Okay, so I want to try a little experiment. Okay, how cute! Good evening and welcome to For Your Reference brought to you by your friendly neighborhood librarians at the University of Tennessee. I am Robin. I am Paris Blateline. And I'm Sarah Johnson. So Paris, I take your reaction to this to mean that you are a collector or at least a lover of beanie babies. Yeah, it's like you like kind of just took my soul from me. Beanie baby actually got on my birthday. My mom bought it home for me because she had to work all day. And so it was like my little birth, like my first little birthday gift. And it was like super cute. So they hold like a special place in my heart. I even have like plastic tags all over them. Even though I still play with them. So yeah. That's so nice, Paris. I also used to collect beanie babies.  And we're just like nothing like that. It doesn't matter. I don't know what I was doing there. It's in the way. You just left all kinds of money on the table there, Sarah. I had some beanie babies. I didn't really collect them. I just got the ones I thought were cute, you know. I do kind of collect pins like these little buttons and stuff. I got some sticky here, for example. My wife and I do have, we do collect stuff. We have a lot of weird stuff in the backyard that we sort of dug up in landscaping changes over the years. And probably the best example is this creepy figure that Holly dug up out of the front yard. Oh my goodness. Nope. That's how people die. Now I'm out. Nope. I'm sorry. Is this thing still in your house? It's, yeah, it's actually in the backyard. It's sort of become part of the artwork right now and the yard art. I don't know if it was better or worse in situ. Like where Holly actually found it. I think we have a picture of that as well. I'm glad you didn't find it. I mean, it's all in Holly's. You can imagine coming across that though, just peeling back and then being like, oh, God, what is that? I wouldn't need to cover it back up and walk away. Nope. Didn't see it. All right. So tonight we're going way further back in history than beanie babies. But we are going to talk about figurines. And hopefully our special guest can give me some advice on whether to invite an exorcist or other such professional over to deal with our creepy statue. This is reviewer two. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our first guest tonight, who is a professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee. Welcome to the show, Dr. Aaron Derby. Hi, Robin. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. You joked about the exorcist thing, but in Mesopotamia, some of the folks who are ritual specialists who use figurines are called up Kalu. And one translation of that is exorcist, just so you know. I like it. So tell us a little bit about you and your work. So I've been a professor at the University since 2011. I was a lecturer first, and then I was hired on the tenure track in religious studies. I am an archaeologist, but I'm also a specialist in ancient Hebrew literature. And I teach all sorts of classes for the department in early Judaism, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, archaeology in the Bible. And then I teach a bunch of modern classes to like religion in the workplace. I'm also fun fact, the faculty director of undergraduate research and fellowships with Andrew Seidler over in student success. And they do a bunch of work with diversity and engagement. So I pop here and there all over the place across campus. And so you don't have a lot going on at all. No, I am so bored. Nothing going on. All right. Well, let's see if we can get somebody who actually has some stuff going on. In the role of a viewer to tonight, we have Dr. Theo Kokostonsky, distinguished lecturer in the Department of Classics at the University of Tennessee. Welcome. Hello. Thanks to you. Thank you for inviting me to be here. I'm so happy to have you. So it's your turn now. Tell us a little bit about you and why you do. Well, I actually came to the University of Tennessee at the same time as Aaron Darby in 2011. And I'm a distinguished lecturer here. Aaron and I actually met in Izmir, Turkey, like 15 years ago or something like that. So I also teach and I'm an archaeologist as well, but in the Classics Department. So I teach things like Greek and Latin and ancient literature and translation, Greek and Roman texts and things like that. But my love is actually the classical world in Greece. So that's where I study things like ritual practice and figurines and small shrines. And my specialty focuses on the period of like 700 to 200 BCE. So yeah, quite a bit in the distant past. All right. So I'm excited to listen to you to do your thing tonight. And the question you're going to be talking around is this, how do figurines challenge what we think we know about ancient religion and the lives of everyday people? So reminder to everybody out there, if you're in the audience and you have questions, you can drop them in the comments section on YouTube or Facebook. And we'll we can surface them during the Q&A. When my face reappears on the screen, Aaron and Theo, that is your cue to bring it in for a landing and we'll be about ready to start Q&A. Doctors, take it away. All right. Well, I'm going to get started here and ask Aaron before we get into the nitty gritty of scholarship. Can you tell me what's the point of figurines? I mean, why even bother studying these things? I mean, we already learned that they're kind of creepy at some time. So why study them? It's a good question of you. And I'll tell you that part of it plays into my anti-authoritarian personality. And the answer is in my field, I thought people were writing about figurines all the time, but doing it really poorly. And now my figurines are females. They are primarily heads with breasts and then a pillar body. And so that turns out invites a lot of speculation about what they're for, why they're in ancient Israel, people try and connect them to the Bible. That doesn't work particularly well. So I actually got interested in figurines because of all of the sometimes serious, sometimes ridiculous scholarly interpretations and popular interpretations of my little ladies. And some of the more ridiculous ones at one point, a very prominent archaeologist who will remain nameless excavated some figurines and took them to a gynecologist because he was worried they had sexually transmitted diseases because of the shape of the anatomy. So it varies from there how people respond to these. But I think our responses to the figurines tell us a lot more about ourselves than they sometimes tell us about the past. So I wanted to know, first of all, how do we get to the bottom of that problem? And then if we were trying to interpret something about the past, what could the figurines actually tell us? So I guess it grows out of my need to punch back a little bit at the scholarly world, especially some of the more comical interpretations of my corpus. What about you? Well, we have a different situation in the classical world or the Greek world. I'm kind of impressed that they even cared about them because for the longest time, no one cared at all about the figurines in the Greek world unless they were tenagraph figurines which are focused on fashion. And those were found in the 19th century and they influenced fashion. Those women have these beautiful hats and a fan and they're all decked out in clothes. But otherwise, people just ignored them. They were like, well, why study something that's mold made that's being repeated over and over again or something that's handmade? I mean, it's not the aesthetic because we have a big issue with the aesthetics and people being really interested in sculpture. So people really ignored them or just focused on them stylistically for so long. And it really wasn't until about 50 years ago that anyone really cared or was publishing on them in anything beyond just a sort of stylistic way. So we had a sort of situation where they were ignored for a long time. And I feel like I'm constantly being like figurines are really important. They're interesting. And I think at a basic level, when you have a figurine, they evoke a response because you'll see some figurines that I'll show. I'll have them shown that basically they show things of the daily life. They show people and whenever you have them out, people want to touch them. And so they evoke a response. And because they evoke a response, I think that they've ignored for a while in a way that I don't really understand, but I can say that they're being studied now. And I think we have totally opposite problems because you have a wealth of art objects from your period. And we have a paucity of art objects from my location and period. So people really like the idea that there is some sort of pictorial image coming from ancient Israel. It's not mentioned in the Bible. And so then there's a lot of speculation, whereas you all have so much material. I think it would be easy to prioritize stone or other kind or pottery rather than than the figurines. Yeah, that's kind of where we were at. But I have to say that there's a lot of us who are pushing them and talking about them now. So it's a little bit better for sure. It's a lot better. When I first met you and Izmir, I was an interloper. This was a conference entirely on classical corporate pretty much. And I was one of the lone sort of ancient Near Easternists learning about how folks in classical archaeology approach figurines. So yeah. Yeah. Well, welcome. We love you too. We'll welcome anyone who wants to study figurines now. But I think, Erin, let's actually focus on the question that they asked us to talk about. So how do figurines challenge what we think we know about ancient religion and the lives of everyday people? In my context, again, because there's this push and pull between the biblical record of what happened in ancient Israel and what archaeologists actually excavate, it challenges quite a lot of our suppositions that if your suppositions were based only on the biblical record. So if you assume that ancient Israelites didn't make any images at all, what do you do when everywhere you excavate in the eight through the six centuries BCE, you're excavating figurines. And I work on anthropomorphic human shaped figurines, but there are zoomorphic animal figurines as well. So if you read only the Bible, you may get this impression that you can't make any images whatsoever. But when you excavate regular people's houses, what you find is that there are images all over the place. And so that's one, I think, difference of perception. I also think this is something you work on too for you. For a long time, people approached the figurines when they talked about them just as images, rather than as the end result of a ritual that's much bigger than the figurine itself. And so using figurines to talk as much as we can, where we can, about the rituals in which figurines were used, I think gives you such a rich and more interesting picture of everyday religious activities. So mine are mostly in domestic units. And while it's really hard to go from where I excavated a fragment to reconstructing a ritual, what we