Novum Newsletter

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.

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.

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 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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.