> Europeans seem to enjoy mocking American fondness for air-conditioning This is true. I happened to buy a condo where the previous owner had installed a mini-

> Europeans seem to enjoy mocking American fondness for air-conditioning This is true. I happened to buy a condo where the previous owner had installed a mini-split AC. I took a quick look at it with "lol what is this thing" and forgot about it. Then later I suffered a week or two into the 2014 summer heatwave, before it occurred to me to turn that oddity on. Best thing ever. We Europeans also still stubbornly think that cars with automatic transmission are not real cars. Although the good fuel economy of hybrids (we love good fuel economy!) is slowly changing this. But if someone made a hybrid with manual transmission, we'd sure buy those.