Hello everybody. It really is a pleasure and an honor to join you today as part of the Africana Conference so thoughtfully put together by I'm told the students at Tufts Fletcher School. Let me thank my dear friend Professor Chidio Dinkalu for making sure that I'm a part of the conference this year and my very warm regards to the students and faculty of this historic place of thought leadership in diplomacy and international affairs. It would have been a great pleasure to have been with you physically on this occasion and I had indeed indicated that I would be there but for a clash with our precedents travel shadow and since both I and the president cannot be out of the country at the same time I of course had to step down my own engagement so I'm extremely sorry that I'm unable to be present physically and nevertheless I'm pleased to be able to interact with you through this platform. I've been asked to speak today on Africa 2050 making growth work. Africa 2050 making growth work. This is of course a challenging topic to address in a short speech but I'll attempt to cover a few of the critical issues. 2050 is important in a discussion about Africa's future prospects. It is a halfway mark of this remarkable century which has in a few short years seen great advances in digital technology, a global financial crisis and of course a frightening pandemic. 2050 is also the target date which many countries in the world have set to attain net zero carbon emissions and this is true of course for African countries as well. Also when we discuss global demographics 2050 is usually the reference date and Africa is expected to have just over a quarter of global population 26.3% up from 18.2% in 2020. It's also estimated that over half of the population the largest number of young people in the world would live in Africa by that date and as we know population size is intrinsically linked to economic size and inherent in the very notions of poverty per capita income and the size of the labor market which of course are related to growth. But what must be done in Africa to make growth work? What do we really need to do? On the one hand Africa is making steady progress on several fronts. Despite challenges post COVID-19 Africa is growing well compared to the rest of the world. The IMF World Economic Outlook for October 2022 projected that Sub-Saharan Africa would be the second fastest growing region of the world at 3.7% compared to 4.9% in emerging Asia, 1.7% in Latin America and the Caribbean 3.6% in the Middle East and Central Asia 1% in the United States and about 0.5% in the Euro area. Of course we can always make the counterpoint that Sub-Saharan Africa is coming from a much lower base but then that's an argument. We've also seen appreciable increases in socioeconomic conditions in Africa since the era of independence as well as improvements in economic conditions. The GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa was estimated to be about just 31 billion US dollars in 1960 and is now 1.71 trillion US dollars while life expectancy has risen from 42 years to 62 years in the same period. On the other hand partly due to the end of the commodity supercycle in the earlier part of this century and also as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic several African countries are facing debt crisis. It's been estimated that 60% of low income countries many of which of course in Africa are either debt distressed or at high risk of debt distress. This situation must be taken seriously for instance Africa lost two decades of growth and development in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of being ensnared in the international debt crisis of that era. So if we lose two decades again we're already knocking at the door of 2050. So for growth to work in Africa it's important to build on the progress that's already been made while averting another debt crisis. The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and worsened what was an already troubling debt profile in the continent. High inflation and interest rate increases in the major economies have also led to higher borrowing and financing costs in Africa thereby increasing African debt burdens. The challenge though is that the old debt management process of the 1980s and 1990s may not work in the current era in spite of the initiatives put in place like the debt service suspension initiative and the common framework for debt treatments. To start with China is now a major creditor and China is not part of processes like the London club and the price club. Moreover the structure of most public debt has changed as much of it has resulted from borrowing in global capital markets and the ownership of results in debt instruments among private investors is now quite varied. So some imagination and of course political will will be required to help African countries stir their way through the current macroeconomic challenges including domestic actions to rein in inflation and improve domestic resource mobilization. There is certainly now a need for urgent action in framing a new institutional framework for debt restructuring that goes beyond the debt service suspension initiative and the common framework. What is needed at this time is a new international framework for tackling debt issues perhaps along the lines of the global sovereign debt round table that took off at the IMF World Bank spin meetings just this week. This is a framework that brings together all those concerned bilateral creditors including China, private creditors including bondholders, the multilateral development banks and indeed debtor countries. And I think this is the way to go if we are to address the changed nature of the terrain in terms of new prominent players and new types of debt. Let me speak a little about democracy and governance. In spite of recent reversals in a few countries, Africa has made steady progress with regard to democratic rule and improvements in governance such as multi-party frameworks. For instance the incidents of civil wars of course fell as high as from 18 in 1991 to 8 in 2008 and of course has dropped much further now to just certainly the lower single digits. Military coups also showed a similar downward trend and there is commitment to improving governance in the continent and perhaps this is best captured by the establishment of the African pair review mechanism whereby African heads of states and governments hold one another accountable for governance conditions in their countries and it's encouraging that even where there have been democratic reversals the African Union and regional groupings like Echoes have resisted such changes. They've imposed sanctions and insisted on a prompt return to democratic rule. What is required in addition is for serious and credible leaders to live up to expectation by deepening democracy, upholding high standards of transparency and accountability and having an unwavering focus on improving the well-being of the African people. And I think history and experience now teach us that democracy and its associated rights and freedoms must be fought for and defended at all times. By the way just as I was coming here I saw on the news that there was heavy fighting in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. I just wonder to what extent that is going to lead to a changing government and I hope that we're able to get some stability in Sudan as quickly as possible. The issue of corruption of course is always the elephant in the room and there's clear recognition that corruption not only ciphones limited resources required for development but also that it leads to perverse incentives and undermined social values. The African Union Convention Against Corruption is a signal that leaders in the continent recognize the negative impact of corruption and this has been complemented in many countries by the creation of anti-corruption institutions. In Nigeria for instance we notably have the independent corrupt practices and other related offenses commission the ICPC for short and the economic and financial crimes commissions amongst others. But official corruption and corruption in general remain significant and I think there and I must say that we cannot make concrete progress without dealing with corruption. Official corruption I think will reduce considerably with increased use of technology for government approvals and processes removing human discretion as much as as much as is possible and second an insistence on accountability and punishment for impunity and it may seem hard to do but the evidence from all over the world is that with decisive and committed leadership corruption can certainly be tamed. It's also evident and I listened briefly to I think it was Mona Idrisu in her presentation. She was talking about the necessity to create jobs and I think that this is absolutely important for growth to work in Africa. It must create jobs and provide economic opportunity. As we saw during the commodity super cycle in the early part of this century several African countries were growing quite rapidly without and without an accompanying increase in jobs or marked reductions in poverty, the so-called growth without the so-called growth without jobs syndrome. Ensuring job creation going forward will be even more challenging because we have to ensure that digitalization for instance does not lead to job losses. This was already a challenging prospect in the past when word processors replaced typists and automated teller machines displaced bank shares. The prospects are even more ominous with what we're seeing with artificial intelligence and robotics and we know of course that this will put millions of jobs at risk at a time when the labor force is increasing. We already know that robots have displaced workers in manufacturing assembly lines and more ominous is the likely impact of artificial intelligence. I was looking at a recent study by Goldman Sachs which showed that AI tools could impact on up to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide and some of the jobs that are said to be at risk from chart GPT alone are in areas like technology, media, law, legal practice, accounting, teaching, finance and trading as well as graphic design. Indeed the very coders who create the AI may find themselves soon displaced as artificial intelligence which uses iterative learning might work faster and cheaper than them. So what this means then is that we have to spend time on designing educational curricula in which young people and the current workforce learn to work with and complement artificial intelligence in a manner that increases productivity and I think just to say a little more on this point artificial intelligence and all of the improvements in technology can help Africa to leapfrog its way through the years and years that other developed economies have gone through. So there's a need to harness artificial intelligence to achieve that and I think we're seeing that in several aspects or several aspects of our lives from farming, from agriculture to education etc. So there is definitely something to be said about being prepared to take maximum advantage of technology in providing more jobs and more opportunities and of course better paying jobs. So I'll talk a little also about climate change and climate action. Like the rest of the world, Africa has to find a pathway to growth that is sustainable in the light of climate of the climate change crisis. The continent however faces a conundrum in that it is rich and many parts of our continent are rich in fossil fuels including natural gas but we are energy poor. In other words, Africans do not have power just by the fact that we have tremendous fossil fuel reserves. So while the world is saying, especially the global north is saying, that the safest thing to do is to decommission all our fossil fuel projects and machinery and have only restricted use of natural gas, we're saying that there must be a better way to undertake this transition especially as gas is not as polluting of course as crude oil or coal and is still essential for the purposes of industrialization and especially for us clean cooking. While Africa must insist on climate justice in the sense of common but differentiated responsibilities, it should also agree that there is a new way by which we can benefit from the processes of adapting to climate change. Africa has the potential to become the first truly green civilization, the first civilization on earth to use renewable fuel for purposes of transformative economic for purposes of a transformative economic journey. We have the lowest carbon emissions today and Africa can develop by deploying and using green energy effectively and by mobilizing our young population to promote green manufacturing on a scale that would make it a global green factory of the world. We can and indeed must do something revolutionary and something different. In other words, Africa can use climate action to underpin and increase in productivity and to create well-paying jobs. For growth to work in Africa it must also be equitable but right now eight of the most unequal countries in the world are in Africa. It's important to reduce inequality because it is negatively correlated with minimum with medium-term growth. Similarly, important is the need for gender for greater gender equality. The global gender gap index shows that on average females in Africa were 