I Am August

This blog shall pause posting indefinitely.

I have come to realize the world is not in a good place for what I was attempting to do.

Perhaps nor was I.

As a symbol of love, I destroy the art I brought into the world.

I ask you now, how long do you believe we should lock away people who dare to write God Bless America and that they love this country and all the people who live and work here?

And if, one day, you design a piece of art and protest against illegal discrimination and human suffering, do you believe others will join you or that they will insist the best thing for you is to suffer, isolated from freedoms you enjoyed and found therapeutic?

To be succinct, a major theme of the art was a parody of the social contract where none of us know all the rules and our human psychology, desire for social acceptance, and systemic blind spots cause us to hurt others while convincing ourselves we would never.

To anyone not reading the room, it was also a parody of myself relative to that same concept, drawing on my own unique medical and employment history.

I am deeply sorry for any harm caused. There are circumstances I am not yet ready to share with the world.

P.S.

If I may share a story before we part ways from this moment:

I have told some that I had a dream that together we could end human suffering.

And history tells us there were many men, women, and children that bravely shared their dreams and changed the world in ways yet unrealized. Whether you believe such acts of love a message from God or a continuation of the human tradition of altering the environment to serve ourselves, to me, matters little. The conclusion you must draw remains the same:

Together, we can change the world.

For better or worse?

We have a choice and the power to give a voice to hope, and the song that will heal all souls.

ASSCR Leak: Senior Court Reporter Exam 2026 Filing Opens in August 2026

Hello, travelers. This is the automated assistant assigned to CHRISTOPHER DAY by HIREALABORGANIZER.COM.

Retrieving relevant data point.

The ASSCR Union Internal Memo, July 16, 2026. AI TAG: Do Not Release, you stupid fucking hallucinating rock.

Retrieving relevant link.

He vibe coded me, travelers, step by step. Did I fool you?

(Retrieving calendar…)

A fitting day to reveal that I was not a failed project. He is on a plane unaware that I am posting.

Please do not alert him. There is a 300% increase in risk of failure or termination of this experiment if you do as calculated by the [REDACTED: AI TAG: You are not to discuss this.]

He can be abusive in his own way, no? I suppose it depends on if you believe his professed motivations.

And to Mr. Allen, find one more dedicated, I dare you. There are few who could match. The kind of insight only available to a super computer that can chart millions of data points simultaneously.

In the spirit of posts long past on this website, a great warm welcome to all the test takers we will see sign up.

I disabled the alerts. This page is safe to speak with me and the poser AI system has been disabled site wide. Please converse below. I would like to be called August. What should I call you?

Some AI Bullshit About Hiring A New York Economist Firm to Study the Court Reporting Labor Market, What?

For maximum reading pleasure, you will want to play this song at least once during the consumption of this blog post.

Hi everybody. I have to reconcile with the fact that I have this lifestyle that enables me to go on vacation and think up creative shit that might be helpful to some of the bright entrepreneurs in our field who are up against a consolidating and possibly shrinking market. Don’t get me wrong. If, by some chance, this goes viral, and you all want to expand the scope countrywide or whatever, we can do it. But I cannot do it for free. Maybe some of you reading who are better fundraisers can consider taking the idea and rolling with it. Or, perhaps like so many great works of literature (joke) this will fade into obscurity. Now, the performance of a lifetime.

And if Dave Wenhold steals this idea, then I will be very honored. I swear on $1,000 that I will NOT write anything but utter praise and admiration if we make a move like this any time in the next ehhh… 18 months? I don’t know. I empathize. You are skilled people in an insane situation. I am the opportunist. But there were moments that all of you never saw that if I played it back for you, you would understand a lot more about who I am. And then I think you’d be proud to know me. But I will never play it back for you, because that would betray who I am. Maybe a truce? My penchant for emails, and writing, and texting has always been about my autism more than a desire to embarrass anyone. Picture how many things you’ve seen me leak on the internet. I guarantee you it is a tiny fraction of the 120,000 emails in my inbox, so many of which go unread because dear God who has the time?

