Culture Corner: January 2026
Reading, Watching, Listening, Playing, Doing.
This is a monthly feature – well, most months, at least – where I discuss what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and doing; and encourage readers to share the same. Here’s the pick from December and January.
Reading
Books
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)
At the height of imperial optimism, a time when science, rationality, and the civilising mission promised to sweep away the dreck of barbarism, a Polish-British man - both victim and beneficiary of colonialism - wrote this story (a mere 107 pages!) which showed how contingent, how fragile, how dependent on external forces of restraint the line dividing civilisation and savagery really is. I’m not nearly clever enough to have picked up all Conrad’s references, but you encounter so many of the agents of colonialism, the engine of this brutal and absurd enterprise, here: the romantic imperialist, the staid bureaucrat, the ambivalent gadfly, the charismatic politician.
As striking as this story’s moral pessimism is Conrad’s writing. It is demanding. Every word, every sentence does work. Conrad wrote in his third language; his English is baroque, pompous, as dense as the Congolese jungle that gives the story of Marlow and Kurtz its setting. I don’t think that’s coincidence: perhaps as readers we’re meant to feel the same disquiet, the same unease, as Marlow when he made his way up the river. But when it shines, it glitters more brightly than almost anything I’ve ever read:
“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once -somewhere- far away in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect.”
I mean – my God! Every critic of the multi-clausal sentence has to reckon with this, and the early scene where Marlow sails down the Thames, the central nervous system of imperialism, and imagines the Romans sailing down the same river, to tame their own colonial vassal, millennia earlier.
A word on the book’s (and, perhaps by extension, Conrad’s) racism: he does use words in this story that we don’t use anymore. But I think – and I acknowledge my bias here, as someone marvelling that a man with whom I share nationality could command such supernatural power over language and psychology – that the central claim of many of Conrad’s critics, that Congo (and Africa, and the colonised world) is the Heart of Darkness, and that colonialism is a scourge because contact with the black man debased the European, doesn’t quite hold up. Africa doesn’t corrupt Europe. Europe is corrupt because it is human, and Heart of Darkness shows what happens when the restraints are removed. Perhaps that’s too kind to him. One of the beautiful things about literature is that other opinions are available.
Heart of Darkness is hard going. But its courage to contradict the logic of its time, its formal novelty, its rough beauty, and its moral rigour make it special.
Stone Yard Devotional (Hannah Wood, 2023)
An epistolary novel written in the form of diary entries by a middle-aged woman who leaves civilian life behind to join a convent in country New South Wales, despite almost certainly not actually believing in God. We’re told, in diary entries that ruminate on her past, that she became overwhelmed by a feeling of not being in control of her life, of being overwhelmed by despair she could do almost nothing to extinguish. Life at the convent is slow, mundane, domestic – until the intrusion of three external events that test the sisters’ faith, interrogate their consciences, and examine how well they can prevent a mouse plague.
The final paragraph of the Guardian’s review does a good job of explaining why Stone Yard Devotional works:
“Attention,” said Simone Weil, “is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Wood is a writer of the most intense attention. Everything here – the way mice move, the way two women pass each other a confiding look, the way a hero can love the world but also be brusque and inconsiderate to those around them – it all rings true. It’s the story of a small group of people in a tiny town, but its resonance is global.
Inspector Imanishi Investigates (Seichō Matsumoto, 1989)
I bought this book – a staple of Japanese detective fiction – in Tokyo. I appreciated how this book told its story differently to so much Western crime fiction; the detective isn’t a hero who makes brilliant deductions, instead he’s more like a patient civil servant, chiselling away at the rock until the truth reveals itself. Matsumoto tells a good story while also integrating many of the preoccupations of Japan in the post-war period: internal migration (a source of initial confusion for Inspector Imanishi), rapid cultural changes (one of the book’s throughlines is the juxtaposition and, in many ways, the incommensurability between the old and the new), the meaning of duty, and the desire to outrun our own past (key to cracking the case).
