How to Degoogle Your Life

Pulling the plug on Google

I'm traveling this weekend, visiting family and supporting my wife, who is running the Miami Marathon. This is a repost from the spring of 2024.


There is a lot of talk out on the Internet about people trying to increase their online privacy. Folks are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of information harvested by big tech companies, and increasing uncertain about what those companies are doing with all that they know. Who are they selling it to, and what are they doing with it in turn? Google is at the heart of many people's lives, especially if they use an Android phone or a Chromebook. Many of the rest of us are still using Google as our default search engine. We are using Gmail and Google Drive and Google Docs and any of a dozen other tools and services owned by the company. If you've had enough and would like to try to reduce or eliminate Google from your life, you are going to need help. This article by crackerjack tech journalist, Justin Pot, is a good starting place.

How to Quit Google, According to a Privacy Expert

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The Phones of Normal People

Taking a picture with an iPhone

Note: I'm still traveling and short on time, so I'm sharing a post from back in May that touched a nerve with many people in the geekspace.


Now, I realize that there are some folks in the geek space who still make use of default apps. Robb Knight's project from the winter of 2023 taught us that. By and large, though, the things that people in tech related fields do with our phones, laptops, and tablets fall far, far outside what normies do with theirs. Even further from the norm is what the professional nerds do. Those folks who make their living from monetized blogs, podcast ads, subscriptions and other forms of content are so far removed from what your Mom does with her phone that they could be living on another planet. I saw many bloggers today venting a little over the vapors the content production machine types are having about the new iPads and the fact that those darn folks at Apple just won't listen to them.

I live at the intersection of normies and tech because I do IT support for a living. I have to talk to your Mom at work in the language she speaks about her computer and her phone. I know, trust me, I really know how much she hates changing her password and how much she really doesn't want to have to download and configure a two-factor authentication app. I know how frustrating it is to search for Microsoft Authenticator in Apple's App Store only to have the number one hit to be a $40 paid app and not the free product from the folks in Redmond. You know what's important to your Mom? That her icons don't move, that's what. Last year, Microsoft had an errant patch Tuesday that ended up removing the Office icons off the desktop of corporate computers.I spent a couple of days explaining to people that, no, we didn't "delete Word off your computer," and talking them through recreating the shortcut. That's a crisis. Not being able to use the Finder on an iPad is not a crisis.

Pete Brown said it well, "the vast majority of iPad owners are using the device to read Kindle books, play Candy Crush, and take bad photos." There are millions of us nerds out there using the best calendar and note-taking apps, but there are tens of millions of people perfectly happy with what Apple or Google gave them. Maybe they have downloaded a few apps (and probably never deleted them) to try out. They might even be pretty good at Instagram, but they are not us. They do not know what version of the operating system they are running on anything. They do not care. They hate updates because they interrupt stuff they'd rather be doing. They don't care about the new features being announced at WWDC because they do not want to learn how to do new things with their already too complicated tech. They are the baseline. We are the outliers.

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Christmas Tree Rd., Sampson County, NC I took this picture because it represents the kinds of things you can still see in the rural south. I’m recording - not proselytizing nor mocking.

<img src=“https://amerpie.lol/uploads/2025/day-one2025-02-01-at-07.34.56.jpeg" width=“600” height=“392” alt=“A horse stands beside a rustic, red barn with corrugated metal roof. Large white text reads: “JESUS SEEK AND FIND HIM FOR ETERNAL LIFE.” Surrounding are leafless trees and open fields.">

This is a female eclectus parrot. They look so different from the males that scientists who discovered them thought they were two different species. #birds

A female eclectus parrot in rainforest greenery

School memories, new lab day was always fun but a lot of work

Rows of iMacs stand idle on a long table, aligned in a bright room with a tiled floor and white brick walls.

The List

IMG_8454

I appreciate the people who read this blog. I'm grateful for your attention, your comments and for the great blogs so many of you maintain. I'm currently traveling and spending time with family I haven't seen in 10 years. Tonight's post is from April when I was just getting started. Straight from the heart.