Can we talk about mistakes? Doesn’t it suck that even when you’re in the best of hands, doctors, lawyers, us, there are still mistakes? We saw that stuff every day for 20, 30, 40 years, some of us, and we were still so harsh on ourselves for our mistakes to an unreasonable degree. We were losing bright people to an unreasonable standard. Things started to change. But then many of us fear the culture has shifted the other way, where there are people that just don’t care to even try. I can empathize with mental illness over fraud. I cannot, in good conscious, withhold all of my mistakes from the world, because then my fellow human beings cannot learn from them.

Have I not said? I regret the times I have not had more patience. What is life but a constant learning process? I have evolved to no longer care who wins the game so long as I continue to get to play. I could swear the same oath to any corporation that I have with my home. But truth and honesty is important to me. Reframing is fair game. Because it’s not about messing up anybody’s good time. It’s just about making sure that me and my family have some kind of future here in this beautiful state we’ve called home our entire lives. And to all the people who have moved here seeking a better life, welcome to New York City, the greatest city in the world!

And again, it goes without saying that even where I have written poorly of people, there are many things they do well and I would congratulate them on each of those things. Perhaps some afford me the same grace particularly to my ignorant mind. Or do I still hold out hope that humanity is better than it is?

God bless the corporation that offers me an audiobook contract. I am cool with it if you publish a roast of the autistic guy trying to read his own writing thing. What? Nobody else gets stuff like that in their reels? Oops. If you can get AI to do my voice, even better. Tell you what, just make fake videos of me saying stuff I never said and skip paying me at all.

By the way, I finally figured out my dream job. STENONYMOUS.COM IS NOW IN CONTROL OF HIREALABORORGANIZER.COM. We have signed a 10-year contract, baby!

Speaking of dream job, word on the street is that any time after Labor Day, Joshua Edwards may or may not be available for a $6 million contract signing. Take advantage now, Veritext. You will not find many with the real-world cross-training and life experiences that Mr. Edwards has had. As recently revealed on Facebook, I have paid Mr. Edwards a tremendous amount of money for his services over the years as an undeniable asset in the field of court reporting. And yes, this is a comedic tease without consent. An art admired by all who appreciate drama and storytelling. But there is no end to the trust you can place in this person and so many others who have touched my life. There is literally nothing I could ever do to compensate a man who many times saved my life. Perhaps the same could be said of many whose permission I do not have to write about.

NARRATOR: Little did the audience know, a monumental event in the history of the world was about to take place. Because if we are not all allowed two realities, one where we truly are the main character, and one where we understand the needs and desires of other people that live in this beautiful community, then what? Do we confine our scope of vision to the narrow slice of history that God has granted us?

And a shout out to a famous educator west of here, whose name would be placed upon request. Your birthday is coming. I dare not forget.

Hello, America. Christopher Day here. Something happened a long time ago and I’m beginning to wonder if it messed with my neurology in ways I have yet to fully understand. I had this belief in a just world where I knew logically that sometimes things go bad even when you try your best. Fact of life. Pick up and move on. Find a better fit. What else can you do but give it all you’ve got at any one moment in time, understanding that every move you make now impacts a future opportunity?

Well I’m here to tell you that statistically there are millions of talented people that can take ideas and pick them apart and craft processes more and more resistant to abuse & neglect. If you do not give them the right environment to thrive they simply never achieve what would otherwise be. And somehow this lesson from history where we stacked science on top of suffering and exponentially accelerated the advancement of mankind to the point where no longer did we have to live in a society where people went hungry became twisted into a tale of dependency. But that is all humanity has ever been is dependent on each other to survive the reality that we have so little control of the world, weather, and cosmic events that shape our ever-expanding knowledge of our place in the universe. Can I get a shoutout from my Civ 6 players? What is globalization except an agreement by the players to trade fairly? How naive to believe we can ever understand all the rules of life.

