Please stop perpetuating the myth that cats are "arseholes".
Cats, much like dogs, and every other non-human on the planet, have different drives and understandings than a human. Just because we aren't capable of fully understanding those drives isn't a reason to denigrate them.
The next time your cat does something that is outside of your understanding, please have a little compassion.
It's not about understanding, it's about alignment of drives/intentions.
Humans who are arseholes have drives and understandings that are vey human and reasonably understandable, but they're arseholes nonetheless simply because these drives are in a bit of a conflict with what others around them would like to and they don't care much about the desires of others - just like most cats.
I gave some proof and I’m speaking from experience. I grant that my perspective my be biased so if there is any data to the contrary then I would love to be enlightened. My goal isn’t to point out if someone is wrong for the sake of it, I hope to teach, learn or both. This was such a shocking revelation to me that I was hoping for some data.
> How can I improve my pronunciation without paying someone to train me?
Find a youtube channel or something else with many, many hours of someone talking in an accent you find pleasant. I use librivox audiobooks for German (free, in many languages). Try and imitate them in sentence sized chunks. This is slow and boring. Listen. Pause. Try and imitate them .
This will work but it's pretty boring. More effective, faster and much more boring is the short text approach. Take a short text and just say it over and over again trying to improve your accent. Listen to the original. Say it yourself. You can read it until you have it memorised, no problem. Record yourself. Compare the original and your latest try. If you keep trying you'll improve very fast.
1) Find some songs in the target language and get the lyrics. Sing along with the music. Have the music coming in on earphones. Once you think you're good at it, record yourself at the same time. Listen to yourself and try to improve.
2) Find some material where you have both audio and written versions of the material. You can often find children's stories on the internet like this. Also some news channels will have both written content with video. Also you can get audio books. Listen to the audio. Then read the material. Once you think you can read the material out loud, try to read the material at the same time as the audio. Try to match pacing and intonation exactly. Once you think you are good at it, do the recording and listening trick.
You can imagine that my Japanese students enjoyed doing karaoke in class :-)
> If you use any other keyboard for any other purpose, the more removed from the standard layout you are, the more disoriented you'll be when switching between the two.
Not for me. I use a Kinesis Ergo Advantage at work and home, and have no problems using a standard QWERTY keyboard (infrequently). Switching requires no thought or practice.
The Advantage products shift the major keys where you would normally use your little finger on a QWERTY keyboard to your thumb. It is heaven.
Cats, much like dogs, and every other non-human on the planet, have different drives and understandings than a human. Just because we aren't capable of fully understanding those drives isn't a reason to denigrate them.
The next time your cat does something that is outside of your understanding, please have a little compassion.