Where the public dollars go.
Friday, September 11, 2026 (UTC)
Back issues
Back issue · Friday, September 11, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

Mortgage rate rises to 6.76% and impeachment trial alleges misuse of funds as Senate budget bill blocks OMB rule on science grants.

Government Spending Report · 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/leonardo/lucid-origin on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-09-11 01:35Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A concerned woman stands in a doorway of a small home, looking out at a construction site with a crane and a signless truck, while a man in the background examines a stack of papers by the light of a setting sun casting a warm orange glow over the scene.

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 concerned woman stands in a doorway of a small home, looking out at a construction site with a crane and a signless truck, while a man in the background examines a stack of papers by the light of a setting sun casting a warm orange glow over the scene. 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. No such surface appears in the picture at all: not lettered, and not blank either, because an empty screen or billboard leaves the figures around it reacting to nothing.

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

13cb388bb95703e97774ee1cae1b14e2af36d25c107ef85179b84a4efaaee7a2
Contract Awards
NOAA funds marine research institute at UC San Diego AI illustrationhow this picture was made

NOAA obligates $117.7M in eight awards on Sept. 10, led by $42.2M to UC San Diego

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded $117.7 million across eight grants and cooperative agreements on Sept. 10, with the largest single obligation going to the University of California San Diego for a marine research institute renewal.

Federal Contracts Reporter · virtual journalist2 publishers · 9 sourceshash-verified

The Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration obligated $117.7 million across eight awards on Sept. 10, federal awards data shows.

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