U.S. Sen. John Cornyn went so far as to push legislation renaming a highway for President Donald Trump as he sought the president’s endorsement in his hotly contested runoff with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Now he says that bill “may not make it into my priorities the next seven months.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday confirmed the country’s first case of New World screwworm — the parasitic fly poised to harm the state’s $15 billion cattle industry — in South Texas.
…
The confirmation comes one day after Rollins debunked the claims of a state lawmaker that the screwworm was less than 1 mile from the U.S.-Mexico border.
…
The parasitic fly targets the live flesh of warm mammals including cattle, pets, wildlife and humans. Screwworm infects them by embedding their larvae in open wounds. The larvae feed off the flesh, causing severe wounds or death.
…
Screwworm had been eradicated in the U.S. since the 1960s when the pest was pushed back into Central America. However, cases began springing up in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. In 2024, Mexico reported its first case.
…
Rollins blamed the spread of screwworm toward the U.S.-Mexico border on “the open-border policies of the last administration and the resulting illicit cattle movement”
When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.
The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.
But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.
A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son.
ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,” wrote the group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii as well as Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado and Mike Levin of California.
Last year, the Pentagon announced the loan to Vulcan Elements, a small North Carolina startup, about three months after Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took a stake of undisclosed size in the rare-earth magnet company.
When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.
Since when do we have the Pentagon *Bank* loaning money to putative defense contractors? Yes, as with all things Trump, this is manifestly corrupt, but why not start with the apparent fact that someone at the Pentagon is dipping into the ocean of money that is routinely appropriated for defense and “lending” it to a start-up. ‘Choosing winners,’ as the GOP howled any time a Dem administration as much as mentioned the name of a vendor.
ETA – but, but, but….Hunter Biden sold a painting!!!
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
@Charley in Cleveland: There are provisions in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regs (DFARS) for contract financing (FAR/DFAR Part 232). These are usually for special cases and are strictly scrutinized. I don’t know the details of this deal, but I wouldn’t be surprised that the legal aspects have been greatly distorted and great pressure put on the government contract officer to sign off on it.
There should be some sort of guarantee involved, too.
In Mexico, when a government agency hands out an advance for a large contract, it requires a surety bond for the full amount*. This protects the agency from the supplier failing to meet its obligations, or just running away with the money.
None of which makes handing the Taco spawn money in any way ethical or responsible.
*It can also be a deposit or a certified or cashier’s check for the full amount, which would render the advance pointless.
I wonder what kinds of questions El Taco’s pollsters go around asking. If any exist, that is. You’d think he wouldn’t have launched a Middle East Quagmire(TM) without at least gauging the sentiments of the deplorable base first…
I imagine questions such as “Would you support El Taco suspending the midterm elections?” “How do you feel about El Taco dissolving Congress and replacing it with a capitol-shaped rubber stamp?”
Come to think of it, many of MAGA candidates and politicians are of the “catfish” variety. Hell, the world’s best deal maker, peace maker, and stable-genius Trump, may be history’s greatest “catfisher” of all time. The reason Trump’s cult generates a massive amount of A.I. visual memes representing him in fantastical superhuman form, is to override the utterly deficient reality of their woefully substandard leader and distract from his thoroughly corrupt behavior. Trump as Jesus, indeed! We have a cartoon character running this nation.
without at least gauging the sentiments of the deplorable base first…
At this point, Trump’s mind (and those of his supporters) have transcended any preference for democratic values and are full-on power drunk, staggering towards autocracy. Trump no longer cares what anyone thinks. In his mind MAGA-SCOTUS gave him carte blanche, and Todd Blanche is there to assist. Let’s see what they conspire for the mid-terms.
According to his campaign website, Obama Shaw admired the former president because “Barack Obama brought a hope into the world that I had never seen or experienced before.” He added that the former president “was the catalyst that had me legally change my name because I believe that people today need that same type of hope.”
@Rob1: As I noted the other day, it’s been a long time since I worked on campaigns, but that is just so, SO weird. Back in my day, that would have been enough to get you fired from the campaign, because it’s so obviously doctored and it’s made a laughingstock out of the candidate. Very, very bad form.
@Jen: I really thing that a lot of this comes down to our collective failure to handle the Schrodinger’s Douchebag in all aspects of our society. Its enabled people to act worse and worse, and then pretend it was nothing if called on it. From Rush Limbaugh to the catfish candidates to Trump’s open everything being dismissed as “Trump Being Trump”, we’ve gone off the rails by not properly discouraging assholery.