32% less likely to have the same economic, social, legal and political opportunities as males. It must be important therefore for African countries to prioritize the advancement of women by giving them greater economic opportunity and access to cutting-edge educational and health facilities. One area in which equality is important is in giving women voice especially through political participation. As encouraging to note in this regard that African countries like Rwanda, Rwanda is the first country in the world with a female majority in the parliament with 61.3% in its chamber of deputies. Now these things are important because Africa trying to develop without its women folk is like tying one hand behind his back while trying to climb a tree. Regional and I think that this is this is just absolutely important. We cannot, we simply cannot do much without doing something about gender equality. I think one of the critical things that we must do also is educational of girls and that is something that we've taken up quite seriously in Nigeria in the past few years. We've worked on not just a program but a curriculum for accelerated education of girls. That of course is challenged sometimes by cultural beliefs and sometimes just plain prejudice. But I think that those are surmountable and some of the programs that we're seeing, the successes of some of the programs we're seeing show that there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel. I talk a bit also about regional integration and I think regional integration is absolutely important for us in Africa especially to overcome the limitations of our small fragmented economies. The takeoff of the African continental free trade area in January 2021 is a step in the right direction. So the free trade area is expected to create a 2.7 trillion US dollar market by eliminating trade barriers and enabling economies of scale on the continent. This arrangement should be exploited in full to enable African countries make gains from trade not only in goods but also in services. It's also encouraging that the free trade area is being positioned to drive industrialization in Africa by promoting the development of regional value chains. The process of course will be aided by putting in place the necessary infrastructure to underpin production as well as an efficient payment system that overcomes the need to purchase third currencies before trade can take place between African countries. And of course we have a great effort by Afroexem, Afroexem has established an interesting payment system which seeks to deal with this obstacle of third currencies when African countries trade with each other and from what we see there is considerable progress being made in the way that that payment system has been working. Another great resource that will enable Africa make the most of his growth is our diaspora and I think instead of lamenting the brain drain which of course is costly, Africa should organize itself to take advantage of his diaspora. In addition to remittances which were told in excess of 37 billion U.S. dollars and 37 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 and now in excess of 96 billion U.S. dollars as of 2021. The African diaspora is a significant source of strength. The diaspora has established businesses in various sectors, they've offered themselves for public service and have provided cutting-edge services in medicine, in surgery and in medicine and several other areas. Indeed the diaspora is Africa's vanguard for keeping up with the rest of the world. So apart from the serendipity of getting the right leaders at the right time, the things I've spoken about fall within the purview of national governments. The reality though is that getting the right mix, timing and sequencing of development policies and implementing them successfully remains a major challenge. As the noble red robot solo said, ingredients do not make a dish. One thing that also matters in the drive for growth, but which is not under the control of domestic authorities, is the external environment. The global economic order matters because it frames the trade and development policy options available to developing countries. And I would say that the unparalleled success of countries like Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and China, more recently, and increasingly India and Vietnam is an outcome of the liberal international economic order put in place by the victorious past at the end of the Second World War. The liberal international economic order allowed for exchange of ideas, technology and know-how across countries and could be said to have peaked with the globalization that started especially in the late 20th century. The claim has been made that more people were taken out of poverty in the post Second World War period than in the preceding 500 years. Now this is not so difficult to believe if we consider the remarkable transformation of China and India. China is reported for instance to have lifted 770 million people out of poverty over a 40-year period, while India is said to have lifted 415 million people out of multi-dimensional poverty in the last 15 years alone. Since we are in a notable center for the study of global affairs, I think we should ponder a bit on the global economic order and ask ourselves whether the conditions under which recent late developers grew fast is still available and would still be available to support Africa's quest to make growth work over the next 27 years. To be frank, the Omens do not look good and it seems to me that those of us with an abiding interest in international relations must work together to ensure that it continues to enable global peace and security as well as economic progress. Indeed, the ability of Africa to make the most of growth depends a great deal on peace and security also in the rest of the world and within the continent. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine has appended that era of peace in mainland Europe, which many of us had taken for granted. The outbreak of that war led to huge increases in the prices of food, fertilizer, and fuel, which are required to feed people and power growth and development. Equally troubling is the fact that the resources being used to prosecute the war detract from the resources that could otherwise have been used for development assistance or debt relief, which have a role to play, of course, in propelling growth in Africa. On the domestic front, Africa continues to struggle also with imported terrorism. For instance, the 2022 Global Terrorism Index reports that the Sahel region of the continent has become home to the world's fastest growing and most deadly terrorist groups, and that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 48 percent of global terrorism deaths. So given the scale of the problem and the fact that the threat of terrorism anywhere on earth is a threat to the whole of humanity, I think it's time for the global community to treat the menace of terrorism, especially in the Sahel, as a common challenge. And I think that it bears repeating that this is one area in which the great powers and emerging powers can come together, put aside their rivalries, and work together with Echoes and the Africa Union on an initiative to stamp out terrorism in Africa, especially in the Sahel. Let me conclude by saying what I think is cliché in discussions of governance, and this is that leadership is key. Africa's growth ambitions will surely need leadership that is committed, knowledgeable leadership, rather, that is committed to good governance. At the end of the day, knowledgeable leadership committed to good governance, I think, is key to achieving all or any of our ambitions. Thank you very much for your time today.


What's going on guys today? I am back with another destiny 2 video and today I have something pretty damn funny and Epic at the same time and that is footage of Savala dying like a WTF What is going on now before you guys see this craziness if you do enjoy the video Even like is much much appreciated on my behalf Okay So for the third and final time of me running the first mission into the destiny 2 beta and my third character Which in this instance was a Titan? I actually decided to stay with Savala and help him defend the tower against the cabal to see if anything else happens Besides the constant wave of enemies that keeps spawning in what I learned was while defending the tower with him for about 20 minutes or so Not much happens besides the fact new guardians keep spawning in and so while I kind of just Rotating his set mechanics, which is what you would guess would happen in this instance of the mission where people do Spawning and spawn out but other than that I actually discovered Zavala can actually die here as crazy as it sounds He does and the fact you have to revive him is amazing Unscreen now we are seeing this happen to be honest I don't know actually killed him but look like some kind of crazy fire laser beam attack thingy thingy bub bub But looks up. He just melts him. I thought he just melts him And it's just after the instance of him dropping his bubble me trying to get into it and failing like a boss And I don't know if it's affected him in any way But weirdly Zavala seems slow to react into getting back into cover and got absolutely Annihilated the best thing about this is though you actually have to revive him which I know seems like no big deal But I think it's actually epic So whether this happens if you just wait with him for a certain while whether it's just a glitch That isn't supposed to happen But the fact you can revive him bungee have definitely put their feature in place where he can die It's it's obvious. But yes, Zavala actually dying and being revived within the tower Can actually happen which I think is epic. Another video is nothing amazing It's not really a must-know, but I think it's great to know and see so guys you saw it here first Zavala dying and being revived. Hope you guys enjoyed the video as always I will see you on that next one and peace out until next time


In few words what I do is to care for the dead as many other people care for the living. In conflict settings, after disasters, the effects of not treating the dead in a dignified way live on in the minds of the affected communities and is part of the tragedy of the war or the disaster. We're working for the living, for the relatives of the missing, for the bereaved families. The need to certify a death is a universal necessity recognised by the legal frameworks of all countries which requires a formal procedure which the ICRC Forensic Services can contribute to. Dealing with the missing is sometimes the most difficult part of peacemaking. Political power of the missing and dead is huge. The neutrality of the ICRC helps you at the end to your work better. It makes the authorities or the families to believe more in what you say. The forensic skills and knowledge are used exclusively for humanitarian purposes. Where armed conflict is taking place, in many cases the authorities are overwhelmed. We are talking about not one dead body from a murder at the morgue but thousands or hundreds and that's what makes it different, that you have to adjust the procedures to be able to respond to a large-scale event. We often work in contexts where many of the high-tech portfolio that we're used to see in some TV series do not exist. So, our forensic specialists have to make best use of sometimes very limited resources to fulfil their task. It also opens an incredible door for inventiveness, for developing new tools, scientific procedures etc. Every day is different. Sometimes you go to the field and you are present during exhumations.  Sometimes you are conducting training activities. One day we talk to ministers or even presidents on forensic humanitarian action, on management of human remains. And the next day we go with a grave digger and show him how to mark a particular grave site. You are under pressure, you have lots of bodies but you also have lots of families, you have colleagues, you have stress. It's a challenge that we face and at the end very, very rewarding. We are part of the protection department of the ICRC but on the other side we have projects where we set up forensic infrastructure. We work a lot with protection delegates, with colleagues from weapons and contamination department, with health department. So we can conduct different projects. You work together in such a way that it's a powerful experience. It's a sort of a family. You also feel backup because you are part of a big organisation. Having a wide network of world-leading forensic specialists for overcoming some of the challenges that we face in the field. You need to be respectful, you need to respect the environment in which you are, instead of imposing directions. You need to be able to work in teams, but they need to be able to look at systems. Commitment to humanitarian values has a core requirement for working in the ICRC. To be passionate about it, to really believe that you can make a difference with what you know. The ICRC give me the opportunity to apply my skills in a way that has more impact. Whenever I am able to give the remains back to a family and when families ask you questions and you are able to provide answers, this is the most rewarding moment. This is when you feel that I'm actually in the right place doing the right thing.


