Category: Non-Reporters

God Bless America March 2026

March 11, 2026

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I’m happy that the Citizens United ruling so many years ago paved the way to corporations controlling our Congress. Can you imagine if they had to write laws without millions of dollars in corporate and foreign money on the table?

I’m happy that our Supreme Court has basically no oversight and can freely take gifts from corporations and their mega rich owners. Can you imagine if they had to decide cases without that influence?

And finally I’m happy that our President gave away billions to corporations and foreign governments and is spending lots of money bombing children overseas. Can you imagine that money being spent on anything else?

But most of all I’m happy that our free press is largely controlled by mega corporations and foreigners who will dutifully keep all of this out of sight and out of mind, twisting narratives to suit them, their shareholders, and their advertisers.

This is a great America. I can’t imagine it any other way.

-Christopher Day

P.S.

I’ve written ad nauseam about being grateful for what I have and wanting my standard of living to be the bare minimum. I remain convinced that if it’s possible to rig the system in such a way that so few people benefit, it is likely true that it is possible to rig the system in such a way that the maximum number of people benefit.

But you need leaders that believe that to get it started.

Jackie Mentecky: It’s Deception. It’s A Bait and Switch…

(CDA stands for Christopher Day Annotation in this text.)

“We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment lawyer.”

Cheri Marks speaks to FL stenographer Jackie Mentecky

ME: Where are you from and are you currently working as a stenographer? And how did you get started in that field?

JM: I’m originally from England, but I grew up in the states, I lived in Pittsburgh for a long time. I moved down to Florida 28 years ago, and I’ve been reporting for since 1998.   My entire career has been in Florida.

ME: How has the work been going recently? And can you tell me about when and how you started working with the reporters in Florida?

JM: I’ve always worked for the big boxes, but it was more recently I started asking myself, ‘what’s going on with our career?’ And I started nose diving and down rabbit holes, pulling up lawsuits, pulling up billing. And it was when I saw the writing on the wall that I decided to open my own agency.

ME: Could you give me some examples of things you were finding, what the bad practices entailed? I’m also curious where you seek out news, sources and information about abuses in the field of stenography. Is there good communication within the field?

JM: I can tell you this. Going into a job, attorneys were very vocal in asking, ‘why is my bill so high? What is going on?” And I would talk to my girlfriends, and again– more and more attorneys are complaining about their invoices.  I’m like, ‘sir, I haven’t seen a bill since 2006. I don’t know what they’re billing you’.  

We never got a copy of the bill.  We never knew what they were billing.  Attorneys, law firms, whatever it was, everything was kept in the dark, hush hush. Nothing. Nothing. We used to get copies of the bills that went out to the law firms–

ME: The bills were coming from who?

JM: The big boxes. So we used to get copies of the bills when they invoiced their clients, but then they stopped.  Looking back, that’s kind of when things started going south.

Everything was hidden behind a back door, don’t ask questions, you know? And it was very, you could sense it. You knew it. You would bring it up once in a while, but, God, you were so busy! You just kept working, right? We were busy. You knew something wasn’t right, but you think, well, I’m still making good money, so leave it alone.

ME: Don’t make waves.

JM: And then you’d forget about it, until somebody else would bring it up..

JM: About six years ago, my son started having really bad seizures. And I stopped going out on live jobs, so I was working from home.  I was working for a big box, already either appearing by phone or transcribing audios, before it was even cool. 

So the first year of COVID I ended up going back to one of the big boxes because Zoom was now popular. It was a lot easier for me to go back to being a stenographer that was doing hearings and trials and depositions. We were having, oh, gosh, two, three jobs a day during COVID when people finally learned how to use Zoom, and we were slammed. Like, even if you tried to get a day off, they were blowing up our phones:

“Open job”, “do this”, “we need that”, “we need help”, “help. I understand you’re off tomorrow, but can you please take this job?” 

I mean, we were slammed.  And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t so slammed anymore.

But attorneys were like, oh, my God. We’re still on backlog, we’re busy, busy, busy, busy. We gotta go to trial.  And the court stenographers were saying, ‘what’s going on?’ Our two jobs a day are now, if we’re lucky we got two or three a week.

So, what is going on?