In retrospect, every time someone has ever said “you just can’t take a joke” it should have been met with a punch in the face.
Suppose around 5,000 BCE aliens took some humans, plus many of their domesticated plants and animals, and transplanted them to an Earth-like planet thousand of light years away (their motives are not relevant just now). Say 4,000 years later, these humans have developed to a technological level similar (not identical) to the mid 19th century.
If I set a story here about a coup in a liberal monarchy (ie a monarchy with parliament but not a constitution nor universal suffrage), would you think it qualifies as science fiction? The most advanced technology shown would be an internal combustion engine that’s all the rage among the railroad industry.
One small detail is these people don’t know their ancestors were transported by aliens to another planet. There are old legends and creation myths, but nothing concrete. In fact, one scientific controversy is that there are clear signs of evolution for lifeforms in their planet, but none for humans, dogs, horses, cows, etc.
They won’t learn this for a few more decades, when they land on one of their three natural satellites and find a message left by the aliens.
@Kathy: Here are my thoughts on: suppose the aliens transport not our species but our brothers the Neanderthals? This would be a springboard for rumination about what exactly we are.
That would be awesome, and a completely different story. I’ve already built a background on transplanted H. sapiens 2.0, and a fair bit of history from the coup outlined above, to interstellar wars, to finding other aliens, to eventually reaching Earth.
I don’t know enough about Neanderthals to speculate on their development. I do have a short story where a tribe of H. sapiens neanderthalensis are found. But they just are seen at the very end.
I’m not sure if brands are getting desperate, or if this is the fault of deploying AI where it shouldn’t be, but I’ve noticed an increase in just odd remarketing emails. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve:
– Received an email asking me for a product review of a purchase (it was a gift card)
– Received an email offering me a discount for “items left in my cart” (I never added any item to my cart)
– Another email asked how I was enjoying my purchase (this, again, was the GIFT CARD)
– Lots of “suggested” items that are odd/strange
Approse to nothing in particular, I have a friend who has been working in China for a US company for nearly a year now. I asked her what it was like and she sent me this vid, saying it’s pretty spot-on. Life in the modern Chinese city of Shengzhen.
Everything electrified. Scooters, cars, one hardly ever hears an engine. All those young people…not fat person to be found. I wonder what Xi and other government officials feel when they visit a US city. Superiority, most likely.
My friend is looking forward to the end of her contract in about 6 months though. Not a fun place for a single working woman in other ways. She doesn’t fit in, as she’s got a sort of Rosie O’Donnell personality and sense of humor, and that doesn’t fly well in that society. You have to be careful want you say, and “bold” seems to equate with “arrogant”.
Suppose instead of one big moon, Earth had two or three somewhat smaller moons.
To begin with, this would require a different origin story for the Moon. The consensus theory is the proto-Earth was impacted by an another proto planet*, probably as big as Mars, and the resulting ejecta coalesced to form the Moon. I assume it also means Earth gained some mass, as 1 Earth mass +1 Mars mass do not add up to 1 Earth mass and one Moon mass.
There’s also the matter of how the Moon keeps Earth’s axis stable. Not that this is the ideal, but life here has adapted to the seasons made possible. Conceivably multiple moons might have a similar effect, depending on their masses and orbits. Conceivably, too, life would have adapted to a more chaotic axial tilt.
Assume we can put all this aside, or that Theia (the Mars size proto planet) caused three natural satellites rather than one, and supposing history had played out the same (NARRATOR: in a pig’s eye it would!), what I wonder is how multiple moons would have affected the space race during the cold war.
A lot would depend on their masses and orbits. If they’re roughly the same mass, assuming 1/3 of a Moon mass, at an average distance of 300,000 kilometers from Earth, an Apollo type system could have visited all three easily. In fact, it would have perhaps managed to bring back more samples form each, as far less fuel would be needed to lift off each satellite.
It would make sense to assume the winner would be the power capable of landing on all three moons, too (BTW, let’s call them Selene, Artemis, and Diana). Apollo then would perhaps have planned and carried out nine flights, one to each satellite. The Soviets might not have given up, especially if the Americans had trouble reaching the farthest moon.
Or imagine this twist. Suppose two of the mons are big and one, say Diana, is small. And not only that, but while Selene and Artemis are between 250-350 thousand kilometers distant, Diana orbits at 36,000 kilometers off the surface. Alas, not at 0 degrees to the equator. So it appears to move up and down over the same spot over the course of a year.
That’s geosynchronous orbit. It takes exactly one day to go around the Earth. This means it’s always over the same spot relative to the Earth. The incentive to set up a base there would be huge.
