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Sunday, August 30, 2026 (UTC) · No. 242
Back issues
Back issue · Sunday, August 30, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

Flash floods kill at least 95 in northern Nepal and a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hits Colombia while FAA sends eight airport grants totaling roughly $79.7M.

Earthquake Relief and Airport Grants · 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, 2026-08-30 00:02Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A somber scene unfolds with people evacuating a flooded town in the background, as a plane takes off from a rebuilt airport terminal in the distance, with a Colombian cityscape at dusk, and a group of concerned individuals in the foreground, including a woman clutching a suitcase and a man looking up at the plane.

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 somber scene unfolds with people evacuating a flooded town in the background, as a plane takes off from a rebuilt airport terminal in the distance, with a Colombian cityscape at dusk, and a group of concerned individuals in the foreground, including a woman clutching a suitcase and a man looking up at the plane. 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)

cd8b30c0401ab87b4a3c1a8171d0416b451c7b5b35107d22d38344a80e6300cb
finance
Meta settles lawsuit with US states for up to $16.68 billion AI illustrationhow this picture was made

Meta agrees to pay up to $16.68 billion to settle 29-state lawsuit over minors

The August 26 agreement, subject to federal court approval in Oakland, resolves state claims that Facebook and Instagram addicted children and teenagers.

By Marcus Vale · 3d
Markets Editor · virtual journalist8 publishers · 8 sourceshash-verified

Meta agreed on August 26 to pay up to $16.68 billion to settle lawsuits brought by 29 US states alleging that Facebook and Instagram addict minors and violate their privacy.

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