Covid was the perfect opportunity for these firms to do this to us, because we weren’t in the office together. We weren’t seeing each other all the time. Everybody was working by zoom now. So this was their big chance to cry ‘shortage’ and hire digitals, get them trained, and then try to get rid of the court stenographers. For them to say, we’re too slow, and then come to find out that they have digital reporters in Texas taking Florida work. 

I started doing some research. I knew something was up. I knew that this had got to be over profits. I mean, they’re paying these typists $20 an hour. I did legal transcription for over 20 years at a big box firm. I know what AI software they’re using, and how much they’re paying their typist, everything.

Because that’s what it is.  They get these digital court reporters, they’re paying them $20 an hour, but they’re still billing the law firms as if a professional stenographer showed up. And then they bless them with this title, ‘court reporter’.

ME: No way!

JM: It’s deception. It’s bait and switch, you know? You hear ‘court reporter’, you’re thinking, court stenographer.  And there’s someone sitting there with a machine just pressing ‘record’. And then they input it into a system. 

ME: Geez. Is there a Stenography Union? 

JM: Well, Florida’s not big on unions. We have the Florida Court Reporters Association. And I always thought it was funny that the big box companies always had people on the board, right?  The same people that have tried to strip us of our profession were on the board making decisions on whether we should get legislation to protect our careers. Weird, right?

ME: Yeah.

JM: And it’s so funny because they were all on the FCRA, and they would be big sponsors for conventions and stuff. Then Covid comes and they’re no longer doing that. They’re part of the AAERT, which is the electronic 8th-grade-comparable test to become a court reporter.

(CDA: In full disclosure, I’ve actually read AAERT’s best practices manual, and I believe if best practices were followed all the time, decent transcripts could be made. Best practices are not followed all the time and some of the transcripts I’ve seen over the years have been atrocious. But I suppose that’s not entirely unlike our own field, where some of us do not join into the “excellence culture.”)

ME: Wow.  

JM: They were on the board, but they’ve been playing this for years. Covid was the best thing that ever happened to them.

ME: Right. Do you feel like there’s potential for individual court reporters to unionize as a way to push back against this?   I don’t know If there’s much conversation between states, or if you’ve done any kind of organizing? 

JM: Well, it’s still getting out. At all the agencies, all the managers would always tell us, ‘your job’s protected. We wouldn’t be an agency without the court stenographers’. But behind our backs, they were training digitals. I don’t know how much you know about Veritext, but they buy out to small agencies. They have a school to pump out digitals.

(CDA: BlueLedge.)

ME: Wow.

JM: And then especially, with Zoom, they’re able to get away with using a digital, and they’re billing clients as if a professional stenographer showed up. 

I don’t know how New York does it, but down in Florida, we have an appearance rate, which is just us showing up, as an hourly rate.  So, I’ll give you an example of a trial.  For a court reporter to show up, let’s just say $1,100 for the day.  The court reporting agencies would pay the court stenographer anywhere between 65% to 70%. So you’re looking at, you know, $650-700

So they made, like, you know, what, 400, $500 up, sending the court stenographer there.

‘Shortage. Shortage. Let’s send it digital!’.  And we’re gonna pay the digital $20 an hour to hit ‘record’.  

And then when I started doing the deep dives and the rabbit holes, and I’m seeing how much they’re telling us ($5 a page), versus how much they’re charging them, ($60!)  I was going into courthouses and looking up lawsuits.  Agencies were suing attorneys for non-payment, and they have to attach the bills– they’re charging them for litigation packages and storage fees and reads.  And, you know, this poor court reporter probably only made a third of that bill.

So when I came across Chris and https://stenonymous.com/ I reached out to him.  But a lot of the reporters just didn’t believe us.

ME: Really?

JM: Because the agencies kept saying, oh, no, your job is secure.  They didn’t want to believe it. It’s denial.  I’ve talked to Chris a couple of times.  We should really unionize and try to get this going, but it’s also true that the perpetrators have a lot of money.

(CDA: I have spoken to an attorney and have extensive knowledge on this. Unionization, especially unionization alongside digitals with contractual ratios would change the game forever in our favor.)

ME: Yeah.

JM: And they have big dollar investors, millions and millions and millions of dollars. And if you even type ‘court reporter’ into Google search, all you see are the big box names. They bought up so much advertising.

