The Fastmail calendar wouldn't load this morning (the connector kept returning a server error), so today, Tuesday 20 Oct and Wednesday 21 Oct can't be listed fresh. Check the calendar app directly.

Last known from yesterday's edition: Tue 20 Oct, 19:45–20:15, MUDr. Král, HemoClinic, Na Poříčí 1041/12, Praha 1.

The shipping mail couldn't be read today (same Fastmail error). Last known status from yesterday:

• AlzaBox, order 1063088224: Hylo-Dual eye drops at AlzaBox P3 Žižkov, Fibichova 1586/11. Code 732 201, collect by today, 23:59. Skip if already picked up.
• Alza, order 1063088226: Nidelo socks, due at the same Fibichova AlzaBox today by 20:00; the code comes by SMS/email.
• Intimissimi 2003989511 + 2003989496: at Náměstí Republiky 1 until about 23 Oct. Skip if already collected.

• Ukraine: Ukraine launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight Saturday to Sunday, one of its biggest raids of the war. It set the St Petersburg oil terminal and a depot on fire, killed at least one person and disrupted the city's airport. Russia kept hitting Ukrainian power infrastructure, killing two and injuring at least 17. (Al Jazeera/AFP, Guardian)
• US–Ukraine friction: Trump waived new Russia sanctions, eased curbs on Russian diesel and said Zelensky "doesn't want to end this war." Zelensky talked with Witkoff and Kushner and said US intelligence sharing has resumed. The WSJ reports Putin floated a Trump–Xi–Putin summit on Ukraine without Kyiv, possibly at APEC in Shenzhen in November. (AFP, CNBC)
• Iran: the IRGC says another "violating" supertanker hit a mine south of the Strait of Hormuz and caught fire. It named no ship, and there's no independent confirmation. Araghchi says Iran's offer to reopen Hormuz within seven days is "still on the table," but there's no deal, and the US renewed a worldwide caution for Americans. (Xinhua, Gulf News)

• Pavia prosecutors are moving toward asking for Andrea Sempio to stand trial. His defence filed five expert reports (on the shoe print, palm print 33 and the DNA under Chiara's nails), and Sempio declined to be questioned before the 18 Oct deadline, preferring to argue it at the preliminary hearing. His lawyer said: "Non può essere indagato a vita, tanto vale andare a processo." (ANSA, Sky TG24, Rai News)
• There's a side fight over the bloody shoe print. Sempio's experts say it's a size 40, not his 44, which would also clear Stasi, but Stasi's lawyers rejected the help: "Non ci aggrappiamo alle prove." (Corriere Adriatico)

Last week, 12–18 Oct

• European Council, 15–16 Oct: no deal on the 2028–34 budget. Costa will keep negotiating, aiming for agreement by year-end. Leaders pushed the "One Europe, One Market" items (Industrial Accelerator Act, grids package, simplification omnibuses) and energy prices, reaffirmed support for Ukraine and asked the Commission for extra 2027 funding. (consilium.europa.eu)
• Council, 12 Oct: final green light for the programme for agile and rapid defence innovation. (Council press release)
• General Affairs Council, 13 Oct: a budget debate, a state of play on Hungary under the Article 7 rule-of-law procedure, and conclusions on democratic participation and societal resilience. The presidency reported Council positions agreed on Omnibus X (food safety) and the core of Omnibus VIII (environment). (Irish Presidency)
• Commission, 14 Oct: it launched the Water Resilience Investment Accelerator, backing 20 water pilot projects, and opened feedback on revising the cross-border gas network code. (ec.europa.eu)
• Also: on 14 Oct Coreper cleared the sixth update of the carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxic substances at work directive for formal adoption. On 15 Oct the EU–GCC summit was postponed. Nothing major turned up from Parliament. (Council, Commission)