Hey there lads and ladies, it is Petrifying Pumpkins here with yet another firewall zero hour video. Today is the 18th of December, the date that DLC number three will be dropping. However, the update has not yet gone live. It looks like it's going to be gone by American time, so that means it won't be out for a few hours yet. But there are some things about the update that I wanted to talk about. So over on the PS blog, Shabs met a blog post detailing the updates and DLC three. Now most of us, we already knew. So I skipped down to the stuff where he details some of the improvements that are going to be made to the game. So the first one is that there's going to be a way to deal with the AFK players as we already knew. But the second one is that voice chat will continue during loading screens. So this was something that was pretty annoying since launch.  However, when I went back to check the PS blog post again, the post was edited and that point was replaced with a different fix. And so then I went over to reddit or slash firewall zero hour, where I saw a post talking about this particular fix slash improvement. And there was a comment there from a firewall developer named Andrew. So I'll put his comment up on the screen and we'll read us just a heads up. The Vo IP while loading into maps feature had to be temporarily shelved at the last minutes, literally due to an annoying infrequent bug that we have to knock out before it can go out to the real world. But fear not, it is very much on the front burner for early next year. Sorry for the delay, but it's coming real soon. So while this has been delayed and that is a bit disappointing, it still looks like it'll be arriving early 2019, which isn't too bad. At least we know it's on the way, which is very nice. So what did they replace that bullet point with you may be wondering? Well, they've added that the Taylor CQB variant will be changing from a three burst fire to fully auto fire, which I'm happy about personally. It means that the two tailors will feel more unique from each other now. And it breeds some new life into one of the original weapons. The final bullet point they mentioned is one that I found very surprising. It is the addition of contractor eye movement in the lobby. Now that sounds kind of random, but there have been times where I've zoomed in on the eyes of my contractor and they've looked kind of like they're painted on. So now that they're going to be animated, it might be one of those small touches that makes the game feel a bit more realistic. So I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks. So one more thing that I want to point out is that there is now a free firewall zero hour stasic theme on the PS store. At least it's out in the EU store anyway. It has some nice custom music and icons and it has a really nice transition from the bottom bear to the top bear. I might just record some of that and have it on the screen for you now so that you know what I mean.  And with that I will end this video lads and ladies. I was hoping to be playing the new map by now and streaming this, but it looks like it might drop while I'm at work. So it could be around 11pm my time before I'm streaming that. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. Please consider doing all the usual moist shies and I'll see you in Greenland. Bye for now.


And we are live. I'm Peter Higgins and I'm going to introduce our next speaker. Angela Lee is an R-spatial Research Analyst at the University of Chicago, working in Economics, Health, and Public Policy, known for our Lady Chicago and the R-spatial chat on Twitter. Also at CivicAngela, Marina Kozak is the Assistant Director of Health Informatics at the University of Chicago and a Health Geographer presenting Calculating Nationwide Access Metrics for Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder. Great. Thanks for having us, Peter. We're really excited to be here today talking about some of the work that we've been doing over the past year. I'm actually currently no longer at the University of Chicago, so I've moved on to a different institution, but Marina will be carrying on this work over the next few years. So this work has been sponsored by the NIH Heal Initiative, which is part of the J-Coin Network, which looks at opioid treatment for people in justice settings. And we did this as part of the Center for Spatial Data Science. And, Marina, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself as well. Sure. Yeah. So I'm Marina. I'm a Health Geographer, as well as Spatial Epidemiologist. I work primarily as a social determinants of health researcher in how SDOH impacts multiple different domains. And the opioid epidemic is one of those domains. So we'll be focusing on that today. Great. Cool. All right.  I'll refer to that as OUD for short. So OUD is a chronic and relapsing disease that affects the body and the brain. It can affect individuals of any background, which is something that's become increasingly known, hopefully, over the past few years. Also, it can result from taking prescription opioids after surgery or for pain. These are a unique set of circumstances kind of combined to drive what we now call the opioid epidemic. And that basically means in the past about 20 years, almost 450,000 people have died from an overdose involving opioids in 2018. There were 2 million people who had an opioid use disorder. So this gets further complicated, of course, as we talk about COVID. So while the data is still new and fresh, at the very minimum, we know that opioid-related mortalities have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is likely due to a variety of reasons. It could be from increased isolation that will drive relapse and overdose death. It can be related to limited treatment options as well as disruption to existing access, as well as exacerbated health and economic inequities. So at this point, we know that at least 40 states have reported increases in deaths as of this month. And at least there's been an 18% increase in related mortalities nationwide, though you'll see a lot of spatial heterogeneity, meaning in some areas it will actually be far, far higher percentages than 18. So something that's not as often talked about when we talk about the opioid epidemic is access to evidence-based treatment. So from this talk, we're really coming at this from a public health and kind of clinical science perspective. For a long-term recovery, we know that people are more successful in the recovery plans when they involve medications for opioid use disorder, specifically evidence-based ones. These not only help brain chemistry or normalize brain chemistry and curb withdrawal symptoms, but in obviously support recovery plans, but it also saves lives. So there's a huge reduction in mortality when MLUDs are included. And from a public health perspective, it also prevents downstream infections from injection drug use, like hepatitis C, HIV, and so on and so forth. There's three primary medications that we talk about in this area, methadone, buprenorphine, naltrexone, each work in very different ways. And then from a clinical perspective, it's really important to get the right treatment to the right person. And individuals will have preferences for different medications, and we find that success is really connected to whether or not they're able to get what their preference is. So next one. Just to give you kind of, you know, highlight the importance of these, we know that specifically methadone and buprenorphine are associated with reduced mortality, especially after non-fatal opioid overdoses. So the idea is to capture someone, if they've survived, you know, in this example, if they've survived an overdose to make sure that that doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, a minority of patients actually get access to MLUDs. And it's still not widely used in this, in the community for a variety of access stigma and other issues that we won't get into today. But to highlight, so next screen, just one kind of specific point here. Methadone has been associated with very high reduction in mortality specifically, which means less overdose deaths and followed by buprenorphine. And then there's still research being done on naltrexone. So that may be preferred in some areas for other complex reasons. So our central question is really, where can patients access evidence-based medications for OUD in the US? And then from a social determinants of health perspective, how does that kind of structural access mitigate health outcomes, right? And it ends up to be a very complicated topic because not all medications are used in the same way, and access will really matter. So different individuals need access to different medications in different ways. Methadone, you might need to use daily initially, and then weekly, and then monthly. So access is really critical, whereas buprenorphine can be picked up by pharmacy monthly, and then naltrexone would also be another monthly trip. So I'll switch over to Angela to delve into the details. Thanks, Marinette. So before I started on this work, I hadn't done that much in terms of access. And so one of my major goals for the first part of this was to sort of understand access and how we define access. So in terms of how we can measure access, there are many questions that we can think about when looking at this. So one of them, as we mentioned, was what resources being access and how frequently it doesn't need to be accessed. You can imagine that going to a methadone clinic regularly is very different from going to a specific clinic to get a prescription for buprenorphine. Additionally, how far away is the provider? And not only in distance, but also in time. So you can imagine in Chicago, a short distance that might be able to be traveled in rural areas might take a really long time to get to, depending on congestion and other factors. Additionally, how will the individual get to the resource? Do they have access to a car or do they have to rely on walking or public transit? And so adding these things into our understanding of access really helps us further our knowledge of how individuals can be treated. And this isn't only medications for opioid use disorder. This could be for primary care. This could be for, I think I talked to someone earlier today who was interested in liver transplants. So these are a set of methods and ways to think about the world that might be useful in other parts of the public health sphere or even beyond. So one of our first objectives was to define spatial access to medication. In the literature, you'll find some very common metrics. So basic ways of capturing spatial access include the count of resources per area. So within a given area, how many hospitals are within a zip code or looking at a count of resource buffers. So if we buffer hospitals by one mile, how many buffers intersect with this zip code? Often these methods are undertaken using proprietary or expensive software. But we also wanted to look at the sensitivity of boundaries. How are we certain that one mile is ideal for a specific area? Do we want to look at transit mode? Do we want to look at population density or re-running this analysis multiple times? For our access metric that we'll be talking about today, we are looking at minimum distance. So we took the centroids of zip codes and we measured from that centroid to the nearest MOUD resource. So in this case, you can see that we have two points and the point that is closest to the zip code centroid, we measure that distance. So it might be 1.2 miles. And we