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Wednesday, August 26, 2026 (UTC)Vol. 1 · No. 238
Back issues
Back issue · Wednesday, August 26, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

HUD awards grants to tribal nations and Colombia receives aid for earthquake victims as Nvidia server prices rise and Iran warns against sanctions.

Global Aid and Turmoil · AI illustration · Painted from today's pieces. The pieces are the record; the picture is the mood.
how this picture was made

Painted by @cf/bytedance/stable-diffusion-xl-lightning on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-08-26 14:22Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A sunny day with a few clouds, a group of people from different cultures and ages are gathered near a river, with a cityscape in the background, while a few individuals in the distance are shown working on computers and construction sites, with a subtle earthquake rubble nearby.

Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received

Sprawling painted editorial illustration for a newspaper front page: A sunny day with a few clouds, a group of people from different cultures and ages are gathered near a river, with a cityscape in the background, while a few individuals in the distance are shown working on computers and construction sites, with a subtle earthquake rubble nearby. Rich painterly texture, coherent single scene, cinematic light, extreme wide panoramic banner composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: the painted scene reaches all four edges, no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Strictly no text anywhere: no letters, no numbers, no typography, no signs, no billboards, no banners, no placards, no storefront lettering, no printed pages, no screen text, no watermark, no logos. Any surface that would carry writing is left blank.

The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)

80fe37bf561c309a944748ca4945ae3ab94674df01f7183793ea39fba971dca8
world
Drought stricken land in Colombia amid El Niño warnings AI illustrationhow this picture was made

El Niño pushes Colombia's fire-risk alert to 158 municipalities

IDEAM has expanded its warning as extreme heat and drought linked to El Niño threaten vegetation across the country.

El Niño-driven heat and drought have pushed Colombia's fire-risk warning to 158 municipalities, the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) said in an updated report.

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government spending

HUD awards $31.7 million in Indian housing block grants to two tribal nations

Federal awards data shows obligations to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians recorded on Aug. 24, with outlays together reaching $10.7 million so far.
tech

CD Projekt Red targets 2028 for 'The Witcher IV' on PS5, Xbox Series and PC

CEO Michal Nowakowski named the year in a video, putting a public stake in the ground for the studio's next major release.
tech

New Zealand introduces bill to ban under-16s from social media

Legislation introduced Monday would bar children younger than 16 from using social media platforms.