Times are Europe/Rome, the same as Prague.

Tue 3 Nov · today

• Nothing timed.

Wed 4 Nov

• 12:00–13:00 · 🧘 Pilates · Next.Move Churchill, Italská 69/2584, Praha · booking confirmed by Next.Move on 2 Nov

Thu 5 Nov

• 09:00–09:30 · 🩸 Blood test, Synlab Olšanská · Olšanská 2666 (Olšanská poliklinika, 2nd floor), Praha 3 · walk-in for Synlab order 2026058765 (paid) · fasting recommended; bring the order code and your ID/insurance card

Heads-up: your monthly Lítačka coupon expires on Sat 7 Nov (PID Lítačka mail, 1 Nov).

• JP-KONTAKT desk, order 20/2026/4730 (VSS 180/70 height-adjustable desk, white, with assembly) · JP's own delivery to Kubelíkova 39 · arriving this week (2–6 Nov), per JP on 30 Oct · no newer mail, so still no fixed date · logistics will call to set the day, or book a day and time yourself on 778 747 901
• Nothing else · nothing expected or waiting for pickup

Ukraine

• 💥 Aid centre bombed in Komyshuvakha. Russian 3,000 kg guided bombs hit a school used as an aid centre in Komyshuvakha (Zaporizhzhia region) on Monday, killing at least 26. Zelensky called it "utterly horrific". Independent
• 🏥 Overnight strikes. A strike on a medical facility in Kharkiv injured 62, and Russia says it hit energy sites in the Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions. Ukrainian drones damaged a refinery in Yaroslavl. Zelensky had warned of a big attack timed for the US midterms. Anadolu · Axios
• 🤝 Abu Dhabi talks next week. Witkoff says US–Russia–Ukraine talks resume in Abu Dhabi on 10–11 Nov, with a Brussels meeting with the UK, France, Germany, the EU and NATO this week on security guarantees. Guardian

Iran

• 🛢️ Hormuz in two days, on conditions. Tehran says it could reopen Hormuz within two days if the US ends its naval blockade, lifts oil sanctions and unfreezes assets. Its negotiators have left Doha, a draft deal is circulating, and Qatari mediators flew to Tehran. Euronews · Reuters via Investing.com
• 🎯 US "defensive strikes". On Monday the US carried out limited strikes on Iranian surface-to-air sites in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian TV reported explosions on Qeshm Island. AP

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

• Still no filing. Pavia prosecutors still hadn't filed their request to send Andrea Sempio to trial as of 2 Nov. La Provincia Pavese
• Constitutional challenge threatened. On TG1, Sempio's lawyer Liborio Cataliotti said that if they do, he'll raise a constitutional challenge: two trials can't run in parallel while Stasi's final conviction stands unrevised. Stasi's defence is expected to file for a review of his conviction within November. Virgilio
• Online. No substantive new X discussion.

• 🎛️ Bitwig. No new release; 6.1.4 (13 Oct, rekordbox integration) is still the latest, and stem separation is promised for winter. No new Bitwig tutorial from the last two days worth a link.
• 🎚️ Traktor. No new release; Pro 4.5.1 (July) is still current, and there's no fresh tutorial.
• 🐧 Ubuntu tip: cd -. cd - jumps back to the directory you were just in, and running it again flips you back. It's handy when you're bouncing between $HOME/Music/projects and /etc or a mounted drive. (echo $OLDPWD shows where it'll take you.)
• 📦 Package: mediainfo. sudo apt install mediainfo shows what's really inside an audio or video file: format, codec, sample rate, bit depth, channels, bitrate and duration. mediainfo kick.wav is a quick way to check whether a sample pack is 44.1 or 48 kHz before you drop it into Bitwig, and mediainfo --Inform="Audio;%SamplingRate% Hz, %BitDepth%-bit" *.wav lists a whole folder in one go.

Glitchy window? Check hardware acceleration. If the Grok Bot window ever starts drawing glitchy or feels sluggish, check the Settings → General → Hardware Acceleration row. It sits with the system controls, and there's a restart row right next to it, so expect to relaunch the app after you change it. Open Settings with Cmd+, or from the account button at the bottom left of the sidebar.

A scarlet macaw in Costa Rica (ImagePerson, CC BY 4.0). Wikimedia Commons

• 🦜 Costa Rica's macaws nearly quadruple. Scarlet macaws on the Central Pacific coast have grown from about 215 birds in the early 1990s to nearly 800, thanks to a 36-year project at Punta Leona. Eleven nests now have live cameras. Upful
• 🌑 Lights out for shearwaters. Corvo, in the Azores, switched off its street lights from 21:00 to 04:00 for the last five nights of October so young Cory's shearwaters could find the sea. The Azores host about two-thirds of the world's breeding population. Good News Network

A Cory's shearwater off Sagres, Portugal (Hobbyfotowiki, CC0). Wikimedia Commons

Wombat droppings showing their cubic shape (SojournerRL, CC0). Wikimedia Commons

Wombats poop cubes. Bare-nosed wombats leave dozens of little cube-shaped droppings a night, which they use to mark territory on rocks and logs. A 2021 study in Soft Matter showed the shape comes from stiffer and softer bands along the end of the intestine. Earlier work on the cubes won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize.

