New Republic had an article about “responsible tourism” and whether it’s ethical to travel. At all. There are all the benefits of travel; it exposes you to new people, new ideas, new experiences. But there are also all the drawbacks of travel: the impact on the environment, the exploitation of people, the division of haves and have nots.

As lovely as tourism is for the individual traveling and as helpful as that tourism can be for an economy, it is rarely a great thing for the world. After all, “tourism alone—that’s nonessential pleasure travel—is responsible for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Gulp.

We’re a travel family. We go on trips. Sometimes they’re to visit people. Often they’re to visit places. We contribute to that 8% of emissions. When we talk about climate change, we can’t just talk about the ways companies need to change. (They do.) We also need to talk about ways we need to change.

If you knew that staying put at home, keeping your movements to a small area, never taking an airplane, would help reverse the impact of climate change, would you do it?

The author admits that he won’t give up travel, even if he knows it’s the right thing to do. And I don’t think anyone will give up travel reading this post. I’m not giving up travel.

But this whole thing is food for thought.

It was inevitable. Someone invented a social network for one. Just you. You and all of your bots. Apparently it looks like a robust social network filled with people who are solely focused on what you have to say. But those people are bots. Bots who ask for nothing in return and are simply there to laugh at your jokes, tell you you’re clever, or console you when you’re down.

I don’t know if I think this is the smartest thing in the world — like a social network version of Her — or if it’s a dangerous way to circumvent social situations. I don’t feel the impulse to try it, and I’m glad it’s there for people who want it, though I worry that it will leave behind a residue of emptiness. Sort of the emotional equivalent of trying to exist on potato chips.

I also get nervous whenever an app maker promises that your words are private. Of course they’re not private. They’re being typed into a machine. Plus, I feel like if they need to point that out as the benefit that it may not actually be a benefit.

I don’t know. What do you think about this?

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

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Google searches. They seem straightforward. You put keywords in the search bar. The algorithm spits back results. You usually find what you want.

OR SO YOU THINK.

This article from Scientific American about all the tricks you can do with searches just blew my mind. (At least, the “What Good Searchers Do” section.) I do almost none of them. Will I remember to do these tricks when I’m searching two weeks from now? Probably not. But will I remember this article and use it for — at least — the next ten minutes. Absolutely.

What are you searching for right now?

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from January.

I read a lot of Parnell Hall’s Puzzle Lady books last month, but I’m not going to do a separate review for each one because I wrote about them in December. I still like the series. It’s mind candy.

Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo): I spent years taking this book on and off my TBR list. I don’t know why I was so reluctant to commit to reading it because it’s FANTASTIC. It’s a book about a magical heist in a vaguely Scandinavian-like universe. I had to read the first chapter twice to figure out what was happening, but I quickly found my footing in the world. My cousin and I read it for our book-club-for-two, and we’re following it up soon with the sequel, Crooked Kingdom.

A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle) and Sign of the Four (Arthur Conan Doyle): I’m re-reading the Doyle canon. While I’m currently deep in the short stories, I wanted to go in chronological order, so I started with the two novella. I’ve always liked Doyle, but I’m getting so much more out of these stories since going on a Sherlock Holmes tour of Edinburgh. That tour was one of the best things we’ve done on a vacation. It has made me think about how much our tangential experiences affect the way we read a book.

What did you read last month?

The most exciting thing happened to me this week (I guess I lead a pretty unexciting life)–I won a Goodreads giveaway. I enter them regularly because Goodreads will send you a heads up if a book on your to-read list holds a giveaway. It’s two clicks to throw your name in the hat.

Despite entering regularly, I’d never won a giveaway. I didn’t know anyone who won a giveaway, which made me wonder if they actually chose winners and sent books.

But then magic happened. One morning this week, I woke up to an email telling me that I was a winner in the giveaway for Rhys Bowen’s Above the Bay of Angels, and my prize was waiting for me in my Kindle account. If I lived inside a movie, it would have been that part of the film where we all break into the same dance, tossing our devices in the air while we do back flips. And then catching them while sinking gracefully into the splits while consuming chapter three.

Or something like that.

Anyway, in case you were wondering (as I was), people do win the Goodreads giveaways. Which is 1000 kinds of awesome.

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Happy Valentine’s Day. Or, if you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day (we are not Valentine’s Day people), happy Friday. Or happy February 14th. Or happy weekend. You choose.

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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 in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

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

• “Childless woman announces her life not filled with freedom, money, travel, never-ending ease” (Infertilityhonesty)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I usually don’t feature pieces from mainstream media here, but I liked that New York Times did a piece on the financial cost of treatments. Of course, there are so many hidden costs in there, such as therapy, lost wages from time taken off from work, gasoline to and from the clinic, but this is a great starting point for the general public to understand the astronomical costs (sometimes) associated with family building.

A Separate Life has a beautiful anniversary piece. This line is bittersweet: “When the babies didn’t come, amid some scary diagnoses and losses and difficult years, his hair went grey.” And this one made me smile: “They are old only in the length of time they’ve loved each other.”

Infertilityhonesty has a post fit for the Onion depicting the press conference she wishes she could hold. Laughed at this line: “Studies show awkward pauses are the number one occurrence resulting from childless not by choice people talking honestly about their lives.” This parody is brilliant–go read it.

Lastly, Inconceivable! has a moving post about the grief that comes after a decision and how so many other feelings about other things can get tied up with processing the end of family building.

The roundup to the Roundup: I’m a winner! Happy Valentine’s Day. 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 February 7 – 14) 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.