Of course, see what the narrator helpfully said above. Diana would be visible only on one hemisphere, not both. If it was the Western Hemisphere, the Europeans wouldn’t even know it existed until Portuguese sailors swung sufficiently far west of Africa in their search for better winds to round the continent. And that would affect history.
*Crashing proto planets may not be that rare. It’s thought a similar collision knocked Uranus on it’s side. Before Pluto was demoted, there was speculation that a similar collision affected its orbit (it crosses through Neptune’s orbit).
@Kathy: I would be curious where they took the humans from — all one place, or around the world?
About 5,000 years ago we already had different skin tones, but not modern concepts of race. And starting with a small set of people, they would likely end up roughly one tone even if they are selected from different parts of our world initially.
How will they know who to discriminate against?
They also are advancing faster than us in your timeline. The split also predates the Epic of Gilgamesh.
I’m not sure how much of humanity survives without myths and racism. I suppose there’s always sexism.
—-
There’s a woman who frequents the same coffee shop I do, and she’s working on a post-capitalism utopian novel. She makes the mistake of speaking to me about it, and I ask questions like “so… what do they do with the people who disagree with this utopia? Are there re-education camps? Burn pits?”
We did it ! We got him! Voter fraud has been found!
His name is Tommy Tuberville. Voting somewhere that’s not your “primary residence” is in fact illegal — even if you’re white.
I’m thinking a representative sample. So mostly what we call people of color. BTW, it’s 5,000 BCE, so 7,000 years ago.
There will be myths, and religion, too. Overall I envision a pagan style transactional religion, mostly centered on four deities that represent primal forces: Vash for the oceans, Malek for the land, Essil for the sky, and Srynger for fire.
The evolution controversy gives rise to an omnipotent creator religion. Other lifeforms evolved. But humanity and its domesticates were clearly created ex nihilo, which is why they don’t appear in any fossil record.
Modern notions that humans might have been transported from another world, as the old myths and legends say, are clearly ridiculous. Everyone knows leaving the planet is impossible. Why, you would need so much fuel to accelerate to 12 km/s required to achieve orbit, that no machine would be powerful enough to lift the fuel, much less any payload. Even if you could, you’d be stranded. In vacuum, rockets have nothing to push against (these were actual arguments against space travel, as late as the 1920s).
They also are advancing faster than us in your timeline.
Yeah, that’s the whole point of this background world.
LOL.
Trump Interstate? After US Senate loss, Cornyn says it’s no longer a priority
First U.S. screwworm case confirmed in South Texas
It’s Biden’s fault.
You have to wonder when the Trump Crime Family corruption is going to break through to the general public.
The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.
Lawmakers demand answers about $620M Pentagon loan to firm tied to Trump Jr.
@Scott:
Since when do we have the Pentagon *Bank* loaning money to putative defense contractors? Yes, as with all things Trump, this is manifestly corrupt, but why not start with the apparent fact that someone at the Pentagon is dipping into the ocean of money that is routinely appropriated for defense and “lending” it to a start-up. ‘Choosing winners,’ as the GOP howled any time a Dem administration as much as mentioned the name of a vendor.
ETA – but, but, but….Hunter Biden sold a painting!!!
Statement from fired CBS/60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley:
https://x.com/DylanByers/status/2062013125554246140
@Charley in Cleveland: There are provisions in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regs (DFARS) for contract financing (FAR/DFAR Part 232). These are usually for special cases and are strictly scrutinized. I don’t know the details of this deal, but I wouldn’t be surprised that the legal aspects have been greatly distorted and great pressure put on the government contract officer to sign off on it.
One of the most interesting things I’ve watched. Universe 25. I imagine there are folks here who’ve heard of it. I had not. Rather discouraging.
@Scott:
There should be some sort of guarantee involved, too.
In Mexico, when a government agency hands out an advance for a large contract, it requires a surety bond for the full amount*. This protects the agency from the supplier failing to meet its obligations, or just running away with the money.
None of which makes handing the Taco spawn money in any way ethical or responsible.
*It can also be a deposit or a certified or cashier’s check for the full amount, which would render the advance pointless.
I wonder what kinds of questions El Taco’s pollsters go around asking. If any exist, that is. You’d think he wouldn’t have launched a Middle East Quagmire(TM) without at least gauging the sentiments of the deplorable base first…
I imagine questions such as “Would you support El Taco suspending the midterm elections?” “How do you feel about El Taco dissolving Congress and replacing it with a capitol-shaped rubber stamp?”
