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Why is there steam coming out of the streets in New York

⁨422⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨kunegis@feddit.org⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/a89dfc24-0c19-4e46-871a-3a930279f6b2.jpeg

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Comments

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  • dhork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:

    en.m.wikipedia.org/…/New_York_City_steam_system

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    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You should tell this guy.

      youtube.com/shorts/_MAXlkWLpfM

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      • anzo@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Imagine having two keyboards just to put your hands in each of them and, like play 4 keys from each… without moving your arms at all…

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    • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Thank you. There’s so many people responding with unhelpful answers.

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      • Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
        [deleted]
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    • rothaine@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Wow that’s neat

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      • MrPoletki@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        No, that’s heat.

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  • pacology@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s not steam. It’s smoke from wood fired pizza ovens for the turtle men that live there. There was a cartoon documentary about them on tv a few years back.

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    • jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I never thought of them eating artisan pizzas. I always figured they’d get some shitty dominos.

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      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Ew, gross. They live in a sewer, but they’re not animals.

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      • ieatpwns@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        They wouldn’t do dominos they’d probably get a variation of Rays famous near them

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      • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        They seem to have the only people willing to deliver to a drainage hole.

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  • Kaiserschmarrn@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    A new rat pope was elected. Image

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    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I love how plausible this is

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    • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Praise Cheesus

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      • MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Thank you, much a-brie-ciated.

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  • verdantbanana@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The New York City steam system includes Con Edison’s Steam Operations, a piped steam system which provides steam to large parts of Manhattan. Other smaller systems provide steam to New York University and Columbia University, and many individual buildings in New York City also have their own steam systems. The steam is used to heat and cool buildings and for cleaning and disinfecting. It is the largest such system in the world and has been in operation since 1882.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology

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      • ieatpwns@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Amazing for the 1800s

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      • jaxxed@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Whole parts of Eastern Europe still transport Steam for heating.

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    • Infynis@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now unfortunately

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      • BoulevardBlvd@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now ~unfortunately~ very fortunately since children don’t know how to look out for a superheated steam leak and it was only a matter of time before a child got fucking bisected

        Ftfy

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    • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Wow this makes me realise why so many movies set in New York I watched in the 80’s and 90’s often had steam coming up from the ground.

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  • PillowTalk420@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s just toxic gas bubbling up from the ruins of Old New York that New York is built on top of. The mutants down there are a steampunk society.

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  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Old steam heating system. They vent it when they’re working on a section.

    Side-note: surprised by all the fellow New Yorkers i’m seeing in this thread. I thought yous were still at the other place.

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    • DelightfullyDivisive@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yep. Detroit has this, too.

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      • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Yeah it’s common enough I figured most knew, but a few years ago I went ice skating at the bryant park rink with this girl who refused to walk anywhere near the steam. She thought they were toxic and didn’t accept my explanation, so we had to walk an extra few blocks to get around the steam work. Shrug

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    • TBi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I wonder if they could make it more efficient by running at a lower temperature and installing water source heat pumps in buildings. youtu.be/abGiNL9IT54

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      • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        That’s a good idea! My understanding is that the old stream network is slated for decommission and replacement by this program, basically a large distributed geothermal heat pump network that also harvests from major heat producers like data centers and provides both heating and cooling.

        It will end the era of the steamy-street Sin City aesthetic but should be many, many times more efficient than the old steam system. Phase-change thermal transfer in HVAC systems is currently as much as 400% more efficient than the theoretical limit of direct heating, because it only uses the energy necessary to move heat from one place to another rather than produce it, and it works for both heating and cooling.

        Right now I believe they’re piloting the system in NYCHA buildings (public housing) of neighborhoods outside the old steam network, like Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, but supposedly the plan is to expand to the rest of Manhattan.

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  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Steam from the steamed hams we’re having

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    • habitualcynic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      And you call them that even though they are obviously grilled?

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      • kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        excuse me for a minute

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  • RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    New sewer pope

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    • TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Image

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  • Cocopanda@futurology.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.

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    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I swear I thought this answer was about as accurate as the one that said “dragons”.

      How steampunk for probably the largest city in the world to use steam in this day and age? I love it…

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      • PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th largest city.

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  • Hikermick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Some big cities originally heated their buildings by producing steam in one one centralized building and delivering it to large buildings thru pipes underground. The steam you see is from leaking pipes in this antiquated infrastructure. It’s a very inefficient method if you ask me. Cities should offer these buildings low interest loans so they can update and be independent but they never take my advice

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    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Afaik it’s not inefficient if the heating is done via fossil fuels as big furnaces (especially in the past, especially turbo-fan super-fine grind coal ones) are much more efficient than smol ones for individual buildings (even if the buildings are giant).

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      • Hikermick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It’s terribly inefficient. The efficiency is lost when the steam that condenses back into hot water is lost and none of it is returned to the boiler to be reheated. Rather than reheating this returning water which normally is at 120-160 degrees Fahrenheit, fresh water is used which in the winter here is around 56 degrees. Aside from this the cold water taken in contains impurities such as dissolved gasses which cause corrosion and dissolved minerals which can cause scaling that acts as an insulator raising the amount of energy needed to heat the water.