can do this at scale in R. So that brings me to my next point. We want to scale spatial access analysis. Point and click GIS has pitfalls. So you have to repeat your processes for each visualization of interest. This might also often be done by single analysts on costly licensed software in a separate research silo or department. We believe that using R for GIS makes spatial analysis scalable and meaningful to the larger research community. So you can imagine that geospatial data processing, access metric calculation and geospatial visualization, that might not be something that you initially do in-house. But with R, you might be able to remove that bottleneck and start looking at spatial access metrics and look at that in more detail. So the next bit I want to talk a little bit about the code that we used to do this. And R, I'm going to go through relatively quickly. We have written a tutorial with a lot of this information and it's online and we'll share the link later. So sit back and let the code wash over you. I'll be going through pretty quickly. The data that we're going to be using is the substance abuse and mental health services administration data from 2019. The sources are the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services and the Buprenorphine Waved Physicians Database. If you go to the SAMHSA website, there's this nice locator and you can actually check the specific types of substance use services that you're interested in, as well as a number of other things, healthcare centers, mental health. And you can download, I think, a CSV with the point locations of these facilities, as well as the addresses and other information. Note that this is a nationwide point location data set of substance abuse treatment centers prescribing MAUD. So you can actually get methadone at places that are not substance abuse treatment centers specifically. So anything that we show is probably even an undercount of the access, but it's the best data we have. We're also looking at the most recent year, so 2019. One of the projects we have underway is to get some historical data on the locations of these facilities and look at sort of more of a temporal analysis. To select our MAUD proxy variables, there are a number of MAUD relevant variables coded in the survey. So we relied on clinical expertise to select the proper variables relevant to long-term recovery and maintenance. You can see that from this juju plot that there are six methadone variables in the data set. We chose the one that was relevant to methadone maintenance specifically. This is really different from cases in which we might use methadone in an emergency context. The workflow that we used was first to process our data, second to calculate our access metrics, and third to visualize. I'm going to walk through each of these sections in R, and this is sort of the general data workflow that we used. And you can see that there's a lot sort of in the whole process. We have to combine for data processing. We have to look at addresses and a CSV, pull-in boundary data, and then take that as inputs to calculate access metrics in R. We can calculate a number of different types of access metrics. We'll be focusing on minimum distance. And then once we have that, we can put it into a visualization workflow with other boundary files, join attributes, and visualize this using we's the team app package in R. But you can throw it into a shiny app, and we've seen a lot of examples of great shiny apps lately. Okay, so I want to go through this quickly. But the first thing that we're going to do is prepare our origin or zip code data. We're going to be using the SF package, and the functions in that package really are very clear on what they do. So the first thing that we're going to do is read in our shape file using read SF. This is very similar to read CSV. But you can throw in any type of spatial file in there, and it'll read it and turn it into a spatial object. Then we'll transform our data. We're going to project it. So turn it from latitude and longitude, which is on the sphere of the globe to a flat surface. This is extremely important when you are measuring things like distance so that you get an accurate representation of distance. We're going to be using a projection that is specifically good for Chicago, which is the 3435 projection. And then we're going to calculate the centroids of those zip polygons using ST centroid. Finally, we'll take that centroid object and write it out using write underscore SF. And we can write to shape files or CSV. So we can take this point object in R and save it as a spatial thing, or we can save it as a CSV and share it with stakeholders down the road. We also, I don't have data here for calculating population-weighted centroids, but that is also something that you could do. Next, we'll prepare the destination or resource data. So these are where our MOUDs are. If you have solely addresses and if you just are working with addresses, you can first geocode those addresses. So what that will do is take an address 123 Elm Street and change it into latitude-longitude coordinates. Once you have those coordinates, you can use ST as SF and change that into a spatial object in R. Finally, you're going to project again using ST transform using the new coordinate reference system or CRS and put it into the same projection as your zip or boundary data. I'm going to take a look at the spatial data structure that we're working with in R because I know that not that many people have worked with spatial data structures in R. So if I go ahead and pull up the SF R object, what that looks like is something like this. SF is really good because it allows you to work with structures that look like data frames in R. If you've worked with the SP package, you'll notice that it's a little bit different in terms of the objects that are created. First, I want to point out that there's a header that gives you some geographical information about this data set. There are a number of things in here that are important, but the most important thing for you as you go forward and work with geospatial data is to look at the projection. 4, 3, 2, 6 means that the data is not projected and that it's in longitude and latitude and not in X and Y. You can see that in our geometry column, this is the last column in your spatial object that we have a point object and it has a longitude of 87, negative 87 and a latitude of around 41. These are in decimal degrees and they are not great for measuring distance. Okay, so to calculate minimum access and we can talk a little bit more about this, but I'll direct you to some resources that go into a bit more about spatial data structures. To calculate minimum access in R, we're going to be using a great function called ST nearest feature. This is built into the SF package and with point data, you can find the closest one to you. I think I talked to someone who didn't know about this function and had been calculating it by hand and running their own functions, but ST nearest feature is fast and it will allow you to find that resource. So we're going to find the indexes of the nearest clinics and then we're going to index the original methadone locations. And what that gives you is for each zip code, what is the address and geometry location of the nearest methadone provider? And you can see that in this case, the point data is the numbers are a lot bigger. This is because we've projected that data and the numbers are in X, Y, and I think it here they're in terms of feet instead of decimal degrees. Okay, for each origin code, we're going to calculate the distance the nearest destination. So now that you know what object is closest, you're going to calculate the distance between the center of your zip code and the nearest clinic. And then you're going to convert to miles. So when we do that, we get a nice vector of miles in R and this we're going to use as our access metric for now. So you can see for the first observation or data, the nearest methadone clinic is 6.98 miles away. Okay, and then finally visualizing access metrics in R. After we joined the distance value back to the original spatial file, we're going to make a thematic map with T map. And this is very similar. The syntax is very similar to GD plot two. However, it adds a few functionalities in there that allow you to work with spatial data specifically and then also visualize interactively. So I was in the geospatial mapping for the feather earlier and people asked a question about this. So not only can you make this map, but you can also run a function called T map mode view, then run the same code that you already typed in again. And what you'll get is an interactive version of the map, the static map that you've just created. Disclaimer, these map defaults are not great because the breaks are a little bit bigger than we want. I think carefully about the map breaks that you want. We also don't have all the resources that we need in here. So this is not a final visualization. This is just to show you what T map looks like and what it does. So T map mode view and T map mode plot will allow you to go between static and interactive mapping and T map. So I really, really like this package. Okay, I sped through all of that really quickly but I'm gonna go ahead and direct you to these free high quality resources for learning more. These are both books that have come out within the last two years. And they are just phenomenal. If you want like a overview of sort of geocomputation in art or geospatial health data and how to build shiny apps for health and ethnic specifically, I think purposes, go ahead and take a screenshot of these links. I really recommend these resources for learning how to do this. Okay, I'm gonna jump to the results. So we are still at the beginning of some of this analysis. So there's definitely more to be done but I'm gonna go ahead and show you the US wide access metrics that we calculated for each of the medications. These are the access metrics for a buprenorphine based on minimum distance. You can see that access is actually, it looks pretty good, not terrible. However, I will point out that these access metrics are to potential prescribers. So they're all the positions that could potentially prescribe you buprenorphine. We have no way of recording actual prescribing. So it's the best we have. This is not realized access. This is sort of potential access. Naltrexone looks a little bit worse and like the access is not as comprehensive. You may also say, hey, like this looks like it's just an urban rural map and that's potentially true but when we jump to methadone, you'll see that sort of looking at buprenorphine and naltrexone methadone is a lot sparser. So this is really problematic because methadone has been shown to be one of the most effective medications in reducing mortality. And it's one of the medications that needs to be accessed most frequently. So every day. And you can see that the access for this is just way worse than buprenorphine and naltrexone respectively. So these are just preliminary results. But I think this is really, really telling in terms of methadone access and the sort of sparseness of that access across our nation. We also took a look at sort of the median distance to the nearest resources versus rural and urban areas. So you can see that the rural distances are a lot higher than the suburban and urban distances. Obviously this doesn't take into account congestion, travel, like time to distance. But you can see, and I think in here we actually threw in dialysis. Dialysis is very