DEB_MULEUCS_UNICODE=off makes emacs startup many times faster, but when once a month, someone sends me a utf-8 email, the mail looks broken. I wish there was a DEB_MULEUCS_UNICODE=auto that would activate it the first time we encounter unicode this session.
Or, with DEB_MULEUCS_UNICODE=off, there should be some warning message in the minibuffer saying why the characters look bad when we first encounter a unicode file this session, and what one should do about it -- even if the only choice is 'restart emacs with no DEB_MULEUCS_UNICODE=off'.