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    • Wahots@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      District level heating is actually pretty efficient, some universities do the same thing on purpose to save on bills. Our relatively young city does it with the downtown skyscrapers for the same reason.

      The other nice thing is that when you upgrade the heating system to be less carbon intensive, you can instantly have a ton of buildings all jump instantly to fewer emissions too.

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    • dickalan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Boy, I sure love it when dip shits act like they’re from Reddit and talk about stuff they know absolutely nothing about, why don’t you shove your foot in your mouth and stop typing

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    • _stranger_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Why not just have the city mandate the upgrades and then implement them? It’s probably not that big of a problem for everyone involved.

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      • Hikermick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        If it were that simple everyone would have done it by now. This method of heating your building is very expensive. Long story short, I’m in the HVAC business and two of my customers have made themselves independent. One was a private property management company that gutted an empty building and was successful, the other is a federal building that hired a private company to convert over and got screwed.

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  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s the steam from the melting pot

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  • pwalshj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The tubes are there to raise minor steam leaks above street level so they don’t hinder visibility.

    Another interesting underground quirk we have is our pneumatic tube mail system.

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    • FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Wait those pneumatic tube things are real?? I always thought it was like 1960s sci-fi. Like what they thought the future would be like

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      • exasperation@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It was the fastest way to get original physical documents from one side/floor of the building to another.

        When I was a kid that was the standard way that banking drive throughs worked, too. You’d drive up to the multi-lane drive through, each station would have a pneumatic tube for handing off cash or checks or receipts between the car and the teller in the window. It pretty much ended when ATMs could start handling cash and checks.

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      • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Those things used to be on every single bank drive-up teller booth in the 80’s and 90’s.

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Haha Roosevelt Island trash system go pshew

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    • Bezier@suppo.fi ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I like the term “clogged mail”

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  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That isn’t steam, it’s smoke. Smoke from the smoked hams we’re having. Mmmm, smoked hams.

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    • son_named_bort@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I thought that was from the streets of Albany?

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      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        no, there it was the other way round, pay attention

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    • samus12345@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Surely you mean smoked clams?

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  • FiskFisk33@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    There’s a really good explanation here:

    youtu.be/QRKzA8JlYBU

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  • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    There’s a lot of things under the streets of New York, many of them cause heat. In order to cool them off the heat is vented outside and the warm moist air meets with the cool dry air and condensates into droplets that we see as steam. Same affect as breathing out on a cold day, you’re not creating steam but it looks that way because the warm moist air from your breath is condensing in the cool dry air.

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    • dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Could you name one thing that would cause heat under streets? It’s kinda hard to believe tbh

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      • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Pipes transferring steam.

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      • Coreidan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        When you take a hot shower where do you think that water is going?

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      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        en.m.wikipedia.org/…/New_York_City_steam_system#%….

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      • WordBox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Subway brakes.

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  • Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You know how when rocks take off in Florida there’s lots of smoke?

    Yeah there’s a tunnel that goes from Florida to New York that the smoke goes through to help heat up the New York streets. So anytime you see smoke in New York it’s cause a rocket was recently shot up in Florida. Technology Infrastructure is incredible!

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  • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Teenage mutant ninja turtles barbeque

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  • h3mlocke@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Hot. Moist. Air.

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    • supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      it’s steam not air

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      • h3mlocke@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        No it is Moist. Air.

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      • Dearth@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        You can’t see steam. It’s not visible to the naked eye.

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  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    The CHUDs are having a BBQ. Guess the markets closed for the day.

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    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I think it’s important, at this point, to differentiate between NYC CHUDs, and your common racist shitbag chud. NYC CHUDs are many things, but not racist dickbags.

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      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I’m just referencing the movie, but if you think that there not racists in NYC, you haven’t talk to enough New Yorkers.

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  • daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Volcano under the city

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  • MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Hundred plus year old infrastructure.

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  • Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s not smoke. It’s a space station.

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    • edgemaster72@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      That’s no moon, it’s… oh, wait… shit.

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  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Wrong answers only:

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    • VinesNFluff@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      From the Steamed Clams we’re having. Mmmmmmm, Steamed Clams!

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    • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Illegal underground gay saunas

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      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        german techno beats intensify

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    • Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Rat farts.

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      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        New York rat farts, which are genetically distinct from normal rat farts.

        Image

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    • MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      They smoking dope down there

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  • Rosscameron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Ah yes, the classic New York fog machine. Turns out it’s not for dramatic effect—just the city’s 19th-century steam system still doing its thing. Who needs modern infrastructure when you’ve got built-in Gotham vibes?

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  • Cornpop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They use a lot of steam for heating still

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  • Gerudo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    They outlawed chem trails so they had to change tactics.

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  • Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s the ancient horrors beyond description, that are buried underneath the city, that are having indigestion.

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  • leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s where they store the chemtrails before putting them in planes.

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  • RangerJosey@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    There’s C.H.U.D.s down there....https://youtu.be/BJckCjZ8Tdw?si=mv2SGgDh…

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  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Sewer mutants cooking up some grub.

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