EDITORIAL


Drinking was the only thing that saw me through the tough times


Like a lot of people, my life has not exactly been a bowl of cherries. From childhood family problems to my own marital difficulties, from my t ee n a g ed s t r ug g le to find meaning in my existence to my recent f in a n ci a l woes, it seems like every day of my life


By Craig Sanders


has offered little more than a 24-hour struggle to avoid complete mental breakdown. Trough it all, there’s only been one


thing I could count on – one companion that’s always been at my side, one friend that’s never led me astray: alcohol. Yes, for much of my life, drinking was the


ROBOTS from page 13 more of


the non-hardworking humans


who’ve been the backbone of this nation’s homeless population for hundreds of years are being replaced by machines – robots capable of being far less productive than a traditional, flesh and blood homeless person could ever be.” According to the report, many of the


same robots built to replace humans in the workplace since the 1980s are now beginning to edge out homeless people for full-time positions on the streets of our inner-cities – so much so that robotic units now constitute almost 12 percent of the nation’s estimated 3.5 million homeless – up sharply from approximately eight percent in 2011. Experts pointed to breakthroughs


in robotics technology such as the development of the Fujitsu robot – an advanced humanoid-like machine capable of avoiding the work of at least four homeless people – when projecting that by 2020, more than half of the nation’s homeless guttersnipes will have been replaced by these slothful, super- unmotivated robots. Speaking to reporters Monday, Mangino explained


the conditions


driving the trend toward automation in the nation’s homeless environment. “Humans are losing out


currently


only thing that saw me through the tough times. I was barely out of my youth the first


time drinking alcohol helped me make it through a particularly difficult period. It was my fiſteenth birthday, in fact, and my father had gone a little overboard with my birthday spanking, if you know what I mean. No, it wasn’t the first time he’d hit me, but I was determined to make it the last. Tat night, as I gathered my belongings and prepared for my premature escape into the word of independence, I found a half-full bottle of my father’s whiskey. Although I didn’t care much for the taste, I hastily guzzled it down to celebrate my pending liberation. To make a long story short, I didn’t


end up running away from home that night. Instead, I ended up passing out on my bedroom floor. And you know something? In the harsh light of that February morning, I realized that


they must motivate themselves into at least scrounging up some food or they’re going to die. Modern robots, on the other hand, can squat in an alleyway for months on end without even running a self-diagnostic check, let alone have to liſt a hydraulic-powered arm in the name of self-preservation. In a nutshell, humans simply can’t compete with machines’ ability to sit around and do nothing all day.” Arthur Clive, head of robotics for a


major U.S. automobile manufacturer, agreed with Mangino’s assertion that a highly-inefficient modern robot can simply do a better job of avoiding work than can a homeless person. “Compared to your average homeless


running away from home was not such a great idea. It turned out that drinking had helped me both forget about my father’s physical abuse and deter me from making a big mistake in running away. I’ve been drinking my problems away


ever since. In fact, looking back on all these years,


I think it’s safe to say that by now, if it hadn’t been for drinking,


I probably


behavior instead of just crawling inside the bottle for a few days. It’s pretty hard to cause yourself harm when you have zero control over your basic motor functions. With alcohol being so readily available, I oſten find it hard to believe that so many people turn to self-destructive activities like listening to rock music or overeating whenever one of


life’s It’s pretty hard to cause yourself


would have ended up on skid row, in jail or even dead. With as much shit as I’ve had to go through in life, as many nights as I’ve been on the brink of emotional and mental collapse, it’s perfectly reasonable to envision myself having resorted to some sort of self-destructive


than two hundred languages, which only succeeds in making the homeless robotic unit look even that much crazier in the eyes of the public.” Mangino said that homeless robots are also capable of being discriminated


little hurdles


harm when you have zero control over your basic motor functions.


puts them back on their heels. Equally confusing are the ideas of going to a psychiatrist or joining a support group. Whenever I need to find someone to listen or a group of people with similar problems, I needn’t look any


further than the closest pub! You’d be surprised how many others use the bottle as their pillar of strength. Just remember that no matter what


remedy you choose to combat this cancer called life, like a hangover, the tough times will pass.


“It takes a more than a battery recharge to convince a homeless robot to completely reformat its drives and adopt an entirely new operating system that can lead them toward success,” said Clive.


person, a robot is capable of taking up to five times as long to bend over to pick up a used cigarette off the street in the middle of oncoming traffic,” said Clive, detailing one of many advantages homeless robots have over humans. “And when it comes to yelling at telephone poles, modern robots’ speech and language capabilities enable them to shout completely irrational nonsense for a longer period of time and at a higher decibel level than


“Our perception of the nation’s


to robots on the streets simply because they are just that – human,” said Mangino, the federal government’s highest-ranking official on homelessness. “Your typical homeless person can only sit around at the library or lay on a park bench for so long before


page 14


homeless as a group of men and women who are unable to adapt to society’s structure is becoming increasingly outdated,” said Mangino.


can a human – without the need to pause for breath every once in a while for fear of passing out. Not only that, but they could yell obscenities at parking meters in more


against and looked down upon as second- class machinery by common citizens, who tend to harbor the misconception that a robot’s homeless status is purely the result of its CPU consciously choosing not to run any work programs. “Just because a robot is homeless doesn’t


necessarily mean it’s programmed to be lazy,” Mangino said. “Te truth is that many of today’s homeless robots have a few wires crossed, if you know what I mean. Tey’re oſten singled out and kicked to the curb just because they’re a few millimeters off. What’s worse, their conditions are oſten improperly diagnosed or they are never able to get the maintenance they need to function properly and coexist with other robots in an assembly line mainframe.” Clive agreed with Mangino’s argument


that just because a robot is homeless doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t want to perform intricate, repetitive motions 24 hours a day. “A lot of the robots you see hanging


around in storefronts on your drive to work every morning are not lazy chunks of metal that would sooner have their USB ports removed than have to be on


an assembly line working for the man,” said Clive. “Many of these units are proud, hard-working bots that just got overloaded or damaged somehow and became unable to work. Maybe they had their extension arm seize up on them, or maybe they fried their motherboards experimenting with bad downloads. Or maybe


they have memory


problems that make it impossible for them to function. It’s important to remember that not every robot out on the streets is there because they’ve


made a conscious decision to throw their lives into the scrap yard.” Mangino said that although the U.S.


government has only recently addressed the homeless robot issue, the ICH has already been approved to launch two federally funded programs aimed at helping homeless robots get back up on their wheels. “Twenty-seven major U.S. cities have


received funding to open up free shelters – a place where wayward robots can go


Mangino: “Humans simply


can’t compete with machines’ ability to sit around and do nothing all day.”


to get a good power-wash and maybe get their batteries charged or download a few soſtware updates so they can start scanning for jobs,” Mangino said. “In addition to that, most of these cities will be implementing a program that issues free memory cards once a month to as many needy robots as possible.”


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