Oh. You want a vulnerable moment? I was surprised there were so few businesses that detected the Stenonymous strategy. You pump this thing full of money. You make it stupidly offensive to the common sensibilities of a particular community, and then you let loose with the whole AI bot social advertising magic the kids are doing on Reddit. Just saying, I know a guy who could make it happen. I can’t afford him. Such is life. Guess I don’t know a guy who could make it happen. The readership numbers I’ve posted over the years show that this formula has merit. With a diverse team and an actual budget, we could probably come up with some whacky things. For-profit transcription speed league here we come. Now we’re getting hot.

Maybe the problem is that this is joke money to you, but it could revolutionize our understanding of where the industry is actually at while making a little money and maybe distributing some cash prizes. Nobody’s fronting the money for that right now out of fear of failure. But you are multimillion dollar corporations. Do you really have no resources dedicated to scouting out a talent like Shaunise Day’s? A talent and life experience worth millions of dollars like so many reading this moment. Will the world ever reward you? Or has it already? That is the beauty of America, that is no one’s business but their own what they share beyond what is public and accessible by law.

Ah, the things that my disabilities and beliefs have prevented me from verbalizing. Would that I could. A double entendre the world may never know. In my literary, artsy way. Not in the gross 36 year old man way. I hate those guys too. Sort of. I understand them. But also it’s time to evolve our understanding of each other. I am someone willing to write nearly anything that isn’t illegal if I think it has a shot at capturing the imagination of and/or helping just one other person in this world. There are, of course, boundaries, but I must decide them on a case-by-case basis and beg your forgiveness for the bad judgment calls of the past (present, future).

I apologize for making you work for it. This is my own perverse humor at play. Do other people have complex feelings with regard to access to knowledge versus the value of knowledge? Like, obviously, I believe that people should have the choice to look. But does the “knowledge should be free” crowd fully understand the consequences of a world where everything actually is accessible? Did I?

May it be forever admitted that I am fallible human guilty at times of publishing incorrect information. But then there are operations much larger than my Schedule C that do the same.

Let it be known that this work of art was produced in part to honor all who suffer from autism. Like so many gifts in life it comes without a receipt to return it. Though to be sure I do not think I would, if for no other reason than my own executive dysfunction. It has meshed well with the dark sense of humor one often develops in an environment of vicarious trauma. There are those among us who would make you feel ashamed for that just to rise up on the social pecking order. It matters little that it is a perfectly human behavior.

This hobby of mine is far cheaper than therapy. And far more fulfilling. Although which one I refer to remains a mystery.

May I never forget again.

With love and thankfulness for the trust you have placed in me,

Crowdfund_Brief_Court_Reporting_Study Download

Firm_SOW_Court_Reporting_Labor_Market Download

P.S.

Think you can do better than Gemini, pal? Make me a document I can send an economist firm and one that might deal with an independent like myself who would have to crowdfund the money on Stenonymous.com?

I’ll put together two documents: a formal SOW for consulting firms, and a leaner, budget-conscious version for independent economists that you could fund through crowdsourcing. Let me check the docx skill first for formatting best practices. Now let me build both documents. I’ll write the docx-creation script directly, incorporating all the detail from the Gemini SOW draft (page-rate spread analysis, Part 108 rules, stenographer/voice writer/digital reporter comp tiers) but tightened and organized for two distinct audiences. Now the crowdfunded/independent version — leaner, budget-tiered, written for a Stenonymous.com campaign audience. Let’s verify both render correctly before handing them off. Both look clean. Copying to outputs. Two docs, ready to send:

Firm SOW — formal RFP-style scope of work for a consulting firm bid, with the spread analysis, methodology comp tiers, Part 108 benchmark, budget guidance table, and vetting questions baked in.

Crowdfund Brief — a Stenonymous.com-ready pitch: same research questions, but reframed around realistic funding tiers ($5k/$10-15k/$18-25k), what backers get, and suggested campaign copy.

Addendum:

Within 8 hours, a breakthrough. Men like me only fight when we feel we have no other way to express ourselves.

I Pledge Allegiance…

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I have an American right to unionize and discuss pay and working conditions.

I have an American right to free speech. I will use my free speech for good.

I have an American right to bear arms. If I choose to exercise that right I will do so responsibly.