I Can’t Stop Thinking About VAR (Daisy Christodolou, 2024)
A short polemic against the introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology in soccer, written by a director of an education technology start-up and pessimistic West Ham fan. This is, to borrow a football cliche, a book of two halves: one descriptive, the other prescriptive. The first half is a compelling case for why VAR’s imposition and application in soccer has been a mistake: there is simply too much ambiguity in the laws of the game, and the technology is both too precise (forcing referees to review incidents in slow motion, which has a tendency to make them appear worse) and not precise enough (the quickness of human action means that the exact moment when the ball leaves a player’s boot, crucial to determining offside, often happens between camera frames). The end result delivers lots of frustration and not enough consistency or common sense. The second part of the book, a discussion of what kind of technology could replace VAR (Christodolou floats the idea of using footage from past games to crowdsource more stable definitions of fouls – novel, but surely even more impractical than the current regime), is less convincing. Still though, as a reformed VAR optimist, who’s seen his belief in the power of technology to settle disputes about rules not survive contact with reality, I’m really glad that a smart person took the time to properly articulate their misgivings with this technology. This book is worth it for that alone.
Blogs/articles/essays
The Set Piece Revolution (Expecting Goals, January 2026)
Michael Caley is one of the best amateur soccer analysts out there, and his Expecting Goals newsletter is full of clear insights into some of the most important tactical trends in the sport. In this piece, Caley dives deep into the current set piece meta of the English Premier League and unearths some fascinating facts:
While set piece goals have increased, goals from open play have decreased by even more, so the net number of goals in the Premier League has declined.
“Set Piece Revolution” is something of a misnomer: almost all the extra goals from set pieces have come from two sources – goals from long throws, and goals from corners directed at the goal-mouth, where attacking teams use elaborate blocking schemes to disrupt the goalkeeper.
As teams have learnt how to optimise returns from set pieces, they have taken fewer risks in open play (itself also a function of how lethal counterattacks have become).
Free kicks still feel like a largely untapped source of goals.
The German Bundesliga appears to be in the early stages of its own set piece revolution.
If you love nerdy sports longreads, which, as a subscriber to One Percenters I’m assuming you do, you should really read this – it is a great example of the form.
Introducing phases of play (futi, January 2026)
John Muller’s space space space newsletter (RIP) was another indirect inspiration for One Percenters. These days, Muller works on a live score app that provides “tactical insights, visuals and stats that actually explain the game”, and writes a newsletter explaining the problems he’s trying to solve during the development process.
I really enjoyed this post, where Muller begins with the problem of the important details event data fails to capture as a starting point to explain the different phases of play in a soccer game. He begins by dividing the game into four high-level phases: organised possession, transitions, set pieces, and contested phases, before going deeper to explore sub-phases (e.g. he defines organised possession as consisting of buildup, progression, fast break, and finishing sub-phases).
This taxonomy is interesting on its own, but I especially appreciated thinking about how it maps onto footy. As with any ball game played on a field, pitch, or court, there’s a lot of overlap. Footy has organised possession, transitions, set pieces, and contested phases. I think where it diverges from soccer is the share of time in a game spent in those phases. As soccer has become faster and more physical, there are now more transitions, set pieces, and duels. But, generally speaking, organised possession is still the default mode of a soccer game. Is that true of footy? Without looking at the numbers, I’d suggest the ball is in dispute (either not in possession of either team, or in provisional but unsettled possession) more often in a footy game than it is in a soccer game. Regardless of whether that’s true – a subject for a future post, I daresay – this piece provides a useful framework for thinking about soccer, footy, and every sport like it.
The case for a varied life (Cognitive Wonderland, January 2026)
Loved this piece arguing that we should pursue a diversity of interests and talents, both to protect our self-esteem, and also to maximise the beauty of experience. Some excerpts:
If you measure yourself on a single dimension, it’s easy to find someone who is better than you. There is always going to be a better scientist, philosopher, weightlifter, or musician.
But most of us have something else going for us. If you compare across your mix of pursuits, the picture changes. The person who makes more money than you might not be as good at playing guitar.
