Anton Cebalo
As seen in:
Novum Newsletter,
Substack,
Aeon,
The Brooklyn Rail,
3 Quarks Daily,
Noema Magazine,
Palladium Magazine,
QOSHE
Articles by Anton Cebalo
What Makes a City (A Short Trip to Venice)
I recently came back from a trip through a few cities along the Adriatic Sea after visiting my extended family. My reason for traveling was mostly to alleviate my own stuckness, and what better way than by movement with no specific plans in particular. My short journey started in Split, Croatia, continuing on the Adriatic Highway constructed during the time of Yugoslavia.
The Allure of Everything Kitsch
Kitsch has become so broad a category as to be often meaningless. Kitschy art and products of the past can easily be repackaged as trendy these days, and sincerity is blurred entirely. I had always considered kitschiness to be an aesthetic quality, a mass-produced knockoff of something genuine. Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being expands on kitsch though, as something necessary for politics and general social organization. His definition is the most compelling I've found.
Talking Yourself into a Catastrophe
It goes without saying that one can talk oneself into problems. Your own stories become pathological like a slow drip eroding your senses. And you may find yourself circling a narrative so many times over that language starts to fail. What's left then is just feeling. Exhaustion with it all gives way to resentment and anxiety as many morbid symptoms appear.
Vienna’s cafés inspired poets. Belgrade’s bred dissent
One day at Café Central in Vienna in 1894, Peter Altenberg was reading a story in the newspaper about the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl. He decided to write a short poem in her honour. Then, by mere chance, some of the great names of the Viennese literary world entered the café: Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Felix Salten, Richard Beer-Hofmann and Hermann Bahr.
Loitering towards war - Anton Cebalo
Loitering towards war - Anton Cebalo
The Nonsense World of Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms was a strange man. Born in 1905 in St. Petersburg, he was the son of Ivan Yuvachev, who was persecuted for his involvement with the revolutionary group People's Will (Наро́дная во́ля).
The Mind of Gavrilo Princip
In the past few months, I have been reading about the personalities present in Young Bosnia for a forthcoming essay. The group was not formalized by any means, made up of decentralized cells of 3-5 people, and a scattered array of political influences. But in Gavrilo Princip-its most famous member and who would ultimately kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand-you see a distillation of the temperament that made them.
A Lament for the Earth (from an Unknown Poet)
In the first century AD, a passionate didactic poem was written in Latin and later bundled with Virgil's work. However, the style is so drastically different from his that the author's real name is likely permanently lost. is a poem that revolves around explaining how Mount Etna ("Aetna" in Latin) on the island of Sicily erupts. Whoever wrote it must have made an altar in his mind devoted this volcano which was the most active in the region then.
Turbo-Culture
A short essay on the mad genre of Serbian turbo-folk—and how culture today also seems to be going “turbo.” Maybe someday I’ll write a long, in-depth history of how the Balkans fell under its spell amid war because it is unlike anything else. Turbo-folk star Ceca and career criminal Arkan in World War I attire (1995) Most people reading this have probably never heard of turbo-folk.
The New Millennium - 3 Quarks Daily
The film The Matrix famously froze its simulation in the year 1999. It was chosen as the alleged peak of human civilization. What unknowns might the new millennium bring? Many were understandably anxious. It was a psychologically-heavy turning point. But celebrations abounded. ABC News ran a special program that covered the new millennium festivities around the world. A global consortium was formed to commemorate the occasion.
Welcome to the Technocracy
Anton Cebalo is a writer — you can follow his work at novum. Founded in 2021, Do Not Research is a reader-supported publication. Each week, we highlight the work of a writer, artist, filmmaker, poster or creative. You can help to support this project: Between 1921 and 1932, a strange man became a familiar face in Greenwich Village, New York City. Howard Scott lectured all who would listen on his vision for an anti-democratic state led by technicians and engineers.
The First Eco-Horror Film
Bibiheybat is a settlement on the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan. Located along the Caspian Sea, the region became the crown jewel of Imperial Russia for its resources. Modern oil production as we know it today began in this tiny town. In 1846, the Russians began drilling here. It was the first time an oil well was drilled mechanically instead of dug by hand. By the late 1800s, large oil fields were discovered offshore. Baku by then was producing over half of the world's demand.
The World of Dreampolitik
Let's talk about politics and fantasies A painting like a dream. The Ball (1899) by Félix Vallotton German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously said that “politics is the art of the possible.” He called it realpolitik. But what if politics is instead the art of the impossible? Now we’re stepping into the realm of dreampolitik. Dreampolitik was first coined by media theorist Stephen Duncombe. He used this idea positively to argue that effective politics should be about dreams.
