Author: Shovas

I started moving back to the small web in 2025 as part of whole-of-life shift in the way I interact with technology and the online world. For me, this mostly involves moving away from social media platforms and big, corporate tech companies. And that meant rediscovering alternatives to what I had started to become dependent on, that is, subscription services, mainly, such as YouTube, Spotify, X/Twitter, etc. My goal has been to recreate those in a more human-centric way on the small web. This will be a living post that will serve to document how I went about that.

For some years now, I have often listened to the Rob Inglis audiobook narrations of the Lord of the Rings. Concerning Hobbits, and the entire prologue to the Lord of the Rings, makes for particularly excellent bedtime listening. Out of this habit came a wish for more Middle-Earth short stories and these are the compilations of chapters that best fit that purpose, that is, a half an hour to an hour of good, calming storytelling.

I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts the web he is shown because he is expecting to wake up. Do you believe in fate, Neo?

These lists encompass true wonders of the web, sites that defy expectations, sites you wouldn’t expect to find providing the value that they do. And all of these websites are still running, so far, in 2025.