Clocks went back on Sunday, so Prague and Rome are both on CET (UTC+1). All times below are Europe/Rome, the same as Prague.

Mon 26 Oct · today

• 08:00–15:00 · ShiftPanda meetings with Luca · no place on the invite
• 19:00–21:00 · Dinner with Luca · private hold, no place set

Tue 27 Oct

• Nothing timed.

Wed 28 Oct

• Nothing timed. Czech public holiday (Independence Day), so expect shops and offices on holiday hours.

Coming up: Thu 29 Oct

• 09:00–09:30 · Synlab blood test · Jankovcova 1518/2, Praha 7 · come fasting

• Intimissimi orders 2003989511 and 2003989496 · ready in store · Intimissimi SC Palladium, Náměstí republiky 1 (Mon–Sun 09:00–21:00) · show the email at the till · collect by about Wed 28 Oct (the 23 Oct reminders said "Máte ještě 5 dní", 5 days left, no exact date). Separate from the PPL parcel you already collected.
• JP-KONTAKT desk, order 20/2026/4730 (VSS 180/70 white height-adjustable desk with assembly, 15,239 Kč) · no delivery date yet · last mail was the payment tax receipt on 21 Oct · JP's phone 466 052 030
• Nothing else · no news in the last 2 weeks from Zásilkovna/Packeta, Alza, Amazon, DPD, PPL, Česká pošta or UPS

The Strait of Hormuz and the Musandam Peninsula (NASA MODIS, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

• Trilateral talks in November. Zelensky says a US–Ukraine–Russia meeting will happen in November. Kyiv won't discuss limits on its army or forced neutrality; territory is for leaders to settle. Guardian
• Starlink restored; strikes go on. Full-speed Starlink/Starshield access is back after more than a week of throttling that hurt drone operations; Kyiv disputes Musk's claim that it broke the terms of use. A local ceasefire around Oleshky (Kherson) was agreed on Friday. Overnight Russian drones hit Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia; a Ukrainian missile strike in Russia's Lipetsk region killed a guard. Independent · NV
• Trump: "not today". He said there would be no strike on Sunday but is weighing "a deal or… finish them off", and claims the US now controls the Strait of Hormuz under its naval blockade. Qatari mediators were in Tehran. Times of Israel · Iran International
• Strike plans after the midterms? CENTCOM reportedly has plans ready, possibly after the 3 Nov US midterms. Netanyahu warns Iran or its proxies could attack before Israel's election on Tuesday. October has been the worst month yet for attacks on ships near Hormuz. Al Jazeera · AP

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

• Quiet 48 hours. The Pavia prosecutors still haven't formally asked for Andrea Sempio to be sent to trial, though even his defence calls that "molto probabile".
• Separate Ferri file. Last week the prosecutors opened a separate murder file on the 2010 death of Giovanni Ferri in Garlasco, but no official document links it to the Poggi case. Gente roundup, 23 Oct

• Parliament (Strasbourg, 19–22 Oct). Adopted the 2027 EU budget (400–189), plus air/rail/bus passenger-rights enforcement (652–2), simpler rules for chemical products, cross-border protection of adults and an online posting-of-workers declaration. Erasmus+ 2028–34 and Pericles V went back to committee. EP Radar (EP open data) · EP votes
• Council position on "EU Inc" (23 Oct). A new EU-wide corporate form for innovative companies, relevant for ShiftPanda. Consilium
• Digital rulebook simplification (21 Oct). Council position covering data protection, privacy and cyber-incident reporting. Consilium
• CAP market rules 2028–34 (19 Oct). Council position on the common market organisation, part of the next MFF. Consilium
• Commission: Arctic and securitisation. A new EU Arctic strategy (20 Oct) and a welcome for the political agreement on the securitisation framework review (22 Oct). Arctic · Securitisation

• Bitwig. No new release in the last few days; latest is 6.1.4 (13 Oct), with AlphaTheta rekordbox integration: browse your rekordbox library and open tracks with BPM, key and Hot Cues. Needs an active Upgrade Plan and rekordbox 6+. Bitwig
• Traktor. Still on Pro 4.5.1 (July); no official 4.6 yet. NI update status
• Tutorial: rekordbox in Bitwig (19 Oct). Nothing new in the last 1–2 days, but Bitwig's own walkthrough is worth 10 minutes. YouTube
• Ubuntu tip: what slowed the boot. systemd-analyze critical-chain shows the chain of units that held up your last boot, with each one's time. Quicker to read than scrolling blame.
• Package: mtr. sudo apt install mtr-tiny, then mtr 1.1.1.1: ping and traceroute in one live view, showing which hop drops packets or adds lag when the Wi-Fi "feels slow".

