Y’all really should watch the video if you havent! I think even if you have no interest in Minecraft, or football (as others have mentioned Tomlin was a long tenured NFL coach until this year). There’s something so refreshingly earnest, and joyful about watching someone share something they’ve poured so much time and themselves into.
I have to admit the merging of worlds here is wild. I never expected to read Mike Tomlin, long time coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers on HackerNews yet here we are. It was not on my Bingo card. Refreshing, indeed.
I (stereotypical nerd) was briefly friends with a large Samoan man that was built like a tank and did amateur MMA fighting. One night we were going out drinking with a group of us and he let slip that he was super into Starcraft. Me and all of my geeky friends lost it, couldn't believe it etc etc. I learned later he muttered to the one other athletic guy in the group, "I guess these guys don't really hang out around athletes very often." He wasn't being a jerk, he was right, we totally let our prejudices get the better of us. It's not at all uncommon for athletic people to be into nerd stuff.
He's one of the longest consecutively tenured by a single team. There are some coaches who have coached longer, but not consecutively, or not for the same team, but Tomlin was the head coach for the Steelers for 19 years. And in those 19 years, he never had a losing season.
He had one more year on his current contract when he decided to retire.
He was mostly known for being able to wrangle the more "unique" personalities of the NFL and for his answers during press conferences. Giving us such gems as "The standard is the standard", "and things of that nature", "We're still squirreling those nuts", "We do not live in our fears", etc.
I used to religiously, watch his press, conferences and other media appearances. His unique and widely recognized leadership skills are an inspiration to me.
“The strength of the team is the team” discussions about meaningful expectations and divisions of labor are all particularly useful at various times. “Remaining singularly focused” is often the only way you can accomplish some specific task, and “wanting volunteers, not hostages” is important for many relationships, professional and personal.
My favorite quotes have to be about uncertainty and fear. If you blink, cut your eyelids off.” and “taking the calculated risks associated with secure victory” are great. “Living in our hopes not in our fears” go through my head a lot.
I love how it's a city with almost solarpunk theming—present day, but with buildings nestled in greenery in an almost idyllic setting. Then he moves into one of the apartment blocks and WHAM—there's disturbing imagery on the television screens. This is the kind of creativity that comes from sitting with a piece as you make it and thinking it through bit by bit.
For those who don't know Mike Tomlin is the former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the second longest tenured coach in the league, and never had a losing season before resigning his job last year.
The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
It's absurd, but he partly reflects on that himself: "But more than anything, it was therapeutic for me. Some mindless entertainment. I'm not a big TV watcher. It allowed me to detach from the realities and the pressures of life."
Tomlin is a poster child of how hard it is to drop early impressions of someone. He came in as a hot shot, but after last season he was going on 8 years since a single playoff victory.
He stayed at the Steelers too long. He should have gone somewhere with a better QB, the Steelers should have bottomed out enough to be able to draft a good QB.
He did the best with what he had, as all coaches in the NFL are bound to do. He dealt with a Big Ben playing well into his decline, then a bunch of 2nd and 3rd string QBs, and then the prima donna/flake Aaron Rodgers, which was likely the deciding point for his retirement. He could have had his pick of coaching jobs if he wanted, and the steelers record over his tenure was something most teams would dream of.
Being an NFL head coach is easily a 60+ hour a week job, especially if you want your team to be good (and the Steelers were consistently at least above average his entire tenure)
They had Ben Roethlisberger during the early parts of his tenure with the Steelers. Then they didn't have a franchise quarterback. It's a league ruled by good quarterbacks.
i’d lose myself in a creative world if i lead a team that demands excellence without a franchise quarterback. imagine how many meetings this man endured in lieu of a capable qb.
but it is cool how mike’s minecraft story follows a familiar arc for anyone raising kids after 2009, and learning about his interests in architecture and urbanism.
I love this, and love listening to how much he's connected to the thing he made. This should remind us that not everything is done with an end goal in mind.
If you're unfamiliar with Minecraft, the build he's showcasing isn't actually advanced when it comes to building. Building in Minecraft is almost an art form, and many techniques have been developed over the years. This is because you have limited control over what you want to express: you are operating at a block granularity (more or less) and a limited number of block types that give blocks different textures.
A tech savvy teen could probably write a Java mod that generates something similar to what he's done, even prior to LLMs. An LLM could take a Google Streets feed of NY and replicate it in-game, etc.
