I typically use my partner as a tiebreaker. We usually get one or two.

I like when the results are closer, so I spent a bit of time introducing the matchmaking. A lot of people, myself included, have been surprised by Matt of the results this year. I’m a little frustrated most of my favs have lost, but I’d rather that than having matches be predictable.

I’m so happy I can still teach you guys new things! After almost 3000 posts, I thought I would have long ago run out of things to talk about, but these are really fascinating animals. Either that or you all would get tired of me!

This year’s stuff feels like it’s taking longer. I used to think it was about half an hour a day I’d spend prepping the next day’s matches, but this year, some have been closer to 2 hours since we’ve got some rare owls in this one.

It’s always a ton of work, but you all love it, it really bumps us up in commu rankings, and hopefully grabs us a handful of new people for our group.

If you’ve ever got any questions, feel free to ask. I can talk about these guys all day!

29-29, someone tried to be sneaky and downvote Crested, so it may not show if you dont have downvotes shown.

This is another back and forth battle!

This is the main resistance I see. I thought I’d be boring in the beginning. I didn’t know much about the subject I began to post about. But from continuing to interact, I learned more about the subject, and I learned what the people I was talking to liked more or liked less.

If you’re just being yourself and talking about things you’re interested in, you’re gonna be fine. People here are pretty chill, so if you’re not spouting outright lies or antagonizing people, there isn’t anything to worry about.

I don’t know how those people do it. Putting out stuff every day for one community keeps me as busy as I’d want to be.

I was in college in the late 90s and remember being in Intro to Business. One of the exercises we had was something about looking at a list of applicants and choosing who to hire. The teacher had looked over everything and got disgusted and read a bunch of replies in front of the class. The answers were basically all about who seemed to be the most exploitable at the advantage of the fictional company, ie who would work overtime they didn’t want to but they had family to support, etc. He couldn’t believe that people were looking at business that heartlessly.

It really gave me a bit to think about, and I remember that more than anything else from that class, but it seems a lot of others really felt they were on to something, since that seems to be how things played out. Maybe my teacher was too idealistic or this was still just Reagan era economic policy kicking in, but it does feel like this is the kind of business world we’ve built since then.

Ransuil

I checked the Dutch wiki to see if it explained the name.

It owes its name to the resemblance to a ‘ranse’, Middle Dutch for ‘cap with a hood that hung in folds’.

But I could find nothing when searching for ranse. I saw lots of traditional hats, a few that may resemble the plumicorns, but nothing actually labeled as a ranse. Any idea what they are talking about?

Bing also translates Ransuil to Tawny Owl. Whoopsies.

I like flight shots of Little and Burrowing Owls since we usually just see them standing around or hopping about. They’re owls though, so of course they fly too! It really shows off the feathers here that we don’t see when it’s loitering there.

Thinking about it now though, I imagine this was taken with a flash or some type of triggered lighting, so I don’t know how happy this photo made the subject, but it’s still a pretty photo. Sorry Little Owl! 😵‍💫

I never know which translation to trust!

Being a German word, I just assumed it was a string of adjectives strung together, but I thought it was an owl that looked like a piece of wood and had ears.

Someone at some point told me steinkauz was from the Little Owl liking to live in stonepiles and such rather than just being shaped like a rock as well. I still think it works either way. 🤪

None surpassio the Asio?

Don’t be weird, support the Eared?

❤️

I just watched the first episode of the most recent series of Black Mirror and it was this too.

Implant had range limitations, premium tier to avoid you randomly shilling products, constantly increasing subscription fee, etc.

Snowy vs Long Eared, unfortunately for me, went as expected. It got respectable support though, and it never felt impossible, but it never got a last minute surge to pull ahead.

Snowy will go on to meet the tropical Black and White. To me there seems an obvious favorite, but I’ve been wrong about a lot in this year’s games!

Very curious to see how Boreal fares today, and also Morepork and Little tomorrow. Those are the potential disrupters we have left from the look of things. Morepork is coming in with the highest votes, and Little was a bit of a standout too.

Sooty vs Flammy was fairly close all day. I kept waiting for it to switch to Sooty pulling ahead.

I always like hearing what Sooty reminds people of. It seems to involve a different memory in everybody.

Flammy’s flammulations(?) are really pretty though, especially when they get a little bump of the saturation slider, and it always looks so groggy.

Next stop is White Face though… That could be tough!

Screech

Crested

Boreal