Times are Europe/Rome, the same as Prague.

Fri 30 Oct · today

• Nothing timed.

Sat 31 Oct

• Nothing timed.

Sun 1 Nov

• Nothing timed.

• JP Kontakt desk (order 20/2026/4730, VSS 180/70 height-adjustable, white, with assembly) · still no delivery date · JP replied on 29 Oct that their logistics team will contact you once they schedule the run; to pick the day yourself, call logistics on 778 747 901. Your follow-up asking how long delivery usually takes has no reply yet.
• Nothing else · no other parcels expected

Ukraine

• Drone kills 14 on a Dnipro rail platform. A Russian jet-powered drone hit a crowded platform beside a Zaporizhzhia-bound train; at least 20 people were killed across Ukraine in a day, including in Chernihiv, Kremenchuk and a late missile strike on Kyiv. Macron and Costa condemned it. Guardian · Reuters via Arab News
• Kyiv reportedly paused refinery strikes. The WSJ says Ukrainian long-range units were told in mid-October to put attacks on Russian refineries on hold under US pressure, probably until after the 3 Nov midterms. Reuters couldn't verify it. Independent
• Oleshky truce holds. Demining of the routes is finished and a humanitarian convoy is ready to enter the occupied town. Ukraine says its Neptune missiles destroyed two Su-34 bombers. AP · Euromaidan Press

Iran

• Qatar's draft, Tehran's no. Reuters reports that Qatar's new seven-day draft has daily confidence-building steps and several guarantor states, with a reply expected by the end of the week. A senior Iranian official called it "unacceptable ideas", and Araghchi is still pushing Iran's own 7-day Hormuz plan. Al-Monitor / Reuters · Arab News Japan
• The war keeps spreading. The Houthis targeted Riyadh on Thursday and coalition defences intercepted the missiles. Brent topped $115 after an earlier Houthi strike on Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery. Al Jazeera · Geo / Reuters

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

• Sempio speaks on TV. On Rete 4's "È sempre Cartabianca" (28 Oct), Andrea Sempio said the starting data behind the male-line DNA under Chiara's nails "non sono dati sicuri", and called print 33 a spot on a busy wall. His lawyer Angela Taccia said a trial request is "molto probabile" and they're ready. Il Tempo · Virgilio
• Defence wants an untranscribed wiretap. Consultant Armando Palmegiani told Mattino Cinque that one intercept the prosecutors set aside, in which Sempio explains his "soliloqui", is "fondamentale" for them, and that they've requested it. On 19 Oct the defence had asked for 81 discarded intercepts to be added to the file. Virgilio
• Timing, unofficial. Press reports still put the Pavia prosecutors' request for trial in early November; Cataliotti has floated spring 2027 for the preliminary hearing. Nothing has been filed officially yet. Virgilio · RaiPlay, Ore 14

• Bitwig. Nothing new; 6.1.4 (13 Oct, rekordbox library integration) is still current. Bitwig
• Traktor. Nothing new; Pro 4.5.1 (July) is still current. NI Community
• Tutorial. No worthwhile new Bitwig or Traktor tutorial from the last two days.
• Ubuntu tip: open the folder you're in. xdg-open . opens the current terminal directory in Files, and xdg-open file.pdf opens a file in its default app. It saves hunting through the file manager for a path you're already sitting in.
• Package: zoxide. sudo apt install zoxide, then add eval "$(zoxide init bash)" to $HOME/.bashrc. After that, z proj jumps to the folder you visit most that matches "proj", so you stop typing long cd paths.

Your own computers live under Settings → Computer. Press Cmd+, and open the Computer tab: it lists the computers you've registered, and the Settings → Computer → Local execution row sits right alongside them. That's the place to check when you want a bot to work with files or apps on your own machine instead of its cloud computer. Each command a bot runs on your machine still asks for your approval first.