The Internet Was Imagined Before World War I
Writer Joseph Roth noted that the period after World War I thrived on "the ability to forget quickly and emphatically." This was just as true for people. People who had great, popular dreams about the future before the war were thrown into obscurity afterward. One such person was author and lawyer Paul Otlet. Otlet was definitely an idealist. In 1910, him and lawyer Henri La Fontaine sought to create a "city of knowledge" which they called Mendaneum.
Technocracy 2.0 | The Brooklyn Rail
In September 2025, President Trump held a dinner with over two dozen leaders from Silicon Valley. Easily one of the wealthiest gatherings ever held in the White House, the guest list included tech CEOs, venture capitalists, and administration officials. The topic of the dinner was investment and state alignment, as every individual present jockeyed for Trump’s approval. Government contracts and less regulatory oversight were the prizes for those companies which promised the most funds.
First Contact with America
In 1941, Henry R. Luce famously declared it to be “The American Century” in LIFE magazine It’s become less and less common to experience real and genuine differences these days. Some 50 years ago, an average person might have traveled just a short distance from the Soviet bloc to the West and been completely shocked. But nowadays, globalization means there is less and less left to truly surprise.
A New Anti-Political Fervor
Credits Anton Cebalo is a writer and historian. He publishes “novum” on Substack, where he writes about culture, politics and history. It’s said that we live in a crisis of democracy, but it would be better stated that we live in a crisis of politics. Throughout the world, and especially in the West, an anti-political mood has taken hold. Faith in several key national institutions is at an all-time low in the U.S. To many voters, political outsiders are more compelling than experienced politicians.
2025 Recap
A personal post to close out the year — I hope 2025 has been good to everyone. For me, it has been clarifying although difficult, and it’s come at the expense of my output. The first half of this year was a wash. Still, this blog now has over 3,200 (!!) subscribers and I’m very appreciative of that. I promised myself 2026 will be much different. The plan is writing, writing, and more writing. And I’ll be making some changes to get there.
Within the Context of No Context, Revisited
detail from Heat 76 by Poppy Faun (2022) In November 1980, TheNew Yorker put out one of the longest and strangest essays it ever published. “Within the Context of No Context” took up practically the entire issue with its dense criticism of what television had done to America and the world. The author George W. S. Trow made sure to keep it weird, stylizing each section to be read as if you were taking a dopamine hit of a drug. WONDER… HISTORY... PSUEDO-INTIMACY...
Who Are Today’s Nihilists?
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Living with Too Many Stories
It’s no surprise that we’re defined by the stories we tell ourselves. Or to put it differently, the limits of our language are also the limits of our world. Yet, the internet has complicated storytelling. What used to be a monoculture has split up into many little niches and subgroups. It’s led to what literary critic Peter Brooks has called “the hyperinflation of the story.” According to Brooks, everything is taken hostage by stories nowadays more than ever.
Nothing Left Inside
When I was in 1st grade, there was a sentence written on the classroom wall: “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” For the longest time, I thought this was just a generic quote. To my surprise, it’s actually by Norman Vincent Peale. A Protestant clergyman, Peale became famous for selling positive thinking and relentless self-confidence. Known as “God’s salesman,” he spread his message through evangelical Christianity.
The Two Media Tactics of the 2020s
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how online life in the 2010s feels like a distant, foreign world. The smallest of differences in the discourse were taken so seriously then. Grievances and outrage were commonly aired in clickbait thinkpieces in Salon and other publications. Small accounts cancelled the problematic and popular, and found quick publicity from it. Around this time, the influencer economy was also starting to boom.
Welcome to the Technocracy
Between 1921 and 1932, a strange man became a familiar face in Greenwich Village, New York City. Howard Scott lectured all who would listen on his vision for an anti-democratic state led by technicians and engineers. Businesspeople and politicians would be replaced, and a new society of abundance would be possible through science.
On Weird America
I recently watched an episode of an old TV show with my parents that used to premiere in Yugoslavia. Called Caravan, the series ran from 1963 to 1983 and took audiences to little-known parts of the country. The host, Milan Kovačević, spoke in a dry and matter-of-fact tone. With each episode, he introduced parts of Yugoslavia to its own citizens, and implied it was all part of a collective bounty to be enjoyed. Yugoslavia obviously no longer exists.