Part of my daily routine is to record three things in my daily journal entry for which I'm grateful. I've been doing it for a long time. I try not to be too repetitive, so I'm always on the lookout for things to identify and add to my list. It helps to ask myself that question multiple times a day. I found a good parking spot? Boom! Grateful. My clothes fit particularly comfortably today? Boom! Grateful. A text from one of my grown kids, a tasty lunch at a familiar restaurant, a good report at the dentist - I'm always on the lookout.

I'm lucky in that I have everything I need even if I don't have everything I want. I learned how to tell the difference between those two things a while back and that skill serves me well. Life is by no means perfect, I weigh too much, some of the people I love the most live too far away to see them as much as I would like. I sometimes regret not getting further along the career path I chose than I did before I retired. All of those things are mitigated by other factors. I've lost weight before. With technology, I can stay in touch with my kids and grandkids fairly easily. I may not have retired as the CIO of a tech company, but I had a solid 8-5, Mon-Fri job that left me plenty of time to do the stuff that really brings me joy.

I battled alcohol for years, sometimes going long stretches without it, years even, only to fall back into bad habits and addiction. I'm forever going to be grateful that things finally clicked one day. I had a moment of clarity that allowed me to see what kind of future I was headed towards and to also see that I could avoid going there. I took my last drink on December 28th, 2008 and have been continuously sober ever since. Being sober isn't my identity. I'm prouder of things I've done than of the simple act of abstaining, but I'm definitely happy not to have that struggle any more.

I've been married since I was 18 - to four different people. Luckily my wife and I have been together a dozen years now and it keeps getting better. I don't suffer from the curse of loneliness or the stress of constant fighting. I didn't go to college. I was a two-time teenage parent, and the workforce was always the place for me. I found the IT field around the age of 30 after having been in the military, working construction and in manufacturing and a stint as a prison guard. Once I got into computers I moved through a couple of different industries before landing in educational technology, the area I made a career. Even post-retirement, I missed it enough to take a low stress job at a local university solving problems for end users.

My wife and I have enough dough that we don't have to worry about the things that used to be terrifying when I was younger: an unexpected car repair bill, medical expenses, the death of a major appliance. We don't have helicopter money but don't have to pinch pennies either. We can afford to help out the kids when they need it. It feels good. I'm not going to lie. At the end of most days, I go to bed pretty happy. I have enough in my life to keep me busy. I still love technology as much as I did when I bought my first computer (on a Sears card in 1993). I have repaired the damage my bad habits caused in my life. I'm fortunate and I'm grateful and I'm glad to make that list every single day.

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AppAddict Free App List #3

This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.

A Curated Collection of Free Apps

Another Curated Collection of Free Software

Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day

Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease


Free Apps \#3

Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher

MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free

Royal TSX for Remote Management

Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade

SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers

Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone

Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids

Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused

Media Tracker for Mac and iOS

Free Security Apps for Mac

MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?

Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free

Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure

Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder

OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator

Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos

Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More

Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips

FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt

Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier

Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features

Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging

DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity

Integrity - Free Link Checker

Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard

RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility

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AppAddict Free App List #3

This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.

A Curated Collection of Free Apps

Another Curated Collection of Free Software

Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day

Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease


Free Apps \#3

Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher

MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free

Royal TSX for Remote Management

Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade

SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers

Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone

Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids

Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused

Media Tracker for Mac and iOS

Free Security Apps for Mac

MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?

Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free

Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure

Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder

OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator

Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos

Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More

Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips

FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt

Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier

Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features

Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging

DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity

Integrity - Free Link Checker

Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard

RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility

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Watching the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean - in North Carolina. Eat your heart out California.

A person walks along a sandy beach during sunset, with the sun near the horizon casting orange and pink hues over the calm ocean.

From the Cรดte dโ€™Azur, itโ€™s #WindowFriday

A stone planter holds vibrant yellow and white flowers against a rustic orange wall with blue wooden shutters. A small sign reads "rue de la Fontaine" nearby.

Looking for Inspiration? Look to the People!

Stonewall Uprising

The Stonewall Uprising

Almost all the rights and privileges we enjoy in our daily lives happened because common people fought for them. I'm a veteran, and I am not being disrespectful when I say that the real fight for freedom happened at home between the people and the reluctant ruling class. The fight for freedom isn't something that only happens on the battlefield. Take some time and read about a few struggles. Get inspired. The time is coming when more of us will be called on to stand up against the fascists and corporations seeking to remake America into some throwback model of ugliness.