do know from ritual texts in the ancient world in my periods are that figurine rituals were really complicated, that they involved all sorts of steps. Sometimes they involved even offerings that the figurines represented are often not the thing that you pray to. So in Mesopotamia, where you have ritual tablets with figurines, different type of figurine, but still the prayers are to the main purpose. The figurines are to the main deities of the pantheon and the figurines represent lower level and intermediary entities. So if, you know, because we don't have a lot of data in ancient Israel and you dig up this figurine, you may assume it's a prime goddess or it's the thing that a person was praying to, but the data from the Near East indicates that you can't make that assumption. It's very likely that that's some sort of apotropaeic or protective symbol. Maybe it's some sort of spiritual entity that is being used to exercise evil or sickness out of a house and guard against its return, which ultimately leads us to know that everyday people's lives that were ritual lives were just as complicated as our ritual lives, which I think we should have known to begin with. But when we look at the past, I think sometimes we draw a picture of it. That's too simple. Like we stand at this distance, right? And so we homogenize everything into a simple narrative. When we think about it, of course, it's not so simple. Definitely. I didn't realize that they had such a had a potential for such a different sort of role because ours are so much more all over the place. We have them in burials. We have them in houses. We have them at sanctuaries. We have them in stray finds. And we have them also in production centers. We have workshops that they survive. But then we also have them in workshops in shrines right next door where we can't even tell the lines of the shrine. So we have them as just they're integrated in the lives of the ancient Greeks in such a way that it's kind of overwhelming in some ways because when you find them, I usually say the way that we start to really talk about is when we see them in numbers. So you're talking about numbers that are much smaller than mine. But if I see one or two, I'm not usually that excited about it because it doesn't tell me that much. For me, it's about where we start to see concentrations and context of them. So for me seeing, in fact, when you find a large number of them, anywhere like at my shrine at Kokanoversee, which is a little shrine to the Nimpsay in Corinth, there's 250 that were in a deposit. And so 250 is like, okay, that tells us a little something. Let's talk about the types. But we're also talking about places like the Corretian Cave, which is a cave near Delphi that has over 50,000 figurines. Or if you go to the Sanctuary of Demir and Corret, which is a larger sanctuary in Corinth, which we have 24,000. So we see them much more in numbers. But at the same time, you can have some really interesting debates about an individual piece that's really interesting, like someone baking bread or what might look to be a small shrine representation burst. Yeah, so you can see here we've got some dancing figures and we have a standard standing female type who's holding a bird and a piece of fruit. And then we have like handmade figures, like birds and my favorite little mouse down there below. So you have these sort of figures that can be both very specific to a shrine, such as those dancing groups, which suggest to us Nimps, or they can be something so common, like that standing female figure that's in the background, that those figures are found all over the Greek world. And when I say the Greek world, I don't mean Greece. I mean all of the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. And that type is less evocative because it's standard and it's mold made. So dealing with those sort of issues, for me, it's about numbers sometimes, which is kind of funny because I'm not a numbers person. But if you start to see something again and again repeated, and there's a lot of them that we start to see as significant. But then you have to determine, are we looking at a workshop? Are we looking at a sanctuary? Why are they there? So that's kind of what we have to... It's about making sense of the choices that people are making. And that mass production piece is a clear distinction, right? Because my figurines, the stylistic features of them, they only appear within the polity of ancient Judah. So that's the Southern Kingdom, if you're thinking of biblical history. They don't appear outside of that much at all. Whereas the OU could have a demeter and curate from anywhere across the Greek world. And I think that's a really interesting distinction that our production industries operate and are organized slightly differently in the two periods. Definitely. I mean, I think... I just wanted to point one thing about those standing females. So every single polis, if they're making terracottas, has their own version of that. And they're both using it internally in their own city and also exporting it. So you can find not only a standing figure of your place, but an imported one elsewhere. So how do you deal with those kind of distinctions? Yeah, and we don't have... I mean, really, we don't have imported figurines much in Judah and we don't export them much out of Judah. So there's a whole set of questions that have to do with who's responsible for the production lines and is it controlled from the top down by the state? Or is the stylistic continuity at different cities but only within Judah somehow a grassroots movement? So we use all sorts of tools to do that. And I think you all use the same. We will take slices out of a figurine through a petrographic study and look at the makeup of the clay. And then that can tell us a little bit about where the clay came from and was it local or was it imported. But we have to get down to that level of analysis because we don't have figurine workshops that anyone's excavated. So we have to go from the objects and what we can learn about the objects in their clay and the tempering agents that were added to infer something about production. Whereas at Corinth you have quite the opposite situation. You have a wealth of information. Yeah, we have a Potter's Quarter where they're actually making the figurines and we have molds where we can actually put the figurines that we find back in the molds. So we have a full connection to the production site and then we can see them being used in the city itself. So what can you tell us about the figurines and what does it tell us about the people who are making them? Because we're kind of pushing to this like the craftsmen but also the consumers and the production and all of that. And so in my field again because my corpus is predominantly female, the presumption had been that they were made by women or only by women. That they were made kind of on an ad hoc basis in someone's home when something came up or that they were used only by women for concerns we somehow assumed would only be women's concerns. And what we find when we look at all the data is that we have actually full blown production industries that are complicated probably entire families are incorporated into the production of these things. And there's lots of complicated reasons we won't get into here for why we think that. Some of them have to do with the makeup of the clay and the similarities to other kinds of clay items we find in ancient Judah like pottery. So it's probably more complicated than simply aligning a style of a figurine to a gender of a maker or a gender of a user. We've got lots of ritual texts from the Near East that indicate that even if you did have a problem with infant mortality or death in the family that that would be a concern maybe the entire family engaged in including the woman, yes, but not only the woman. So it's really hard to go from a figurine to the population that used it and use only the iconography in my case to make that assumption. And partly because it's not in shrines we don't have inscriptions, they're in houses where all sorts of people live. Nuclear families live there sometimes seasonal laborers move in and they live there. Sometimes you've got a joint workspace where people from different houses get together and work there. I think that when you're talking about domestic deposition of figurines like Robbins crazy figurine in your yard they're mostly trash, right? So they've already been disposed of maybe once, twice, three times and you've got lots of people that live in the space whereas in your case you've got these awesome shrine deposits. They're pretty amazing, I have to say. I love them. So it's interesting because you're talking about this emphasis with women. We have a dominance of female figurines as well in the Greek world but there are often there's far more variety than I think that you guys have in your area. But I think one of the most interesting intriguing things about getting back to the people who are making them are the traces that they leave for us. And so for both my handmade and my mold made ones I have fingerprints and large fingerprints. So you can actually see the traces of the human that made them and you can see them recutting and reusing figurines simply because either it's easier or because that one's just really special. And so you have this sort of set that there's like this conservatism that they want to repeat things over and over again. And so that tells us a little bit about ritual practice in the Greek world which is there's sort of a standard you have to sort of do this and that it's this standard practice to give a figurine. But one of the things I think is really interesting about figurines generally at least in my world is how the range of types is present. And so we have things to tell us about what people are doing in their daily lives. Like there's images of people making bread sitting at an oven. There's pictures of them. There's a one of a man grating cheese. I mean how more domestic and great can you have with something like that. But then there's also whimsy. So it doesn't have to be all these serious standing females with that are being dedicated as sanctuaries. You also have things being dedicated and placed in graves. And my favorite are monkeys. So there's a whole series of monkeys doing silly things that are Corinthian that we have examples in Corinth from the workshops. And my favorite of course is one that's on the bottom which is a monkey holding a cloth over his head eating a piece of bread with the pestle in one hand as he's standing on a mortar that's tilted. I mean how much more whimsical can you get than that. At the same time they're also producing things like representations of shrines and these very standard figures. So I think that's kind of one of those really fun things that we have with the figurines. So tell us a little bit about personality. I think I mean whose idea was it. Let's do a monkey. Monkeys aren't in Greece. They don't live in Greece.  So I think that's kind of fun. You're also more accessible right too if you're not just interested in what elite people who have money to dedicate statues are doing.  