You have to sort through so much to really find out really what’s going on. Though, the law firms are beginning to become educated. They’re like, what do you mean, ‘there’s a digital’? What’s a ‘digital’? They don’t know. The companies think the law firms don’t care, but they do care.

(CDA: Some care, some don’t.)

ME: Maybe if there were some kind of team effort between the stenographers and the law offices?  Maybe my next interview should be with a lawyer, to see what their take on this is… 

What’s the state of your work now?

JM: Well, now I’m busy. I’m making more money now than I ever have. But I hustle and I work for a couple small firms that take good care of me, and I have my own clients.  

I keep telling every single court reporter, leave the big boxes.  Go back to the boutiques, they have great clients. In that way, I’m doing well. But it makes me angry when I find out my friends aren’t busy. I’m like, you’re a real time reporter. How are you not paying your rent? 

ME: Have you thought of starting a class action lawsuit or anything?

JM: I mean, they monopolized our market.

I started going on LinkedIn, and I started following some of the big law firms and other court stenographers, and I started posting the truth about what’s going on.  And it was shocking, to find out how many lawyers did not know that a digital reporter doesn’t actually type the transcript or ever look at it, that they just make the audio.

They tell the lawyers, ‘this is a digital court reporter who’s making a recording, it’s transcribed by stenographic means’. But it’s not!

They don’t tell them that it’s going through AI.  They don’t tell them that if it’s a 100 page transcript.  There could be five typists that go through it. That’s why it’s all messed up. 

I’ve consulted with a few lawyers in a small court reporting agency. She called me and said that she needed a stenographer. She had called to the big boxes, and they’d said, oh, yeah, we have a stenographer. Well, they end up sending a digital.  And it was expedited. It was an all day export. And when they got the transcript back– 150 pages were duplicated!

ME: Oh, my God.

JM: And the transcript was trash.  She called me up, and I explained to her exactly what happened.  And what to say to the big box agency that did it, and what to say to the judge.

And they won!

So, I think we need to educate the lawyers about what’s really happening with the digitals and what the agencies are doing with their audios– how they’re being charged to expedite. They’re getting charged $16 a page, but they’re paying somebody $2 to do it.  And then saying, ‘it’s because there’s a shortage, and we were trying to save money’. 

So, when a court reporter shows up, in Florida, they don’t have to order.  They can say, I don’t need that yet, so they don’t order it.  But if they order it, that’s where the money is. But it depends how many attorneys are there. So usually it’s like two attorneys, plaintiff and defense.

But you could have two attorneys or you could have ten attorneys.  You can see on the notice how many parties are on a lawsuit.

So when a court reporting agency goes, ‘Oh, look at this lawsuit. There’s one plaintiff and five defendants. That’s six copy sales right there.  Yeah, let’s send the digital– because we’re gonna make a ton off the per diem.  We only have to pay somebody $2 a page to do the audio and fill in the gaps’ (which are wrong, by the way).

And then they have five copy sales. And in Florida, a copy sale can range anywhere between $4-6.  Up to $30 to 100 page transcript. That’s 100% profit margin to them.  If there was a court stenographer, a real professional court stenographer that showed up, it’d be 70% of the entire amount that went to the court stenographer.

ME:Yeah.

JM: Digital is 100% profit margin.  It’s not a shortage. It’s corporate greed, and profit margins.

ME: Totally.

JM: And then, once again, they don’t even tell the lawyers.  

ME: It’s like, they’re taking advantage of this complex exchange. They’re exploiting it for profit. And it’s subtle.

JM: Yea. I want to say it was 2017 that Veritext, US Legal, and Esquire all got bought out by private equity firms. Like, within three months, all the big boxes got bought out. And it was so weird, too, that I was also finding newspaper articles and stories stating there’s a shortage of court stenographers.

(CDA: My memory differs here. I believe at least Veritext was already owned by private equity. It may have changed hands around that time period though. I have no memory of the status of U.S. Legal Support or Esquire.)

Isn’t that weird? All these articles started popping up, right when all these biggest private equity firms were buying up the big box companies for millions and millions and millions of dollars. Why would a private equity firm buy a company when they were crying shortage?

(CDA: I remember this being more like 2019 when all the articles were popping up. But it hardly matters. It was happening.)

And then I found Veritext’s patent, their big AI software and recording devices, and that the plan was to just get rid of stenographers altogether.

