Ramble: Bulgarian Cityscapes

6 stories to start your weekend, plus bonus tweets of the week.

Midjourney generation of a person reading before some exercise in the style of Hieronymus Bosch.

Hey there! Per usual this Ramble veers beyond the realm of endurance sport and movement to highlight other cool things I’ve read and encountered of late. Let’s go!

Stories I can’t stop thinking about

• Bulgarian cityscapes (99% Invisible)

  • Oh, to wander in the forested pathways between Sofia’s modernist apartment blocks! Ever since living in London, I’ve been fascinated by modern architecture's angular, brutal chunks. The socialist variant in Sofia resulted from centralized planning, drawing from Le Corbusier and the Garden City movement.

• “A New Life” by Leslie Jamison (New Yorker)

  • Jamison’s descriptions of the physical shifts, rhythms, and connections after birth stopped me in my tracks:

    • “After they cut her out of my abdomen, they carried her to the corner of the room. One impossibly small leg stuck out of the blanket. The anesthesiologist kept trying to take my blood pressure while my arms buck…