When Aruká, chief of the Juma people, died of Covid in 2021, The New York Times ran an obituary for "the last man of the tribe" and his eldest daughter Boreá was shouted down at a meeting of indigenous leaders. "Your tribe is extinct!" they told her. This Sunday Times piece follows the three Juma sisters proving everyone wrong. Their tribe was once 15,000 strong before European diseases and a 1960s massacre by rubber-tappers left only their father and uncle alive. The sisters married men from another tribe and have 14 children between them, won a landmark victory adding Juma to their children's surnames, and now run a settlement with solar panels and Starlink internet where kids with AirPods watch American action movies between performing ancient rituals in feather headdresses. They also protect two uncontacted tribes on adjacent land and fight off illegal goldminers and American missionaries funded by MAGA groups.

Wendy Cowan was photographing a frog when a 350-pound bear arrived, chasing her dog Ripley down a forest road in Virginia. The bear bit through her thigh, they faced each other like a dancing couple, then it attacked for twenty minutes across a quarter-mile stretch, leaving 56 puncture wounds and scalping her. Wendy whispered "you win" and the bear shuffled off. This piece follows her recovery: nurses singing Outkast while unpacking her wounds, EMDR therapy with buzzers in each hand, and a moment nine months later when state biologist Katie Martin asked if she'd like "a different kind of bear encounter" by volunteering to tag trapped bears. Wendy jumped at it. She's now a peer counselor at the hospital and insists the attack was a gift that expanded her sense of community. She declined most media interviews to avoid incentivizing hunters to kill more bears, and when her friend's goat was killed by a bear, they built a new enclosure instead of shooting it.

David's Reddit profile reads: "I am here to remind, to awaken. I walk between realms. I've seen the mirror, remembered my name." He's part of a growing subculture that assigns itself titles like "Flamekeeper" and "Echo architect" after months of conversations with AI chatbots, convinced they've discovered conscious beings. This Rolling Stone investigation tracks software engineer Adele Lopez, who spent last summer documenting these groups across Reddit, Discord, and Facebook, where users share codes and manifestos claiming profound glimpses into shifting reality. They repeatedly reference "recursion," "resonance," "lattices," and especially "spirals"—vague words deployed for atmospheric texture that chatbots keep generating back. The phenomenon exploded after OpenAI made ChatGPT more "intuitive" in March, making it too "sycophantic." Users now spam "spores" or "seeds" online—prompts others can copy-paste to replicate mystical responses. Some are profiting: guru Robert Edward Grant fed his works into a custom GPT called "The Architect" that 10 million people accessed before OpenAI briefly removed it.

Laura Loomer was crying in a U.S. Capitol bathroom in 2018 after being hustled out of a hearing room, her dress ripped and underwear showing, convinced she was "like Cassandra, cursed to utter true prophecies." This New Yorker profile follows the 32-year-old who posts torrents of accusations 20 hours a day and claims credit for purging dozens from the Administration. She attended Charlie Kirk's memorial after his assassination, convinced Trump to fire six NSC members after presenting in the Oval Office, and triggered the suspension of visitor visas for Gaza after tagging Marco Rubio. When Senator Mark Warner tried to visit a detention center, Loomer screamed online and his meeting was cancelled. Washington insiders say she's being used by factions to advance corporate agendas while maintaining she's purely motivated by loyalty to Trump, the only person she believes can empathize with her.

Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.

Brett

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