The New Vertigo Years
Waiting for the Metro (1910) by André Devambez If you had to pick a period that most closely resembles how we experience life today, the start of the 20th century might not be the obvious answer. Life over a century ago seems like an altogether different world. Yet, it was also the beginning of what we’d today recognize as modernity. A deep anxiety pervaded the social climate, especially in Western Europe, as every aspect of life was being upended.
Writers As Politicians
Hello, happy to finally be publishing another essay for my history-writing series Past as Prologue. If you’re a new subscriber, this is a series where I revisit ideas and moments from the past that were unique for their time. You can read the last installments here and here. This essay is about a period when underground literature was so idolized that many believed its heroes should enter politics and govern.
The Internet Is Like a City (But Not in the Way You'd Think)
In the days of the early internet, the language to describe it was still an open question. Cultural critic Howard Rheingold, credited with coining the term “virtual community,” likened it to a great frontier. “The pioneers are still out there exploring,” he wrote, with its borders undetermined.
Symphonies of Color
This short essay was inspired by Oleksiy Radynski’s documentary “Infinity According to Florian” which is now screening at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens, New York every Thursday from January 25 - March 25, 2024. Siberia’s vast expanse, encompassing some 9% of Earth’s landmass, has long stirred great minds, often under extreme duress. Historically, it has been a place of forced labor, exile, and otherwise unlikely friendships.
2023 Recap: Novum Newsletter
Hello everyone. Is it too late for a 2023 recap? I hope not. The past year has been good to me in many ways, but in other ways not so much. For almost half the year, I didn’t publish anything here. But despite that setback, I had 872 subscribers at the start of the year and now I have some ~2,650 subscribers. Thank you for sticking around. My initial plan for 2023 was to pursue a weekly series where I reviewed stories that interested me.
The Return of the World's Fair
In the spring of 1873, a Japanese delegation arrived at the World’s Fair in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Five years after the Meiji Revolution, their attendance was meticulously planned. A special government bureau was created, and a team of engineers accompanied the delegation. The exposition was even given a test run a year beforehand in Tokyo. Yet for Kido Yakayoshi, one of the founding Meiji statesmen, the event provoked a kind of existential crisis.
There Once Was an Empire
When it comes to history writing, one of the most recognizable frames is the story of the “rise and fall.” Although broad and often misused, it is a trope that excites the public imagination. Nowadays, one doesn’t need to look far to find anxieties over our own alleged fall. Discussions on “decline” and even “collapse” have become more commonplace online. And more generally, across all published literature, mentions of doom and gloom have reached new heights, irrespective of political leanings.
On the Importance of Roots
In the past decade, the writer Simone Weil has grown in popularity and continues to provoke conversation some 80 years after her death. She was a writer mainly preoccupied with what she called "the needs of the soul." One of these needs, almost prophetic in its relevance today, is the capacity for attention toward the world which she likened to prayer. Another is the need to be rooted in a community and place, discussed at length in her last book On the Need for Roots written in 1943.
The Man Who Shredded the Newspaper
In the decade before World War I, the newspaper dominated life like it never would again. The radio was not yet fit for mass use, and neither was film or recording. It was then common for major cities to have a dozen or so morning papers competing for attention. Deceit, exaggeration, and gimmicks were typical, even expected, to boost readership. Rarely were reporters held to account. This characterization is not mine but taken from Austrian writer Karl Kraus.
The Purpose of the Novel
A while back, my father mentioned something he had noticed while reading Croatian newspapers online. Idioms were being borrowed from English which made little sense. He suspected writers were cheating with the help of Google Translate by copying and pasting articles from English, introducing awkward phrases into Croatian, and lowering the quality of writing overall. He definitely had a few convincing examples to back up his observation.
What Is Psychopolitics? - by Anton Cebalo
Hello new and old readers. Last month, I was featured as the lead story in Substack Reads which was a pleasant surprise. This newsletter now has some 2,200 subscribers! After a bit of a delay, I am happy to share a new piece exploring the critical writings of philosopher Byung-Chul Han and how he understands online life.
When America Received a Message from the Future
It can be said that much of modern America was born in 1939. That year, the New York City World’s Fair officially began. The mega-event would go on for two seasons (‘39 and ‘40) and break records, exciting audiences by promising a glimpse into the “world of tomorrow.” The Fair condensed many ideas and developments that would come to define the coming era, famously called the “American Century” by media magnate Henry Luce.
Midcentury Planners Demolished America’s Social Fabric
In 1939 at the New York World’s Fair, industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes presented his exhibition on the future of the American city. Named “Futurama,” this world was one of the mega-highways that cut through dense metropolises and their skyscrapers. Some five million people viewed the exhibit, shattering records at the time. Geddes had begun his career in the theater, and so he knew how to stir the people’s imagination.
