Mike Batie

Family Historian • Graphic Designer • World Traveler

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

Standing in front of one of earth’s greatest spectacles. This is Episode 49 of the ongoing eruption inside Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. #Hawaii

[Jessica Meir @Astro_Jessica]

We were thrilled to have you aboard the International @Space_Station, @FreddyLA7! Life up here literally orbits around strong international spirit and solid teamwork, just like the World Cup. @NASAJohnson and Houston were honored to host you. Enjoy your trip north, and safe travels! 🚀⚽️

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

Skiing Piz Gloria Schilthorn #skiing #skitrip #schilthorn #skitravel https://t.co/q9BUJKDiWe via @YouTube

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

Welcome home, Artemis II 🌎

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

Ruins of Kilmacduagh Abbey
#travel #ireland #medieval
https://t.co/CZYzLCIdZo via @YouTube

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

Superman David Corenswet's Ancestry #superman #superman2025 #davidcorens... https://t.co/TTOYtIzGdC via @YouTube

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

@nickgalitzine @Variety Congratulations, Nick! I knew you would go far from your very earliest roles! 👏

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

12 Reasons Why Cities Need More Trees:

1. Temperature Control

One large tree is equivalent to 10 air conditioning units, and the shade they provide can reduce street temperature by more than 30%.

2. Noise Reduction

Trees can reduce loudness by up to 50%. In urban areas filled with the sound of cars, construction, sirens, aeroplanes, and music, trees are essentially the best way to block noise and keep cities — along with the homes and workplaces in them — quieter.

3. Air Purity

Trees remove an astonishing amount of harmful pollutants and toxins from the air. In urban areas air quality is often disastrously bad — with severe consequences for our health. Trees make the air we breathe much cleaner.

4. Oxygen

And, while absorbing all those pollutants, trees also put more oxygen back into the urban environment. Oxygen levels are significantly lower in cities compared to the countryside; trees help to solve that problem.

5. Water Management

Trees do more than just shelter us and our buildings from rain — which is, in fact, extremely important. They also absorb huge quantities of water, reduce run-off, neutralise the severity of flooding, and make flooding more unlikely altogether. Not to forget that their roots absorb pollutants and prevent them from feeding back into a city's water supply.

6. Psychological Health

Studies have proven what we instinctively know to be true: that human beings are significantly happier when surrounded by nature rather than sterile urban environments. Our emotions, behaviour, and thoughts are shaped by the places we spend time — and trees have a profoundly positive effect on our psychology. The consequential benefits of being happier and more peaceful — as individuals and as a society — are immense.

7. Physical Health

Beyond all the other ways in which trees improve air quality and the urban environment, much to the benefit of our health, they also encourage people to go outside. Cycling, running, and walking are all more common in urban areas with plenty of trees. A knock-on effect of people spending more time outdoors is also social integration and stronger communities.

8. Privacy

A simple point, but not inconsequential, is that trees provide privacy.

9. Economics

The total economic benefit of urban trees is hard to calculate. There are costs, of course, including the repair of infrastructure damaged by roots and maintaining the trees themselves. But the total economic benefit — a consequence of everything else in this list and more — far outweighs the expenditure. Trees make cities wealthier.

10. Wildlife

Trees are miniature cities all of their own, serving as a habitat for hundreds of different species, including birds and mammals and insects.

11. Light Pollution

Trees don't only block the light shining down, therefore keeping us and our cities cooler — they also disrupt light shining up, from street lighting, cars, houses, and billboards. Skies are clearer in cities with more trees.

12. Aesthetics

And, finally, trees are beautiful. They break up the potential monotony of urban environments — the sharp geometry, the greyscale roads and buildings, the endless rows of cars — with their trunks, boughs, canopies, and flowers.

Just think: the gold and red of falling leaves in autumn, the white and pink blossom of spring, the vast green canopies of summer, and the branches lined with hoar-frost in winter. Every single tree is a myriad of intricacy and texture, of colour and scent, of dappled light on the pavement, mottled bark, knotted roots, of clustered leaves and delicate petals and stern boughs.

Few streets would not be improved by the kaleidoscopic aesthetic delights of a tree, not to mention the many different species of tree, all over the world, whether willow, oak, lime, cherry, aspen, maple, birch, horse chestnut, dogwood, hornbeam, ash, sycamore... the list goes on.

There are some drawbacks to urban trees, most of them context-specific, and they are not — of course — universally appropriate. But it seems fair to say that many cities would benefit from at least a few more trees here and there.

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

@HWAncestry Happy Birthday Charlie! 🎂

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

👏👏👏 @FinnWittrock #SAGAFTRA #FinnWittrock

[Hollywood Ancestry @HWAncestry]

‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ actor Nicholas Galitzine’s surname indicates royal ancestry. Get the story here: https://t.co/fYmuIaKUxe

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

I love the architectural details of Grand Central Terminal. Here are some pics from my last visit. #grandcentral #NewYorkCity

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

It's not often that you see audiences tastes changing in real time, but here it is. They're not done with seeing movies in theaters (as many of us had feared,) but they want something different than what we've been giving them for the last decade or so.

[Tom Vaughan @storyandplot]

The first two things a reader does when they open your screenplay:

1) Check the page count
2) Check to see how dense the writing is.

They start reading your script with whatever emotion those two things give them.

The primary factor that determines both?

THE ACTION LINES

[Seattle Kraken @SeattleKraken]

*screams in game seven*

[Scott Myers @GoIntoTheStory]

Monica Beletsky: "A pilot story is when a character’s normal life is changed forever by an outside force. The lead tries not to accept the new normal, until they finally embrace it. The new normal challenges their identity, moral compass, and reality.” https://t.co/6AIBe72cSc

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

@nickgalitzine Awesome! So excited to see this one!

[Dan LeFevre @dan_lefev]

It will keep snowing until there is a resolution in the Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash trial

[Mike Batie @mikebatie]

@spyderdobro 💛💛💛

[Ben Meer @SystemSunday]

10 ways to live life like it's your second time around:

1. Consider the things won't give a f*ck about in 5 years. Other people's opinions, petty disagreements, sensationalized news. Allow yourself to stop caring now.