People who are maybe a little bit more along the lines of the average person watching the show or working at the university. And I think that's like if we write history without those people we've written you know 1% of history. You see there's just really not an option to ignore them. And I also like to think about how many people touched that figurine before it finally was deposited. I mean you think about the person who made it. Then you think about the person who bought it. And then you think about the person who deposited it. And then once it goes in the sanctuary you can't let it leave. So if someone has to move it what if it breaks but you can't leave you have to bury it. And then the person finds it. And then we fix it. And then we said I mean there's just so many hands that touch these things that it feels like you really are touching a bit of history whenever you're working with figurines. And some of my colleagues they'll be frustrated that so many of our figurines are in disposal context not in the context of use. So it's broken right. And then it's been used to to block up a wall or they've used it to like push ashes around in a little oven. But I also like to think about the afterlife of figurines after they're broken. Right. The little kids who might play with them in the courtyard or how you might reuse them to level the floor. Mine you know they didn't deposit them in a ritual pit and deactivate them. They're just the materia of everyday life and the biggest context in Jerusalem where I spend a lot of my time thinking about figurines are they're you know they're thrown in to like make construction fills and we find them in toilets after they're broken. They're just they're the landscape of kind of daily life and just because they maybe don't play the original role they had when they were made by the coroplast or when they were acquired by the ritual agents doesn't mean they had nothing to do after that point. Right. They continue all the way till like you said we excavate them today. Or Robin excavates or a figure a figure that's creepy mine are not that creepy. I'm telling you that. That's about. Okay so you haven't found any your figures aren't that creepy but for each of you do you have a sort of favorite thing like one favorite thing that you you've dug up or a favorite sort of dig you've been on. I mean one thing like not my own dig. Doesn't matter. Jeez that's a hard question right archaeologists we're pretty psyched out of our mind about pretty much everything. Right. Like the best thing to find is poop. If you can find an ancient latrine and you can test the soil you can learn so much about people and parasites and their daily habits and their lives so. You are special Aaron you are special. I was gonna say I like I like my mouse. I like my I like my terracotta mouse with the big ears. Yeah I think I'll see with my creepy statue. All I'm saying is you can't really tell it is fecal matter after so many years so you don't can't rule out that your creepy statue was in ancient people matter I'm just saying just saying. Well now that just makes it worse. No it does it's it's kind of making it worse. Well I will say is one of the most amazing things I think about being an archaeologist and studying these is I work at a place at Corinth and it's been excavated under excavation for over 100 years and so you go into the storerooms and not only do you get to see the material that's been excavated you also get to see the material and the written explanations and drawings of people who've been and study the material in the past so you're here like my heroes who are studying the material and so the the rewards of going in there and just seeing cabinets for me just drawer after drawer after drawer after drawer figurines that are unique and special is something that I enjoy and I think it's such a privilege that I have to be a scholar of this. Cool cool cool. So a question I've always I don't know that I've always had this question. I was born with this question. The thing I think about is you know how and you you sort of touched on it a little bit how do you you know you're at this at this dig and you're you're pulling all of these artifacts out of the ground.  I mean imperfect out of the interpretation. Yeah. I think maybe it's marked more by the effort doing so than it is our success in an absolute way. You know what what what is true is you dig what you find not what you were looking for and it doesn't matter what you thought was there. You are now responsible for preserving that for not just anyone who comes after you but anyone with any research question that comes after you. So essentially you have to document every single thing you excavate with the same level of care and detail and cultural sensitivity to the place where you're working as the primary object. So you know if Theo is interested in figurines and she's working in a site in Corinth and she excavates something that's like medieval. She's got just as much an obligation to care for that material as she does her primary research interest. So in archaeologists we're caretakers right and when an archaeology is destructive you can't go back and do it again when we excavate it it's gone. So there's a heaviness a weightiness to playing that role. And politics does get in involved too. I mean Corinth was the Nazis came into Corinth and during World War II and actually pulled out the crates where they had the figurines and other material that had been from the early excavations and used the wood for firewood. And so we're left then dealing with the material that was left behind and it was documented but we don't have the same level of documentation. And also choices were made when people were excavating about what to keep what not to keep what to record. So even though we're saying this is what you should do sometimes people didn't do it. And so you have that and then people there people sometimes make choices about what they're going to excavate and interpret it in different ways and things a lot with the classical world have been reused and appropriated in ways that are dangerous. And so yes you're right it's a problem but if you're you know trying to do your do your best and try to keep politics out of it it's always the best policy. And then there's museums too right Theo? I mean museums are also a political act whether or not you keep an object whether or not you show an object whether or not you make that object available to the general public. So a lot of my work I focused more on objects that have come just directly out of the ground but Theo deals a lot with museum collections and images and all museums are also political. It's true right. Definitely. So we are nearing the end of our time but I do have one quick question and this is for you Theo is there any sort of speculation in the scholarship about how monkeys ended up in great civil places? Well it's okay I can answer that well we actually do have monkeys in Mino and frescoes so in Thera or Akrotiri we have monkeys on the wall paintings and so it's not that they didn't know the monkeys it's just that there were no monkeys in Corinth as far as I we have any records for so it's not like they didn't know and they are traveling they're they're traveling there's a lot of connection between just the Mediterranean world. It's funny you asked that question because I actually looked it up because I was like if I mention monkeys I need to check this and so originally people thought that they were connected to the monkeys that the Greeks were seeing were from Egypt but it turns out that perhaps the Minoan monkeys were from India which are a type from India which suggests even further contact and exploration and exchange so that's I think that's what's going on is that someone saw a monkey was like they're hilarious I'm going to do a monkey and then they were like from then on they were like I love it I love it and I sometimes think they might stand in as like children you know as sort of like what are children kind of doing but their children aren't really in the iconographic record in the figurines in the same way that you might think so I think that might be it and they're really great with animals I mean we've got monkeys and dogs and birds and all sorts of fun things so that's my answer to you is that it's exchanged and what's going on so these people aren't isolated they're in contact with lots of other people in the Mediterranean and even across the you know across the the land as well cool well I um I get to sit here and chat with you all night but we have other things to get to I would like to thank you both so much for being here and now it's time for us to send you over to Paris Wayland with Check This Out Hey everyone Welcome to Check This Out segment my name is Paris Wayland and then the Media Literacy Librarian here at the University of Tennessee and the Check This Out segment for those of you who maybe might just be joining us is a segment where we focus on how to make sense of the topic at hand or something close to that and we use the resources provided by UT Libraries and authoritative sources for the public to pull from so today we're going to focus on we're going to talk about the importance of identifying and verifying sources because origin and context are important contributors to forming the bigger picture right so to give the viewers a unique perspective we have a public facing librarian I guess this episode is Brittany Norwood Brittany is a Commons Librarian and Hodges Librarian so she hangs out with most of us you most often see her working at the front desk or providing research assistance but she also works behind the scenes on different library programs like Woman in Horror which you might have seen at the end of October and Distress for Success which is coming up after Thanksgiving she's interested in helping students develop the skills and confidence to be information literate and in her spare time she often is crafting reading or watching movies so Brittany thank you for taking the time out to chat with me thank you for inviting me on Paris yeah so as we're preparing for the show when we were talking we discussed how you didn't really have like a academic background and religion or studying objects but I know for a fact you have a love for storytelling and you answer a lot of really odd research question is through the research assistance chat features so in fact you actually told me a story about a conspiracy theorist in their research on the centaur and for those of you who you don't know what I'm talking about there's an installation on the first floor of the library which is the centaur ballas and our centaur has a very interesting story that you can revisit in our first season a four-year reference episode two in the stories from the stack segment with Ingrid Ruffin but in that episode their interview chancellors professor Beauvais Lyons and they discussed the centaur ballas and he presents the question do centaurs exist to kind of create conversation around the blurred lines between reality and imagination but Beauvais specifically mentions many trappings of authenticity which he mentions in reference to some charts of potteries that are like