The fundamental thing about John Mosby was he was kind. I could tell that in my first meeting with him. We talked about work stuff, of course, but we also talked about the NBA and specifically his love of the Golden State Warriors. Before John became president of Highline College, he was a lifelong resident of California and what Californian could not love Steph Curry and a team that transformed how basketball is played. Being a Californian, John liked warm weather and perhaps Seattle’s relative cool was his largest challenge to living here. We also talked about James Baldwin, who John loved and if memory recalls, had written research papers on. As you might guess about a community college president, John had certain political beliefs and yet he didn’t condemn others for theirs, at least not publicly. I remember at a forum I attended where a student, who had far different political beliefs, expressed them fervently. John engaged with the student in an open way, embracing the student, acknowledging his point of view, even as he talked about the issue from a broader perspective.
I was fortunate enough to text with John on any number of challenging issues, and he was always generous with his time and advice. John and I were supposed to travel to Japan together in March of 2020. I was very much looking forward to the trip, which would have been John’s first to Asia. But Covid hit and the trip was scratched. And then John fell ill, going into a coma. He eventually recovered but was placed on the kidney transplant list. And then other health problems beset him. We did not have the opportunity to interact as much but when news came of his passing Monday morning it was a shock even if I knew he had serious medical issues. I thought of him on my bike ride that evening–a warm night seemingly made specially for John–including when I saw a woman dancing as she walked her dog, presumably listening to a good groove through her headphones, dancing, as certain people urge, like no on is watching. Life is short, and John Mosby died at far too terribly a young age. Perhaps that woman was onto something. RIP John.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Keep On Truckin’ (Cleanly)
Your eyes probably widen every time you pull up to a gas station and note the price per gallon. But industry everywhere is also dealing with high fuel costs—your eggs and iPads, a company’s component parts—they are all generally transported by truck at one point or another. The increased cost of fuel due to the Iran war will likely accelerate the transformation to electric trucks. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global sales of electric medium- and heavy-duty trucks grew for the third consecutive year in 2024, surpassing 90,000 units — an 80 percent jump over the prior year. The skeptic’s case against electric trucks is that if you carry enough weight across enough miles, you will drain any battery pack before you reach your destination. However, between 2020 and 2024, battery pack capacity for medium-duty electric trucks increased by more than 60 percent and yet the price of those packs rose only about 15 percent over the same period. For heavy-duty trucks, battery packs grew about 70 percent in capacity while costs increased less than 20 percent. The result is that fleet operators buying electric trucks today are getting dramatically more range per dollar than they were four years ago. Batteries can be charged more quickly now too. China, of course, is dominating this market, as it is electric vehicles in general. The IEA projects electric truck penetration to reach about 2 percent of global truck sales by 2030. The IEA has consistently under projected solar capacity—we bet they will be too low on trucks as well—especially if the Iran war doesn’t end anytime soon.
Which Country is Greta Garbo?
How’s that for a nearly 100-year-old reference in the headline? We’re going to lure in Generation Z off of TikTok. Which might be good because Americans spend too much time alone as you can see in the first chart below (especially as they age–old people should get off TikTok too). Damian Ma of Carnegie China (based in Singapore) rightly suggests comparing this data with other advanced economies. Unfortunately, that’s hard to do. In 2023, Americans age 15 and older spent 6.73 waking hours per day alone. That is a lot of solitude for the social species we humans are. But is this an American story or a modern one. The United States is one of the few countries that measures this cleanly. Canada comes closest. Statistics Canada has such data and Canadians spend about 6.5 hours alone, not much different from their southern neighbors. Britain has published a narrower measure that shows Britons spent 100 minutes per day alone in leisure time, or 29 percent of their leisure time. That is not directly comparable to the American all-waking-hours figure. Most international time-use datasets are built around activities such as work, leisure, and household labor, not around co-presence — who was actually with you. So they can tell us how much time people spend socializing, but usually not how many hours a day they are alone. China is a good example. Its time-use surveys ask who respondents were with during activities, including whether they were alone or with a stranger. But the latest official release from China’s Third National Time Use Survey reports broad categories such as paid labor, unpaid labor, leisure, and social communication, not a national “hours alone per day” figure. So the real international story may be this: America may not be uniquely alone so much as uniquely measurable.
China Corner: Wait, China Is Not Expansionist?
There have been a number of articles this year claiming China is not expansionist. We hope to someday write a Substack article detailing how that assessment is wrong. But for now, let’s take a look at China’s influence on Zambia. Last week, Access Now, the organizers of RightsCon, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, announced the conference in Zambia was being canceled. Why? The AP reports, “Access Now said it had been informed by Zambian officials that the government had been pressured by China over the conference ‘because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person.’” Well, geez, you can’t have that, at least not if your China. Access Now said it pushed back on any move to exclude delegates from Taiwan and thus Zambia couldn’t host the conference. Why would Zambia be unwilling to push back on China? China is Zambia’s largest official creditor, owed $5.7 billion. Chinese companies have invested roughly $6 billion in the country’s copper sector over two decades. Beijing donated the Mulungushi International Conference Center which is the very building where RightsCon was to be held. The cancellation came one week after Beijing pressured Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles to deny overflight rights to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s plane. These are only minor examples of China’s activities in the world. It is an expansionist power in many ways.