I don’t think of trying new things as just a way to keep things fresh, but a way of being able to see more of the world. There are so many different domains that some people spend their entire lives diving deep into, becoming experts, and exploring. By trying lots of new things, we can visit these different worlds and gain perspectives we might otherwise lack. We only have one life, it seems a shame to leave so much of the world unexplored, and the only way to explore it is to gain some expertise in a variety of areas.
I remember when I was younger thinking it must be embarrassing to be taught something by someone younger than you. You’ve had more time being alive, how can someone younger be “ahead” of you?! But of course, we all spend our time doing different things. The older person likely has plenty of things they could teach their teacher—but they also have the humility to learn something new.
Watching
Australian Open
Had I written this section yesterday, I’d have mostly lamented the poor quality of the Open thus far and used it as a springboard to speculate on the slightly awkward state of both men’s and women’s tennis. The two men’s semi-finals will both linger in the memory; mostly for how they rescued the tournament from a predictable, meandering end while dramatically reinforcing existing narratives. Carlos Alcaraz outlasted Alexander Zverev in a grinding five-hour match that was more psychologically compelling than a showcase of the sport at its best. Alcaraz showed impressive fortitude to grit his teeth through what looked like significant cramping, conserving energy when needed (including hitting some outrageous winners on one leg) and coming back to exuberant life during a see-sawing fifth set. The loss will surely rank as one of the most disappointing of Zverev’s career (a fact many tennis supporters will welcome), and failing to beat a physically diminished Alcaraz will surely make the little voice in his head that says he’ll never win a Grand Slam even louder. I didn’t agree with the apparent online consensus that Alcaraz vs. Zverev was a classic: it was a little too uneven in terms of quality, and I think at least some of the hype was relief that the much more popular player won, and that a dreary Open finally had a memorable match.
No such complaints about the second men’s semi-final, though! That will go straight into tennis’s pool room, and make a worthy contribution to the last few pages of the Novak Djokovic story. As a Federer fan who has, in recent years, come to accept Djokovic’s greatness, I should have known better than to get complacent, but the match-up against Sinner really did feel like a step too far. The Italian had won their last five meetings, and his mix of power, consistency and balance felt like a straight upgrade on late-era Novak. I thought this match would go four sets, max. Recent history wasn’t on the side of the Serb. Neither was analytics. He won something like 47 percent of the total points played, and faced 18 break points for the match – eight in the fifth set alone. Sinner won 72.9 percent of his service points, compared to Djokovic’s 65.4 percent; in only five Grand Slam matches going back to 2010 had a player won with a greater discrepancy in that statistic. But Djokovic is Djokovic because he plays big points better than anyone ever has, and because he forces his opponents to doubt what they’re doing: his aggression was met by a curious uncertainty by Sinner, who allowed himself to become passive in rallies, presumably believing that Djokovic would tire, when instead he should have seized the initiative. The end result was Djokovic saving 16 of the 18 break points he faced, and advancing to a scarcely believable 38th Slam final. I have no idea who will win on Sunday! Alcaraz is younger, but his match was longer and he was more physically compromised. Djokovic will have the concentrated power of the strongest psychological force in sport (his insane self-belief) and the intimidation factor of being 10-0 in Australian Open finals (poor Andy).
The women’s final needed to be an all-timer to redeem what had been a dreary tournament (just 15 singles matches, out of 127, went to a third set decided by two games). And it came pretty close. In the end, it was virtually the only match in the second week that went to three sets or was even especially interesting beyond what it revealed about the deficiencies of certain players like Coco Gauff or Iga Świątek. Elena Rybakina’s win did go some way to allaying one of my biggest concerns about women’s tennis: that Aryna Sabalenka is too good. She’s eliminated the technical and psychological errors that plagued her game when Ash Barty was still around, and has emerged as the dominant player at the same time as her main rivals have stagnated, second-tier players like Jessica Pegula haven’t made the step up, and the next generation of stars like Mirra Andreeva and Iva Jovic haven’t yet emerged (never mind the totally wasted potential of Emma Raducanu, now more of a punchline than a meaningful presence on tour). But Sabalenka hasn’t quite translated her incredible consistency into full-spectrum dominance – four Grand Slams from eight finals is probably a below-par return for such a good player. Rybakina showed can beat anyone on her day, and although Gauff and Świątek both need to re-tool their games to truly challenge again, neither are that far away.