surrounding the actual centaur so I think this conversation about authenticity in the story of like origin of an object kind of leases right into the story you shared with me so do you mind just kind of recapping the centaur conspirator's story and how it reminded you how important it is to check sources with the centaur story so this is something that happened actually earlier this year and I'm not going to lie it it kind of broke me a little bit so I'm at the front desk and patron walks up wanting to know more about the library in general so I'm handing them different literature that we have up front you know having a conversation with them about the library and suddenly they tell me and by the way that artifact you have downstairs is so amazing that you all have something that proves the existence of such a creature and my brain immediately stops and assesses the situation and thinks oh wait there's not actually you know a sign down there saying that this is fake this is made by somebody here at UTK and this person you know just saw the do you believe and a decently like made skeleton down there and connected the dots how do I rectify the situation without embarrassing them so I'm trying to be really nice and I'm saying oh no I'm I'm sorry sir you know there's not really signage down there that explains the story so much about this this is actually something that we made you know it shows a bit about what we are capable of creating it's a fake artifact and I swear this guy when he looks at me I I see the tinfoil hat come down over his eyes and I just I know that there's no salvaging this conversation at this point and he clasps his hands and lays them on the desk and he just looks at me like he is so sad that I don't know the truth and he goes well I read Greek mythology and I know that they find things over there so and once again at this point I I am broken there there is nothing to bring the conversation back on track anything I say at this point like it's going to go further and further absurd so I I hate to admit that I let him leave believing in Centaur still well the institution did it so you know it led him to question do Centaurs exist and so I guess that question is still floating out there so on the topic of authentic artifacts I think this is actually a great opportunity to have you tell us a little bit about scout and how can I kind of aid students in their research of our collection of primary resources yeah so scout is actually a really great resource first of all I'm not an expert on this particular search engine but I can definitely tell you some of the basics of it so scout will allow you to search what we have in special collections and also some in digital collections to see different artifacts that we have down there so it can be a bit tricky to use when you first get started with it and so it could be beneficial at first for you to go to one search actually go to the advanced search option and select special collections under search profile then you can search using keywords or titles and from there you can find you know the exact titles of items that you can then go to the scout database and search for some of those some of the identifying information that's been cataloged for them and once you're able to do that and you find the item and scout it'll bring up the items box number what collection it's a part of different things like that so that you can request the item be brought to you and alternatively you could go directly to scout and search for the items that we have in either special or digital collections you have the option to select if you want to and from there I find that keyword searching using like one specific term works pretty well and that will give you a lot of different source types like archival records themselves or links to entire collections so for example and when I was putting together the display for women in horror with the items that we had in special collections something that it was at first I just wanted to see if we had anything related to horror down there so that was my keyword and it brought up that we have Raimi's manuscript that became eventually the evil dead it led me to our pulp fiction collection different things like that and honestly if you are wanting to get to wanting to get to know more about scout I highly recommend getting in touch with the people who work in special collections they're excellent at their job they have a granular knowledge of the different artifacts that we have hidden back there that you know maybe your keyword searched it and bring up and also they're just really great people I completely agree with you yeah thanks for kind of walking us through that process as well and giving us an example is definitely very helpful for people to kind of have an example as we talk through things so speaking of primary resources I would definitely be remiss if I didn't bring that BTK's very own the Clown Museum of Natural History and Culture which has a wonderful collection specific to East Tennessee and has amazing exhibits both permanent and temporary so you all should check that out if you have a chance and if you're curious about material culture and how to kind of read an object consider visiting their website for supporting materials by the curator of academic programs Katie Malone Katie basically teaches students how to use primary sources in the form of material culture are or natural history specimens which basically means critically analyzing an object just as all of us should be seeking context for information that we are consuming right so bringing it back to your center story when you're helping students with questions around say conspiracy theories how do you kind of go about verifying the information that they've maybe provided if they provide information to you so honestly it depends on the context in which the person is asking this question so some people are interested in conspiracy theories more as information objects or a cultural phenomenon as opposed to engaging in truth seeking behaviors so the interaction when somebody comes and asks about a conspiracy theory it typically starts off with me learning more about why the researching this topic and in the context of what class or what assignment and honestly that's pretty par for the course for most research questions we get at research assistance and we want to know why you're researching this thing that way we can help guide you to the sources that you need but I do feel that it isn't especially important to get this information in this particular situation once I determine the why I try to address the question in kind so for people who are mostly interested in conspiracies as information objects I show them strategies they can use to find information about how the conspiracies were developed who might have started it things like that but if somebody appears to be truth seeking or they appear to be operating under some sort of or disinformation then I try to encourage them to let the literature be their guide or to speak with the subject expert now this can be a difficult process and sometimes you might not realize that a person is operating under the assumption that a piece of false information is true until you start trying to research the question yourself and then you hit either a wall where you can't find anything or you might hit a slew of varied credible sources that are debunking this person's argument that's definitely happened to me before when people have come to RA on topics that I'm not super familiar with and I find out in the process of trying to help them find stuff that they are very wrong and it's never it's it's a delicate situation you have to make sure that you're able to convey what's important in a way that is for lack of a better word relatable to the person after all if I present information in a way that the person won't accept then it can make them dig in deeper to what they're already are inclined to believe you never want to make a person feel stupid or uneducated you want to make sure that they understand that you know that this was a mistake and not everyone will listen to you even if you are as kind as possible but I felt that at least that we can do is try so I do try to watch how I approach the situation but circling back to the language of your original question I typically don't verify sources for people that's not often why they chat in I've had very very few people actually specifically questioning whether a source is credible or not and in those cases it's never been about a conspiracy theory people who do chat in with this truth-seeking behavior typically already believe their argument and they're wanting to find something validating that's what makes the sort of interaction so risky and tricky personally I feel like I'm doing the person a disservice if I don't explain to them that I've searched and we don't have credible literature on their topic and here's what they can do instead and when it comes to explaining how to actually consider source credibility I recommend people checking the researchers sources the researchers reputation and to see if any external factor like a funding source may have influenced how the research was presented and then engage in lateral reading which is probably one of the most important skills anyone can use in this day and age so lateral reading is the act of getting off of the page or the article you're examining and searching for that information elsewhere so say you're reading an article that's claiming the earth is flat and it lists five sources you don't need to just say well they've cited their sources and it was published in a peer reviewed journal so it must be good now instead go to a different search engine maybe one of our databases and start researching yourself to see what other people have found what they might have to say about this research and remember even peer reviewed sources can't be fallible that's why retractions exist and convey false information that can happen to people who publish with the best of intentions if you feel strongly about something someone out there is going to try to use that emotion to convince you that something you convince you of something untrue it doesn't mean that it's bad to care it just means we all need to separate ourselves from our own personal feelings when it's time to evaluate the facts so if you give yourself a period of healthy skepticism and sorry give yourself a period of healthy skepticism to draw your own conclusions and I always say it's worse if the thing that you feel strongly about and promoted ended up being false or misleading and or if something intended to trick you because then if you're sharing that information you're ultimately hurting your own argument yeah thank you for that very thorough answer and all those examples again I think they're very helpful so we stress information literacy and how important it is to critically assess the source of the information or the origin what resources does the library have that may be useful to someone researching say the origin of folktales or even quotes and I brought this question up specifically because when I work on chat every blue moon I get this question and