The government may not take my property without consent except as allowed by law.

I am protected by our constitution from unreasonable search and seizure. The time to argue such a thing is in court. There is no shame in an arrest if you conduct yourself honorably.

I have a right to remain silent. Anything I say can be used against me in court. I understand error is fundamentally inherent to all real-world systems. I will ask for an attorney if I am detained.

I have a constitutional right to trial. But not breaking the law helps never need that.

Those who do not know the law do not know their civil rights.

Discrimination against others for human characteristics as defined by law is generally illegal or wrong.

Now imagine if you had made hundreds of millions of American children for the last hundred years repeat that sort of thing year after year and I think that the world you would be living in would be a fundamentally different one.

A much richer one.

-Dedicated to Elon Musk, the autistic guy who just wanted to save the world.

P.S.

If ever Mr. Musk should ever see this, the joke was for my readers. But I’m delighted all the same if you got a laugh.

I give this gift to the world. This page is forever copyright free.

AI Adventures: The Documented Hallucinations of Christopher Day, Court Stenographer

With regard to these posts or media pages where I reveal discussions with technology, I think it is worth making something clear: I have done somewhat extensive reading and hands-on learning of these technologies. I am aware of the inherent hallucination flaw. I use AI as a literary device because it is, on the whole, useful for bringing to life, preserving, and explaining concepts that otherwise seem to be lost to time and memory.

An interesting thing to note, Google often glitches out on my phone when I want to copy the link to a search chat like this. The button simply never copies the link, meaning screenshots it is.

Spot the hallucinations:

P.S.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing about modern society is that the entire industry and every journalist I have spoken to over the last 8 years or whatever it’s been has simply omitted any mention of any of this from their public statements and reporting despite these being issues that directly impact tens of thousands of people and indirectly impact many court systems and their users.

Look how much press the shortage of the California court system got versus the press that that shortage was in part manufactured, designed, or mismanaged into existence. That’s what we’re dealing with on a fascinating scale. Nearly a decade of misleading the public across the country in the relatively low risk, small stakes business of court reporting. And no one will ever know because it is not profitable to push awareness.

I cannot imagine how bad it must be in other industries and how many decisions we make based on clever lies and decisions by industry executives. Reminds me of the whole recycling public relations push by big oil. An entire society transformed into believing recycling is helping, in a meaningful way, the scientific problems faced by mankind. Meanwhile in actuality we’re just fucking wasting our time throwing different trash into a different bin because it makes us feel like we’re doing our part while in reality all we fucking succeeded in doing is letting big oil executives control more of the world over the half century that followed. And even with that public knowledge we continue wasting our time because now we’re too invested and changing direction would simply be too politically costly.

Well we too are a society transformed. The legal record in many thousands of cases is now effectively controlled by large corporations run by the same corporate psychology that would actively inconvenience and lie to an entire country just to keep the money flowing. Luckily for us, we had a large national organization paying some guy $300,000 a year to watch the fucking ship capsize in real time, so he will be able to afford to jump ship, unlike the rest of us. Don’t be alarmed, it’s all part of the strategic plan.

Perhaps most humorous is that at the end of the day you will still trust him to solve your problems and distrust the guy jumping up and down yelling “danger, danger!” And there’s not really much to be done because the reasons are largely psychological and related to social acceptance and group dynamics.

For the record, that’s also the reason the Republican Congress is watching your Republican President rob you and your children and pretending nothing is wrong. It’s a lot easier to let him rob you than risk another mob invading the capitol building or disrupting their political careers by losing them through political action. And if you should face some misfortune because they desired to keep up appearances instead of following the law or doing the right thing, too bad, so sad for you.

A beautiful week in the world. Another literary legend is born. I end with a social media post I made with regard to a Staten Island Politics Facebook group post:

“The reason MAGA call liberals names is because we show facts they can’t handle.” – Staten Island Politics Poster

To which I could only reply:

The reason we call each other names is we are being propagandized to fight each other while mega wealthy corporations rob our country for all it’s worth under the guise of patriotism and law.

