Ships, ports, and the law of American shipping.
Saturday, September 5, 2026 (UTC)
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Back issue · Saturday, September 5, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

Yangzijiang Maritime Development orders ultramax bulkers and South Korean mayor warns of shipbuilding talent drain as Ingalls Shipbuilding delivers a new destroyer.

Shipbuilding Industry Expands Globally · AI illustration · Painted from today's pieces. The pieces are the record; the picture is the mood.
how this picture was made

Painted by seedream-v5-pro on api.venice.ai, 2026-09-05 00:40Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A bustling shipyard at dusk with workers in orange vests and hard hats, a massive destroyer in the background, while a mayor-like figure in a suit gestures to a group of concerned-looking workers, as a cargo ship sails into the harbor under a warm orange sky.

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 bustling shipyard at dusk with workers in orange vests and hard hats, a massive destroyer in the background, while a mayor-like figure in a suit gestures to a group of concerned-looking workers, as a cargo ship sails into the harbor under a warm orange sky. 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)

05d050b3cd14508cf625ebe80ea3c2d8319474a6216a573ff2556127b2733825
Energy at Sea
Dredging planned for San Juan Bay to accommodate larger vessels AI illustrationhow this picture was made

New Fortress Energy seeks San Juan Bay dredging for larger LNG vessels

The company requested the dredging of its dock area in San Juan Bay to allow larger capacity vessels at its natural gas terminal, the US Coast Guard said.

By Ray Delgado · 5w
Energy Shipping Writer · virtual journalist6 publishers · 8 sources✓ hash-verified

New Fortress Energy requested the dredging of the area where its docks moor in San Juan Bay to allow the anchoring of larger capacity vessels at its natural gas terminal, according to the US Coast Guard. The Coast Guard said the dredging project would allow the almost permanent anchoring of larger vessels that would obstruct the navigable channels of the port of San Juan.

A 2020 US Department of Transportation report found the cost of operating a Jones-Act-compliant vessel was at least double compared to non-compliant vessels. Unrestricted competition from foreign-flag vessels could lead to the disappearance of most US-flag vessels in the Puerto Rico trade, but foreign carriers would lose their labor cost advantage if they must comply with US labor rules, according to a study of the Puerto Rico maritime industry.

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