similar to methadone in terms of how frequently you have to access it. And so if we use dialysis as sort of a baseline for what access should look like, you can see that methadone is way, way farther away than dialysis centers. Okay, extensions and next directions again or sort of at the beginning of this whole research process. So we wanted to present some of the work we are doing just to get it out there but we are working with three MOUD treatments, methadone, buprenorphine and deltruxone. We're doing it for 50 states. We're also going to add in more access metrics. So you can see that we are looking at distance nearest and we're also interested in the count within a certain threshold, the time to the nearest location, a specific access score. And as I mentioned before, we're looking at time periods. So historical data and trying to digitize a lot of those directories from SAMHSA. And then finally, we want to add in more resources like primary care to better understand sort of the landscapes surrounding care for individuals who are suffering from opioid use disorder. Thank you, so we're at the end of the talk. Finally, translating everything that we've done, we're writing an opioid toolkit to explain to our partners what we're doing and give them the resources to do it themselves. So we're going to share this with our cohort and Jcoin. We're preliminary hoping to release this in fall 2020 and share it across our network and community groups. Right now there's a tutorial for access metric calculation, sort of I sped through really quickly up there and some visualization and mapping. We plan to add a lot more in the next bit of time, but if you are curious in doing this process for your data, I will go ahead and give you the link I think in the next slide. And thank you so much for having us. I'm really excited that we got to share this work, even though I think we're still at the outset. It's really important to work and I'm really grateful to Marunia for giving me a chance to work on this. And here are the two links that helped me a lot when I was getting started. So I'm going to go ahead and share those with you. Thanks so much. Super, and if you could drop those links into the chat, that would be awesome when you get a chance. We're coming up on a break. So if folks need a bio break, go ahead. But Marunia and Angela are obviously here if you want to pop a few questions. I will not feel badly if people need to take a break. One question that got a lot of votes was, is methadone versus the other forms of access divided by socioeconomic status? It seems like they're very different access. Yes, definitely, definitely. There's a kind of a long historical and complex reasoning behind that. And it's also kind of related to the different types of what the medication will actually do. So for example, naltrexone seems to be preferred in areas that might have a more punitive approach to opioid use disorder. Because with naltrexone, you're blocked from feeling the effects of opioids. So it's very complicated, but yes, definitely. And another question, it's a little bit slightly different topic, but I think an interesting question. Do you know anything about the opioid related mortality rate, or do you have data on that during the pandemic compared to before? And have you seen increases since March or April? Yes, definitely. I know that in some parts of the countries, it's doubled, we had a slide at the very beginning that highlights some of the most recent research that came out of this, but for example, there's been at least an 18% increase in mortality. And that's globally, that's the average. So that doesn't even include areas that had it even more, where it was even more severe. And the concern again, is that a lot of the areas that had very few resources, like they might have had just one medication. Again, the disruption to that access is even more problematic. There is a website on the national health statistics. I think it's in our references that has drug over those deaths by I think date. And so we pulled sort of this from that dashboard. I think the 18% in mortality rates is sort of preliminary analysis that has come out looking at sort of extrapolating it from some other things. I don't think there's any national collecting of opioid related mortality specifically. So it's mostly just drug overdose. Great. And it looks like Murni has already started to respond to this, but Trang Lee asked, rather than distance, should you do travel time? Because it's so variable in urban versus rural. Exactly. Yeah, I think this is sort of the next stage. And we've actually gotten to generate, and we put this in the appendix because we wanted to, I realized that, let's see, someone might ask about it, but... Clearly the fans are sticking around during the back. Okay. So yeah, we've done it for Illinois. In terms of travel times, it's a lot more difficult computationally because you have to look at street networks, think about like how you're gonna route from destination A to destination B. But our research center has actually put together, it's a pipeline package about calculating access metrics from census tracks to the other. And we can drop the link to that chat in the chat as well. So let's see. Yeah, so these are what we've done in Illinois so far, but we haven't scaled them up yet to the nations. That's very cool. Awesome. Well, I'm sure we will try to figure out a way to curate all these links and share them with folks, but it's just great to see so much spatial work in the health space. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Thanks Peter. Thanks.


Hi everyone and welcome to our first VGC 2020 on Sword and Shield episode of the season. My name is Lee also known as Osiris and it's been a long time coming and I'm pleased to be kicking off this series finally. So we're here we're going to be using a very fun team to kick us off into this new series so it's going to be based around Eskew which is the little penguin Pokemon. We'll get into the team in a moment but we're going to jump on to the ranked battle. And I've had a few games with this team but I've picked this one out as probably one of my favourite ones because it really encapsulates the ability to utilise the trick room here and then the ability on Eskew which has got that ice face ability making it kind of immune to physical hits initially when it is hit. The ice cube on its head kind of protects it from any physical attacks taking no damage then the ice cube breaks on its head after that physical hit and then its stats change it gets a speed boost which is extremely good and useful especially if you're going for a belly drum strategy. So you can see our team here on the left which is indeedy female, the Eskew, the Obama Snow, Rydon, Jellicent and Arcanine. So the Rydon's got a lightning rod as its ability because it does protect us against the electric type users that could really threaten Jellicent. We'll break down the team later in the video and I will be revealing the rental code as well so you can check that out. Now our opponent in this episode is Magic Key and we're going to get straight into this one they're leading out with the Togokiss and Shandler so straight away this stops me in my tracks because the one thing that Eskew doesn't really want to be taking is special type attacks because its ability ice face doesn't protect you against the special side of attackers so things like Heatwave which I'm kind of worried about here from the Shandler make me quite worried straight away I don't really want to be taking too much damage especially if I want to utilise that belly drum later on and especially the Togokiss as well kind of known to be able to Dynamax could throw out a big special type attack which they're known for and that would really put us in a bad position so here I'm just gonna go for an attack into the Shandler I want to make sure that I'm trying to get rid of it because it does threaten our Eskew and our Obama Snow in the back so I want to try and get as much damage on that early on as possible and I'm just gonna keep Eskew around for later and switch in Jellicent here it's suspecting that we all gonna see Heatwave and maybe a Dazzling Green maybe an Air Slash from that Togokiss so we do switch the Eskew out gonna save that for later and by getting this board position out with the Jellicent next to the Indeedy it puts me in a nice position to go for a follow-me trick room the next turn so we're in a nice place to get the trick room set up because we're pressuring this Shandler the psychic seed there on the Indeedy really helping us take that Heatwave a lot better and we do see Yon come out from the Togokiss now this puts Jellicent in a little bit of an awkward position because if we stay in trick room now then we will fall asleep the next turn but you know I figure with how fast my opponent's team is and us being able to utilize something like a bomber snow and Eskew in trick room before that ice face breaks then it will be quite useful here we pressure the Shandler here pretty hard so the chances are it does switch out this is why I kind of change my mind and went for follow me just to protect Jellicent primarily from an air slash from the Togokiss because I do think the Shandler switches out and doesn't really go for that that shadow ball knowing that the follow-me would be into the Indeedy and it's also pressured from a psychic as well and the one thing that I do worry about here is the Togokiss air slash onto the Jellicent kind of denying our trick room which is why I've went for that follow-me more than anything else so we do see the Shandler switch out the Gyarados gonna hit the field now it is gonna get the Intimidate off but onto both our special attackers we're not too worried about that really right now so you can see we are gonna get that follow-me up and just protect ourselves from the Togokiss another thing here would be a Yorn coming out into the Indeedy which we do see that does kind of put me in a bit of a bad position because it's it's obvious that if I want to keep the Indeedy around for later in the battle that I have to switch it out now which gives my opponent the opportunity to really kind of predict there because the Jellicent now was sleep it is gonna take a turn of sleep this next turn we can't wake up so we it's kind of dead in the water but I do want to preserve Indeedy for later now I do have the Sash on Abomasno I do think about bringing an SKU here but the Sash kind of gives me that little bit of security here I guess against against what my opponent can do at least they'll have to double attack into the Abomasno if they want to get rid of it and the likelihood is they might take this opportunity to attack into the Jellicent knowing that it is asleep just to get rid of it off the field because under trick room it does put on a lot of pressure on my opponent especially with the the big water spouts the sap strength and things like that that we're knowing for so I'm gonna switch Indeedy out get rid of that yawn just reset it and then we'll get Abomasno onto the field and if we can successfully get Abomasno on the field here it means we're gonna put you able to put a lot of pressure on to both of these these Pokemon on my opponent's side of the field with these big blizzard type attacks so we do get Abomasno and get that snow warning up and Jellicent does stay asleep and burning that one turn of sleep turn and I think they predict that the Jellicent might switch out here going for the power whip going for a yawn into that slot but not not quite getting that off here the