Despite Thursday’s sell-off, he stayed sanguine about the long run.
• The doctors were less sanguine than the patient.

• lednice (LED-nyi-tse): fridge. Mléko je v lednici. (The milk is in the fridge.)
• mrazák (MRA-zaak): freezer. Dej zmrzlinu do mrazáku. (Put the ice cream in the freezer.)

Karel Poláček (1892–1945), public-domain portrait. Wikimedia Commons

Karel Poláček, Bylo nás pět (We Were a Handful, published 1946)

A boy and his gang of friends in a small Bohemian town (Poláček’s own Rychnov nad Kněžnou) make up adventures, feuds and grand speeches, all told in a deadpan, mock-pompous boy’s voice. Poláček wrote it under the Nazi occupation shortly before he was deported, and he died in 1945. Pure Czech comic tenderness, cousin to Hrabal and Hašek — wonderful in Czech if you’re up for it, and available in Mark Corner’s English translation.

Get it: Amazon.it · English edition, We Were a Handful, Karolinum Press / Charles University (Modern Czech Classics), €11.66

Tampopo (1985, Jūzō Itami)

A widowed noodle-shop owner and a truck driver set out to make the perfect ramen, framed as a “ramen western”. Between scenes, the film cuts away to sketches about food, sex and manners. Funny, sensual, and made for someone who plans trips around Bib Gourmand restaurants.

Trailer: TIFF on YouTube (4K restoration, 2016)

Where to stream: Czechia: not streaming right now. Italy: not streaming right now (available in Germany and other countries on Amazon Prime Video, MUBI and others). JustWatch CZ · JustWatch IT

Clocks are so much more interesting than I thought. · Tom Scott (UK) · English, 21:05

Tom Scott makes some of the best-researched short explainers on YouTube, and this is a rare long one on timekeeping — a good pairing for someone who lives a tram ride from the Orloj. YouTube