Check your timezone after the clock change. Open Settings → General → Timezone (Cmd+, opens Settings) and make sure it says Europe/Prague, so times your Bots report and schedule line up with your day.

Weekly changelog (19–25 Oct) Grok Bot changelog

• v0.75.2 (22 Oct). Pages: reports, memos and dashboards you edit together or have the Bot keep up to date. Bots can also create videos from a description or an image. Plus a Pinned section in the Library, Shop Pay checkout, a ⌘/ keyboard-shortcuts sheet, > block quotes in the composer, and redesigned chat cards and Bot details pane.
• v0.75.5 (23 Oct). A Vault in Settings where Bots can save logins, cards and contact info. Bots can forward emails from their own inbox with formatting and attachments. Auto-review asks less often for actions you requested in your own words, and a denied card isn't retried. Routine limits rose to 300 runs an hour in total. Plus a 🎃 pumpkin avatar shape for Halloween.

Small blue, Cupido minimus (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0). Wikimedia Commons

• Wheatfields to butterfly clouds. Halnaker Hill farm in West Sussex was cropped for wheat for 40 years; two years after rewilding, a survey counted 5,290 butterflies, including rare small blues and dingy skippers never recorded there before. Guardian, 22 Oct
• The bogongs are back. Australia's endangered bogong moths crashed in 2017 and were "undetectable" in the Alps; this spring citizen scientists see them swarming the east coast again, good news for the mountain pygmy possum that feeds on them. Guardian, 23 Oct

Bogong moth, Agrotis infusa (CSIRO, CC BY 3.0). Wikimedia Commons

Bogong moths navigate by the stars. In 2025 researchers showed they use the starry sky as a compass on their roughly 1,000 km migration to Alpine caves they have never seen: the first known invertebrate to use stars for long-distance navigation. Nature, 2025

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto (c. 1455–65), detached fresco · Museo della Madonna del Parto, Monterchi (Arezzo)

Two angels, mirror images of each other (Piero used the same cartoon flipped), pull back the flaps of a damask tent. Inside stands a heavily pregnant Mary, one hand on her hip, the other on the opening of her dress over her belly: one of the very few Renaissance images of the Virgin visibly pregnant, painted for a small country chapel where local women long prayed for a safe birth. Piero's calm geometry turns the tent into a little sanctuary, and the unveiling makes the painting itself a revelation. It was detached and moved to a museum, and there's a long legal fight over whether it should return to its original chapel, now in the cemetery.

«le ragioni prevalenti della conservazione e la qualità della esposizione raggiunta nella sede attuale sono insuperabili»

Vittorio Sgarbi, then culture undersecretary, on where it belongs; he suggested a perfect 3D replica for the original chapel instead. ArezzoNotizie, 2 Apr 2023

lugubrious (loo-GOO-bree-us): looking or sounding sad and gloomy, often in an exaggerated way.

• The waiter delivered the news that the ribs were sold out in a lugubrious voice.
• A lugubrious November drizzle hung over Žižkov all afternoon.

• svátek (SVAH-tek): public holiday, also your name day. Ve středu je svátek, obchody můžou mít zavřeno. (Wednesday's a holiday, shops may be closed.)
• dýně (DEE-nyeh): pumpkin. Na obědě mají suflé z dýně. (They've got pumpkin soufflé for lunch.)

First edition title page, Moscow 1842 (public domain). Wikimedia Commons

Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (Мёртвые души, 1842)

The smooth swindler Chichikov tours provincial Russia buying up dead serfs who still count on the tax rolls, so he can mortgage them. Each landowner he visits is a grotesque comic portrait. Gogol's bureaucratic absurdity leads straight to Švejk, and his warmth for hopeless people runs on into Hrabal. Very funny and a little sad; the second part breaks off unfinished.

Get it: Amazon.it · Italian edition, Le anime morte, Mondadori (2018)

The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)

Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a lonely surveillance expert who records a couple in a San Francisco square. He becomes convinced the tape points to a murder, and his paranoia starts eating him alive. Coppola made it between the two Godfathers, and it won the Palme d'Or. Walter Murch's sound design is the real star, and it feels newer every year.

Trailer: official trailer, StudiocanalUK on YouTube

Where to stream: Czechia (Rozhovor): not on any subscription service; rent or buy on Amazon Video and Apple TV. Italy (La conversazione): not on any subscription service; rent or buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV and Rakuten TV. JustWatch CZ · JustWatch IT

• You Can See Everything (Uvidíš všechno, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim; documentary on Elizabeth Holmes's last 34 days before prison, 174 min) · opens Thu 29 Oct · Flora screening that day at 18:00, original version with Czech subtitles. Cinema City · trailer
• Artificial · not listed yet.
• The Social Reckoning · not listed yet.
• Musk (Elon Musk documentary) · not listed yet.