Culturally, we are not that much different from the US. Sure, we have fewer guns and we get a little less teary when the national anthem plays, but we’re pretty much the same country except for all the snakes and spiders.

Occasionally, though, you find out there are some things you take for granted – like, say, dual flush toilets. Having a piss button and a poop button? That’s an Aussie thing, you will not find those on a Yank toilet. Switches on power points? Nope, they just have to pray that their young children don’t put forks in them.

Not too overwhelmed by these? Then get ready to shit your pants: most of them don’t have kettles. The electric kettle, possibly an even more commonplace feature in the Australian home than the fridge, is a rare curiosity reserved for the minority group of tea drinkers in the United bloody States of bloody America.

As you might imagine, some people were perturbed:

nothin fucked me up as much as learning Americans don’t own kettles. no wonder trump won — Lucy Valentine (@LucyXIV) March 8, 2017

I just heard americans microwave water. If you’re american you legally have to disclose every weird fucken thing you do to me, right now, — hairless pooper (@lonelydandruff) March 8, 2017

america: our president will kill everyone

me: no surprises

america: we boil water in the microwave

me: fuck me rigid with the kings corpse — thomas violence (@thomas_violence) March 8, 2017

You might be asking, as others were, how the fuck do they live?

@ImogenDunlevie @LucyXIV what!?! So they boil water on the stove? In a saucepan or do they have “Polly Put The Kettle On” kettles? — Jo (@eskimojo) March 8, 2017

The answer is: they don’t, they just survive. Just kidding, the truth is much worse: they microwave water. Or, at least, some of them do.

The very boring explanation for this bizarre fact is that because they are on 120 volts (as opposed to our 240 volts) it takes way longer to boil water off house power. Couple this with the fact that most of the population drinks coffee over tea (those barbarians) and the heating process necessary for coffee is often combined in the machine that makes it, and it means standalone electric kettle didn’t ever really take off (although you can still buy them).

So what do you do if you need hot water? You use a stovetop kettle (weird but fine I guess), boil it in a pot on the stove (ghastly), or (vastly more ghastly) you… Christ, it’s hard to even type… you put it in the microwave. I’m not making this shit up:

@Shuttlecock

Mostly they use the microwave — Tiger the Werewolf (@HyperTigerXT) March 8, 2017

Others have differing theories about how they do it:

Obviously America is a rich and varied place so in some places the kettle is relatively common but, still, fucked up. Unbelievable.