Ron Charles asked a thought-provoking question in a recent newsletter: “Will human-raised children become a luxury product?” The question comes from a doctor whose waiting room used to be filled with conversation, which is now filled with silence as people — children and adults — scroll on their phones. Whereas people used to fill the waiting room time either chatting or reading aloud to a child, they are now scrolling on separate devices.

But I would argue we’ve been in this state for a very long time, long before AI or even smartphones came on the scene. Having time to slow down and engage in hands-on parenting has always been somewhere between a luxury and a conscious choice. To have time to read to your child or use that downtime for conversation, you need to have space in your schedule. You need to not be pulled in 20 directions. You need to not have a full-time job, or if you have a full-time job, have a lot of flexibility in that job to build hands-on parenting into your day. And, frankly, you are likely giving up something yourself if you’re working full-time and parenting hands-on. Something has to give, and it’s probably going to be something related to the adult’s physical or mental health. There are only so many hours in a day.

So the real question is how we’re going to build that time into the day so we can have working parents who use that waiting room time to read to their kids instead of hand them a device so they can catch up on work while away from work. Or just catch some needed downtime from life and time to mindlessly scroll instead of do one more thing. I say this as someone who read to her kids well into middle school so we could discuss books as they unfolded. So I love reading aloud. But I also see the other side.

Last summer, I read an article about Trader Joe’s Dubai chocolate. Reiterating: big fan of pistachio, big fan of kadayif, big fan of chocolate. Our store told us it would be back in the fall. For a few months, we checked every time we went to the store, but it didn’t return in the fall or winter, and we thought they had decided not to bring it back.

Imagine my shock when I was leaning over the frozen vegetables a few weeks ago, and Josh said, “Is that the Dubai chocolate?” pointing at the shelf above my head. It was. It was the freakin’ Dubai chocolate that had been on the shopping list for nine months.

I bought four bars, untasted, because I thought it would be easier to give them to someone else than get them again. I was correct. They’re sold out again. But, yes, it’s as good as I hoped.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Prädestiniert” (Elaine ohne Kind)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Separate Life posted the to-do list she took out of her head. Our to-do lists tell a story; capture a moment in time. And this one made me want to reach through the screen to give her a hug.

Lastly, Swistle has a unique take on using human touch when you don’t necessarily have traditional human touch. She found it grounding during a stressful dental visit to use the moments her body touched another body to focus her thoughts. She writes, “This time, instead, I concentrated on the way I could feel the assistant’s leg against my upper arm, and the dentist’s fingers on my mouth—sorry, it is kind of struggle to write this in a way that doesn’t sound unintentionally erotic; but you’ve had dental work done, you know we are not talking about that.” Okay, I snickered at “unintentionally erotic,” but I think it’s a good reminder when we start to panic to focus on what we can physically feel.

The roundup to the Roundup: It really is very good chocolate. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 15 – 22) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

There is an app called Stillgram that allows you to remove all people from the photo WHILE YOU ARE TAKING THE PICTURE. Did that require all caps? Sort of.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve patiently waited, annoying my family, for a space to clear before taking a picture so I could have it without people in it. The flower door of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp comes to mind. We all aged about 300 years before I could get a moment without a random woman absentmindedly talking to her friend in front of the door. But that is the joy of taking a picture. You wait for the perfect moment and swoop in.

This app allows you to point your phone camera at the Trevi fountain, snap a picture, and have it look like you’re the only human on earth. Oh, and if you want to pay for the premium feature, you can position your loved one in the frame, tap on them, and keep them in the picture, erasing out everyone else. It’s kind of brilliant, but it’s kind of scary. It’s rewriting reality in the moment.

I’m not sure how that is different from coming home and editing everyone out of an image. I know it is possible to do this with software. Or how it is different from any sort of image manipulation, which has been going on long before modern software, such as airbrushing.

I don’t know. I guess because with all the other options, there is an original that reflects what your eye saw in the moment. It can’t capture the mood or the long wait for a plaza to clear. It can’t show all of the angles you didn’t choose or the outtakes. But this app takes us one more step from reality. And I don’t know how I feel about it.

What about you?

The writer Amy Tector asked if people choose a fork or a spoon when it is a meal that could go either way, and while I don’t have strong feelings about utensils, I do always reach for a bowl when a plate could technically do.

We run out of bowls — and we have an extraordinary number of bowls — long before we run out of plates. We run out of bowls before the dishwasher is full, so then I am forced to balance it out with a plate. I will put anything and everything in a bowl. All pasta. All salads. All rice dishes. All usual things that go in bowls, such as soup, cereal, or yogurt. I live a heavily bowl-centered life.

Are you team bowl or plate?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I’ve always thought that I’m decent at guesstimating size. Distances? I’m dreadful. But if you ask me to make a 16 cm x 9 cm square, I can usually get pretty close.

But now I have proof because there is a game (of course there is a game) where you have to try to create a shape and then see how close you are to correct. On my first try, I got 89.34%, which is a B in 501st place. Once I knew how to play the game, on the second try, I got 91.05%, which is an A in 396th place. I’m moving on up.

How do you do?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.