Surveying bleached coral in Hawaii (The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey, public domain). Wikimedia Commons

• 🪸 Bleached coral, brought back by touch. Stanford researchers found that bleached corals fully recover when they touch a healthy clone of themselves: tissue bridges pass the symbiotic algae across, and the fastest full recovery took just seven weeks. For now it only works between genetically identical corals, so the team is working on that limit. Stanford Daily
• 🐢 Aldabra's giant tortoises hit a record. A five-year survey by the Seychelles Islands Foundation and the University of Exeter counts up to 183,000 Aldabra giant tortoises on the atoll, the highest ever recorded. In the late 1800s fewer than 1,000 survived. Island Innovation

An Aldabra giant tortoise on Curieuse Island (NorbertNagel, CC BY-SA 4.0). Wikimedia Commons

Charles Bridge from Mánesův most (DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0). Wikimedia Commons

Charles Bridge was supposedly founded on a palindrome. Czech legend says Charles IV laid the first stone at 5:31 am on 9 July 1357, so the moment reads 1357 9 7 5 31 forwards and backwards. A believer in numerology, he's said to have picked it to give the bridge extra strength. It was finished 45 years later, in 1402. Wikipedia

Image: Velázquez, public domain. Wikimedia Commons

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656) · Museo del Prado, Madrid

A big room in the Alcázar in Madrid. At the centre stands the five-year-old Infanta Margarita Teresa, with two maids of honour (the meninas) fussing over her, the dwarfs Mari Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato, a dog, a chaperone and a guard. On the left, Velázquez paints himself at a huge canvas, looking straight at us. In the mirror on the back wall appear King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, which means they are standing where we stand, and a courtier pauses in the bright doorway behind. It is a picture about looking: who is the subject, who is watching, and what is on that hidden canvas? It's why painters from Goya to Picasso, who made 58 variations on it in 1957, kept returning to it. Wikipedia

«Io sono italiano e ho vissuto fino al 1984 con la convinzione che noi avessimo i quadri più belli del mondo. [Ma] devo confessare che il quadro più bello del mondo è Las Meninas.»

Vittorio Sgarbi, commenting on the painting on Virus, Rai 2, 28 March 2014. it.wikiquote

sprezzatura (sprets-uh-TOOR-uh): a studied carelessness; making something difficult look effortless.

• Her sprezzatura at the piano hid years of scales.
• He wore the old tweed jacket with a sprezzatura that no tailor could sell him.

• podzim (POD-zim): autumn. Na podzim chodíme do lesa na houby. (In autumn we go to the forest for mushrooms.)
• listí (LIS-tyee): leaves (fallen, as a mass). Na chodníku je spousta mokrého listí. (There are loads of wet leaves on the pavement.)

Karel Čapek (public domain). Wikimedia Commons

Karel Čapek, Válka s mloky (War with the Newts, 1936)

A sea captain finds clever giant salamanders off Sumatra and teaches them to fish for pearls; soon the whole world is trading, arming and exploiting them, until the newts start wanting coastline of their own. Čapek tells it through newspaper clippings, minutes, footnotes and bar talk, so it's as funny as Hašek and as sharp as Orwell, and it's the Prague classic that still reads like today's news.

Get it: Amazon.it · Italian edition, La guerra delle salamandre, UTET 2009, transl. Bruno Meriggi (out of print: Amazon.it lists only used copies, from about €45)

Withnail and I (1987, Bruce Robinson)

Camden, 1969: two broke, out-of-work actors, the anxious Marwood and the gloriously drunk Withnail (Richard E. Grant), escape their squalid flat for a "holiday" in a freezing Lake District cottage owned by Withnail's uncle Monty. Very little goes right. It's the most quotable British comedy there is, a Fante-and-Bukowski kind of story about wasted youth that turns quietly sad at the end.

Trailer: Handmade Films on YouTube

Where to stream: Czechia (Withnail & I): not streaming, renting or selling anywhere right now. Italy (Shakespeare a colazione): streaming on Amazon Prime Video (also with ads); rent or buy on Amazon Video. JustWatch CZ · JustWatch IT

This New Bitwig 6.1 Feature Is Weirdly Powerful · Polarity Music (Berlin, Germany) · English, 29:15, published 3 Jul 2026

Polarity digs into the new analysis outputs in Bitwig 6.1's Sampler, inside The Grid: Onsets, Pitch and Envelope. That lets any sample drive rhythm, pitch and modulation, and he's honest about where the detection still falls short. It's a hands-on half hour for getting more out of the Bitwig version you already have. YouTube

• Artificial · not listed at Flora.
• The Social Reckoning · not listed at Flora.
• Elon Musk documentary · not listed at Flora. Cinema City Flora