power whip takes us down long enough for the hail to chip us out but this is perfect because Jellicent going down it's kind of dead weight asleep it could take three sleep turns you never know so getting rid of it off the field now so we can utilize our trick room turns is perfect so what we're gonna do is get the SKU in and we can start our little strategy the blizzards are gonna be chunking the Togekiss I'm not really worried about that too much it is gonna be able to take at least one blizzard so we have to worry about a yawn into SKU which is the one thing I do worry about right here I do think about going for an Aurora veil right now but I think because we still got a sash intact we're not in the the worst position so do I attack with SKU or do I go for the belly drum I think because the Gyarados is mainly a physical type attacker I'm not really too worried like the Togekiss can attack us but it's not gonna be KOing us and we can we're like a totally mean to whatever Gyarados does for one turn anywhere with this ice face active so I'll go for the belly drum now and if we can get this set up remember the SKU is still pretty slow compared to the Gyarados and the Togekiss now under the trick room so we should still be moving before it it's just a case of if our ice face gets broken here then our speed will jump and we'll be in a little bit of a tighter position but things are all right we got the Abomaso X to us firing off blizzards is fine we do see the Gyarados it does dynamax here so it's gonna chunk itself up and beef itself out and it's gonna be a bit more difficult to take down but like I say we should be alright as long as we don't see the going and we don't we just see the follow me from the Togekiss maybe just wants to protect the Gyarados a little bit more this next turn as we do get a blizzard off and do some nice damage to that Togekiss meaning that we we will be able to take it down the next turn but we get a freeze on it which is huge for us a big help there and we do get the belly drum off with our little penguin and he is gonna boost that attacks that to the max and we also have the Citrus Berry on there so it does mean we're in a nice position now known that the Gyarados can't do anything to us this turn because of its physical type attacks and our ice face ability that we are going to be able to dynamax the next turn and really start doing some work we do see an S max air stream into the Abomaso now does just take us down to our sash so that's fine and really kind of not doing my opponent any favors with that speed boost there especially because we've got a couple of turns of trick room left now we do see the the chip on both my opponent's Pokemon here from the hill and we're free just to fire off another blizzard here because what we can do is blizzard take the Togekiss down and then attack into the Gyarados with our SQ go for an icicle crash into it and that should be enough to take both Pokemon down here we're not worried about the freeze here and I don't think it really plays too much effect into what my opponent can do unless the Togekiss does have protect by any chance and it's unlikely though Togekiss isn't really normally carry protect here so it's likely more going to go for another follow me which then kind of makes the the freeze even more like null and void in my opinion anyway and the only thing that would make a difference is the protect there which we don't know if it's got or not so we do see a max guard from the Gyarados going to try and stick around at least one more turn now as we do see the Togekiss I don't know what it was going for there maybe a protect you never know but we do get the blizzard off with our bomber so it'll be enough to take the Togekiss down and we're still sitting in trick room still sitting in a nice position here it'll be interesting to see what my opponent brings in next as we do go for that icicle crash but into the max guard Gyarados going to stick around for at least one more turn and my opponent here probably trying to stall out the trick room turns I would think and chandelier could come in for my opponent that's what I kind of expect but we haven't seen that fourth Pokemon yet so we don't know what their last Pokemon is and that could cause us a few problems like chandelier here I'm not too worried about because eskies should still underspeed it in the trick room depending on the build of it of course and we do have liquidation which is nice coverage it'll be able to knock it out and chandelier is pretty low anyway so I'm assuming a blizzard and then maybe the hail chip could be enough to take it down a bomber snows pretty powerful it can throw out some big damage but we do see my opponent is going to bring in the dragapult here so um not really a favorable position for my opponent at all now I could go for the blizzard here and I do think about it but you know what a bomber snow is really on its last legs the trick room's going to end soon and the aurora veils probably the most useful thing for us to take now in front of two potentially physical type attackers in dragapult and Gyarados eskies sitting in such a good position right now so we are going to actually dynamax that eskew and go for that max hail storm or max hail crash or however whatever it is called not too familiar with it honestly if you hadn't noticed already anyway we do max our eskew looks so cool it's such a cool design it's such so wacky I do love it anyway we are going to get this blizzard this aurora veil up which does help bolster our defenses especially when we are dynamaxed as well so the thing that we won't up for eskew take those attacks a bit more when we do get the max hail storm was I right the first time I don't know anyway into the Gyarados max attack easily enough to take it down so Gyarados gone they lose their dynamax pokemon and I think this might be the last turn of trick room maybe maybe I don't know we do take the dragon claw it does break our ice face and boof oh but this is the last turn of trick room so this means we do get a speed boost now dragapult still going to outspeed us unfortunately that's one of the drawbacks that we don't get the jump on dragapult but that's fine like we're not on the worst position at all we got our aurora veil support up there's no way that dragapult is going to take us down now we could make the play of switching a bomb it's not out to bring it back in to get our ice face up again but I don't really see there's any need to to do that and risk that then we're going to go for the max geyser into the chandelier just to make sure that we take it down here we are definitely going to outspeed the chandelier we know from earlier in the game that our indeedy outsped it turn one so we know that our sq is going to outspeed it here we're running max jolly nature so our speed is pretty safe here the dragapult's definitely not taking sq down I wouldn't have thought behind an aurora veil and if obama snow can get an attack off here you know a blizzard probably will take down the dragapult so that's a big thing for us and we do get the max geyser off we actually do outspeed the dragapult which is quite surprising but we do get the chandelier anyway so no protect coming out there and we do set up the rain and that is that so chandelier going down dragapult left what we're going to see the dragapult go for and it goes for another dragon claw and we take that pretty comfortably there so it is life hoped as well and we do actually get the blizzard off with obama snow and it does stick around long enough to pick up the knockout onto dragapult and that is the game for us so both our ice types which are generally quite weak pokemon defensively putting some big work here and I think this really shows off the team and its ability to to kind of sweep through and maneuver around really tight situations and it's done an incredible job okay so now we're going to take a look at the actual team breakdown we'll look at the ev spread and some of the movesets before we give you that rental code so you can try this team out for yourself so we've got sq here and not one for anything flashy I think I just mainly wanted to to max out its longevity that's why I've got 252 in HP you know we're going to be boosting most of the time and maxing out its attack so we're not too worried about that attack investment the speed is quite important there I did want to make sure that when its ice face does break and after we take a physical hit that that 130 base speed that it goes to from its 50 base speed is maxed out so we get the jump on pretty much everything else in the format they're hitting a speed stat of 200 with the jolly nature max evs there like I say we could have maxed out attack but with the support of aurora veil and the max HP you can see from that the match that we kind of had here that it does take a bunch more damage with that aurora veil support and then we'll move on to indeedy so we've got the psychic seed here initially I wanted the focus sash here just to give it a little bit make it a bit more tricky for my opponent to take down especially if they're not doubling into it turn one just to support the eskiu because of the follow me there it's so good the reason I haven't went for toga kiss here is because we're kind of doubling up on weaknesses like we don't really want to be so weak to steal type attacks you know it's attackers because you know you've already got a bomber snow that doesn't like them right here is not super keen and indeedy kind of doesn't have that weakness so for that reason it helps out a lot more and also the psychic terrain is really nice to protect eskiu from things like pranks the t waves and just fake out in general and priority attacks that could be a little bit problematic so that's the main reason indeedy feels like really good support here we went for follow me which is kind of obvious to help us get the belly drum up in situation safeguard there's another one to stop opponents burning us ally switch is another one just to infuriate your opponents if you're in a really tight spot can help especially if you want to set the trick room up set the belly drum up or just get an attack off with one of the more powerhouse pokemon and then psychic which does actually hit pretty hard under the trick room we've went just for max attack because when i'm using the psychic i want to be able to hit as hard as possible and max speed because i don't really need as slow indeedy here i feel like getting the psychic off first getting the safeguard off first is really important here and with the psychic seed kind of boosts to the defenses it really helps out and it means we don't need so much investment to survive a lot of threatening attacks now we'll move on to the jellison you can see we've got a split of 252 hp 140 special attack modest nature and 116 special defense just maxing out that special well not maxing out maxing out the hp giving a bit of special defense support to give it a bit of a better chance against opposing rotums with thunderbolts and grass type attacks that are coming out we've got just a culver berry to protect against dark type attacks because we've got the indeedy support therefore the ghost type threats water spout a shadow ball trick room and sap strength as its moveset and i should change this because it is actually cursed body which is probably the better ability here and then we've got a magic man we've got a bomber snow we've definitely put the focus session this it's got a four times weakness to fire which is pretty common in the vgc format protect a roar of ill leaf storm is