always throws me off because you know my background's in like digital arts and like a lot of librarians background is in English and it feels like it comes so natural for them and I have to search for this you see I was psychology and sociology so I'm out of left field there but um yeah we do have several databases that talk about this sort of anthropology and that could be of interest to people we have various books in our collection that gather and analyze folktales urban legends conspiracy theories and so on but honestly one of my favorite sites for this is still snopes.com when we were chatting earlier I told you a bit about this but the reason why I feel so strongly about information that I see is because back when I was first starting high school like somebody shared a story with me about this really spooky spider and I was convinced the spider was real and it was going to find me and kill me and um snopes helped get me out of that mentality and I am still terrified of spiders but I know that this one doesn't exist because of them honestly I just thank God for snopes but um honestly I feel like it's an accessible introduction to your topic and it can help guide you to some of your first sources that can lay the foundation for your argument and outside of those resources always feel free to talk with us via chat or email your subject librarian these are all excellent routes for starting crafting this sort of search strategy especially if you're wanting to look into the origin of these stories yeah so um with so many fake news sources material papers and you know social media basically encouraging rapid sharing of information what do you think our viewers can do to build their information literacy skills other than you know listen in on our podcast honestly one of the best things you can do is test yourself find different quizzes or modules that colleges and libraries have published and take them attend free webinars you learn best when you have the chance to make mistakes and even fail so find an environment in which it's low stakes to do that if you're wanting help with finding something like this once again chat in use reachers assistance will help you find these things and outside of that start playing around with different search interfaces and learn a bit about algorithms and how authority is contextual and constructed when you start to understand that then you'll start to feel a bit more confident and being able to understand like what information literacy is and how we how we rate different sources of credible or not yeah absolutely great suggestions for our audience Brittany and thanks for sharing your experience with the resources that U2 that U2 Libraries provides for our community so that basically wraps up our check this out segment for today thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing how you approach information needs so thanks for hanging with us Brittany viewers as always thanks for listening in we hope that this conversation was informative and you feel empowered to question the media that you are consuming in any form and that's going to wrap up our session for today next we have stories from the stacks with Sarah Johnson evening everyone welcome to stories from the stacks tonight I'm going to highlight an item from our Betsy B. Creek more special collections department that goes hand in hand with our theme tonight which is exactly what Paris and Brittany were just talking about and you might be thinking oh cool let's keep learning about figurines and their place in history and information literacy well so maybe not exactly that I gotta pull you in somehow don't I gotta get you you excited but we are going to take a look at an item from our special collections which sounds very fancy doesn't it showcasing the religious lives of everyday people and how interpreting these materials is guesswork a lot of the time so it's still pretty similar to what we're discussing and we can make educated guesses and try to envision what it was like at the time but we don't truly know what was going on with any particular person and I I think I'm getting ahead of myself again I do that a lot because I just get really excited about all of this stuff so let's take it back special collections what is this this department acquires arranges preserves and promotes the use of rare and unique materials that supports the information instruction and research needs of the University of Tennessee community aka special collections is like one of the coolest places in the library but people like me should be thoroughly screened for how many times I've taken a tumble in public before being allowed into a place like this I'm joking a little bit anyone can visit special collections in fact we highly encourage it so we are going to take a look at a journal belonging to a British born artist Herbert Francis Williams Lyons that is a hefty name for you we're going to call him Herbert for short I really like these people who have the biggest names ever but Herbert it is so a little bit about good ol' Herbert he was born on January 19th, 1863 in Plymouth, England and he trained as an artist in Boston, Massachusetts in Paris, France and his art is expressed through mediums of oil paint watercolor and engravings in wood and he primarily depicts scenes in religion and mythology as well as land and seascapes and describes his subjects of his work as ethereal, spiritual, mystic and as well as material subjects kind of gives you a lay of land and in 1922 Herbert was in his late fifties and he decided to go on an international tour including Africa, America Asia, Australia and other various islands can you say bucket list like I'm doing that when I get 50 his international tour is the focal point of this journal and he entitled it album of sketches of the holy land which sounds way fancier than any journal I've ever kept and he begins this journal with a description detailing the spiritual journey he embarks on through his world exploration within the book are 63 pages of impressionistic sketches made with pencil and pen that illustrate scenes of biblical inspiration found from found from his tour of Palestine Jerusalem and Egypt many of these sketches are coupled with Bible verses or notes written in English Hebrew and Arabic and as you comb through the pages you'll see he has scenes of buildings and landscapes he's seen on his travels animals he's come across and portraits of everyday people and they're beautiful as you can see Herbert was an artist and all artists leave room for interpretation of their work it comes with the territory but I find that his personal journal full of everyday scenery and religious inspired sketches creates an opportunity to dive into his personal experiences which in turn leads us grasping at straws trying to know the true meaning behind it while not as influential as the use of figurines in ancient culture Goodall Herbert still has added value to the understanding of religious experiences of everyday people and in the instance of this particular journal a personal journal it is an ambiguity kind of the point though and like but that's okay so even though I do not study myself I do not study material culture or religious lives of people in history I can still be inspired by their commitment and their experiences as people and being mindful of the collective we is grounding and each person's experiences are very important and that kind of wraps up our little short stories from the stacks this time see you next time well that is it for another show and that's our final show of the fall semester and next week y'all is Thanksgiving how is that possible hello Turkey it's the start of the holiday season so we wish all of you out there a wonderful season of holidays whichever ones you celebrate and we look forward to seeing you again in 2022


We developed a mathematical model to analyze the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. The model takes into account multiple transmission pathways, including environmental reservoirs, as well as changing transmission rates due to the disease's dynamic nature. Our results show that the virus will remain endemic, requiring long-term prevention and intervention efforts. This article was authored by Cha Yu Yang and Jean Wang.


and welcome to the session in which we will discuss itemized deduction that goes on Schedule A and specifically we're going to be discussing charitable contribution. Once again I know I keep repeating myself but it's important to emphasize that Schedule A deductions are deductions from AGI and what does that mean? It means on your 1040 you have a line called adjusted gross income any deduction that's listed before adjusted gross income is called 4 AGI and any deduction after adjusted gross income is a deduction from AGI. Schedule A deductions are deductions from AGI so what are Schedule A deductions? Schedule A deductions are personal expense in nature you could be also an employee incurring those expenses or you could have some investment interest but they are personal it means they don't belong to a business if they belong to a business then you have a Schedule C. Again those deductions I know I keep repeating from other sessions they only make sense they are only beneficial if the itemized deduction are greater than the standard deduction so you would add up all of your itemized deduction and let's assume they add up to 22 000 then you compare this to your standard deduction what's a standard deduction it's a number given by the government based on your filing status basically a deduction given basically a free deduction if this deduction happens to be for you 25 000 well you don't use the itemized deduction if your standard deduction for your filing status it changes every year is 17 000 then you would use the itemized deduction now the itemized deduction is being used less and less because miscellaneous expense deduction is suspended from the year 2018 to 2025 I know you're sick of me saying this but it's very important to remember this it's suspended and the standard deduction overall the government increased the standard deduction so to be specific in this session we're going to be looking at gifts to charities and gift to charities you could give many types of gift to charities you can give cash or check for less than 250 you could give other other than buy cash or check if it made a gift of 250 or more you must attach for 80 to 83 if the gift is over 500 so notice you could give many things you could give cash you can give clothing you can give property and because you could give so many different things we have to be aware of the different roles matter of fact this is going to be the charities a gift to charities I'm going to break it into two recordings because it's going to be it's going to have a lot of details to cover let's go ahead and get started before we proceed any further I have a public announcement about my company farhatlectures.com farhat accounting lectures is a supplemental educational tool that's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation as well as your accounting courses my CPA material is aligned with your CPA review course such as becker roger wiley gleam myles