Weekly Progress Roundup
Milei’s shock therapy is working, biotech is reducing animal suffering, and the media is hiding something about gas prices.
Biotechnology is reducing livestock suffering
Industrial agriculture has been a massive boon to both humanity and wild nature, but it is unfortunately responsible for significant animal suffering (though livestock were also badly mistreated on preindustrial farms). Thankfully, biotech companies have discovered a way to eliminate one major source of animal anguish: the mass killing of newly-hatched male chickens. The technology, called in-ovo sexing, allows farmers to identify and destroy male chicken embryos before they are capable of feeling pain—and at a cost of just a few additional cents per egg. In-ovo sexing has already been deployed commercially in Europe, and, according to bioengineer and journalist Niko McCarty, is now reaching US hatcheries.
Pain from Milei’s “shock therapy” is receding
President Javier Milei’s reforms in Argentina, like other instances of rapid economic liberalization, caused some immediate though necessary hardship as excessive spending and growing indebtedness gave way to more restrained fiscal and monetary management. In the first half of 2024, the nation’s poverty rate hit 53 percent, up from 42 percent when Milei took office. However, this painful period seems to have been short-lived. Not only is Argentina’s economy now experiencing robust growth, but preliminary estimates show that the poverty rate may have fallen below 40 percent in the second half of 2024.
What the media won’t tell you about gas prices
As I wrote in our annual progress roundup, good news is usually not news at all. An analysis of gasoline price coverage reinforces this point. The research, from the economics blog Briefing Book, looked at over a million TV news transcripts and found that the lower gas prices are, the less often they are covered by the media.
So, in case you haven’t heard, US gas prices are expected to drop for the third year in a row in 2025.
Energy & Environment:
Health & Demographics:
Life Expectancy Has Continued to Rise in Longest-Lived Countries
US Childhood Cancer Deaths Have Declined Six-Fold over Seventy Years
Science & Technology:
Chick-Fil-A’s Lemon-Squeezing Robots Save 10,000 Hours of Work
New Platform Simulates Realities for Training Self-Driving Cars
Scientists Pull 1.2 Million-Year-Old Ice Core from Antarctic