Doomslayer: Weekly Progress Roundup

Human Progress expansion, a possible cure for diabetes, robot proliferation, and more.

Jun 22, 2025

Announcements

We are pleased to announce that we have hired two new team members.

Jackson Vann has joined as a Quantitative Research Associate. He will refine and expand our data visualization system to ensure we provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on progress indicators.

We also hired Dr. Kyle O’Donnell as a Policy Analyst. He will research and write about economics, and the problem-solving innovations and processes stimulating human progress. Before joining the team, Kyle taught at George Mason University and James Madison University.

Economics & Development

Argentina’s wholesale prices fell 0.3 percent in May—the first drop since 2020—in a significant win for Milei’s economic policies.

Energy & Environment

Conservation and biodiversity

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, one of the world’s most endangered species, have laid a record 383 nests on the Texas coast so far in 2025, surpassing the previous high of 353 set in 2017.

Energy production

Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy startup, has drilled what it calls its “hottest and deepest well to-date” in southwest Utah. The company also claims that its enhanced geothermal system can extract up to 60 percent of available underground heat, around three times more than conventional geothermal wells.

Natural resources

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted efforts to diversify the rare-earth mineral supply chain. While China still controls about 70 percent of global mining and 90 percent of processing, Brazil—home to the world’s second-largest known reserves—is opening new mines, while US companies work to rebuild domestic processing capacity.

Pollution

A recently published study analyzing mercury levels in the leaves of Androsace tapete, an alpine plant, on Mount Everest, found a striking 70 percent drop in atmospheric mercury pollution since the early 2000s.
The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit focused on removing plastic from waterways, has launched a new initiative to stop ocean pollution at its source. By partnering with 30 major coastal cities across Asia and the Americas, the group aims to block up to one-third of river-borne plastic from reaching the ocean by 2030.

Food & Hunger

England is close to approving a new regulatory framework that would allow commercial production of gene-edited crops, paving the way for faster agricultural innovation.

Health & Demographics

In a small trial, a single infusion of a stem cell therapy cured 10 out of 12 patients with severe type 1 diabetes, with those 10 showing normal insulin production a year later.
Hepatitis B prevalence in Egypt has dropped by 15 percent since 2015, thanks to consistently high vaccination rates. Today, less than 1 percent of Egyptian children under the age of five have the disease.
The FDA has approved lenacapavir—a new and much-celebrated HIV drug that prevents the disease with a biannual injection.

Science & Technology

Walmart will soon offer drone delivery from 100 stores across Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, in addition to its existing operations in Dallas and Northwest Arkansas.
Waymo is attempting to bring its self-driving taxis to New York City. The company has applied for a permit to operate with human safety operators and plans to begin manually mapping Manhattan’s streets this summer.
A new ultra-black paint might help solve the problem of satellite light pollution, which has increasingly interfered with ground-based astronomy. The coating reflects just 2 percent as much light as uncoated satellites and will be tested on an orbiting CubeSat next year.
Honda has become the first company outside of the US and China to launch and land a reusable rocket vertically.
Amazon’s Zoox is building a factory in the Bay Area intended to produce up to 10,000 robotaxis per year.
Researchers have developed a computer algorithm that designed entirely new enzymes that match the performance of natural ones—potentially useful for creating custom catalysts for pharmaceutical and industrial chemical production.