my accounting courses are aligned with your accounting courses broken down by chapter and topics my resources consist of lectures multiple choice questions true false questions as well as exercises go ahead start your free trial today so what is the big idea of a charitable contribution well it's simply put the government wants to encourage you to do what to donate why because if you donate if you donate you are serving the public good and basically you are taken away this this tasks from the government and government loves to be helped so basically you're helping the government indirectly because you're helping others otherwise the government will have to take care of that whatever that issue is so individual and corporation may deduct contribution made to a qualified domestic organization now individuals can make contribution and corporations now when we discuss the corporations which is a separate recording there are different rules different limitation for corporations and this session will focus on individuals and what do we mean by qualified domestic organization in other words you cannot give this money to your needy neighbor that's really nice of you if you if you're helping someone but to take the deduction you have to give this money to a qualified domestic organization how do i know it's a qualified domestic organization if you're not sure go to the irs website and there's a list of all qualified domestic organization most churches synagogue mosques as well as many other organization you just they have to be registered with the irs the gift have to be the contributor must have a donative intent what is what does that mean to gift someone it means you are not expecting anything in return and this is important so you're giving this gift and you say i don't want anything in return because if you get something in return then it's going to reduce your it's going to reduce your contribution so if the contributor receive a tangible benefit some sort of a benefit well the fair market value of such benefit reduces the amount of the charitable contribution so if you are making a charitable contribution and you don't expect anything in return to a domestic qualified organization you can deduct this amount however if you made a contribution and you get some tangible benefit in return well you have to reduce your contribution by that benefit let's take a look at an example sarah purchases a ticket for a special performance of the local symphony which is a qualified charity she paid the ticket is priced at 150 while the regular symphony concert ticket is 50 so she paid 150 the price she paid the 150 but the regular price is 50 okay according to the rules sarah is only allowed to deduct 100 because the regular price is 50 so she paid 150 so of that 150 would say 50 is the benefit because she's getting the ticket and 100 is the extra that she paid she can get a deduction for it this means she can only deduct 100 even though she paid 150 it doesn't matter if sarah attends the concert or not you know that she's limited to 100 how can she how can she get the whole 150 not to accept the ticket altogether she would say here's 150 for the tickets keep it i don't want the ticket don't don't give me the ticket back then she can deduct the full 150 but if she paid 150 and the the value of the ticket is 50 now why did she pay 150 because she wants to encourage she wants to encourage the local symphony she paid extra more than when they are what they are asking if she want to deduct the 150 don't take the ticket just say here's 150 i paid one price but i don't want it once she takes it the deduction is 100 state credit for a charitable contribution this is fairly a new a new deduction that the irs is kind of making sure it doesn't happen several state offer tax credit for taxpayer who donate the specific states or local fund or public charity so in certain states if you donate money they'll give you a tax credit on the state level okay to address the concern about potential abuse because remember your local and state taxes you could only deduct up to 10 000 so here's what you are doing here you make a you make a contribution to a charity to a charity and in return you get a benefit in terms of local and state tax credit well what does that mean it means you are reducing when you get a benefit you are reducing your state taxes so you're you're getting benefit from that charity indirectly and as a result you are reducing your local taxes so what the government says is this according to these rules if a taxpayer receives a state or local tax credit that exceeds 15 of their payment so if you get a tax credit you know 15 percent if you pay the thousand dollar and you get 150 up to 15 percent their charitable contribution will be reduced their charitable deduction might be reduced by that credit let's take a look at an example so in 20x 2023 alex a resident of state ax donated seven thousand dollar to state ax education fund okay this donation makes alex eligible for 40 percent state income tax credit which is if he paid 2800 if he paid 7 000 the state is given him a 40 percent tax credit it means alex can reduce his state taxes by 2800 so he made a donation to the state and he did get a benefit in return but the benefit can have a sneaky benefit and a sense that you're getting a benefit from the government 2800 this state credit can use to lower the overall state income tax for alex by making this contribution what the irs is saying alex is attempting to convert a state income tax payment subject to 10 000 limit per year into a charitable contribution which has a limit of 30 percent of adjusted gross income this is what they're saying you are making an attempt to lower your income taxes which is and to benefit more however when alex filed his 2023 federal income tax he must reduce the charitable contribution by 2800 because the tax credit exceeds 15 of the payment made because you received so too much credit as a result the contribution for the 7 000 7 000 minus 2800 he can deduct as charity for federal income tax purposes 4200 so simply put you cannot make a contribution get a tax credit or a tax benefit which is a tax credit a benefit on the local level then use the same contribution and get a benefit on the federal level that's what they're saying if you get a benefit and they allow you to get a 15 percent tax credit anything above that they would recapture it contribution of services let's assume you want you you volunteered your time you went down to the local red cross you volunteered your time well that's fine but your time is not deductible your time is not deductible contribution of services to a qualified charitable organization are not deductible that's your time however if you incur expenses unreimbursed expenses now you are paying something to those to those services then it's deductible what could be expenses well you might have to buy a certain uniform for performing the service that might be deductible also you might incur transportation cost sometimes you might have to travel and stay in a hotel lodging you might incur meals while away from home for the purpose of performing the donated service that's different than your time you're paying separately now you could also instead of itemizing your actual automobile cost you could take a standard mileage rate of 14 cent which is subject to change every year but so when you when you travel you'd say okay i'm gonna keep track of my mileage i'm gonna multiply them by whatever government standard rate happens to be or you can keep track of your actual cost for transportation expense now travel expenses are not deductible if if there's a significant personal element of pleasure so if you really enjoy doing this and you're doing this for your own enjoyment then it's not the travel is not deductible why because there should be nothing in return when you make a charitable contribution personal pressure recreation or you went there to volunteer and it's also you're taking the vacation at the same time you can't do that it's basically there's an element of personal pleasure pleasure it means you are getting something in return an example would be sara a delegate representing her church in austin taxes travels to a two-day national conference in chicago after the conference she spends a week exploring the city just you have to be very careful in chicago in this situation none of the transportation meals or large and are deductible because the travel included a significant personal element of pleasure recreation or vacation so she she's a delegate to her not-for-profit organization her church that's great but the transportation expense cannot be deducted because there's she spent that week vacationing in chicago you have to be aware of certain contributions that are non-deductible that they try to trick you on the exam for them certain items are not deductible dues fees bills paid to country clubs lodges fraternity order or similar groups they are not deductible cost of raffle bingo or lottery ticket now why because you are expecting to get some benefit also when you buy a lottery ticket you may not win but there's the expectation cost of tuition if you pay someone's tuition that's that's that's not deductible sometimes they try to to trick you well you did not give them cash you paid the tuition that's not charitable contribution payment for the right to purchase tickets for seating an athletic event in a university stadium you're getting a benefit be careful value of blood giving to a blood bank that's not deductible donations to homeowners association not deductible gifts to individuals you know gifts to individual basically the same thing as paying for tuition rental value of property used by a qualified charity let's assume you have a van or a truck and you tell them go ahead use it for a day or two basically it has a rental value you cannot deduct this and when it comes to cheer charitable contribution substantiation is an important factor with substantiation it means you have to show evidence evidence to support your deduction to claim a deduction taxpayer must have a proper documentation and substantiation now what about evidence you should have well it all depends at the amount the amount of the contribution and whether it was made in cash or non-cash because again you can give cash you can give clothing you can give a used car you can give stocks you can give bonds you can give a plane you can give a boat you can donate so many different things so different rules might apply to gifts of specific types of property such as use automobile due to past instances a taxpayer abused identified by congress and this is gets abused used to gets abused a lot and i'll give you a personal story i used to be one of my customers was a used car dealer and and he used to abuse this abuse it i don't know if abuse whether it's illegal or not but it was abused okay so just now the congress what they started to do they put more restriction on specially used car therefore additional guidelines are in place for such donation now we're going to go over these guidelines briefly for each type of donation to give you an idea how restrictive are charitable contribution if you