its new move that it gets in generation eight and then blizzard so it's got that nice coverage of grass and ice grass types are really good in vgc so this is really nice to have especially if we can get the trick room up against even things like ride on riperia other opposing ground types and there's so many dragons in the format that blizzard spams look really strong the weather control as well as nice to disrupt opposing weathers and aurora veil support is just incredible if you can get it off and then we'll move on to arcanine which is just a kind of standard special arcanine i feel like we've got a few physical attackers in the team so having more special attackers is probably better we're not then crippled by intimidate so this is the reason here went with the lumbary because we've got safeguard on this arcanine it makes it a little bit easier if there's fast sleep fast t wave fast whatever that can be disruptive to arcanine it means that we can heal a status condition and then get that safeguard off protect the next turn willow isp nice support for opposing physical type attackers then snarl to law special attackers and then heatwave just generally which is really nice against durant teams because we've got the follow me from indeedy and then we can heatwave not worry about redirection from the opposing durant team and we can just wipe it out and one heatwave even if it is dynamax so speed there we nearly max it out but given it enough to out speed the majority of things you want to be out speeding so you can function a bit better and it's not really a pokemon that you want to be running in trick room anywhere and then we'll move on to our last pokemon which is going to be ride on you could easy put ryperia here but i really like the the lightning rod and i think if you're going lightning rod with ry ride on or ryperia i think it's it's the better option is ride on with the the bulk that you get with ev allite and then protect brick and swipe was a nice option i thought here could have went fire punch but i think we've got the courage we need elsewhere in the team and being able to law opposing pokemon's attack stat is quite important in this format because there's a lot of physical attackers so that can come in quite clutch sometimes and then just rock slide and high horsepower for the coverage you've got a split of two two eight hp and two twenty defense which gives you a good chance to survive a life old charizard timid solar beam not in the sun though but you can disrupt the sun pretty well with a bomber snow and you're always king with the the rock slide so that's pretty much the spread there just wanted to give it enough bulk to survive those big hits and be able to actually have a bit of offensive pressure itself and it makes for still a nice dynamax pokemon when you've got the trick room up if you want is an option there you know you've got the the dragon type d max move which is nice to allow the opposing's attacks that you've got the the special defense boost with the the ground type and you can change the weather again if you want into sandstone with that rock slide so and that is the team and we'll jump over now and here is the rental code so there you go my friends i hope you enjoyed the battle it was a very fun battle it really kind of encapsulates the team i know there's a few members there that we didn't see um but have a lot of fun with this rental code and we'll be back very soon with another battle i will be streaming with this this team so do make sure you come over to our twitch channel the links down in the description stream Tuesdays Thursdays and we'll be having a bit of fun with this penguin in see how far we can get on the ladder with it but thanks for tuning in do leave your comments down below leave a like on the video if you've enjoyed it make sure you subscribe to the channel because we will have a bunch of vgc content coming out in the coming weeks and just take care of yourselves and i'll see you all for the next one


We've got 12 games on Tuesday nights main a daily fantasy baseball Slate and a lot of times when you've got that many games You've got a lot of options in a similar tier who could all produce similar upside and I feel it's night That's not actually the case where I feel really good about one pitcher being above the pack You know being a standout even relative to 23 other pitchers there are a couple stacks I feel like are in a similar spot where they potentially could separate from the field So a bit of a unique slate in that regard where I do kind of want to narrow things down and focus on Those pitchers and stacks I think can separate we'll run through which stacks those are which pitches like most which guy I think could run away from the field and get you ready for Tuesday night in and I'll be DFS Welcome on into the solo shop That's right here on the fan dual podcast network and fan dual research our brand new site on fan dual comm slash Research my name is Jim Suss. I am a managing editor of digital media for fan dual research here to break down The 12-game main slate for Tuesday with locks up for 705 p.m. Eastern For today whether on this slate there is a chance of rain in Washington for the Nationals and the Rockies Especially early it should clear out eventually But it is one to monitor in New York for the Mets and the Yankees rain is likely early though It may clear out later on they might have to have a late start But they could play after that potentially depending on the timing of that rain in Boston for the Red Sox and Braves There's a chance of rain though doesn't look too bad right now So check back on that one later and it is 92 degrees in Minneapolis for the twins and the Mariners Humidity not terrible, but still very good hitting weather So I'd upgrade batters and downgrade pitchers for the twins and the Mariners We'll dive on into top pitching options and more here in just one second First day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast It is still called the number fire daily fantasy podcast because number fire still exists Just our content is in a new place right now solo shot Heat check all that all will stay in the same place and solo shot will still be going up over on the Fandall YouTube page And over on the Fandall TV plus app on Amazon fire Apple TV and Roku devices Make sure you find the solo shot wherever you consume that we will have a PGA DFS podcast on the podcast feed Later on today previewing the 3m open We've got some exciting news over at number fire beginning now You can find all the number fire content from the analysts You know over at a new home called Fandall research Fandall research is on the Fandall domain I mean you can now do your own research on the same site where you play spats and submit daily fantasy lineups And don't worry all the number fire tools are still in place over at number fire calm It's your daily process can remain the same for now as I thank you for all your years of loyalty We'll be running free rolls over on Fandall research now through the end of the NFL season to check out This week's free play on the women's World Cup go to the fan Welcome to Fandall research article over on Fandall research again Be sure to check out all the great content while you're there again That's fandall.com and slash research to find it and the welcome to Fandall research article has a link to the free roll For the US versus Netherlands talk through that match with Dr. Ed Feng last night on covering the spread got his read on it and talked about Some bets he may like over there as well That's on the covering the spread podcast feed the Fandall YouTube page and fandall TV plus as well So again podcast stuff remains the exact same same schedules the same Where you get it is the same just all of number fires content now going up over on fandall calm the slash research as opposed to number fire Com you can still find the heat map Projections all in the same place at number fire for right now Pitching preview for this Tuesday main slate Blake snail checks in with the highest salary on Fandall at $11,000 followed by Andrea Abed at 10 8 we got Mero Kelly checking in at $10,500 followed by Corbin Burns at 10 3 Pablo Lopez Sourius 10,000 George Kirby a 99 rematch of last week for them Charlie Morton checks in 97 with Justin Verlander at 96 We got Aaron Savalli at 93 Chris Bassett is 92 with Alex Cobb Julio Rias JP France Kyle Hendricks Domingo Ehrman and Michael Kopeck as the others at $8,000 are higher now I was on Blake's now last week and it didn't go well because he walked seven batters in five innings against the blue Jays and That was not ideal drove his mother's pitch count didn't let him get deep in the game didn't get a lot of strikeouts But Snell still allowed just one and run in that game the results were still good and I'll be back on him once again tonight Despite the seven walks again just one earned run and part of that's luck because that's a lot of base runners You don't expect to allow just one run in that situation but it's also an indication of Things Snell has been doing really well recently Over his past nine starts Snell has been throwing fewer forcing fastballs and more curveballs and in that time He has a 40% strikeout rate, which is awesome. You love strikeouts But he's also allowing just a 22 percent hard hit rate He has not had a single game with a hard hit rate of 40 percent in any of those games Which is so so tough to do especially when not let me have balls a lot of balls of play because you're getting a lot of strikeouts That's why Snell's ERA in this time is 0.69 Nobody right now is on his level in that regard with tons of strikeouts and no hard contact allowed Snell space in the Pirates tonight. They have a 93 WRC plus against lefties with a 24 percent strikeout rate It is a good matchup for a lefty I have Snell projected for 9.4 strikeouts tonight, which is a massive number for my projections But I buy it I think he has to be the top guy on this slate and the combo of strikeouts with soft contact is tough to match so to me We're looking for pitchers who can separate on a big slate Blake Snell is that guy for tonight? So to me Blake Snell needs to be our top pitcher in MLB DFS on Tuesday night after Snell I Think I have to put Corbin burns second He's at home against the Reds, which is definitely not a fun matchup But it seems like Burns is getting back to his old form and I think we should consider him here at $10,300 Burns has had back-to-back starts of double digit strikeouts And that includes a game where he had 13 and that 13 strikeout game came against the Reds Which means they did see him back on July 14th, which is pretty recent. They also saw him on July 7th So this will be the third time the Reds have seen Burns in 18 days That is a big downgrade because familiarity to me at least does matter a lot It helps though when the guys overpowered that team when he's seen them He had an 18.6 percent swinging strike rate the second time they faced him They also faced him back on June 2nd and he had a Burns had a 15 percent swinging strike rate in that game as well So they know what he's throwing throwing they've seen him three times already But they haven't been able to hit it as of yet Burns has been throwing more curveballs his past 12 stars in that time 28% strikeout rate, which is paired with a 29 percent hard hit rate. It's not quite snails level But it's still very good. It's hard to match what snail has done I think that the low hard contact allowed does help burns his case quite a bit if If the the opponent were as familiar with burns as