atomfullerene

So I knew of the story only through reading the GURPS Riverworld book.

I suspect that might be the best way to read Riverworld actually. The world is the really cool part.

They aren't addressing the corruption problem! They aren't stifling the investigation of corrupt officials and orchestrating media blitzes to convince people that the corruption was just made up by republicans. They aren't even having their lawyers and judges make arguments about how the corruption is legal! How can they expect their corrupt members to be victorious if they don't take these simple steps to address the corruption in their party? They are practically marginalizing it by failing to address the needs of these people!

He has the Low class.

Yep, marine mammals tend to be pretty big. Even sea otters are large for a mustelid

Here's an image showing the north pole region through the cenozoic.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Beringian-biogeography-through-time-in-the-context-of-land-positions-paleoclimate_fig2_306339486

As you can see, Europe and Asia have been connected to N. America on and off consistently through time. And prior to the Pleistocene the arctic was much warmer. This allowed a variety of species groups to spread between N. America and Asia, including giant salamanders, paddlefish, and alligators. The first cyprinids got to N. America during the Oligocene, and traveled across Beringia to do so. There's been some movement back and forth since then, for example in the genus Catostomus which has a species found in both N. America and Asia.