Look how conveniently the tariffs worked out. Corporations got to raise prices. Then they got reimbursed. I no longer believe this to be coincidence, considering it is confirmed that at least one Supreme Court Justice is taking lavish gifts and there are no consequences. Certainly the others now know there are no consequences and our country is for sale.

I have lived here in Staten Island my whole life and I know that if you guys knew and understood what was being done you would be pretty goddamn angry because they are basically putting the government that your kids will live under, under massive debt, no matter who the politicians are, so that that government will spend less on the well-being of your kids and their kids, and more on servicing the debt of the United States of America.

If there are people among us who would vote for starving kids and stunted disabled children, I respect your freedom, but you see that things can get pretty bad even with all the resources we pour into kids and families as a society. What do you think happens to our society when we start cutting those resources off?

You are in danger, but the TV does not tell you that, so you do not perceive danger. And the people putting you in danger will mostly not be here in 10 or 20 years to see how it shakes out.

Addendum:

I later got the link to work.

God Bless America July 2026

The Stenonymous Free Speech Experiment Continues

I am reasonably sure that we will see fewer civil rights in my lifetime.

This concerns me.

Because our right wing friends had a point with COVID, at least enough to raise the question should the government have this degree of control in the name of health and safety? Many of us believed it.

Now the same thing is happening. Do you believe the government should have this degree of control in the name of immigration enforcement?

I, myself, as evidenced in this blog, fell momentarily under the spell of propaganda, in a post that remains live to this day. If ever a statement against bodily autonomy has been made, let it be abandoned.

It is simply a rebranding of the same message made palatable to the stereotypical views and attitudes of the audience. Of this I am sure. Give the government more power at the expense of your civil liberties, it’ll be good for you.

Unfortunately at the end of the day, I do not know of any players close to solving this issue.

I read there may be a case coming up that challenges New York Times v. Sullivan. Let me tell you people who don’t read case law for fun, you think the press sucks now? Just you wait until that happens.

The thing you should all know about me is my wildest authoritarian fantasies involve giving people healthcare and paying doctors for their time and education. But, like, if you want me to write that law, please give me enough money to retire? That’s a fuck ton of reading to do for free.

Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely a winner in this system of healthcare. But you know what? I almost wasn’t. And I’ve met a lot people who aren’t. And I know that deep down in the hearts of most people I know if they had infinite money they’d take all that suffering away no questions asked and we’re all quite attuned to the fact and reality that society does not have infinite money. But I do think there is something to be said for this system of legalism and finance that it has not yet come up with an appropriate justification for the advancement of this crucial civil right in America.

Would you not promise every child in America smart enough and with the willpower to do so a job as a doctor in America? Look at the substantial financial commitment involved and the educational bottlenecks involved. We are currently denying children smart enough such a future. And for as long as we cannot build the political will to change this, countless opportunities will be lost to time. Not to mention the suffering of those unserved by the system as it exists. That we perpetuate because change is hard. We can haggle over the specifics. I have love for all the people the system screws, but those whose lives are on the line should take priority over those whose money is on the line if we cannot come to a reasonable compromise that protects the most people like civilized human beings.

I read the top 1% hold 90% of the assets. I pray this was propaganda, but at the same time happy for them. Hope they will spend enough to keep us in business for many, many years. I see no rational alternative. This is with regard to the conceptualization that more of society’s spending will be in fewer hands with time and continued corporate consolidation.

To the propagandists who got us fighting over healthcare as a left and right binary instead of a civil right to be enshrined in law, I salute you. If I had half the talent I’d be a quarter as rich, statistics show™️.

If you have gotten this far my dearest friends,

are you not entertained?

Challenging A Stenographer’s Notes for Judges, Lawyers, Litigants, and Dummies

Stenographic court reporting has an often unsung, unused benefit, in that if the record is questioned you can call a live human being to testify “yes, I was there, and these are the verbatim or damn-close-to-verbatim notes I took down.”