Child Labor

What Ended Child Labor in the US - Labor Rights History

Child labor in the United States - Wikipedia

Womens' Right to Vote

Suffrage Timeline

How Did Women Win the 19th Amendment? A Piecemeal Path to Women's Voting Rights โ€” Google Arts & Culture

40-Hour Work Week, Workers' Compensation, Right to Organize

The history & evolution of the 40-hour work week | Culture Amp

A Brief History of Workers' Compensation - PMC

Labor Movement โ€‘ America, Reform & Timeline | HISTORY

Anti-Worker Violence

Ludlow Massacre

The Everett Massacre

Thibodaux Massacre

Bogalusa Labor Massacre, Attack on Interracial Solidarity

Civil Rights

Civil Rights Martyrs

Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights | JFK Library

Freedom Summer

The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change

Stonewall and Beyond

How the Stonewall uprising ignited the pride movement

The First Pride Was a Riot: The Origins of Pride Month

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Mountains I Have Loved

silent valley-2 Silent Valley Reservoir, County Down, Northern Ireland

I was sitting in a hostel in Maine with multiple other hikers. I asked this good old boy from Tennessee if he'd taken the side trail the day before to see the spectacular overlook from Spaulding Mountain. He looked at me confused and said, "I wouldn't take a side trail to watch a dragon fight a unicorn." He had one thing on his mind, obviously. He was ready to reach Mt. Katahdin and finish the Appalachian Trail.

Although there are a seeming countless number of beautiful views along what is, after all, called a national scenic trail, most of the journey is spent in what hikers call the green tunnel. You see nothing but trees, rocks and a never-ending footpath. In many places, towering rhododendrons form a literal tunnel, blocking out the sky and any view up or down the mountain you're hiking on.

I'm from the south and I love the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but we can't hold a candle to the beauty one experiences in northern New England. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are breathtaking over and over. Going above the tree line in the White Mountains is unforgettable. The hundreds of lakes scattered through the dense woods of southern Maine allow you to snap photos every couple of miles worthy of being made into post cards.

I'm partial to mountains when it comes to looking for landscapes to appreciate. One of the most beautiful days of my life was spent driving the high road to Taos, New Mexico from Santa Fe. There is little to no humidity, unlike what we have in the eastern mountains. So there is no haze. The sky is crystal clear and a clear blue that abruptly changes to many shades of green as your eye moves down to the peaks of the mountains. The mountains are taller than what I'm used to. After all, it is ski country. You can return to Santa Fe along the low road which skirts the Rio Grande in high walled canyons.

Fans of America's mountains should visit Colorado Springs. From anywhere in town, you can see Pikes Peak. A train ride to the top is only a few doors and is something to put on your bucket list. Also in there are, the Garden of the Gods provides ample opportunities to capture photographs of the landscape and of the big horned sheep who live there.

For a different kind of beauty, the Mourne Mountains, located in County Down in Northern Ireland are a mostly treeless expanse of grasslands divided by stone fences and few man-made structures. There are a couple high mountain reservoirs that catch the water they need down in Belfast. The few people who do live there are friendly. If you're lucky, you can find a tea shop where you can get a cuppa with a couple of biscuits to sip while you sit beside a peat fire and just take in the wonderful Irishness of it all.

My bucket list includes seeing the Alps in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Recently, as Internet friend told me that there is a trans-alpine railroad journey from east to west on the South Island of New Zealand that provides some of the best views to be seen on planet Earth, and now I want to go there too. I have no great desire to see Kilimanjaro or the Himalayas, even though the beauty of those places in undeniable. I think the altitudes would do me in.

What about you? What mountains have you loved?

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White Top Mountain in southwest Virginia was the site of a huge traditional music festival for a few years towards the end of the Great Depression. Located in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, it remains undeveloped. It’s bisected by the Appalachian Trail and a good spot to see black bears.

Tall evergreen trees stand on a grassy hillside under a partly cloudy sky, overlooking distant mountains and valleys, creating a serene natural landscape.

RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility

RsyncUI Interface
RsyncUI Interface

RsyncUI is the successor to Rsync OS X. It is a graphical user interface for the powerful command line utility, rsync, a file synchronization utility that has its roots in the Linux world. RsyncUI is an Apple native app, 100% written in Swift. All of the actual work is still done by rsync, buy you can skip much of the learning curve involved in using the CLI.