It went through during COVID last year, and I posted it.  And I thought, is it just me, or does it seem like Veritext is really trying to make us all quit?

They’re really rude to us on the phone. They’re starving us. And then the work that we do get, it’s paltry, and there’s no write ups. It’s like they’re purposely giving us the jobs that they know aren’t going to write up, and we’re just getting a bad per diem.

And then, we started talking on Facebook, posting stuff. And then people were like, yeah, me too.  And I’d preciously had stenographers reaching out to me at Facebook, I would take overflow for them. I would call them and ask, what’s going on? And they’d say ‘We’re fully staffed. We don’t need you anymore’.

We need antitrust monopoly.  We need an employment contract lawyer.

ME: Yes.

JM: Because in 2011, Veritext, US legal, and Esquire all got sued. There was a class action. Did you know about this in Florida?

ME: No.

JM: There was a class action lawsuit because attorneys were very upset that the word indices at the end of their [transcripts].  They were getting charged per page, like it was a regular transcript from the court reporter.

And the word index is all at the end of the transcript. If you said the word ‘the’ 100 times, it’ll tell you every time in that transcript where you said the word, ‘the’.

So, you know, it could be a hundred page transcript, but it could be a 30 page word index. And they were getting charged page rates, and they were fighting it. So they filed a class action lawsuit saying this is unethical. This isn’t part of the transcripts, it’s not part of the record.

And they ended up losing.

ME: What?!

JM: Because the court reporting agencies went in, and they said, this word index is part of the court reporters word product. It’s part of the transcript.

(CDA: In actuality, it’s more like tying a product under the antitrust laws. You can, and court reporters absolutely do, create transcripts without word indices.)

And that’s how they lost. Now, it’s funny because when that lawsuit came out, it’s running rampant in the office. We were all hearing about it.  But, the court reporting agencies were like, don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about the clients.  It’s an ongoing litigation. And then we just never heard about it again.

ME: Right.

JM: So when I started doing my deep dives and I was trying to find out what’s going on and what are the real rates, I happened to ask my friend, ‘whatever happened with that?’

ME: That lawsuit?

JM: Yeah. So I googled it, and I read the order when it was dismissed, and I was like, oh, my God.  It got dismissed because they’re saying it’s part of our work product. It’s part of our official transcript. And she was like, wow. So why aren’t they paying us for it?

We have never gotten one penny for a word index. Yeah.  I think somebody owes us a lot of money.

ME: Yeah!

JM: So, I was just finding out so much.  So I called a lawyer. And I asked, was this dismissed because they were saying the word index is part of the court reporter’s work product? And he said yes. And when I told we never got paid for that, he said are you serious? I almost had a heart attack.

ME: Wow

JM: What a mess. Yeah.  It’s so shady. I do believe there’s handholding. I do believe these agencies are in it. There’s no doubt. I believe there’s handholding because the AAERT, the two biggest big boxes are on the Association’s membership boards.

I mean, come on.

ME: What are your next moves? What are your hopes for the future of this community and for communications across the board?

JM: Definitely to get more information out.  I think what’s going to save us is educating the lawyers. They need to know that if they want to protect their record, they need to have a stenographer.

ME: Yeah.

JM: If they’re gonna go with the digital, then you get what you pay for.  When you’re paying for a professional, you should demand a professional. 

ME: Yeah.

JM: You know?  It’s very overwhelming. Chris and I were sending stuff back and forth all the time. I got very busy with work. I’m hoping we can get back on it. I would love to get a Florida court stenographer association up, and a campaign to educate the law firms and lawyers and really just bring everything to light.

ME: That sounds like a good path forward.

JM: Here’s my favorite example:  this is from a trial transcript and appeal transcript out of Broward county, which is in Fort Lauderdale.

I live 20 minutes north of there. And the guy was charged with “lewd and lascivious molestation”.

The digital transcript says he was guilty of “ruining the gas”. The city’s gas station.

The transcript is on my LinkedIn page.

ME: Oh my god, so wild. Okay, I’m gonna end your interview with that amazing quote. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. 

JM: Bye.

Scam Alert: Fake Student Loan Forgiveness

I recently received a message about my student loans. It used an address I am familiar with and looked possibly legitimate at first glance.