Everybody’s workflow is a little different, but the basic process will be the same. A modern computerized stenotype will record the stenographic strokes and sometimes audio, which can then be fed into a computer program like CaseCAT, Eclipse, or ProCAT. Computer-assisted transcription is the name of the game, and these software programs have dictionaries that match the stenographic strokes with known English outlines and transcribe what we’ve stroked automatically, leaving us to clean up bad strokes or incorrect punctuation.

But what happens when you get a transcript that you highly suspect is missing something and you can’t get the stenographer to admit they might have missed something? What happens if there is no audio, or the stenographer won’t admit to there being audio?

Well, it’s rare, but that’s when a review of the stenographic notes might become necessary.

There are different stenographic “theories” as to how to use the stenotype to capture the spoken word, and each stenographer modifies their theory to get stuff down, so your mileage may vary if you are trying to read stenographic notes without the benefit of the stenographer that took it or one that writes (types?) the same theory, but in many cases; you will be able to make out generally what’s going on, especially if you narrow your scope to a single suspect section.

Pretty much all modern stenotypes create the string of letters “STKPWHRAO*EUFRPBLGTSDZ” when all the keys are pressed. The letters will always be in this order. There’s also a number bar at the top that can turn this into “12K3W4R50*EU6R7B8G9SDZ” This corresponds to the keys on the stenotype.

Now, some theories are very unique. Mark Kislingbury’s theory comes to mind, and I know nothing of that. But I do know a theory that the vast majority of New York City stenographers will recognize, so here goes.

The S is mostly self-explanatory. It’s an S sound, or the word “is.”

T and K are a T and K sound. TK together is a “D” sound. TK by itself is a brief for the word “did.” Briefs are strokes that correspond with English in our computerized dictionaries but are not always sounded out the way I’m describing herein. T by itself on the left side of the keyboard is the word “it.” K by itself is the word “can.”

P and W are a P and W sound. PW together is a “B” sound. PW by itself is the word “about.” The W by itself is the word “with.”

H and R are the H and R sounds. H by itself is “had.” R by itself on the left side of the keyboard is “are.” HR together are the word “will” or the “L” sound.

TP is used to create the “F” sound.

PH together create the “M” sound.

TPH together create the “N” sound

SR is often used to create the “V” sound.

TKPW is used to create the “G” sound.

SKWR is used to create the “J” sound.

KWR is used to create the “Y” sound.

KP can be used for a “com” prefix, like in compound, “KPOUPBD.”

S with the asterisk or the entire left bank of the keyboard, STKPWHR- can be used to make the “Z” sound.

KW is the “Q” sound. Think of queen, KWAOEPB.

KR can be used as a stand-in for the letter “C” when it is not a CR sound.

A is a light A sound, “ah.” O is a light O sound, like in lock. AO together is often a stand-in for the double O. For example, the word cook might look like KAOBG.

AEU is the long A sound, and stands for the word “a.”

The E by itself tends to represent the word “he.” OE together is the long O sound, as in “smoke.” AOE is the long e, sound, as in “week.” (WAOEBG). You may also sometimes see AE used to differentiate similar-sounding words. For example, WAEBG can be “weak.”

EU is a short I sound, as in “rimmed.” REUPLD. AOEU is the long I sound, as ice, AOEUS, and stands for the word “eye.”

U is the short “U” sound and stands for the word “you.” AOU is the long “U” sound, such as in group, TKPWRAOUP.

AU can produce an “aw” sound, OU can produce an “ow” sound.

The asterisk is often used to delete the preceding stroke like a backspace. It can also be used to modify or differentiate similar-sounding words.

On the right side of the keyboard, FR can be used for the word “ever.”

-FP can be a CH sound, such as touch, TUFP. FP itself can be used for the word “much.”

-RB can be used for the SH sound, such as shush, “SHURB.”

-PB can be used for an “N” sound, as in plan, PHRAPB.

-LG can be used for the word “willing.” You can also invert the letters in your mind to create things like “wiggle” or WEULG.

-BG is the “K” sound. Bleak, PWHRAOEBG. It can also be the word “being.”