Consistency in women’s tennis is good; I don’t think many fans want to go back to the volatility of the post-Serena, pre-Barty days, or the brief interregnum following Ash’s retirement. The top of the game is in good health. Predictability looks like more of a problem on the men’s side. If watching three men (sorry, Andy) dominate the game for 15 years was boring for some, then watching two of them dominate will be excruciating. But you can see the outline of something that, although it probably won’t threaten the Sincaraz duopoly, might disturb it: Djokovic showed us he’s still here, Lorenzo Musetti would have beaten Djokovic in straight sets in the quarter-final had his body held up, Zverev is as close as he’s ever been, and the tennis nuffs whisper that Joao Fonseca might be the next phenom. Besides, even if what currently looks like the modal outcome (Sinner and Alcaraz capturing most Slams for the rest of the decade) occurs, it’s still preferable to the tour being dominated by a single player.
Overall, the 2026 Open has been a downgrade in terms of the quality of tennis. It’s also been a downgrade in the quality of the fan experience. I’ve been going to the early rounds on a ground pass for years, and it’s one of the highlights of my sporting calendar, but the volume of complaints about the fan experience deterred me this year. The tournament organisers want it both ways: they’ve kept the price of the ground passes reasonable (offset by a constantly expanding range of pop-ups and installations) but not actually capped crowd numbers. As a result, an increasing share of one’s time at the Open is spent waiting in line for food, drinks, or to get into a court. Still, with something like six of the 10 best-attended days in the history of the Open coming in 2026, it’s highly unlikely the people in charge will see any reason to change course.
Hamnet (2025)
Is Hamnet Oscarbait? I suppose so: it’s a stately adaption of a book which dramatises the origins of Hamlet while, filmed by a big name (non-European) director. It’s Serious and Cinematic. But just because a film is slightly self-conscious in its pursuit of acclaim, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Hamnet is good. It shows us that grief walks many paths, and that tragedy can instigate beauty. The film’s worst feature is its emotional monotony – the death that serves as the film’s anchoring event happens quite early on, and from that point, the viewer is served a lot of Slow, Beautiful Sadness. Its best features are the remarkable performances of Jesse Buckley as Agnes and Jacobi Lupe as the title character. I can’t easily summon a memory of a better dramatic performance by a child actor (caveat: I’m not a film guy!). Oh, and a shout-out to the Brunswick Picture House, a boutique cinema that’s recently opened on Sydney Road. The best way to slow the conquest of streaming is to make going to the movies feel like an event.
Listening
Burial
I worked as a dishpig during undergrad. After a shift, usually after midnight, I’d get home – some of my colleagues would kick on at the Tea Tree Gully Hotel; I never joined – with adrenaline in my veins. To help me sleep, I’d tune into the BBC World Service’s coverage of English Premier League games. Since then, I’ve relied on audio to get me to sleep. (I know it’s bad sleep hygiene; my sleep hygiene is deplorable.) The way this usually manifests these days is I fall asleep, one earbud in – always the left one – listening to a TV series or YouTube video. Compilations of the best jokes from Peep Show and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are perennial favourites, I quite like the occasional SummoningSalt video, episodes of Seinfeld have been my go-to for the last few months.
But sometimes, just sometimes, I fall asleep listening to music. Lately, when I’ve chosen to do that, I’ve been diving back into Burial’s back catalogue. And man, oh man – what a delight. Burial paints immersive, evocative landscapes with sound. It’s always in London, it’s always night (no one has ever listened to a Burial song during the day; I don’t think it’s allowed), it’s always raining. Burial’s command of texture, mood, and atmosphere is unparalleled, and his music, especially from his early era (which I’d define as stretching from his debut EP to the Kindred EP in 2012), is a reminder that art inspired by a hyper-local context is often the most enduring and universal. Electronic music can have a short shelf-life; trends move so fast. But Burial remains. Songs like Archangel, Ashtray Wasp, Street Halo, and Moth still sound as exciting as when they were released.
