That bum gives good coverage.

[The Curmudgeon]

In another piece of news that one would assume could only have ever been presented by Kent Brockman, homeless people were being used as living, breathing Wi-Fi hotspots. This actually happened.



Yes, homeless people were to walk around with a t-shirt declaring themselves wi-fi hotspots, and people desperate enough to go on the internet right fucking NOW would pay them to stand next to them for internet coverage. Holy fucking shit.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2113959/Homeless-people-turned-walking-wi-fi-hotspots-2-15-minutes-SXSW.html

Over in the UK they launched a scheme where homeless people sold a magazine ("The Big Issue") and made money for themselves. And they're a fucking pain in the ass. So instead of being hassled in the high street to "buy a Big Issue? Help the homeless?" soon we'll be getting "looking to go online? Need internet?"

[trashcanman]

Uuuummmmm.....I really don't know how I feel about this one. On one hand, if it helps these homeless people get on their feet, I feel like I don't really have room to bitch, but on the other hand I can't help but feel that they are going to end up with the short end of the stick again as anybody who would seriously come up with such an insane notion is not likely to be the most charitable of souls. Just an odd, odd story.

[The Curmudgeon]

So do YOU give money to people on the streets, Trash? Like, if someone comes up and asks for spare change or whatever? Are you a charitable sort?

Hands up admission - I'm not. Where I work the streets are FULL of these guys, from guys sitting drunk holding a cup beween their legs as they slumped against a parked car, to guys coming up and asking you for change because they've "lost their bus pass." All that shit. I ignore all of them.

[trashcanman]

I'd like to be the charitable type, and I have given to people on occasion, but 99% of the time it's a no. It's a simple fact that a lot of these people are fucking scam artists. At my first job, a family used to panhandle out front with one of the kids in a wheelchair and tell a sob story about how the kid needed surgery. Then we started seeing the same family in front of Wal-Mart with a different kid in the wheelchair needing surgery now. And there is another guy in town that stands out in the traffic divider with a sign that he's a homeless war veteran and his father wrote the newspaper to tell people that he is not homeless and was never in the military, he is just so fucking lazy that he'd rather dress like a hobo and go beg in traffic than get a simple job. People like that make me very hesitant to be charitable. I don't ignore them, but I just tell them I've been suckered too many times.