CC 3.0 BY SA Mennowijnen (source)

Meeting the Worldbuilders — Serban Tanasa

bilbo pingouin
Published in
6 min readMay 28, 2016

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This is one out of a series here on Universe Factory, where we look at the people behind the Worldbuilding. We present a number of short interviews with people who have been using our site to try and get some insight into who they are and how it is being used. Today, we receive Serban Tanasa (Serban Tanasa)

Hi, and thanks for agreeing to that interview.

Hi, thank you for taking the time!

As you are one of our elected moderators, you already took part in the group interview already presented here. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to have more specific interview. You previously mentioned that you changed to the private sector in DC coming from methods-oriented political scientist. Is that still valid? Could you tell us more specifically what you do in the private world?

Sure, bilbo_pingouin. I came to the United States for school a long time ago, and stayed in the academia, because I loved having the freedom to think about interesting topics.

However, as an actual career, I found academia a little too cozy for my taste. I liked the fast pace of the private sector better. I worked with the World Bank in DC for a while, and then finally migrated all the way into business intelligence.

As to what I do now, imagine clusters of virtual machines on the Cloud, churning through mounds of data, while I sit on top of it all on a terminal with strange characters streaming on the screen, cackling madly.

Are you imagining it? Well, It's nothing like that. I'm mostly sitting in meetings and coordinating teams of younger people, some not in the US, who actually do the work.

Like many of our members, I believe you first joined the stack exchange network through StackOverflow. Is that correct?

Indeed. I don't answer much on StackOverflow proper, although I have a reputation there in the thousands as well. I'm mostly in #R, #python, #redshift #pentaho and #SQL there.

The Hot Network Questions glittered brazenly on the side-bar.

I think it was a question about the cost of a Moon colony that lured me over to Worldbuilding.

Never looked back. That was in Dec 2014, so I suppose I've been with WB since almost the beginning.

We will come back to Worldbuilding in a moment. Your network profile shows only active participation in StackOverflow, Worldbuilding and Physics. But you mentioned previously a certain preference for live encounters, like programming-related meetups in your area. Are those meetings the reason why you are not so active on other sites, or is more the result of a strong dedication?

Good question. I'm active in astronomy, data-science and social meetups in the greater DC area, but honestly, it's mostly a question of time.

I'm often at work for many hours a day, and most is with proprietary enterprise-grade commercial tools, not the kind that you'd generally find discussed on SO. I have a semi-enforced rule against being on the internet at home. I mostly jump on the Stack Exchange Network in the 15 minutes between meetings or such.

It's a good way to do something else for a bit.

You mentioned that you studied political science and even worked in the academics for a while. Yet, I noticed that you are not active on Politics.SE. How come?

I'm not active in Politics.SE because of my political science background. 10 years of studying political organization and game theory engendered a certain ... perhaps some people would call it cynicism, but I think of it as hard-eyed view of political realities.

I live in the US, which is in the midst of a very exciting race. Most of my friends and acquaintances are Democrats. As soon as I voice an opinion, I'm accused of being a wild-eyed libertarian.

Interestingly, among libertarians and Republicans, I seem to come across as a Pinko Communist.

I see myself as an Uncompromising, Dogmatic Centrist.

So why jump in the mudfest, really?

DC is a political enough place. I can get all my political debates in person.

Ah ah ah. So in essence both sides were correct! But let's change the topic. You mentioned that you are both generally curious and also writing stories yourself. Do you have any plan to jump on a professional train in the writing world? If only for a station?

Haha, I don't think so. I've done the starving graduate student act, no real desire to try the starving writer routine.

But you never know!

I did publish some stories in Romanian when I was young. But have not tried to do so in the US.

There's so much good work coming out, I don't think my contribution would add that much on the margin there.

In which form were those publications? Books? Magazines? Internet?

Haha, the internet barely existed in Romania back then, this was before Bucharest became one of the highest speed broadband cities. It was in magazines. And lots in "Samizdat" form, as manuscripts or printouts circulated among my friends.

Did not have time for it in College, in the US.

Science, reality and space and society make up for more than half of your posts. Even if you have popular magic questions and answers, more SF than Fantasy?

There's no such thing as fantasy, properly defined, in my view. :) Just badly explained SF.

Well, I'm joking, mostly.

But I don't enjoy settings that are utterly impossible and logically contradictory as much.

Whenever I personally write fantasy, I make sure to leave an opening for hard-science to come in.

The ghosts might be (although may not specifically say so in the text) holographic projections from uploaded minds.

So yes, I'm a Hard-SF person.

Could you share some details about a world you are building or a story you are writing?

Well, I've sprinkled lots of hints throughout my questions. Readers could browse through my Alice or Rynn question series, for instance, and get a few morsels.

It's a post-singularity world, where nothing really is as it seems. I seem to have almost exclusively female lead characters, perhaps because I don't want them getting an adrenal response and instinctively trying to solve their problems through force.

Perhaps some of the more obscure ones, related to AI and minds controlling multiple bodies, suggest where I'm currently taking it.

I'm interested in exploring a post-human future. It's really hard though: imagine staring through a dark glass at something with ultra-bright features. It's hard to make out any contrasts, even more so to make then understandable to a general audience.

If I ever feel the urge to do so, I may publish it on my website.

I'd be interested to read it. If you want some chance for smaller publication, our blog is there! Among your own, what are your favourite question and answer?

Well, there is the Adaptive Vampire answer, mostly because I can be perfectly honest and nobody will ever believe it, haha.

Among my own questions, it would have to be the Rynn series Most Subtle Magic.

It was charming. And had great responses, especially the one I chose as canon.

Now, looking back at the previous interview. You were freshly elected for your first moderator position within the Stack Exchange Network. How were the last two months for you?

Busy. Being a moderator is not as much fun as one might imagine. I mean it's nice to see all the data streams about usage and such. But the day-to-day, it's more like a chore: see flag, respond to flag, clean up comments, guide new user, close uber-vague question, destroy spambot...

It's also actually made me less likely to vote on closing/opening, since I can't vote without the modhammer slamming down as I do.

But thankfully, ours is a remarkably nice and polite community, and we have an active core of several hundred high-rep participants that do a LOT of the moderation duties themselves.

I think it is time to end that interview. Is there anything you'd like to add?

I would like to thank the Worldbuilding community for trusting me with moderation powers and assure them that it was a terrible, terrible mistake, and that it is extremely surprising to me that, after 2 months of my moderation, there still is no green glowing crater in the physical location of our Worldbuilding servers yet.

Yes, you did promise some fireworks last time... I'm still to see them... In any case, I want to thank you again for taking some time for that interview.

Thanks for your time bilbo_pingouin, this was a lot of fun.

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