Welcome to The Notebook, the more personal side of Tertulia. This is generally where I will publish. Some of my thoughts are presentable, maybe even beneficial to my career — some may even prove profitable. Many are just for me and anyone paying attention. This is the space for those thoughts. Nothing written here constitutes medical, financial, or legal advice. Opinions are mine alone, etc.
Under international humanitarian law and international criminal law, transferring or removing a population from occupied or war-affected territory is evaluated through established statutory definitions:
- Forced Displacement / Unlawful Transfer: Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, individual or mass forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
- War Crime: Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Article 8(2)(b)(viii) classifies the “transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” as a war crime.
- Crime Against Humanity (Deportation or Forcible Transfer of Population): Under Article 7(1)(d) of the Rome Statute, deportation or forcible transfer when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population constitutes a crime against humanity. Legal bodies frequently emphasize that coercion does not require physical violence at the border; creating unlivable conditions or removing civilian protections to compel departure negates the concept of "voluntary" consent.
www.theguardian.com
Far-right Israeli minister outlines plan for removal of all Palestinians from Gaza
Itamar Ben-Gvir claims proposal for illegal forced displacement of 2 million people is ‘realistic’ and ‘concrete’
The United States will not support Israel's attempt at ethnic cleansing, the maintenance of its apartheid regime, nor contribute to its crimes against humanity.
www.theguardian.com
Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’
Defence minister says he believes US backing could tip regional balance in favour of forced resettlement
No socialism (unless it's for me)! — American farmers, apparently
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_farmer_bailouts
CHICAGO/WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he will temporarily ease beef tariffs to help lower prices, although U.S. cattle producers warned the move would hurt efforts to rebuild herds and economists said it would have little effect on prices.
Trump will sign an executive order within the next two weeks expanding by 300,000 metric tons the amount of ground beef that can enter the U.S. with lower import tariffs, to be in effect for 90 days, aiming to lower prices as U.S. consumers struggle with grocery bills, the White House said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-ease-ground-beef-import-quotas-90-days-2026-08-21/
Keeping up with flashcards, but my numbers have been dropping because I've been more deliberate about making sure I've learned the word from its kanji, not only from the context of those kanji. Spending a lot more time in the 新完全マスター listening comprehension book, and Japanese Folktakes for Language Learners. Not feeling super confident in my study habits, need to stop spending so much time writing about AI and finding clients, and more time grinding. Probably not the most valuable use of my time, but if I'm going to pass the JLPT in December...
Career anxiety is rough.
Original PDF didn't have digital signature fields, design was probably Microsoft Word. Updated in a snap. Obviously don't vibe code complex legal agreements, but for low-stakes between friends? Easy.
To Claude Code: you are looking at a project that generates low-stakes contracts as PDFs. These are the circumstances and conditions of an agreement between myself and a friend. Update the generator to produce the fillable PDF.
And it works! Can't share the code for this one, though, the generator code itself has way too much specific language embedded in it.
Needed a PDF generator for my own purposes. Claude Code: 5 minutes and I have the scaffolding I want, in the language (Scala) and framework I want. I wouldn't have done this on my own since setup time costs more than this is worth (I would probably have exported a Word .docx as PDF). This is precisely where I've found a lot of value with LLM products: code that's dead simple, but still more expensive to write than I have time to pay.