Pure rysnc can sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make, and allow you to specify files that should be excluded in a transfer. Rsync is great for complex file syncs and for transferring a large number of files. When used with cron, rsync can also make automatic backups.

Features

  • Sync to local attached storage
  • Sync to computers on the LAN or the Internet
  • Passwordless login by SSH key
  • Snapshot creation
  • Profiles to organize tasks
  • Quick tasks for repetitive file operations
  • Data restoration from remote servers

How to get RsyncUI

RsyncUI can be installed via Homebrew or download from GitHub:

brew install --cask rsyncui

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RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility

RsyncUI Interface
RsyncUI Interface

RsyncUI is the successor to Rsync OS X. It is a graphical user interface for the powerful command line utility, rsync, a file synchronization utility that has its roots in the Linux world. RsyncUI is an Apple native app, 100% written in Swift. All of the actual work is still done by rsync, buy you can skip much of the learning curve involved in using the CLI.

Pure rysnc can sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make, and allow you to specify files that should be excluded in a transfer. Rsync is great for complex file syncs and for transferring a large number of files. When used with cron, rsync can also make automatic backups.

Features

  • Sync to local attached storage
  • Sync to computers on the LAN or the Internet
  • Passwordless login by SSH key
  • Snapshot creation
  • Profiles to organize tasks
  • Quick tasks for repetitive file operations
  • Data restoration from remote servers

How to get RsyncUI

RsyncUI can be installed via Homebrew or download from GitHub:

brew install --cask rsyncui

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A cold morning on the Uwharrie Trail. We were hiking along and heard the unmistakable sound of bagpipes echoing through the woods. Cresting a hill, we saw the piper, a considerable distance off the trail, standing on a small rise just playing away. So odd and memorable.

Trail covered with fallen leaves and patches of snow, winding through a forest of bare trees at sunrise, with a yellow trail marker on a nearby tree trunk.

Thoughts on the Quantified Self

Chalkboard

I enjoy collecting information about the things I do and looking back over it, just as a form of journaling. Since tech is my jam, I try to automate collecting as much information as I can. There isn't a real point to it. I'm not trying to discover anything or achieve some kind of life hack. Currently, I'm not tracking any sort of health data, even though I've got an Apple Watch. It can collect information on heart rate and sleep quality/quantity, both of which I've been interested in before. I even have a digital scale and a blood pressure monitor, both with Wi-Fi to feed information into Apple's health app.

The type of information I'm interested in these days has more to do with culture and creativity. I use web services that track my television and music consumption automatically. I record the books I read into Goodreads because that information can be exported into other formats. I use a location tracking app that doesn't send the information anywhere other than to my encrypted iCloud account. I also use an app to bookmark notable places I've been, like restaurants, parks, coffee shops and hotels. That app stored its data in a cloud account that only I have access to.

When I was training for long-distance cycling, data collection had a different flavor because I had numerical goals: trying to hit 10,000 miles and get 30 or more rides of 100 miles completed in a calendar year. My Garmin bike computer recorded all of that, along with speed data plus my heart rate and pedaling cadence. Some people even have power meters on their bikes to determine the wattage they generate on rides. I didn't use Strava, but I did use the Garmin website to store my information.

Sushi for two from one of our favorite date night locations

A rectangular plate holds assorted sushi and rolls, including nigiri and maki with various fillings, like tuna and eel, accompanied by wasabi and ginger. Dining table setup nearby.

Little Luxuries

taco_trailer-resized

I remember vividly when I was finally able to go grocery shopping without having to constantly calculate the cumulative cost of the items in my basket. On more than one occasion I had to reluctantly tell the cashier that I'd decided not to get an item or two when my math was bad, and I ended up short while standing at the register. I remember, too, the inability to afford a full tank of gas in the beaters I drove in my early adulthood. I rarely had more than $10 at a time when to buy fuel. When the day came that I could fill up the tank whenever I needed to, I felt like I'd reached a new level in the game of life.

One of the best mental health practices anyone can adopt is what 12-steppers call an attitude of gratitude. I've been makinga three-bullet list in my journal for well over a decade. Many days I record nothing but the little luxuries life offers. I'd rather have a whole basket of the little things than a big, fancy car.

