Times are Europe/Rome, the same as Prague.

Happy Statehood Day 🇨🇿. It's a public holiday, and by law big shops (over 200 m²) stay closed today.

Wed 28 Oct · today

• Nothing timed.

Thu 29 Oct

• 09:00–09:30 · 🩸 Blood test, Synlab · Jankovcova 1518/2, Praha 7 · order 2026058765, paid, walk-in, fasting recommended
• 12:00–13:00 · 💬 Lorenzo & Inna coaching session · Microsoft Teams

Fri 30 Oct

• Nothing timed.

• Intimissimi orders 2003989511 + 2003989496 · waiting at Intimissimi PRAGUE SC PALLADIUM, Náměstí Republiky 1 (Mon–Sun 09:00–21:00) · show the email at the till · today is about the last day ⚠️ (the 23 Oct reminder said 5 days left), if they haven't been picked up already · with today's holiday, check that the store is open
• JP Kontakt desk, order 20/2026/4730 (white VSS 180/70 height-adjustable desk with assembly, 15,239 Kč) · still no delivery date · a message asking for a date went to prodej@jp.cz last night; no reply yet

• 🇺🇦 Oleshky truce holds. A local ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky (Kherson oblast) began at 03:00 on 27 Oct so aid can get in and about 2,000 trapped civilians can get out. Both sides say it's holding, and it runs until 1 Nov. ISW · Guardian
• 💥 Strikes before the truce. Hours earlier Russia fired ballistic missiles and about 280 drones overnight. In Kyiv a university campus and medical facilities were hit, and at least one person was killed. Putin told Finland's Stubb and Norway's Støre that NATO "root causes" must be settled before any peace talks. AP
• 🇮🇷 Iran's offer. After talks with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, Tehran is asking them to sell Washington a two-week regional pause and a gradual reopening of Hormuz in exchange for renewed negotiations. A tanker hit mines in the Strait and caught fire. The National · ISW
• ☢️ IAEA still shut out. Grossi told the UN Security Council that inspectors still have no access, more than a year after they were pulled out in June 2025. IAEA
• 🗳️ Israel votes. Exit polls from Tuesday's election show a majority voting against Netanyahu's coalition. CBS

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

• No official filing yet. Mattino 5's Emanuele Canta reports that the Pavia prosecutors have finished reading Sempio's defence reports and could ask for him to be sent to trial (rinvio a giudizio) within about ten days. That's TV reporting, not a prosecutor's statement. Virgilio
• Stasi's revisione. Stasi's lawyers keep working on a request to reopen his conviction and are going through the RIS files. Il Messaggero

• 🎛️ Bitwig. No new release; 6.1.4 (13 Oct, with rekordbox library integration) is still current, and built-in stem separation is coming "this winter". Bitwig releases
• 🎚️ Traktor. No new release; Pro 4.5.1 is still current on NI's official update thread, with no public date for 4.6. NI Community
• 📺 Tutorials. Nothing worthwhile on YouTube from the last day or two.
• 🐧 Ubuntu tip: findmnt. findmnt -D shows every mounted filesystem with its size, use and free space, and findmnt --verify checks /etc/fstab for mistakes before your next reboot.
• 📦 Package: btop. sudo apt install btop gives a fast, good-looking monitor for CPU, memory, disks, network and processes, all on one screen, with mouse support.

See your plan. To see what your plan includes or turn on extra usage, open the Usage & Billing tab in Settings (Cmd+,). Settings → Usage & Billing → Plan has your plan controls, and Settings → Usage & Billing → On-demand covers usage beyond what's included. The tab only shows up when it's enabled for your account.

An Irrawaddy dolphin (Stefan Brending, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE). Wikimedia Commons

• 🐬 Mekong dolphins up. In Cambodia, six Irrawaddy river dolphin calves were born this breeding season, bringing the Mekong population to 118. Good News Network
• 🪸 Coral helpers. An NYU Abu Dhabi study found that bacteria living on corals make steroid hormones during heat stress, which boosts the corals' immune response and helps their cells survive: a possible new tool against bleaching. NYU Abu Dhabi

Venus from radar data (NASA/JPL, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

On Venus a day is longer than a year. It turns once every 243 Earth days, and it goes round the Sun in about 225. NASA

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Edgar Degas, La famiglia Bellelli (1858–1869) · Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The young Degas painted his aunt Laura, her husband Baron Gennaro Bellelli and their daughters Giovanna and Giulia after staying with them in Florence. Laura, in mourning black, stands tall and still. Gennaro sits half turned away with his back to us, and Giulia, perched on a chair between them, belongs to neither side. It's a big group portrait that reads like a short story about a cold marriage, and it shows Degas, still in his twenties, mixing old-master formality with a very modern eye for tension.

«Degas nulla aggiunge e nulla toglie alla vita; non deve esasperare nessun sentimento, nessuna emozione; registra tutto, impassibilmente; attribuisce ad ogni personaggio, pure esplicitamente in posa, l'atteggiamento dimostrato nei suoi confronti. Basta questo, oltre a una impercettibile ombra di malinconia che trasporta l'esistenza nella sfera sublime dell'arte.»

«Degas è riuscito a conciliare i due opposti, riconoscendo la modernità dell'antico e l'antichità del moderno.»

Vittorio Sgarbi, Artisti, pp. 158–159. Wikiquote

penumbra (noun): a partial shadow, the half-lit zone around a full shadow; figuratively, a vague in-between area where things aren't fully one thing or the other.

• The streetlamp left the doorway in a soft penumbra.
• The new rules sit in a legal penumbra that nobody wants to test in court.

• odběr (OD-byerš, with the ř sound): a sample being taken, as in a blood draw. Zítra ráno mám odběr krve. (I have a blood test tomorrow morning.)
• lékárna (LEH-kaar-na): pharmacy. Je tady poblíž lékárna? (Is there a pharmacy near here?)

Italo Calvino, Il barone rampante (1957)

At twelve, Cosimo climbs a tree after a row over a plate of snails and never comes down again. He lives his whole life in the branches, loving, reading and arguing with the Enlightenment. It's light, funny and quietly sad, a fable with Pirandello's taste for the absurd.

Get it: Amazon.it · Mondadori, Oscar Moderni (2022), 312 pages

Il generale Della Rovere (1959, Roberto Rossellini)

Vittorio De Sica plays a small-time con man in occupied Genoa whom the Germans force to pose as a Resistance general in prison, until the role starts to change him. It won the Golden Lion and has one of De Sica's best performances.

Vittorio De Sica and Hannes Messemer in the film (public domain in Italy). Wikimedia Commons

Trailer: original trailer via Unseen Trailers on YouTube

Where to stream: Italy (General Della Rovere): free with ads on RaiPlay; with a subscription on The Film Club Amazon Channel; rent on CHILI, Amazon Video, Timvision and Rakuten TV; buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Rakuten TV, CHILI and Timvision. Czechia: not listed on JustWatch. JustWatch IT

2. The Bronze Age Collapse – Mediterranean Apocalypse · Fall of Civilizations (Paul Cooper, UK) · English, 1 h 04 min

A slow, beautifully narrated documentary about how the linked world of the Hittites, Mycenaeans and Egyptians fell apart around 1200 BC, with readings from the original tablets. Good for a rainy evening. YouTube

• You Can See Everything (Uvidíš všechno) · opens tomorrow · Thu 29 and Fri 30 Oct at 18:00, documentary in original language with Czech subtitles. Cinema City
• Artificial, The Social Reckoning and the Elon Musk documentary · not listed yet.