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Oblig

Cops tend to (understandably) have an us versus them world view and see everyone's actions as those of a potential suspect.

What? Why is that understandable? You could say that it's understandable that waiters have an us-vs-them worldview. Or IT support. Or musicians. Or doctors. Or ANY group of people that interacts with anyone else in a professional capacity. And all of it is bullshit tribalism that makes for shitty services.

Hate is probably the wrong word for most cops but it would be fair to say cops don't trust anyone who isn't a cop. ... Apply a bit of low grade racism and you have a real problem with police distrusting a minority population and the minority population growing to distrust the police.

Hell, I'm a pasty-ass cracker from upper-middle society and I distrust the police. I know that I can afford a lawyer that means a whole swath of laws actually apply to the police during their interactions with me, but things like civil forfeiture, swatting, and local events give me good reason to distrust the cops. The complain that this teaches children to fear and avoid cops might be accurate, in all ways.

Now it's not like all cops are bad cops. It only takes one rotten apple to poison a department though, and they seem to have a culture of looking after their own. So if one screws up, the rest will cover for him. Because hey, for most of them it's just a job. Something they go into in the morning, and leave at night. They want to retire eventually. And they don't want to rock the boat. And now you have a perfectly reasonable guy who suspects that O'maley down the hall got into the evidence locker when his buddy punched that guy, but doesn't really have any proof, and sure as shit isn't going to rat on his co-worker, and generally just goes along with the flow.

Relevant comic that isn't xkcd: http://www.viruscomix.com/page529.html

I can't decide on a single best webcomic, so that would be either Subnormality, Wapsi Square or Sequential Art.

Funniest would be either Girls With Slingshots, Two Guys and Guy or Shit Happens! (yeah, sorry - it's in German only).

Best art is again either Subnormality, Zebra Girl or Power Nap.

And the most relevant comic to me in 2012 definitely was Wapsi Square, the first thing I check in the morning after getting up (also going by the amount of prints I bought)...

Honorable mentions: Hobotopia, Bear Nuts, Modest Medusa, Flaky Pastry and Hate Farm.

np: Louie Austen - Never & Ever (What A Comeback!)

A quick page search didn't reveal any mention of Subnormality, so here's a link.

And on that note

http://www.viruscomix.com/page462.html

Are you kidding? xkcd is total shit. Let me sum it up for you: whimsical stick figures white knighting on the internet!!!!! But with pop culture references!!!!! LOLOLOLOL. Penny Arcade is better, but the blogs are frequently better than the actual strips. PhD comics is alright, but it's not exactly what I'd call great.

Let me introduce you to a real webcomic: The Parking Lot is Full.

Honorable mention to Gone with the Blastwave, Sexy Losers, and Perry Bible Fellowship, even though PBF is a pretty much a ripoff of PLIF. Still, it ripped off the best, so it gets an honorable mention.

If you're into insipid, warmed-over Monty Python references and "internet culture", then SMBC is probably what you're looking for. It's alright. It's shitloads better than xkcd, at least. And there's no desperate, low self-esteem white-knighting, which is a huge bonus. There's also Bob the Angry Flower, if you crave nerd humor that's got more substance than someone making fucking graphs.

I could mention a few others, but I was never that big a fan of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic (maybe you need to be a weeaboo to really love tentacle rape jokes... and Sexy Losers did it all first). There's also Subnormality, if you don't mind preachy, TL;DR strips about the totally wacky and off-the-wall adventures of a sphinx that -- get this -- likes to EAT PEOPLE!!!! LOL. What craziness!

But, really, xkcd is total shit.

If Hollywood was a person...

...but because of ridiculousness.

http://www.viruscomix.com/page329.html

Obligatory Subnormality comic: http://www.viruscomix.com/page462.html (just the first two panels) . . . Are these *really* the 72 virgins they have in mind?! This would seem a good way to operate Hell . . .

Winston Rowntree is a pretty good comic artist. You can check out more of his stuff here.

Cue Benny Hill music here...

The upshot is that it only applies to certain areas. In other areas I'm still procrastinating some (as normal), but always finishing before deadline and with very good results to boot. My problem is transferring this skill between areas of work.

I think having a specific plan helps. Not just a mindmap, but actual steps to be taken when and where, that lead to a certain goal without fail. Of course, life itself doesn't have very many maps about, so in that case pick a partial goal, and remember the first pair of pics from this comic. Or to put it in more work-related terms, a situation that is not yet completely FUBARed can still be salvaged, and with skill, nobody will even notice. And even if someone notices, at least the situation is salvaged.

Incidentally, I can recommend reading through that entire webcomic, it's made me realise many important things.

The dominant religions on this planet teach that there will be a world-ending apocalypse but the faithful will be whisked away to a better place.

The Atheist Apocalypse!

Dino Comics
Saturday morning breakfast cereal
Akimbo Comics
Subnormality
In that order.

So let's see...

The police are working for us, they are our employees.

Not really relevant.

they are not our enemies,

Ok, let me put it this way: Both the district attourney and the public defender are agents of the state. So, even looking only at those employed directly by the State, we find people who are set up to be adversaries.

Not literally enemies, no. If they're professional, they recognize that at the end of the day, they have the same goals, and they don't generally try to actually ruin each other's personal and professional lives out of spite and a desire to win.

But when they hit that courtroom, they are not friends.

So, similarly, police are not your friends. Their job may be "to serve and protect", but it is ultimately by arresting suspects and punishing people. Their incentive is not to help you, personally, but to help society in general by arresting you, and they are good at it.

And that applies whether or not you have anything to hide. Watch this if you don't believe me.

Cooperating with the police to do a job we give them is not evil. Cooperating when they step outside their bounds is evil, and giving them an evil job to do is evil, but evil is very often no more than an opinion.

Well, first, you're using very loaded language for something that's "no more than an opinion". But let's consider: Giving them an evil job to do is evil.

Well, how about drug use? Can you give me a rational argument for why any substance, taken willingly, should be banned? And whatever argument you come up with, can it possibly justify the bloodbath that was Prohibition in the US, and is drug wars in Mexico?

If your point is that we should cooperate even though the "job" (specifically, the law) is evil, well, not to Godwin this or anything...

The fact is, the majority of the population favors keeping drugs illegal. If you want to change the law, all you have to do is convince people that drugs should be legalized.

Working on it. However, education of a population is a long, slow process, and politicians are the last to go. And again, Nazis.

It seems like you've got more or less an ad-populum fallacy -- even assuming the majority of the public agrees with what the government is doing, that doesn't mean the majority is right.

But even assuming drugs should be illegal, note that this was an alleged drug dealer. Key word: Alleged. TFA claims there was enough evidence for a subpoena, but instead, a "politely worded request" was sent. There's a reason we have a legal process for things like subpoenas -- so that when people are searched by law enforcement, it's legal, or at least with consent.

So Blizzard was entirely within their rights, perhaps -- better check that privacy policy -- but it was in no way the right approach. Remember, it's the job of the police to catch you, fine you, get information out of you, get a confession out of you, etc. It's not your job to make life easier on them, any more than it's the job of the public defender to make the district attourney's job easier.

Finally, read your own sig.

http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html