contribute cash to claim a deduction for cash you must possess a receipt could be a canceled check or a written statement from the charity containing the charitable organization name contribution date and amount like for example if you belong to a church and you contribute money via a check at the end of the year they'll give you this a list of this payment if the payment exceeds 75 and include both a contribution of goods and services a written statement is necessary at that point the statement should include the estimated value of the goods or service received by the donor okay so you want to make sure you're aware of this two non-gift non-cash gifts for non-monetary gifts and here service is not for your time by the way for non-monetary gift what could be non-monetary gift again clothing property anything that you will give for non-monetary gift non-monetary means not money a receipt from the charity must be retained okay clothing or household item can be deducted they have to be in good used condition or better when donated in other words if they are not and the charity cannot use them you cannot take a deduction for them if an item you happen to contribute an item the value of that item is more than 500 and it's not in good condition a deduction if possible if a qualified appraiser is included with in the return now what's a qualified appraiser usually the person working at that charity will tell you and will give you a paper and it's accepted that's that's who would that's the appraiser so someone will tell you what's the value of it how do they how do they know the value because charities they might run stores or they might sell these items on regular basis so they would have an idea how much it's worth how about if you donated a boat an airplane or a used car the deduction for donating those items is typically limited to the amount the charity received from its sale now this is important this is a change of rules because before before the change of rules your the value of the donation was the fair value of that vehicle of that used vehicle whatever you think the fair value is they change the rules they'd say okay we're gonna wait until the charity sells this item and how much they will get is your deduction so taxpayers should obtain a statement from the charity to document the sales price if the deduction claimed is more than 500 then you have to fill out a form called 1098 contribution of motor vehicles both an airplane must be included with the tax return and as i mentioned earlier one of my customers one of my clients was a used car dealership and i started to fill a lot of those because i remember when the tax rule changed and congress became more restrictive now let's talk about cash or non-cash gift of 250 or more now you're just getting over 250 to deduct a cash or property contribution of 250 or more taxpayers require a contemporaneous written acknowledgement cwa from a charity including if you also have a payroll deduction gift it means you are deducting from your paycheck on a regular basis the cwa must obtain for donation of 250 or more in out-of-pocket expenses incurred while providing services to a charity now you need this cwa it should contain the contribution amount property description details on any goods or services received and their estimated value and this must be obtained by the earlier of the tax return filing date or the due date including x tensions non-cash gift now we're talking about more than 500 so 250 we talked about 250 more than 500 additional substantiation is needed again the higher the amount the more you need to show the evidence including details on how the property was acquired and its basis now if you're contributing cash it's easy cancel check will do and their seat from the charity but if you're contributing other than a check money then you need to provide what's the basis of that if non-cash contribution exceeds 5000 now you need a qualified appraiser now you need to get a specialized person that's going to appraise this asset whatever that asset that you are contributing to to substantiate how about if you contributed antiques painting jewelry and other tangible personal property to deduct donated property it depends on the charity uses and its tax exempt purpose and we'll talk about this now we are getting into this the next session if the charity uses the property for the related purpose the deduction is based on the appreciated fair market value so if you donated a painting to a museum well the painting to a museum is it's going to be used in the museum it's for the related purpose then you can deduct the fair market value how about if you donated this painting to the Red Cross then or to the Salvation Army then it's not then you have to use the cost otherwise the deduction is limited to the property cost again we're going to talk about more about this type of property in the next session also the taxpayer should obtain a statement from the charity to document the property's use so you have to kind of get it get a statement saying how am i going to be using it am i going to be using it for my purpose or am i going to sell it because it makes a difference if they use it for their purpose you could use the fair market value if not you are limited to the cost basis valuation again now we're getting into the next session evaluation means how much how much did you contribute you have to assign a dollar amount property donated now if it's money it's easy if you're donating money there's it easy to evaluate cash right cash is cash property donated typically valued at fair market value this is what we're going to be discussing first when the gift is made what's the fair market value when we say fair market value is the price of which the property would be exchanged between a willing buyer and a willing seller with reasonable knowledge and no obligation to buy or sell that's what the fair market value is charitable contribution do not provide fair market value so it's the taxpayer responsibility now for something clothing they might tell you it's the fair market value because they are considered qualified appraiser but if we're looking at something else they may not be expert in that so you have to provide written evidence of the donation the taxpayer responsibility to obtain written evidence of the donation from the charity and determine the appropriate value so it's your job to do so because you're taking the deduction do not again clothing for something less than 500 they can do it for you but something larger you have to you have to take care of that what should you do now go to far hat lectures and work mcqs to do what to understand the concept of schedule a charitable contribution in the next session it's going to be part two for charitable contribution what i talk about the different type of property that you can contributed and what are the limitations because you have again there's always a ceiling congress is a generous to a point good luck study hard and stay safe


The base weather station is here 24-7. We support an air refueling mission, and so we brief the pilots, they fly and refuel the fighter aircraft. We can determine whether the clouds are going to be lower level, mid-level, or upper level, so that all the members of RAF Mildenhall are able to complete their mission.


Technology is really empowering people in terms of their daily lives, you know, to become something. Anywhere from education to, you know, things like finance and others, what is important is that people believe that, you know, this medium and especially mobile devices are, you know, instruments that can help them achieve things, whether it's the education, whether it's the health, whether it's the finances and all of that. You know, the mobile device is one of the devices that can help you be included. We've seen it with, you know, applications that are about finance. I myself have done applications and projects that include actually applications that are around, for example, epidemiological prevention, selling products, organic products, you know, to far-fetched places from the African region, established community rural radios since the late 90s and all of that. So for me, it's all about making sure that yes, we're getting somewhere together with people. In terms of advocacy, I think we won't have too much of a hard time convincing people that, you know, applications that are sitting on mobile devices are something that are key to their daily lives. Take MPESA, take, you know, some of the medical applications that are now on smartphones, you know, that are helping people. Again, when it's about, you know, access and affordability, it's looking at some of the projects that we can either tie with or foster that are around, for example, low-cost connectivity and access to remote areas. ITU is the place where, you know, the Empowering Development Initiative is. ITU is the place where the people who are doing the pipes that are, you know, at the bottom of this network, that's where they are. So there is no reason where we cannot find projects, you know, about access and access that fosters, you know, affordability, you know, are here. So there is no reason why we cannot find them and foster their, you know, their uptake out there. So that's, I think, something that we can happen. And then the last part about partnership, of course, ITU has, you know, works with a lot of organizations out there from, you know, the decision makers, governments to, you know, the people that are from business, civil society, academia, you know, organizations like ICANN where our people, you know, interact all the time with ITU. So, yeah, there are the potential for partnership, you know, in between the group of people who are all, you know, somewhat related to ITU or outside ITU is just tremendous. And, you know, this is, I think, one of the reasons why we retain the three ideas, because it's really, I think they can be the three catalyst areas that help us progress for the Empowering and Development Initiative. Oh, in a lot of ways. So access, affordability means a lot more people who will be, you know, on these mediums. Today, we talked about things like including a lot more people.  We talked about how to foster that. We talked about, yeah, financial inclusion. We talked about people who, for example, in this world, there's about a billion plus people who have no identity. And these are some of the, you know, the ways that we can include everybody. The Sustainable Development Goals with the 17 goals are all, if you just take the first one, which is, you know, and let's get, you know, let's see the end of poverty. The one thing that the one service that we can, you know, give to somebody who has no birth certificate is to make them exist already in this world. The moment they have one, they can be recognized, they can have services from government, from private sector, naming, they can be somebody, they can become somebody, and they can be part of, you know, this future community that we're fostering. So the Empowering Development Initiative is one of, I guess, the initiatives that can help achieve sustainable development goals at all levels. And I think we'll get there, definitely.