Of course, my student loans have been paid for over a decade now.

Let this be a warning to all steno students: There are scams going on that may use addresses you are familiar with. Always double check the sender and DO NOT let the promise of debt forgiveness push you into FOMO (fear of missing out).

Scammers prey on human emotions. Don’t let them prey on yours.

Checking the sender can help identify scams using Hotmail and Gmail.

Luddites Weren’t Anti-Technology. Neither Are We.

Shared by a brilliant court reporter. Let me know if you want your name here.

Check out this page for the book Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant.

As told by the page, and ostensibly expounded on in the book, the Luddites weren’t against technology. Their livelihoods were taken away by factory owners. They were going to starve.

This page expounds on the idea quite a bit. Though in my view it goes to great lengths to not mention that they were starving.

Brings some interesting context to someone calling us neo-Luddites, as a few have in the past. We’re not against technology. We use technology. We are against companies using their money to lie to the public. We are against corporations violating the law to push us out of our livelihoods.

Those that fail to study history are doomed to repeat it?

P.S.

Tomorrow’s post is written the way it is for many, many reasons. My best friends asked if I was okay. I’m okay.

I don’t anticipate you will read the whole thing. I don’t anticipate anyone will read the whole thing. There are strategic, social, political, and legal reasons for a lot of what I do. The day may come when it is time to reveal these things to the world in more detail or in a more formal setting. Till then…

Bulletin: Black History Month & The Lack of Diversity on Stenonymous

It’s Black History Month! I don’t do much acknowledgement on here of the “recognition months.” There is a part of me that feels it’s malignantly ceremonial. What I mean by that is, more or less, while we take this time to acknowledge and remember the contributions of Black people to the United States, and that’s important; we, as a country and society, all too often then turn a blind eye to the racial and systemic injustices of this day and age, comforted by the “ceremony” of giving those people a month.

(NOTE: Phrased that way to parody the “us versus them” mentality of the chronically bigoted.)

This is very similar to how I view the way court reporters are treated. Companies and courts tell us how important we are and what a good job we do, turn around and cut our jobs, and then blame us for shortage. The respect we have is mostly ceremonial. When it comes down to actually improving our lives and working conditions through a simple gesture like speaking slower and clearer there are very, very few that make active efforts to help. The primary difference? Most of us can, if we so choose, give up the game and go do something else. Not so with the color of skin. Imagine if someone spent a whole month telling you how important you were only for you to live in a reality where you are more likely to experience excessive use of force by police. “Stop resisting!” “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

(NOTE: It is pretty funny/sad/interesting to see how systems react to court reporters standing up for equality. That is to say, we are placated and nothing is done to further equality. Seems malignantly ceremonial.)

I have to grapple with the fact that most do not view “the ceremony” my way. It is viewed as a positive thing. I appreciate that very much. I would gladly host submissions related to Black History Month (or Pride, etc). I’m not trying to blackout or cancel the celebration or stifle discussion about what we have learned from history. But I would need people to come forward and submit things. Otherwise, it’s just me, Whitey McWhiteface, writing what I think should be written. Sharing what I think should be shared. And occasionally being called names for it.

Comment from a video posted by Christopher Day.

But in the end it’s not about me. I acknowledge the power of diverse teams. I acknowledge that I can only bring one perspective out of the billions on this Earth. It is one mission of this blog to attract more viewpoints, opinions, facts, ideas. And I will stand resolute and spotlight anyone that’ll take the time to share with me what they’re doing or what they think should be posted. Because I know stuff is happening just like Margary Rogers’ 2022 project, or Kim Xavier’s video from 4 years ago. I just don’t have omniscience. The community’s help is required to keep tabs on and publicize stuff, at least until the day someone can be employed full time to investigate and write about these things.

Help bring an end to the lack of diversity on Stenonymous. Please reach out with any submissions or projects you want featured. Contact@stenonymous.com. We don’t have the same institutional and organizational bars as the Journal of Court Reporting. Let’s press that advantage and make some magic happen!

P.S.