Image: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, public domain. Wikimedia Commons

Francesco Cairo, Erodiade con la testa del Battista (c. 1625–1630) · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herodias, in blue velvet and a fur-lined cloak, has thrown her head back against a cushion. Her eyes have rolled up and her mouth is open, as if she's about to faint. The severed head of John the Baptist lies in her lap on an oriental carpet. With one hand she pulls at his lips, and with the other she lifts a pin, ready to pierce the tongue that condemned her marriage to Herod. That detail comes from an old legend told by Saint Jerome. A chest with its key still in the lock and a pair of rolled scrolls on the ledge make the room feel strangely ordinary.

Cairo (Milan 1607–1665) trained under Morazzone in the Milan of Cardinal Federico Borromeo. He painted this as a very young man, before he became court painter to the Savoy in Turin in 1633, where he was knighted and became "il Cavalier Cairo". He returned to the subject of Herodias and Salome again and again, and turned it into a mix of piety, eroticism and horror that is unique to the Lombard Seicento. The canvas (119 × 95 cm) once belonged to King Louis-Philippe of France and reached Boston in 1926 as a gift from William Sturgis Bigelow (inv. 26.772). There's a later version closer to home at Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza (c. 1635).

«Con lui, gli strumenti della critica d'arte devono lasciare il posto a quelli della psicoanalisi. Davanti a noi si schierano non santi e sante in estasi, ma donne e uomini sfiniti da un desiderio struggente, affannati e sul punto di perdere i sensi. [...] Ma il tema prediletto di Francesco Cairo sembra essere quello biblico di Erodiade con la testa del Battista; un soggetto ripetuto numerose volte, con sempre originali varianti, che trasformano la monotonia creativa in una suggestione di atmosfere peccaminose e dichiaratamente sadiche.»

Vittorio Sgarbi, Artisti, p. 122 (listed on it.wikiquote under Davanti all'immagine). it.wikiquote

bellwether: something that leads or signals where a trend is going. It originally meant the belled ram that leads the flock.

• For decades Ohio was the bellwether state in US presidential elections.
• Oil is the bellwether for how markets read the Iran talks.

• montáž (MON-tahzh): assembly or installation. Stůl přivezou i s montáží. (They'll deliver the desk with assembly.)
• topení (TOH-peh-nyee): heating. Je zima, pustím topení. (It's cold, I'll turn the heating on.)

John Fante, Ask the Dust (Chiedi alla polvere, 1939)

Arturo Bandini is a broke young Italian-American writer living in a cheap Bunker Hill hotel in Depression-era Los Angeles. He falls hard for Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress, and their love is fierce, cruel and comic by turns. It's short, raw and very funny. Bukowski called Fante his god and wrote the preface to the 1980 reissue that brought the book back.

Get it: Amazon.it · Italian edition, Chiedi alla polvere, Einaudi Super ET (2016), transl. Mariagiulia Castagnone, introduction by Alessandro Baricco

Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street, 1965, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos)

In a small Slovak town during the war, a timid carpenter is made "Aryan controller" of a button shop run by an old, nearly deaf Jewish widow who has no idea what's going on. It starts as gentle comedy and turns into a tragedy. Ida Kamińska is unforgettable as the widow. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the first for Czechoslovakia.

The shop front from the film, on Námestie slobody in Sabinov, Slovakia (Jozef Kotulič, CC BY-SA 4.0). Wikimedia Commons

Trailer: POVCineclub on YouTube

Where to stream: Czechia (Obchod na korze): streaming on Oneplay and Lepší.TV; rent or buy on Apple TV. Italy (Il negozio al corso): not streaming, renting or selling anywhere right now. JustWatch CZ · JustWatch IT

We Finally Know More About Humanity's First Civilization · Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell (Germany) · English, 17:30

It shows how ancient DNA, new dating methods and lidar archaeology are lighting up the "dark matter" of human prehistory, and what the first towns may actually have looked and felt like. It's beautifully animated and well sourced, a good 18 minutes with a coffee. YouTube

• Artificial (Guadagnino) · not on Flora's programme or in Cinema City's film list, including upcoming titles. No Czech date yet.
• The Social Reckoning (Sorkin) · still not showing at Flora and not listed as coming.
• Elon Musk documentary · not listed. cinemacity.cz: today's Flora programme and Cinema City's full film list, checked this morning