Hey you guys, so this is gonna be a fairly different video for me Because I'm gonna be trying out combinations for an upcoming wash and go now girl I just did a hard look at myself in the camera You're gonna have to excuse what's going on with my appearance. It's been a very Busy week for us and this was a non-scheduled video I'm just turning on the camera and we're gonna make it happen I did a light beat so that that can distract you from everything else that's going on So you guys I have in front of me about ten different Stylers and leave-in conditioners and we're going to be doing a palm test with Echo Styler Joe I'm gonna say a few things before we get into this now I know other youtubers have done this particular type of test pretty witty as most of you guys know Which I absolutely love the fact that she's done that and she has done this particular particular excuse me Test for Echo Styler Joe and also for wet line extreme gel the clear and blue For me personally, I find that I have gotten the best wash and go not with Echo Styler Joe But with Icy Fantasia Joe along with can too, but that's before can too started messing up can too It's just we're gonna get to a hundred minute But we all know by now that if you get a technique down You can use just like any product however with a wash and go There's a lot of other things involved because your texture of course plays a big part of it And I find that since I have multiple texture textures, which most of us do my density is off the chain I have to be very careful not being heavy-handed So I don't get built up and it helps when I do my wash and go in the shower All right, you guys so we have a full jar of Echo Styler Joe and we're gonna start off with the Taliyah Waajid Curly curl cream um and I know that suggestion. I feel like this is a slept-on product I really do. I know some of you guys said it didn't work for you I'm sorry girl, but I do. I feel like it's a slept-on product. It's very creamy Has a to me. It's like a shade butter. Yeah shade butter Butter I like it. Okay, we're gonna Look at that This is my palms let's add a little bit more see if it does anything No prop blends very very well, okay, I hope I have enough to do my hair Look girl, you got more than enough. All right, y'all. So next up. We have tgi ends buttercream daily moisturizer now Also have her Twisting the fine cream, but since this is a leave-in condition and we're gonna try it with this instead.   Now we have as I am long and luxe grow yogurt Which I had a problem with her recently, but that's enough video coming up, you know in a bit here Mmm So I will be careful with this one. Hmm.  So I'm excited about this good because For the longest for my wash and go so those of you who don't know I've been natural this year It will be 10 years.  Here I come No reason but yeah, I shaved my head and so for the longest I would use curl enhances movie by shave more stir along with Can too I'm sorry along with the echo salad Bangin curls. All right, let's see what this does I need some more gel. It's just sitting there This is what's happening. It's not smoothing in or anything. I don't know I'm gonna do it again. Yeah, I'm paranoid.  No, that is a heart. No unfortunate Moving on next up. We have olive oil or as oil moisturizer Hair lotion, I don't use this this much. I mean, yeah, I think I've used this like never cuz it's full So we're gonna go ahead and see oh Not bad if you do it a little bit more it Yeah, this isn't bad. I will be careful, but that's not bad.  Oh But not for a wash. Oh, look at that not for a wash and go. Take shirt ID styling cream Y'all this product. Hmm. I know some people This product is okay with this this styling cream and this is sold exclusively at Sally's is okay with other product with other products within the line I've had it for a while. It's a jelly type consistency and But we shall see how it pairs with Not bad actually y'all Look at that. I think if you worked it bad, look at that work it in some more and See this is a surprise for me, okay We have Miesha's hydrating twisting butter. Absolutely love this styler. Oh, no, girl. Oh, no, no, no No, I hope this is showing up y'all because I know it keeps Wanting to focus on my face because identification off. Let's just go ahead and do can to I mean you right here, you know Y'all can too. It's just I Don't know Creamy We'll see Nope, look at that. Oh, just this is disrespectful. Look at that I know it's still zooming in on my face, but you can see it even while it's zoom in there. Wow, that just I Want some yogurt now. That's how bad that looks last but not least we have the meal Leaving pomegranate and honey. This is one of my favorite leaving.  You see how it's doing something. So you be careful, but it's not bad. I Will say this is a yes.  Honestly y'all look at it. It's okay. Just gotta blend it in more You came through girl All right y'all Let's start with the worst first Absolutely not cannot will not be able to pair well with We have can to she leave a conditioner again, these are all knows no to this one Mesh Melanin Grape for I will say this this is great for pairing it up with that I think would be great for breakouts twist outs Being very mindful of how much Joe you use honestly with all of these, but yeah, no So no TJ and girl you will know too Maybe but be careful. We have to be the as I am longing Luxe Next up we have the melanin leaving conditioners in absolute. Yes, but maybe yeah Absolute yes, definitely works. Well texture ID styling cream Oh RS I was surprised by you girl. Yeah or is or moisturizing and then we have a Taliyah YG Curling curl cream now what I will be using Pretty one of the best ones besides the texture IB, but I don't have a lot I'm going to have to go with the ORS I Love oil replenishing and this is this again This is one of those to where you just don't know out of all of these products There are some other products here. They have better ingredients overall But this is going to have to be it's going to be my combination, especially since it's cooler now I need a little bit thicker leaving so yeah, we're going to do this so towards the end of this video You're going to see the results of this combination. Okay? Are you guys so I am co-washing my hair with swabs almond shade butter conditioner This is from that previous video. I share it with you guys So I might also add it some apple cider vinegar to my scalp and so my hair is feeling really great after the apple cider vinegar rinse and the Conditioner that right there was the ORS leaving conditioner and then I'm going in with the eco-salo gel and small sections At least for me. I'm going to be doing a combination of raking and shingling and this took me a while Yeah, I will say it took me a while and then next up you're going to see clips of my hair That same day with it soaking wet and then the next day actually three days later with it dry. Okay?  Let me have heads up I'm making these faces because my child is singing. I'm gonna on I'm gonna unmute these clips so you can hear what he's singing because when I tell you Yeah Yeah, I'm a Leo one of y'all pointed it out. I wear my emotions on my face, baby I can't hide it. So yeah girl. I'm looking for big hair. That's what I got I'm gonna turn around to the side to the back and that is it y'all I'm gonna show you clips of what my hair looks like later on that night. And yeah Girl my child is something else So this is what my hair looks like and normally I would not recommend piling on more products Especially gel on top of an old wash and go but this worked I have a lot more shrinkage as you can see but I was able to maintain this wash and go for another three days Okay, thank you so much for watching. Take care. Bye


Hello everybody! In this video, I'm going to tell you how to organize a video conference with a free tool – Google Meet. Recently, Google made this video conferencing service free for all users. As we know, previously, Google Meet was only available to subscribers of G Suite Enterprise, but now it is free for anyone so that people can keep in touch in these troubled times. To start using it, you need to have a Google account and you'll be able to join video meetings. Google developers say they are going to limit the time of such meetings to 60 minutes, but by now you can have them as long as you like. In our channel and blog, you will find solutions to any problem from installing an operating system or configuring it to fix impossible bugs and errors or optimizing mobile gadgets. Our specialists will answer any questions you ask in your comments under the videos or articles. So, let's have a closer look at Google Meet. As I said before, you need a Google account to use the service. On computers, it runs in a browser. Google Meet is fully supported by Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. On the other hand, Internet Explorer supports only some features. If you use a smartphone or tablet PC for video conferences, this tool can be downloaded from Google Play. I will leave the link in the description under the video. Before you start working, let Google Meet access your camera and microphone. Open the main page of the service and click to allow it. If there is no access request for you have blocked it before, click on the icon saying that the camera is blocked and choose the option to always let the service access the camera and microphone. After that, you will join the video conference automatically. If the settings have not been updated, rejoin the meeting or start your browser and join the meeting again. To start a video meeting, click Start a meeting or enter a meeting code if you need to join a meeting which is already in progress. Also, you can schedule a future meeting in Google Clienta. Add a name, set the date and configure additional settings, location, add guests, set up notifications and add a description. When you create a meeting with Google Clienta, you can attach files so that other participants can view the materials before you meet. When you start a meeting, click Join Now. The Add Other window will appear. In order to add more participants, click Add People and select someone from your contact list. Or specify an email address, and then click to send an invitation. Otherwise, click Copy Join Info and send the invitation in any other way you prefer, for example, in a messenger. There are several ways to join a meeting. You can open a schedule event in the calendar and join it. In the main window of the service, select a meeting from the list and click to get connected. Or enter the meeting code or name. You can see the meeting code at the end of the invitation link. hyphens can be missed. Also, you can join a meeting by following an invitation link. Click on the meeting link you received in a message or by email and follow directions on the screen. If you don't have a Google account, one of the meeting participants will have to approve your request to join it. In the meeting window, you can always turn your camera and microphone on or off. Leave the meeting or share your screen. The last feature lets you share your entire screen, a window or a browser tab. If you need a link or code for invitation, click on Meeting Details. At the top of the screen, you can find the list of guests where you can add more people. There is also a chat to exchange text messages. By clicking the three dots button, you can rearrange the tiles on the screen. Turn on captions and full screen mode. In the settings, you have options to check and configure the audio and video equipment you are using. Google Meet can also be used on mobile devices with Android and iOS. Just download and install a corresponding application from Google Play. Such application offers the same functionality as getting a browser from the desktop computer. Start a meeting or enter a code for the meeting which is in progress. Turn the camera and microphone on or off, share a screen, view the list of participants or chat with them and share a link to the meeting, if necessary. With this service, you can easily organize a video conference for your team or arrange a remote video class. Just schedule the meeting and send the link to every participant. This service works both on computers and mobile devices, has a simple interface and convenient options to manage the list of people involved. With its integrated protection features, Google will ensure privacy and security of your data. During the meeting, all transmitted data is encrypted and the default set of protection features makes all your conferences safe and private. And that is all for now. Hopefully this video was useful. Remember to click the Like button and subscribe to our channel. Hit the bell button to receive notifications and never miss new videos. Leave comments to ask questions. Thank you for watching. Good luck.