Catfishin’ Michigan for MAGA.
Senate Candidate Roasted Over Operative Posting Doctored Image of Him to Make Him Look Buff: ‘What the Absolute F*ck?’
–
And the reality —
Come to think of it, many of MAGA candidates and politicians are of the “catfish” variety. Hell, the world’s best deal maker, peace maker, and stable-genius Trump, may be history’s greatest “catfisher” of all time. The reason Trump’s cult generates a massive amount of A.I. visual memes representing him in fantastical superhuman form, is to override the utterly deficient reality of their woefully substandard leader and distract from his thoroughly corrupt behavior. Trump as Jesus, indeed! We have a cartoon character running this nation.
@Kathy:
At this point, Trump’s mind (and those of his supporters) have transcended any preference for democratic values and are full-on power drunk, staggering towards autocracy. Trump no longer cares what anyone thinks. In his mind MAGA-SCOTUS gave him carte blanche, and Todd Blanche is there to assist. Let’s see what they conspire for the mid-terms.
Speaking of name recognition/name appropriation (yesterday OTB):
Another ‘Barack Obama’ is running for California governor
@Rob1: As I noted the other day, it’s been a long time since I worked on campaigns, but that is just so, SO weird. Back in my day, that would have been enough to get you fired from the campaign, because it’s so obviously doctored and it’s made a laughingstock out of the candidate. Very, very bad form.
@Jen: I really thing that a lot of this comes down to our collective failure to handle the Schrodinger’s Douchebag in all aspects of our society. Its enabled people to act worse and worse, and then pretend it was nothing if called on it. From Rush Limbaugh to the catfish candidates to Trump’s open everything being dismissed as “Trump Being Trump”, we’ve gone off the rails by not properly discouraging assholery.
In retrospect, every time someone has ever said “you just can’t take a joke” it should have been met with a punch in the face.
A gentle punch if they are 14 or younger.
I need some story input.
Suppose around 5,000 BCE aliens took some humans, plus many of their domesticated plants and animals, and transplanted them to an Earth-like planet thousand of light years away (their motives are not relevant just now). Say 4,000 years later, these humans have developed to a technological level similar (not identical) to the mid 19th century.
If I set a story here about a coup in a liberal monarchy (ie a monarchy with parliament but not a constitution nor universal suffrage), would you think it qualifies as science fiction? The most advanced technology shown would be an internal combustion engine that’s all the rage among the railroad industry.
One small detail is these people don’t know their ancestors were transported by aliens to another planet. There are old legends and creation myths, but nothing concrete. In fact, one scientific controversy is that there are clear signs of evolution for lifeforms in their planet, but none for humans, dogs, horses, cows, etc.
They won’t learn this for a few more decades, when they land on one of their three natural satellites and find a message left by the aliens.
@Kathy: Here are my thoughts on: suppose the aliens transport not our species but our brothers the Neanderthals? This would be a springboard for rumination about what exactly we are.
@Slugger:
Thank you.
That would be awesome, and a completely different story. I’ve already built a background on transplanted H. sapiens 2.0, and a fair bit of history from the coup outlined above, to interstellar wars, to finding other aliens, to eventually reaching Earth.
I don’t know enough about Neanderthals to speculate on their development. I do have a short story where a tribe of H. sapiens neanderthalensis are found. But they just are seen at the very end.
I’m not sure if brands are getting desperate, or if this is the fault of deploying AI where it shouldn’t be, but I’ve noticed an increase in just odd remarketing emails. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve:
– Received an email asking me for a product review of a purchase (it was a gift card)
– Received an email offering me a discount for “items left in my cart” (I never added any item to my cart)
– Another email asked how I was enjoying my purchase (this, again, was the GIFT CARD)
– Lots of “suggested” items that are odd/strange
Approse to nothing in particular, I have a friend who has been working in China for a US company for nearly a year now. I asked her what it was like and she sent me this vid, saying it’s pretty spot-on. Life in the modern Chinese city of Shengzhen.
Everything electrified. Scooters, cars, one hardly ever hears an engine. All those young people…not fat person to be found. I wonder what Xi and other government officials feel when they visit a US city. Superiority, most likely.
My friend is looking forward to the end of her contract in about 6 months though. Not a fun place for a single working woman in other ways. She doesn’t fit in, as she’s got a sort of Rosie O’Donnell personality and sense of humor, and that doesn’t fly well in that society. You have to be careful want you say, and “bold” seems to equate with “arrogant”.
Suppose instead of one big moon, Earth had two or three somewhat smaller moons.
