Cleanup.pictures seems to be from the same team that made a fun augmented reality demo that lets you “copy and paste” the real world, and is open-source (you can find the underlying code here). Obviously, tools of this sort have long been available, dating back at least to the launch of Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool, but the quality of these automated programs has increased considerably in recent years thanks to AI. Machine learning systems are now not only better at the problem of segmentation (marking the divisions between an object and the background) but also inpainting, or filling in the new content. Just last week, Google launched its new Pixel 6 tools with an identical “Magic Eraser” feature, but Cleanup.pictures shows how this feature has become a commodity.

The only natural light in the 16-square-metre space came from a small upper window, and there is no evidence of any wall decorations.

These days, China's animal-based ambitious parenting lingo includes "chicken babies," or kids with lots of after-school classes and training (that means they've been injected with "chicken blood" — referring to an unproven and now outlawed decades-old practice). "Frog babies" refers to kids without any remarkable talent or kids who maintain average grades even after a period of "injection." "Cow babies" are kids with good grades and perfect performance in competitions.

A man from the Netherlands had reconstructive surgery on his penis after suffering a bite from a cobra while sitting on the toilet.

After a daylong standoff, Democrats set aside divisions between progressives and centrists to pass a $1 trillion package of highway, broadband and other infrastructure improvement, sending it on to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

Mak Parhar, the New Westminster man who gained online notoriety for his belief the earth is flat and outspoken denial that COVID-19 exists, has died.

An Italian man who searched for his missing brother for 24 years found him when he woke up to his sibling stabbing him in his bed. Martin Rabanser, 35, woke up to his brother, Ivo, 42, coming at him with a large hunting knife, reportedly over a grievance that Ivo had with their father's inheritance. Martin is now seriously injured in hospital, according to The Times. (apologies for the Daily Mail link, but I couldn't find a better source)

He addressed the controversy and backlash for 45 minutes on the "Pat McAfee Show," offering a strong rebuke of the process and referencing several debunked talking points circulating among people opposed to the vaccine.

A major Texas veterans group is backing the fight against the state's ban on Delta 8 THC products, which will have its next chapter unfold during a court hearing Friday in Austin. A district court judge will hear arguments against the ban from Hometown Hero, an Austin-based hemp manufacturer and retailer that sued the Texas Department of State Health Services in October. Delta 8 is considered an isomer of Delta 9 THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Manufacturers, retailers and consumers all believed that Delta 8 was made legal under the 2018 federal Farm Bill and a new state law in 2019 legalizing hemp. Texas state attorneys, however, argue that Delta 8 is and always has been illegal. State Health Services manages the state's list of controlled substances and ruled in January that Delta 8 THC was to remain an illegal substance. Attorneys for Hometown Hero argue that the state department failed to properly notify the public about a hearing that ultimately determined the fate of Delta 8 as a controlled substance, which was attended by no one.

New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams plans to take his first three paychecks in bitcoin.

Long marginalized and misrepresented in U.S. history, the Wampanoags are bracing for the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621.

An East St. Louis mother has been charged in St. Clair County in the deaths of her five children in an apartment fire in August. Sabrina M. Dunigan, 34, was charged Wednesday with five counts of endangering the life or health of a child, a felony charge. Online court records indicate there are pending grand jury actions in the case. A judge set bail at $75,000. She is not yet in custody... Sabrina Dunigan and her father have said they suspect it was an electrical fire and claimed the cramped apartment lacked smoke detectors. Rudy McIntosh, a former police officer who is the building's landlord, however, said he put smoke detectors in all of his rental properties.

A Nashville man says he was assaulted by a security guard for trespassing at a dog park, in a video that’s been viewed more than a million times online.

A Los Angeles high school is apologizing after facing criticism that its football team didn't simply defeat an opponent but rather trounced the opposing squad by a score of 106-0. The most controversial move came when Inglewood's head coach went for a two-point conversion after the team was already up 104-0.

In March 2017, the leaders of Washington’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge — an umbrella group for police unions in the capital — told their members about an exciting new idea. They were selling whiskey on the Internet. It was called the Jack Daniel’s Fundraising Committee. The lodge’s leaders were buying Jack Daniel’s whiskey, engraving the bottles with a police-union logo, then reselling them online at the marked-up price of $80. They’d been overwhelmed with orders. “$38,000 has been collected, just on PayPal,” said Marcello Muzzatti, a retired D.C. police officer and the lodge’s past president, according to a recording of the meeting. One of the few non-police officers in the room spoke up. “Is this, like, legal?” said the woman, who union leaders said was a paralegal. “Yes. Absolutely,” said Andy Maybo, then the lodge’s president, who made the recording and shared it with The Washington Post. The Jack Daniel’s committee was a go. Over the next three years, the D.C. lodge — a group of active and retired police officers, working from a clubhouse near the FBI Field Office — sold more than 3,000 bottles of whiskey to people across the country, according to internal lodge documents and interviews with lodge leaders. But the sale of hard liquor is tightly regulated — the shipment of hard liquor even more so. And The Post could find no evidence that the lodge ever obtained the permits required to do what it did: sell liquor by the bottle, and ship it across state lines.

In the past year we’ve seen climate change-fuelled extreme weather to rival Revelations.

Progressives can’t afford to avoid the new culture war.

Your best bet of seeing the planet will be in the evening hours on Nov. 4 and 5. Plus, you may see a meteor or two.

The call came from PayPal’s fraud prevention system. Someone had tried to use my PayPal account to spend $58.82, according to the automated voice on the line. PayPal needed to verify my identity to block the transfer. “In order to secure your account, please enter the code we have sent your mobile device now,” the voice said. PayPal sometimes texts users a code in order to protect their account. After entering a string of six digits, the voice said, “Thank you, your account has been secured and this request has been blocked.” “Don’t worry if any payment has been charged to your account: we will refund it within 24 to 48 hours. Your reference ID is 1549926. You may now hang up,” the voice said. But this call was actually from a hacker. The fraudster used a type of bot that drastically streamlines the process for hackers to trick victims into giving up their multi-factor authentication codes or one-time passwords (OTPs) for all sorts of services, letting them log in or authorize cash transfers. Various bots target Apple Pay, PayPal, Amazon, Coinbase, and a wide range of specific banks.

They've been derided as spruced up pyramid schemes: Companies that incentivize their own customers to become salespeople for products. Now, these so-called multilevel marketing businesses are flexing their political muscle. And they're turning to one lawmaker in particular to protect their agenda: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The political action committee associated with Alticor, the parent entity of the health, home and beauty company Amway, gave $2,500 to the Arizona Democrat in late June, as did the PAC for Isagenix, an Arizona-based business that sells nutrition, wellness and personal care products. Nu Skin Enterprises, another personal care and beauty company, gave $2,500 that month, as did USANA Health Sciences, which sells similar products. In April, Richard Raymond Rogers, the executive chair of Mary Kay, a Texas-based cosmetics company, gave $2,500 to Sinema. Herbalife, which also sells nutritional supplements, gave $2,500 in July. All are affiliated with the Direct Selling Association, a trade group that promotes multilevel marketing. The donations don’t track usual political alliances. Alticor is owned by the DeVos family, one of the biggest funders of Republicans and conservative causes. And, on some occasions, they appear to be rare forays into national politics for the donor entities. Sinema is the only federal lawmaker that the Isagenix and Nu Skin PACs have given to this year. Utah-based USANA Health Sciences has only given to home state Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), home state Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), a Republican PAC and Sinema.