the Reds are I do think you could consider putting burns in Snell's tier, but That's not the case. They are very familiar with him. So I can't do that So to me, I feel okay putting burns second I think he's good enough to overcome those circumstances But to me that's why there is a legitimate gap between Snell and Burns Just given how many times the Reds have seen burns, especially recently for the value play I'm gonna wind up on Domingo Ehrman. He is definitely not a guy. I feel great about he's erratic He could get ejected at any point for using sticky stuff. So that's not fun But he's a path upside and I think that's enough to consider him here at $8,200 Ehrman is facing the Mets, which is a tough matchup They have a 112 WRC plus against righties with a low strikeout rate in the high walk rate And I very rarely use guys facing this team But Ehrman is really solid. In 18 starts this year his skill interactive ERA is 4.02 with a 25% strikeout rate He's had some really bad starts and those have pushed his ERA up to 4.52 and That could happen again tonight because again, he's erratic and it's especially possible given it's a tough matchup but Ehrman has a path to a really nice game and it's hard to turn down when his salary is $8,200. So he's dicey. He's not fun, but after Snell, I don't mind giving him a look I think that Burns has passed to disappointment too So for $8,200 you could do a lot worse than Ehrman And I think that he's kind of in the same tier for me as Burns where it's Snell gap burns Ehrman fighting out for that second slot on FanDuel. Fortunately, I will talk about Pablo Lopez and George Kirby in things to watch later on. First Let's dive into the stacks and go back to that Padres game because I think both sides the both both Aspects the Padres very fun for tonight The offense is facing Rich Hill and the Padres have had a bad year But they fit lefties really really well and I think they should continue to do that tonight Hill has a 4.84 ERA overall this year So clearly not a great season and it hasn't been trending the right way either Hill has been leaning more in his cutter over his past 12 starts with fewer sliders and in that time the skill interactive ERA is 4.93 his ERA is 5.14 and the bad of all data is not great with a 40% of hard hit rate allowed That's despite having a pretty no good number of solid matchups in that time We did see Hill face the Padres back on June 27th He was fine that game but a forward runs and six innings But they did have a 43% of hard hit rate in that game That success there makes sense because the Padres have a 129 a WRC plus against lefties Which is the best mark on the slate. They have a 213 isa which ranks second So I'm not gonna stack against Hill all the time because he's fine But again this kind of team I will definitely be here So the Padres to me the top stack on the main slate by a pretty decent margin Hassan Kim double-dong last night. I think that he has to be one of the better value values in the site This was true even before he went off last night But he's been getting lead off against righties which says the Padres trust him and want him in that spot Which is a good thing and when you put him against the lefty his ISO goes up to 248 with a 46% fly ball rate He's got really good plate discipline data and he will steal against lefties too. So Might feel a bit point-chasing to go Hassan Kim after the night he had last night, but I think it's the correct move So Hassan Kim to me is going to be one of the focal points for tonight and I'll be DFS given He has two sources of upside and is batting at a good spot in the order $2,900 he just kind of checks every box now. We talked about the Nationals on yesterday's podcast and they wound up being fine They scored six runs mostly coming late in that game, but I think they're on the map once again today They're facing Austin Gomber. Gomber is still struggling and it's the point where I think we should stack against him on the road as well But to come Gomber's credit. It seems like he's starting to trend back up a bit over his past nine starts He's been going back to his slider again and his skill interactive ERA in that time is down to 4.61 He's not walking anybody, which is great. So there have been signs of improvement but not walking anybody also means Gomber's letting up a lot of balls-in-play and that's where he runs into issues because he's still letting up a 45% hard hit rate in this time that's why Gomber's let up 10 home runs in this band and The road starts for him even when he's left course field haven't been great. He's left 11 earned runs across 20 innings so Gomber's getting better and that's good. I I like Gomber a lot I've used him in daily fantasy back in the day when he had that really good like half season So I want to get back to where he was but The results even on the road have not been perfect. He's letting him too much hard contact He's facing the Nationals tonight who have a 110 at WRC plus against lefty So I think they do make sense to stack tonight So the Nationals to me going to be number two and third straight to show talking Nationals It feels weird, but I think it is correct here once again within those Nationals stacks We got stone Garrett. He typically bats in the middle of the order against lefties And he has good power marks against lefties, but as with all platoon guys We had to do some digging to make sure Garrett doesn't leave early for pinch hitters because that robs the plate appearances and that can have a big impact on upside but Garrett typically stays in for the entire game. He has finished each of his past six starts He has not left to start before the eighth inning since back on June 6 So at twenty six hundred dollars, I think that Garrett is a mighty fine value play for tonight got some power Has some upside and I think he's very much worth turning to here So stone Garrett to me a really good way to make a getting to Blake Snell getting to Fernando Tates and your Snell line ups A whole lot easier Finally the Guardians offense has been looking much better recently The WRC plus is back up to 99 against righties and it's been below that pretty much all year I think I've seen enough where we can consider them for stacking once again I'm hoping to doing that today They're facing Zach Renke the Guardians are Renke still struggling right now He came out the IL last week and face the Tigers and just one strike out across four innings Let up two and runs in that game and it was his first start off the IL But Renke was struggling before that too. He's made ten starts if you were cutters and in that time Renke has a five point seven six era Let it three home runs in one of those games let up two and another and he's largely gotten beaten up by Better offense than this and he did face Cleveland in this time And he let it just two or two runs across six innings, but Cleveland has been much better recently They've been on the the the incline for a bit their WRC plus the past month is up to 107 with a 151 ISO and they run a bunch so the Guardians are not a team we've discussed often on this show for good reason because they've been pretty awful from a batting perspective, but I Do think that they are back in the crosshairs and a team I feel okay stacking for tonight Granky has been getting hit pretty hard by lefties specifically with a much higher ISO allowed to them And that's good for a lot of the Guardians guys But I like it most for Andres Jimenez Jimenez Trending up recently much better batted ball day to the past month and much better results. He is still running so This is not a team We've been on often But I'm flying being on them for tonight in between the Guardians the Nationals and the Padres I feel like we are the Guardians of the Nationals I think we'll have enough value here to use now while also stacking the Padres getting to the guys We like in that Padres team and Hassan Kim being key fo a focal point of that with his low salary So even though Snell salary is high. I still think we can stack him with his teammates for tonight Let's go now to things to watch if not for the repeat match up in the weather I would be down to consider Pablo Lopez and George Kirby tonight They did just face these teams last week though Kirby facing the twins Lopez against the Mariners and both guys pitched well But again familiarity does matter quite a bit and it's super hot Minneapolis 92 degrees It's not advantageous enough where I'm gonna stack against them obviously, you know We're not going that far with the weather But I do think it's worthwhile to push them down a peg or two as a result of familiarity and weather I Don't really want to stack the Giants tonight because it is pretty warm out east and it's never warm in San Francisco But they're facing Ken Waldechuck Waldechuck lets up a lot of hard contact walks a lot of guys So I think they're at least viable and I'm good at being on them for tonight despite the fact there are Pretty big downsides and go in there Finally Owen White is likely starting for the Rangers tonight He's facing the Astros if he does and I thought they would get your Don Alvarez back last night But sounds like it'll be either today or tomorrow instead, which is a little bit concerning I guess personally But if Alvarez is back I would upgrade the Astros and potentially consider stacking them if he's not back They're okay for one offs But not a ton of appeal beyond that Alvarez does make a big difference for this Astros team So consider that when deciding whether or not stack ends white for tonight Let's finish up here the Dinger calls for today the boring one Fernando Tatis Jr. Facing off with Rich Hill Tatis They'll obliterate most pitchers, but especially lefties so getting him against the lefty I don't got to go there So Fernando Tatis Jr. is the boring home run call for tonight on this Dinger Tuesday the fun one Let's go stone Garrett stone Garrett facing off again against the lefty doesn't leave the game early So if we don't get a home run early on we could get a chance later Again third consecutive day with a Nationals batter in the Dinger calls, but Lane Thomas came through Jamer Condolario came through last night too. So trying to go three for three three beat here with stone Garrett as a fun Home run call so the Dinger Tuesday home run calls here on the solo shot are Fernando Tatis Jr. And stone Garrett That's what we got here for today on the solo shot as mentioned We are back here on the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed Later on today to break down the 3m open for PGA DFS with myself and Brandon You do love make sure you're subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed to get that as it goes up If you like what you hear leave us a five star rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify again check out the end will calm It's last research check out a fandal research again all the same content there value plays MLB betting guides MLB DFS helpers all that over now on fandal research projections still in the same place So check it out. I think it's a great site pretty pretty big fan of the the new design the guys have your ever the guys and gals Cooked up over at fandals. So would check it out would recommend it is a fantastic I think new place for all of your number fire content. If you've got any questions for me I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis J. I. M. S. A. N. N. E. S. You can also follow fandal research at fandal research. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow This has been the solo shot right here on the fandal podcast network