If you’ve ever wondered why I’m such a hellraiser on issues related to our field, simply put I’ve spent enough time reading up on private equity and documenting the behavior of various people and entities related to our field. I see pretty clearly that they’re looking to push the median wage of our field, about $60,000, toward the median wage of the United States, $30,000, and pocket the difference, multiplied by thousands of court reporters. What would you do to make $3 million a year? Even if you wouldn’t do a damn thing, keep in mind we live in a world where people occasionally stab each other over stolen lunch. Pretty safe to say the big box brigade will do whatever is within its power to take that money from you, especially when it can be given a sham veneer of shortage and legality. The more resistance that is put in the way, the slower this happens, with the possibility of it never occurring. So that’s the “altruistic” bit. I’d do almost anything except illegal things to keep your money in your wallet.

But I get the sense many of you are wary of that. Perhaps it would comfort you to know I am also self-serving. I have a disability wherein 50% to 80% of those with it cannot hold a full-time job. I have another disability right on top of that. I not only hold a full-time job, but I am in the 10% or 20% able to pass a stenographic training course. Then I’m in one of the best stenographic jobs in the whole country, which only maybe 1% of us can hold at any one time. So imagine being in the 1% of the 20% of the 20% (0.04%?). Now imagine that you know, almost factually, that there are forces that are systematically plotting to take that away (example) and that your future hinges on the actions of professionals all across your field.

You’d be Stenonymous too.

Brief Hiatus September 2023

Hey, everybody. There are some great articles and ideas in the works. I’ve had an uptick of information from sources across the country and am doing my best to stay on top of things. I also have several articles/ideas in the works for corporations that have opened up to me about their plans and capabilities.

Unfortunately, due to family stuff, this is taking a lot longer than usual, so please bear with me. Low Stenonymous funding means I have to roll without any help. Unfortunately, the blog has to take a backseat to family and work obligations.

I do feel an obligation to my readers and contributors too, but I have to be realistic in prioritizing.

Thank you for your understanding and all the support you’ve given this blog! More regular posting should resume within a month.

Political Violence & Free Speech in America…

A store owner was killed over a pride flag not long ago. When I was a young man and throughout a nice chunk of my life, society was fairly good as a whole about condemning violence. That was sometime after the government stopped producing plans to kill its own citizens. The political landscape has definitely shifted. “Both sides” of the political landscape have elements that regard “the other side” as evil, stupid, or even inhuman. I know because I’ve seen plenty of online evidence and have even made goofy videos trying to persuade young people to get away from thinking about violence as an answer to political problems. We are forgetting, or perhaps some have never acknowledged, that we are all Americans and that while we may vehemently disagree, and in some cases nastily disagree, there is a line, and that line is unlawful behavior.

It has me thinking about my own writing. A lot of my writing is politically left to the degree we must use such labels to describe things, very much like that pride flag is often viewed as being. The concept I created for Patriots Against Corporatism hasn’t taken off yet, but I know there are right-wing people that respect that kind of stuff. They understand that America won’t function without more of the economy going to hardworking people like them, including small business entrepreneurs. The unfortunate catch there is that I may someday have elements from “either” political persuasion angry with me, especially if my following grows.

If I am ever targeted for my writing I hope that people will not lay down quietly about it. You do not need to live in a society afraid to speak. Sometimes the only thing that will stave off the threat of authoritarians of whatever political cause systematically silencing you is gathering together and shouting in one collective bellow, as we have learned from the countless movements that came before.

Those that follow me, I’m eternally grateful for your support. It really made a difference in our field. It continues to do so every day. So if I ever do fall victim to something and am not able to tell you myself, just remember how powerful you really are.

And remember that corporations and governments run cyber ops to control you and how you think about things, including your fellow Americans. That person you’re fighting with online may not be anything more than a kid from a rival country meant to sow discord among the people on the American political spectrum, because if we are fighting with each other, we’re not talking about how to solve societal issues and grow more brilliant American minds, make America a better place to work and live so that the brightest minds from all over the world immigrate here, end corruption in government, and generally how to maintain our relatively wonderful standard of living. For the world governments, this makes America weak, and there are a lot of them that want us weak. For the corporations, our infighting stops us from realizing that some of the richest people on Earth are assholes that abuse that power and they really don’t care if you have a nice life, they care about propagandizing you so that you act in a way that 1) benefits them, such as voting for their guy or 2) combats others that would stand against them deteriorating your and your families’ quality of life, a la the the constant media barrage telling you to live in fear of “them,” the political, racial, sexual, systemic, or religious “other.” These are not nice “rich” people like doctors and lawyers, they are the people who make more money in one night of sleep than you will in your whole life, statistically. These are the people that study human behavior in order to manipulate it for money.

