The causes of imperial expansion are a hotly debated topic. Is it the search for wealth, resources, power, influence, or security? All of these factors play a role, along with many others. Imperial competition drives empires to expand. Ideology, whether political or religious, can have the same effect. Here, I propose a different explanation: boredom.

Although the thesis I propose has universal application, it seems best to avoid engaging in a general—and possibly barren—historiographical discussion. I will thus focus on a concrete empire: mine. My own online empire. I know it’s a niche subject, and some people might argue that it’s not much of an empire at all. Honestly, what I hear is jealousy talking. Nevertheless, I must admit that my empire’s scope is still somewhat limited. It is growing, vigorously expanding, but at the time of writing, it remains limited. Indeed, perhaps it is its reduced size that allows us to observe, in its most distilled form, the principle that empires find their genesis in boredom.

Since I am writing for the wide and ignorant public, I might have to start with some context. What empire are we talking about? Evidently, mine. The one that appeared in the annals of history as recently as last month. Let us remind ourselves of the timeline.

It all started because I had been degoogling. By the summer, I had relocated my email, my cloud storage, and such things, but I still had a Google Site. This was nagging me, and at some point, I decided to see what I could do about it—the first time that boredom plays a key role in this story.

The plan, following Florent’s advice, was to relocate my website to GitHub. Well, I have always been a devoted European, but Trump has made me even more so. Searching for European alternatives to GitHub, I found GitLab. Both names have six letters and start with “Git”: deal.

Now, basing my webpage on GitLab meant that I had to write it in HTML. Many years ago, I had been able to modify a basic HTML file, but all of that was long forgotten. It felt daunting. Some people might suggest that the way out of such situations is to show courage, stiffen the upper lip, or bite the bullet. They are wrong. Boredom is the answer. Indeed, about a month ago, during one of the random two-week holiday periods here in France—times when you’re at home and don’t know what to do, the perfect breeding ground for boredom—during such a time, I decided to give it a try.

Anyway, I discovered pretty quickly that with Le Chat—another European alternative—it was pretty easy. I soon had a functional site on my computer. It was time to upload it to GitLab—something that was trivial with Le Chat but would have been impossible otherwise. It worked, and the site went public. Now, the address that GitLab associated with the page was something like https://my-webpage-4dfc8f.gitlab.io/, and even Le Chat didn’t know how to change it—short of paying. Besides being cheap, I am vain. I wanted something slightly nicer, with my name and such.

I didn’t know what to do about this, but then boredom—again—led me to check out how hard it would be to get a domain. It was soon clear that it was easy. I checked a few names, and about five minutes after seeing that perlora.eu was available, I rented it for the sum of something like 8 EUR a year. Now I could make my GitLab page appear as I wanted. I went for juan.perlora.eu. By the way, the cloud provider of perlora.eu is OVH, yet another European alternative. Besides being bored and boring, I am nothing if not obsessive.

I now owned my little kingdom, perlora.eu, and pride overwhelmed me. But if I was honest, it wasn’t worthy of its name. Perlora called for greater things than vegetating as a single-link domain. But I didn’t know what to do. And I had other things to do, like watching soccer or grading. And, like momentum, one needs to let boredom build up. Eventually, it did, and I decided to look into the HTML challenge of getting a site for a blog running. This was the beginning of Juan’s Rants, what, to everybody’s surprise you are reading.

Actually, I am really enjoying writing a blog. It is something that suits me perfectly: just hold a monologue, not caring whether anybody else cares. Walking to the university takes about 50 minutes, and these are 50 minutes during which I have to amuse myself by thinking about something. By the time I arrive at the university, I could write three posts.

I’m also enjoying the Playmobil aspect of it all. Real firemen have helmets, and so do the Playmobil ones. Real blogs have a subscribe option, and so does mine. And categories, and since today, a search function. There is no comment capability because I don’t want ads displayed on the site, but also because the absolute lack of comments would be too obvious proof that nobody reads it. You want the Playmobil lions to look real, but not too real.