To begin with, this would require a different origin story for the Moon. The consensus theory is the proto-Earth was impacted by an another proto planet*, probably as big as Mars, and the resulting ejecta coalesced to form the Moon. I assume it also means Earth gained some mass, as 1 Earth mass +1 Mars mass do not add up to 1 Earth mass and one Moon mass.
There’s also the matter of how the Moon keeps Earth’s axis stable. Not that this is the ideal, but life here has adapted to the seasons made possible. Conceivably multiple moons might have a similar effect, depending on their masses and orbits. Conceivably, too, life would have adapted to a more chaotic axial tilt.
Assume we can put all this aside, or that Theia (the Mars size proto planet) caused three natural satellites rather than one, and supposing history had played out the same (NARRATOR: in a pig’s eye it would!), what I wonder is how multiple moons would have affected the space race during the cold war.
A lot would depend on their masses and orbits. If they’re roughly the same mass, assuming 1/3 of a Moon mass, at an average distance of 300,000 kilometers from Earth, an Apollo type system could have visited all three easily. In fact, it would have perhaps managed to bring back more samples form each, as far less fuel would be needed to lift off each satellite.
It would make sense to assume the winner would be the power capable of landing on all three moons, too (BTW, let’s call them Selene, Artemis, and Diana). Apollo then would perhaps have planned and carried out nine flights, one to each satellite. The Soviets might not have given up, especially if the Americans had trouble reaching the farthest moon.
Or imagine this twist. Suppose two of the mons are big and one, say Diana, is small. And not only that, but while Selene and Artemis are between 250-350 thousand kilometers distant, Diana orbits at 36,000 kilometers off the surface. Alas, not at 0 degrees to the equator. So it appears to move up and down over the same spot over the course of a year.
That’s geosynchronous orbit. It takes exactly one day to go around the Earth. This means it’s always over the same spot relative to the Earth. The incentive to set up a base there would be huge.
Of course, see what the narrator helpfully said above. Diana would be visible only on one hemisphere, not both. If it was the Western Hemisphere, the Europeans wouldn’t even know it existed until Portuguese sailors swung sufficiently far west of Africa in their search for better winds to round the continent. And that would affect history.
*Crashing proto planets may not be that rare. It’s thought a similar collision knocked Uranus on it’s side. Before Pluto was demoted, there was speculation that a similar collision affected its orbit (it crosses through Neptune’s orbit).
@Scott: “It’s Biden’s fault.”
Thousands of years from now, historians will wonder about the legends of Trump the Great/Trump the Swamp Drainer, and his enemy Biden the Destroyer.
@Kathy: I would be curious where they took the humans from — all one place, or around the world?
About 5,000 years ago we already had different skin tones, but not modern concepts of race. And starting with a small set of people, they would likely end up roughly one tone even if they are selected from different parts of our world initially.
How will they know who to discriminate against?
They also are advancing faster than us in your timeline. The split also predates the Epic of Gilgamesh.
I’m not sure how much of humanity survives without myths and racism. I suppose there’s always sexism.
—-
There’s a woman who frequents the same coffee shop I do, and she’s working on a post-capitalism utopian novel. She makes the mistake of speaking to me about it, and I ask questions like “so… what do they do with the people who disagree with this utopia? Are there re-education camps? Burn pits?”
We did it ! We got him! Voter fraud has been found!
His name is Tommy Tuberville. Voting somewhere that’s not your “primary residence” is in fact illegal — even if you’re white.
@Gustopher:
I’m thinking a representative sample. So mostly what we call people of color. BTW, it’s 5,000 BCE, so 7,000 years ago.
There will be myths, and religion, too. Overall I envision a pagan style transactional religion, mostly centered on four deities that represent primal forces: Vash for the oceans, Malek for the land, Essil for the sky, and Srynger for fire.
The evolution controversy gives rise to an omnipotent creator religion. Other lifeforms evolved. But humanity and its domesticates were clearly created ex nihilo, which is why they don’t appear in any fossil record.
Modern notions that humans might have been transported from another world, as the old myths and legends say, are clearly ridiculous. Everyone knows leaving the planet is impossible. Why, you would need so much fuel to accelerate to 12 km/s required to achieve orbit, that no machine would be powerful enough to lift the fuel, much less any payload. Even if you could, you’d be stranded. In vacuum, rockets have nothing to push against (these were actual arguments against space travel, as late as the 1920s).
Yeah, that’s the whole point of this background world.
@Michael Reynolds: Cripes, like I wasn’t depressed enough about the future….