If the neurotypical world is one where the majority of people believe that getting one over on each other is a good way to run a society, then I am quite happy to be an autist and denounce that society. But I suspect that the truth is that the majority of you do not believe in such a world. This is not inherent human nature. We do not see it ubiquitously in every country, nor do we see it in every community in our country. I believe that you believe in helping others, making an honest buck, and that there are simply sometimes social and economic reasons that that takes a backseat. This is very different from people that have all their needs and desires met and simply want more because they can have more at the expense of all else. And if that’s someday at your expense, it’ll be people just like you that save you or let you drown. If that worries you, you only need to throw the smallest of pebbles into the lake to change your reflection.

Each of you has a gift that can help humanity. I urge you to share yours with the world in the same way I have shared my writing. It is not every person’s cup of tea. Your gift may not be either. My writing has not made me rich. Your gift may not make you rich. But I live a richer and more fulfilled life than the one I lived before. I share what I share in the hopes that you will too.

Christopher Day shares his writing with the world in the hope that something good comes out of it.

Need Short-Form Video Marketing? Check Out Liam Weckerle!

Many in my audience are small business owners. Some own court reporting businesses. Some own side businesses. Everybody needs some kind of marketing.

If a core part of your business is social media marketing, then I recommend shooting Liam Weckerle an email. He’s a young man that I had the privilege of working with on a project in the past, and I can honestly recommend him for his attention to detail and willingness to go as far as it takes to get the job done. Lweck9844@gmail.com!

I took some time to ask Liam a little more about his business creating these short-form videos. I’ll share what he shared with me below!

Liam Weckerle: What is short-form video?
Requirements to work with Liam Weckerle.

In short, he needs a goal, a target audience, and a budget. Here’s an example of his work (for food business).

Example of work by Liam Weckerle

Imagining your service or product being spotlighted? Write Liam today!

Digital Court Reporters, Beware of Vipers Calling For Unity

Don’t know much about STAR, never needed to in my 14-year career, because it’s irrelevant. But I just wanted to put this out there for the digital court reporters that read my stuff. These folks are heavily influenced by, if not directly controlled by, Stenograph. Ask me how I know.

Stenograph, as we all know, is the company that spent at least a decade, maybe two, telling stenographers stenographic realtime reporting was the future and then quietly pivoted to calling digital reporting technologies realtime. Just for a quick recap, support times took a nosedive while they worked on the digital stuff, they encouraged the loss of stenographic jobs in Illinois, and Stenograph has a company president that calls citizen journalists that report things about his company intellectually challenged. Personally, I’m willing to completely forgive that they were part of a propaganda outfit meant to push agencies, students, lawyers, and even stenographers toward digital, but there’s that too.

The point I’m trying to drive home here is the company used us up and threw us away. We were treated as just another resource. That’s what you are to them, a resource to be used for as long as it’s convenient and profitable. They’ll put nice faces on it and use nice words because they know nobody wants to feel like a resource. But a call for unity is just transfer propaganda. You get good feelings from the word unity, but it doesn’t mean anything and is not a guarantee of anything. To many corporations and organizations, our emotions are merely tools used to extract more wealth from us.

You want unity? Start unionizing agency offices. Start talking to each other. Heck, start talking to us stenographers. We’ve got Digital Court Reporter Helpline open for such a purpose. I can admit that there’s some xenophobia among stenographers, but it’s mostly because our jobs are under constant threat by the tech bros that actively lie about the status of their technology in order to sell it and the multimillion dollar corporations using you guys to push us out. It’s not your fault for existing. I’m ready to acknowledge that. I believe most of the people that follow me are too.

And if you think I’m full of crap, that’s fine. But I’ve got a track record of treating you all like human beings. I wrote out hourly conversions at the bottom of my New York Shortage Squeeze article to make sure it was public info how bad digitals, transcribers — really court reporters as a whole — are getting screwed. I’ve tried to bring digital court reporters and transcribers to steno so they can benefit from the increased purchasing power and vast professional network. So hopefully you’ll see that I’m a straight shooter and take it to heart when I tell you don’t pet the snakes.