Building the site for the blog was pretty easy. I just used a template, and that was it. But this meant that I didn’t really understand how to customize it. This was kind of nagging me. And I still felt that I was letting such a grandiose name like Perlora down by having the domain languish there with only two links: my webpage and my blog. So, I asked Le Chat what else I could possibly put there. Although some might say that I was discussing with Le Chat my innermost aspirations—being little better than those who get from it and its cousins advice on how to run their relationships—asking for ideas on how to expand empires does not count. Anyway, besides a bunch of things that I didn’t understand, Le Chat suggested a cooking blog. What could be lamer than a cooking blog? And what moron would want a blog and a cooking blog? Perlora.eu’s fate was clear: it would remain for all foreseeable future, probably forever, as a pitiful two-link domain…

With my empire expanding, I began to wonder: what else could I add to perlora.eu? Boredom, once again, provided the answer. Actually, it was a gradual historical process led by boredom. First, it brought me to the thought that I could actually build the HTML site for a cooking blog, just for the challenge of doing it, without putting it online. I did it. Another Playmobil fire station was built. With helmets and all. Including a fake recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara. However, once it was built, there was the urge to give it some use—a clear example of how investment, be it in armaments or in a cooking blog, creates its own momentum and leads to the product finally being used. But I still didn’t want a cooking blog. Then, in all modesty, I had a spark of genius, something altogether pretty rare around here. Indeed, it occurred to me that actually, instead of a cooking blog, it could be a recipe repository. That idea, akin to the invention of the wheel, the stirrup, or the discovery of iron, changed history.

I am sure I don’t need to explain that a recipe repository is just a collection of recipes. A cynic would say that this is the same as a cooking blog, but without all the artsy and pretty things that make cooking blogs attractive. We are no cynics here. And in any case, the concept of a recipe repository solved the two fundamental problems of a cooking blog: that I would end up with two blogs, and that I would have to work a lot to make it decent—pretty and artsy were always out of the question.

Also, a recipe repository could be useful for me. I mean, I cook often and spend lots of time trying to find again recipes I once found. And recipes are often written in a way that doesn’t fit what I need when I am in the kitchen: you have to read them all before you start cooking, and that’s anathema. So, a recipe repository it was.

It was thought of as a recipe repository for my own use, but once it was up and running, it was inevitable that a link to it would be put on perlora.eu. This hasn’t happened yet, but it will be done soon. Knowing how much patience I have, and how much I care about details, it will probably happen within the next two minutes. Anyway, I present you here:

The Shoddy Vegetarian.

So far, there are very few recipes, but I guess that I will continue obsessing about it for the next couple of months, so there will be a bunch of them. Pictures are shit. Typos galore. But remember: it is not a cooking blog, it is a “recipe repository”! Do you see the beauty of the concept?

Anyway, because if one builds the Playmobil fire station, one wants it to be “real,” I also made an app. Yes, an app. A real app. Android Studio and such. It works on my phone. I don’t know about other phones because the only person I tried to get to install the app made it very clear that every byte of memory on their phone is too valuable for that nonsense. It seems that the app will remain even more niche than all the rest. Although, now that I think about it, maybe I can cheat the being into installing it on her tablet.

Anyway, I am sure that I have made my case, proving that actually, it is boredom that leads to imperial expansion. And yes, I know that to reach the size of tech giants like Google or Microsoft, perlora.eu still has a way to go. But remember, at some point even Rome occupied just seven hills, it was not built in a day. And see how large Rome became! A lot of boredom was involved. Blood, slaves, military genius, but mostly boredom. Also, while I agree that perlora.eu might, in its current state, be described as a small online empire, a mini online empire, or even a micro online empire, don’t forget that in the offline world there are states like Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Faroe Islands, France, or the Vatican…

Moral of the story: if you ever find yourself bored, remember that you might just be on the verge of building an empire. Or at least a recipe repository.