Turnstile
On January 1st, I got one of the scariest texts a 35 year-old man who enjoys staying home can receive: a friend had a spare ticket to a hardcore punk gig and offered it to me. Early January is a time to say yes to things, and I was intrigued by my friend’s obvious love for this band I’d never heard of (if this is an embarrassing admission, then I’m sorry), so I went along. I’m glad I did. Turnstile put on a brilliant show. Perhaps this is a silly impression to take away from a gig – which, by definition, is a gathering of thousands of people who like a band enough to pay money to see them – but I was struck by how much the audience loved them. Even where we were standing, right near the back, miles from the pit, almost everyone knew the words to every song. That feeling of a joyous communal experience, even if I was peripheral to it, elevated the show to something memorable.
Playing
Stardew Valley (2016)
One of my modest 2026 goals is to at least occasionally be able to leave this section blank. I like video games. But playing them is not a productive use of time: it’s procrastination, distraction, avoidance of something which might be harder (i.e. reading) but is almost always more fulfilling. If I sound like a scold or a snob, then yes, I am – just one who usually fails to live up to my own principles. But hey: it’s a process, and shedding old habits and replacing them with better ones takes time.
All this is to say that I spent time over late December and early January doing what I do every 18 or so months: playing a new save of Stardew Valley. Look, if you’re one of the few people left on Earth who enjoys gaming but hasn’t played it – you should. It’s charming, deceptively deep, and an astonishing achievement by a solo developer who continues to add free updates. It definitely begins to sag after you’ve completed the main storyline (usually about 30-40 hours in); the late-game can feel like more of the same, and the non-player characters who aren’t marriage candidates don’t change much. But I don’t want to sound churlish about a game that has entertained me for more hours than I’m comfortable admitting to readers. And the soundtrack is just such a banger.
Doing
Exercising
A couple of recent events in my life, one of them being my expanding waistline, made me realise that it was time to get more serious about my fitness – and that there’d never be a better time to actually do it than now. So, for the last two-and-a-bit months, that’s what I’ve been doing: running four times a week (getting back below five minutes per km will feel like a milestone), lifting twice a week, and eating more carefully. I’ve learnt a couple of things in the process. The first is that, circa 2026, seemingly every single product in a grocery store either has a high-protein version or loudly flaunts its protein credentials. I’ve seen enough fitness and food influencer content on my YouTube Shorts feed to know that protein is the latest nutrition trend, but I wasn’t quite aware of how deep it went. The second is that all the normie advice is true: if you exercise, you will feel better – more energetic, more present, happier. It’s disenchanting, in a way; slightly disappointing to learn that so much of one’s mood is mediated by physiological states. But it’s true! The third is that, although I’m not sure I’ll ever enjoy exercising per se, I do enjoy the feeling of making progress. I wrote earlier that I’m trying to get back below five minutes per kilometre. I have analogous goals for adding more weight to my bench presses and deadlifts. It’s like with any endeavour sustained over long enough: making progress is evidence that you’re succeeding. And that scratches a deep itch.
Making New Year’s Resolutions
I’m corny. In fact, I’m just corny enough to make New Year’s Resolutions. Every year, I make ambitious goals about the books I’ll read, career progress I’ll make, hobbies I’ll maintain, and friendships I’ll nourish. Needless to say, most of those goals are never met – but I’m never deterred. This year, I tried to add some more pragmatism, ambition leavened by more knowledge of my own limits. But achieving my New Year’s Resolution is only part of the point: I find the process of contemplating what’s important to me, the actions and principles that matter most, to be worthwhile in and of itself.
Preparing my 2026 season previews
They’re coming, soon – so keep an eye on your inbox!
What have you been enjoying, or at least trying to enjoy, lately?