For me, !superbowl@lemmy.world is basically the only active community that I really love on Lemmy and the main reason why I keep coming back here. Other places can be fun too, but Superbowl is just different. There are so many funny owl pictures in them as well as so many informative posts (mainly the Owl-natomy Posts). Also, it is a very positive place. I highly recommend checking it out!

Glad you liked it!

About the ecology, I can’t point to anything particular that makes them thrive now. Something interesting that I left out of the post which I read in the article that wasn’t available online, was that the owls eat different food in the Netherlands than in Germany. In Germany there are a lot of rodents, but in the Netherlands the rodents populations are smaller because of very intensive agriculture. Because of this, the Dutch owls eat more other species (they unfortunately did not specify what those species were).

One trend that is visible in nature in Western Europe is that smaller fauna are struggling, but larger species are doing really well. In the Netherlands we have seen reintroductions of not only the Eagle Owl, but also the white-tailed Eagle, the beaver, the otter and the wolf (and maybe the lynx too in the near future). On top of that we have seen big population increases of cranes, geese, deer and probably some more that I don’t know about. This is mostly because of conservation efforts and hunting being banned.

And I didn’t know that about the Kattenstoet, sounds very interesting!

I have no English sources for you, but with some translation app you can probably still check them out. One article that I used is not available online unfortunately.

The Owl Camera(they have other owls and other birds too, as well as some interesting articles. The site is only in Dutch unfortunately).

[Article by NOS](Oehoe bezig aan opmars: ‘Mogelijk al boven de honderd’ - https://nos.nl/l/2519607), the public broadcasting service. From this article is the ringing video that I talked about in the post.

This German Site which has some numbers about the Eurasian Eagle Owl in Germany. They also have This article that talks about how the Eurasian Eagle Owl was perceived in the past in Germany. It is really interesting, so definitely check it out! They have some more articles that are very interesting too.

Also some random linguistic facts: The Eurasian Eagle Owl is called Oehoe in Dutch and Uhu in German; both pronounced as “oo-hoo”. This is the only Dutch owl name that doesn’t end in owl; it is also an onomatopeia.

In this NYT article they say that 55 percent of NYC households have no car, and this site claims a modal share of 30% for cars. So most NYC residents already use sustainable transportation, but not all of them.

It was probably Hans Niemann then

Voor kamers zoeken raad ik je aan een account te maken voor Room.nl als je dat nog niet hebt gedaan. Kost eenmalig iets van 30 euro en ze bieden in vrij veel steden kamers aan. Je hebt een grotere kans om een kamer te krijgen als je een ouder account hebt, dus het is handig om dat zsm te doen.

Ik ben het volledig eens met je sentiment.

Wel even een detail: volgens het knmi (statistieken uit 2022) is de opwarming in Nederland al 2.3 graden. Je hebt dus de gemiddelde opwarming van de aarde genomen in je comment en de gevolgen in Nederland van een hogere opwarming, waardoor die gevolgen ernstiger kunnen lijken.

Dat gezegd hebbende: we moeten inderdaad oppassen dat we niet achterover leunen, want de gevolgen van nog meer opwarming zijn lastig te voorspellen.

I should really start listening to audiobooks more often. I just looked and the book is freely available on Librivox, so I may switch back and forth between reading and listening from now on. Thanks for the tip!

Reading “A tale of two cities” by Charles Dickens. I am not too far into it, but so far it’s been really enjoyable! The English accents are really hard to follow for someone whose native language isn’t English, but I’m getting used to it.

I recently read this and was surprised at how good it was. I loved Orwells Animal Farm, but didn’t like 1984 that much, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it; I read it more to get some insights of the war. But the book is not just informative, it is also really funny at times, and the story is just wild.

I second this recommendation.

Love is a human emotion, so the Caro Kann will never love you. Hope you recover from this loss.

I mostly use “The French” in a dehumanising manner. Which is a good thing, because a chess opening should not be humanised.

Thanks for answering! It looks great!

Looks great!

Some questions out of curiosity: how long ago did you convert your lawn to this (if it was a lawn before), and how hard was it to beat all the grass?

If you haven’t already, check out the Owl-natomy posts! They are a great way to learn a lot about the general anatomy of owls; I at least learned a lot from those posts.

I didn’t know about this, so thank you! To raise more awareness I feel like we should rebrand “flat adverb” to “flatverb” or “fladverb”. This would sure be an improvement over the current brand.

I know it’s just a meme, but when I see anti-Lobelia propaganda of any kind, it fills my veins with rage. Therefore I now spread the truth that Lobelia did nothing wrong, but that Bilbo framed her as a thief. Here is why:

Once upon a time, the hobbits lived peacefully in the Shire, never needing to leave their paradise, therefore never leaving it. However, one day Bilbo suddenly disappears with a wizard and some weird beard-dudes. Then he does not return.

Obviously, he is dead. So his family inherits his estate, among other things, and Lobelia moves into Bag-End.

Now Bilbo is returning from his adventure in the Hobbit. While vibing with Gollum, he had taken the ring of power, and now he comes back to his home. What he sees here horrifies him: His own home is being taken by Lobelia! This fills him with rage.

To understand matters fully, we must understand the power of the One Ring, as well as Bilbo’s psychology. The power of the ring, as is clear in the LOTR books, lies in corrupting the mind. However, we can point to a specific type of corruption: possession. This is logical, as Saurons goal was to possess all of Middle-Earth. You can see this influence of the ring with Frodo becoming paranoid, being mad at Sam for taking the ring.

Now Bilbo. He never went outside the Shire, the only place he calls home. He is continuously among strangers and obviously longs for home. Now when he finally comes home, he sees that this home is taken from him. With the ring already corrupting him he cannot think clearly and therefore doesn’t see how it is logical that others would think he is dead.

But the ring doesn’t stop corrupting Bilbo’s mind. He spins a fake tale to justify his possession of the ring and doesn’t even trust his best friend Gandalf.

Now the question is: why would he only care about posessing the ring? The rings power can’t solely lie in this, for then it would be useless to Sauron. The only logical conclusion is that he became more paranoid every day and started justifying himself in all his possessions.

Now to the point: Bilbo, paranoid as he was, tried to attack Lobelia in every way. She was a selfish person, always trying to get Bilbo’s house and his furniture and what not. Most notably, he said that Lobelia took his spoons, without providing any evidence.

The only thing that we can really say about Lobelia personality is her conversation with Frodo and the second-to-last chapter. The conversation with Frodo does put her in a bad light, but we must remember that Frodo was heavily influenced, or rather indoctrinated, by Bilbo, so this can’t be seen as an objective source. This means the only thing we know about Lobelia is that she was the most courageous of all Hobbits in fighting Saruman and his gang.

If you have mad it this far, I am sure you have been convinced of this truth, and if not, I invite you to give your arguments so that I can crush them.

Tl;dr: Lobelia was right