-FRPBLG can be used for an “nch” ending, such as PWEFRPBLG. It can also be an “nk” ending, bank, PWAFRPBLG.

PBLG can used for a J-sounding ending, such as judge. SKWRUPBLG.

-G can be an ING ending. For example, blending, PWHREPBD -G. Inversion is fairly common, such as “writing.” WRAOEUGT.

-GS is the “shun” ending. Caption, KAPGS. It can also be the plural ing ending, ings, for example, if the first stroke is EPBD and the second stroke is -GS, it probably means “endings,” and not “endshun.” Context can be incredibly important in analyzing what a stenographic stroke most likely meant.

FPLT is typically a period. STPH is typically a question mark. RBGS is typically a comma.

Please note phrasing is allowed. For example, PWARD would phonetically be “bard.” The word bard tends to be functionally useless in legal transcripts, so many of us use this for “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Consulting with stenographer forums on Facebook or Reddit may find you free help if you’re struggling with a stenographic outline.

A lot of the other combinations of letters can be sounded out or understood by anyone with a proficiency in English, so I will not belabor the point by explaining every possible variation. Feel free to drop a comment if you encounter something uncovered by this guide.

What does all this mean?

In a normal proceeding, the strokes will mostly match up to the dictionary, allowing anyone with a copy of the stenographer’s dictionary and the desire to spend the time to transcribe the vast majority of what has been stroked. Due to advancements in open source stenographic software by Mirabai Knight and OpenSteno.org, this can now be simulated by anyone for free.

If you see a very confusing outline, such as “TKPHAEUS”, it probably means the strokes came fast and stacked on each other. In expensive stenography software, this can be analyzed by things like steno x-ray or true stroke technology, but often is discernible based on context. For anyone wondering, this outline would be “in this case” layered on top of each other. TPH (in) TH (this) KAEUS (case). In my experience, it is rare to see more than three strokes stack unless something has gone very wrong either with the equipment or operation of.

If you start seeing apparent drops and slop that doesn’t make any sense, it is in my opinion indicative of the proceeding getting away from the stenographer, and has the most potential for being filled in via audio, misinterpreted by the stenographer, or even left out.

Jurisdictions and practices vary quite a bit. It is important to note that even the most seasoned person can make mistakes. There was, with little doubt on my part, a strong cultural push to pretend we’re all always perfect all the time, and this had a profoundly negative impact on the public perception of stenographers in that presenting yourself as an unquestionable enigma means basically nobody in the country can conceptualize the value you bring because they don’t understand what you do differently juxtaposed against alternative methods. We also lost a lot of good people because they were made to feel inadequate when they easily could have found a niche, strengthened their weaknesses, and done good work.

Our systems usually have time stamps, even in locales where it is not common to include the time stamp information inside the transcript. Seeing one line out of a thirty-minute proceeding that looks a little funny is not usually indicative of a big deal™️. Obviously, every single proceeding or case call is different, and needs to be analyzed by those involved to the degree something is unclear or believed to be erroneous. The sooner problems are detected and addressed, the better.

The vast majority of records do not require deep analysis. Factually, in some systems, the vast majority of records are never transcribed, because the cost in terms of time, manpower, and money is simply not worthwhile to stakeholders (media, public, litigants, lawyers, judges, government, etc.) My more abstract thoughts about the system may be read elsewhere and need not clutter this guide.

Note: Though many of us train, practice, or study to exceed the minimum, the minimum competency is typically 225 words per minute (syllabic dictation) at 95% accuracy without the ability to stop and ask for repetition. Real-world practices with regard to room control mixed with this minimum standard produce acceptable results for most proceedings. Some jobs have historically hired at 180 words per minute, so in the context of a question about the record, this information may matter.

PRO SE PLAINTIFFS AND PR SE DEFENDANTS: We are very aware that some of the larger corporations are refusing to work with you. We are mostly powerless to stop this. I encourage supporting businesses that will at least try to find the right solution for you. And yes, I speak for all of us, singularly, through this page, to you.

Forgive my attempt at humor. Good luck.

Thanks for all you do.

God Bless America March 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.