• Bitwig: Studio 6.1.4 (13 Oct) is still the latest. It adds rekordbox integration, so Bitwig can read your local rekordbox library with BPM, key, hot cues and song structure, and open tracks as projects or split them into clips. It needs rekordbox 6 or later and an active Upgrade Plan. (bitwig.com)
• Traktor: Pro 4.5.1 (July) is still the current public release. A 4.6 beta is reportedly in testing, but there are no official release notes yet. (NI Community)
• YouTube: no worthwhile new Bitwig or Traktor tutorials turned up in the last two days.
• Ubuntu tip: watch -n 2 -d 'df -h' reruns a command every 2 seconds and highlights what changed. It's handy for watching a copy fill a disk or a download grow, and works with any command. Ctrl+C stops it.
• Package: sudo apt install inxi, then run inxi -Fxz for a one-screen summary of CPU, GPU, drivers, disks, network and battery, with serials and MACs hidden. It's the perfect thing to paste into a forum post when asking for help.

Tip: Settings → Updates has Check for Updates, which updates the Grok Bot app itself. That's different from Update Bot's Computer on the Computer tab, which moves the bot's computer to a fresh instance. If the app is acting oddly, check here first.

Changelog (12–18 Oct): a quiet week. The official changelog shows no new release since v0.70.2 on 11 Oct, which was covered last Monday. (x.ai/changelog/bot)

• Researchers found antibody patterns in blood that flag Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis up to 10 years before diagnosis, which opens a path to much earlier detection. (The Guardian, 18 Oct)
• A six-site US academic health system cut anaesthetic greenhouse emissions per operation by 45% and spending on inhaled anaesthetics by almost 40% over four years, with no drop in patient-safety measures. (Medical Xpress, 18 Oct)
• A 40-litre pond that researchers built to help wildlife through the dry months gave Goa its first-ever photographs of the mainland leopard cat. (The Better India, 18 Oct)

Saturn's moon Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. Its surface pressure is about one and a half times Earth's at sea level, and it has rain, rivers and seas, but they're made of liquid methane and ethane, not water. (NASA)

Caravaggio, Seppellimento di santa Lucia (1608), Siracusa, painted for Santa Lucia al Sepolcro.

What it shows: Syracuse's patron saint lies dead on the ground. Two huge gravediggers in the foreground are digging her grave, and behind them a small huddle of mourners, a bishop and a soldier stand frozen. Above them, about two-thirds of the canvas is an enormous bare wall.

Context: Caravaggio painted it just after escaping from prison in Malta, on the run and near the end of his life. That empty wall is the late style: the drama is in the silence, and the void is the real subject.

Sgarbi: in presenting his Skira monograph, Sgarbi used this painting to support his idea of Caravaggio as an artist without hope, according to il Giornale. On the fight over lending the fragile canvas to Milan, he said: «Figurarsi se uno come Caravaggio, che nella vita faceva di tutto, deve essere trattato come una vergine da chiudere in casa». (il Giornale, Francesca Amé, 23 Dec 2005)

lacuna (la-KOO-nuh): a gap or missing part, especially in a manuscript, an argument or a body of knowledge.

• The scholars filled the lacuna in the medieval text by comparing three later copies.
• His theory is elegant, but there's a lacuna where the evidence should be.

• pondělí (PON-dyeh-lee): Monday. V pondělí mám hodně práce. (I've got a lot of work on Monday.)
• porada (PO-ra-da): meeting at work. Porada začíná v devět. (The meeting starts at nine.)

Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov (1859). A Russian nobleman takes some 150 pages just to get out of bed and spends the rest of the novel losing the fight against his sofa. It's funny and tender like Hašek, and as melancholy as Hrabal. "Oblomovism" became a Russian word for glorious inertia.

Ostře sledované vlaky / Closely Watched Trains (1966, Jiří Menzel). Hrabal's novella about a shy young railway apprentice in the occupied Protectorate becomes a deadpan comedy that turns heroic at the end. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It's perfect Prague-autumn viewing.