I lived in a 100-year-old farm house in high school. For air conditioning, we had a couple of window units in the house, but none of them reached my bedroom. Our heat was a wood stove. My first adult jobs were mostly of the outdoor type. When I finally scored employment with the state, it was at a prison constructed decades ago. There was no AC, just giant floor fans to blow the hot air around. Subsequently, I moved to a giant Westinghouse factory with a massive machine shop, high ceilings and shipping bay doors open to the summer weather. I'd already turned 30 before I finally made my way into the white-collar world where I could work at a desk, sitting down in air conditioning.

We didn't eat out much when I was a kid. I'd use my money from whatever little hustles I had going on to occasionally treat myself to some fast food. We lived for a while in Jacksonville, NC and there was a place on the outskirts of town selling three hot dogs for a dollar. I loved that place! To this day, I get more excited than I probably should by the prospect of restaurant food, I don't care how mundane. I'm super happy if I get to go to a taco trailer, and on top of the world if we go to a real sit-down Mexican place with chips and salsa. We could conceivable afford to eat out for every meal, and it's only Wonder Woman's sensibilities that keep from indulging in that.

I've only slept a new mattress a couple of times in my life. One of those times was just a few years ago when we got one of those foam jobs that comes in a box and expands when you take it out. After relying on cheap hand-me-downs, actually having a quality place to sleep was a luxury I didn't know I needed. It's a rare night when I don't feel incredibly lucky climbing beneath the sheets. My super-power is being able to sleep anywhere at any time under just about any conditions. I can now save that skill for when I really require it.

There are plenty of other things that make me feel a little like a Rockefeller:

  • Never, ever going on a road trip without a stop by the Circle K for soda and a snack
  • That first trip to a bathroom with porcelain after spending days upon days on a hiking trip
  • Owning and using fleece lined slippers
  • Being able to get the fastest Internet you can get to a residential building
  • Car repairs that don't go on a credit card
  • Rarely saying no to our favorite charities
  • Every pair of Levis blue jeans I've ever owned

I'm not a perfect gratitude machine by any means. I despise flying. I am almost always glad to be traveling somewhere, but the miraculous act of hurtling across the country miles up in the sky leaves me singularly unimpressed and grouchy. I also thought email was cool for a while until I realized it was a way other people could add items to my to-do list. Then I didn't like it as much. Still, though, there is enough of that poor kid left in me that any time I buy something and I don't feel forced into getting the cheapest model of whatever it is, I'm amazed on the inside. I feel like I've arrived.

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Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard

Raycast Quicklinks
Raycast Quicklinks

There are various Internet search tools available for Macs, but if you are a Raycast user, you can search just about any website without having to install an extension if you take the time to set up Quicklinks. Raycast is a Mac automation tool that extends the power of Spotlight and can replace other utilities, like clipboard managers, emoji pickers and window managers. (See use cases) Raycast offers a few preconfigured site searches in its own library, but you can add your own by adapting the search URL and using a dynamic placeholder.

To configure Quicklinks, open Raycast with your usual shortcut and then press โŒ˜+, to bring up the Raycast preferences window. Click Extensions > Quicklinks, and you'll be presented with the interface you need. There is also a Raycast command Create Quicklink. You can get detailed instructions here.

Here are the Quicklinks I use

Google w/out AI - [www.google.com/search](https://www.google.com/search?q=){Query}&udm=14
All Music - [www.allmusic.com/search/al...](http://www.allmusic.com/search/all/*){Query}
Amazon - [www.amazon.com/s](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=){SEARCH}&sprefix=
Bluesky - [bsky.app/search](https://bsky.app/search?q=){Query}
DDG - [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=){Query}
Gmail - [mail.google.com/mail/](https://mail.google.com/mail/)\#search/{query}
Macupdater - [macupdater.net/app_updat...](https://macupdater.net/app_updates/search.html?q=){Query}
HBO/Max - [play.max.com/search/re...](https://play.max.com/search/result?q=l){Query}
Reddit - reddit.com/search?q={Query}
Wayback Machine - [web.archive.org/web/*/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/){query}
[en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=){argument name="Article"}
YouTube - [www.youtube.com/results](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=){Query}


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