Weekly Retrospective #4
This is the fourth installment of my review series, where I unpack a few essays and topics I’ve been thinking about in the past week. It’s a cross-section of what this newsletter is all about. But first, I have a minor update: I am trying out the AI-generated world of audio. Let me know if it’s any good in the comments. It is admittedly a bit tedious to set up, but I’d be willing to do it if people enjoy it.
Explore
Novum is an assortment of writings covering what’s peculiar to the present. It is made up of multiple sections which you can freely browse. Hop around and explore the different categories of this weekly newsletter. global state & politics social past as prologue the weekly meta For an explanation of what Novum is all about, I recommend reading the About Page.
Explore
Novum Newsletter is a collection of contemporary essays covering politics, culture, emerging ideas, trends, and more. To make it easy to browse, I’ve organized this site around three main sections: global affairs state & politics culture & society I also have a special history-writing series: past as prologue Additionally, any newsletter-related updates can be found at: meta For an explanation of the thinking behind this newsletter, be sure to read my introductory piece:
Panic in the Skies
This is the closing sentence of historian Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). Originally published in Harper’s Magazine, the piece continues to resonate today, and for good reason. It diagnosed a pathology that has followed American culture since its founding: the tendency toward paranoia. When the United States assumed its role as a superpower, this culture of paranoia evolved into an anxiety over whether it was declining as a great power.
How the Locomotive Became a Metaphor for Modernity
Wow, so many new readers. Thanks so much for subscribing. I’ve been away for some time due to personal matters, but happy to say I’m back to writing consistently to this small corner of the internet. This one’s part of my Past as Prologue series. In the past month or so, I’ve been on a kick reading about modernity and what it really entails. My last essay discussed a few early modernist writers, and how their words relate to the lived experience of far more people today than ever before.
2022 Recap: Novum Newsletter
This post will be a bit different from how I usually write. The year is just about over and I would like to sincerely thank every single person who’s subscribed to this newsletter of mine. After being so exhausted by the past few years in so many respects, I wanted to finally start writing properly. And so, I embarked on this journey and published my first piece in March. But in actuality, the whole thing only really picked up in the past 2 months.
Maybe Real Modernity Has Only Just Started
This quote is from the opening pages of Marshall Berman’s book All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982), which I recently started reading. It is such a compelling look into what modernity is all about through the eyes of writers, artists, and other thinkers of the last two centuries. Through their words, we can learn what it means to be an individual living in ‘modern times’ and also feel a deep connection with how the past was lived.
"What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?"
Recently, I came acrossa piece in Bloomberg which explores how the entire worldview of newer traders on Wall St. was unraveling. Since 2009, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at or near zero. Many other central banks did the same. For over a decade, banks could borrow money for little to nothing. It became the new normal, and the generation that entered Wall St. during this time is now disoriented, for they “do not know a world without cheap money.” This story piqued my interest.
A Deep Dive Down the Memory Hole
Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Mass Affect: War and the Global Synchronisation of Emotionsby . Building off the work of cultural theorists Paul Virilio, Byung-Chul Han, and others, the essay unpacks the internet’s hypnotizing ability to synchronize mass emotions. In the past few years, this online feeling has become especially generalized and potent (and often exhausting), as we move from one seemingly unprecedented emergency to the next.
Politics Is Becoming an Ant Mill
I recently came across the phenomena of ant mills. They happen when a section of army ants breaks off from its colony. Losing their ability to track pheromones, they instead begin to follow each other in a circle. They continue in a spiral until exhaustion and often death. Some ant mills can be truly massive. The largest one ever discovered was some 1,200 meters in diameter. To each ant, the distances traveled must seem substantive enough to appear normal, but they’re just trapped in a vortex.
The Social Recession: By the Numbers — LessWrong
ByAnton Stjepan Cebalo Intermission (also known as Intermedio) by Edward Hopper, 1963. One of the most discussed topics online recently has been friendships and loneliness. Ever since the infamous chart showing more people are not having sex than ever before first made the rounds, there’s been increased interest in the social state of things.
The Social Recession: By the Numbers
One of the most discussed topics online recently has been friendships and loneliness. Ever since the infamous study showing more people are not having sex than ever before first made the rounds, there’s been increased interest in the social state of things. Polling has demonstrated a marked decline in all spheres of social life, including close friends, intimate relationships, trust, labor participation, and community involvement.
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