And he wouldn't care! The thing he's made is his own, made under his own constraints, shaped by his own mind.
Yeah I've been thinking that products are a kind of communication. Part of what is communicated is the work, the effort or the journey that it took for the product to come to be. Like when a food product puts the origin story on the back.
LLM generated software seems to push every story to "I wrote some prompts and Claude spit this out". Perhaps that story if fatiguing repeated over and over again. And we're losing something.
In 2020, UC Berkeley students built their entire campus in creative mode. Stanford students saw this and then autogenerated their campus from some kind of mapping data. Predictably, the Berkeley one came out much better.
Best part is that he did this all with a controller + pretty slow sensitivity settings. Aka this probably took 2X as long as someone on a PC doing the same thing
"I started playing Minecraft, man, when my kids were young,” Tomlin said. “I have a Minecraft city in creative that I’ve been working on for like 12 years."
Yeah, it is fun exploring dungeons with my kids. But it seems he clicked the city together? That part always bothered me with minecraft to build anything big, or repetitive.
Well, I love automation, and AI is awesome for that. So now my kids can add details to castles or railwails build by algorithm (But using commands is a big temptation to destroy game balance in survival mode).
This is definitely a personal preference, I think I'd be bored just tweaking something generated by an AI or anyone else, to me a long term construction of something from the ground up sounds much more fun.
I've built a couple replicas of IRL buildings in survival over the years, for an hour or two after work, and found it very relaxing. It did take a lot of repetitive clicking, but the result was (almost) always worth it. And all the things like planning, finding the right place on the map and gathering the materials building materials made it feel like an actual construction, which I enjoyed.
Well, we have fun exploring scenic rides I would have not build by hand and the algorithm is simple enough to explain it to them (they are still learning to read) - the AI takes mostly care of all the messy parts. How to deal with minecraft's various hacks and protocolls and microsoft restrictions to make it do, what I want it to do. Also you can do the construction from the ground up. (just a time issue for me). Be the (coding) architect of a big castle. And I am preparing it - showing to them. There is a UI for setting how wide the water or lava moat is and bring them to think about how to exactly express what they want - in numbers ideally - anything is possible. Including staffing the castle with AI bots (via MineFlyer) and controlling their exact behavior. (not LLM, classic algorithms, do this, then do that). All of that is great for learning to how the system works - what algorithms are.
So yes, personal preference. For relaxation and repetive tasks I rather go away from the screen.
It makes sense that someone like an NFL head coach would be good at this... the sheer amount of detail in the playbooks (we're talking 500-1000 plays) is nauseating and changes significantly from year to year as NFL play styles evolve, esp. as coordinators come and go.
Ryan Bingham: [after informing Bob that he has been let go]
Your resume says you minored in French Culinary Arts. Most students work the frier at KFC. You bussed tables at Il Picatorre to support yourself. Then you got out of college and started working here. How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams?
Bob: Twenty seven thousand a year.
Ryan Bingham: At what point were you going to stop and go back to what made you happy?
It's definitely not for everyone. I'd equate the feeling to knitting, where progress is mostly slow and deliberate and the meditativeness is by design.
It's also more fun on a server with friends, where it can be more about hanging out and doing something together, rather than a solo creative exercise.
The downside is shitty people don't need to learn to not be shitty. In order to work with other people you have to be socialized to some level of "is okay around other people". UBI removes that. The downside is the rest of society having to put up with shitty people.
It's a downside for some nebulous strawman that just barely exists outside of the support system UBI would provide. Far enough out to not experience the benefits but not far enough to be above it all.
Of course the strawman's proponents will use it as an example of why we should write the whole idea off entirely, rather than test the validity of the concern and discuss options that provide some form of equity to a wider population.
What a delightful story! With all the negativity surrounding AI etc. it’s so nice to see such a positive impact of tech on a father and his bond with his kids. The video genuinely brought a tear to my eye.
Could you please stop posting low-quality comments to HN, such as shallow dismissals, snark, putdowns, etc.? Your account has unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we're trying for something else here.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_h_pQ1-5iQg
Interesting choice for his favorite rooftop 12m in!
He had one more year on his current contract when he decided to retire.
He was mostly known for being able to wrangle the more "unique" personalities of the NFL and for his answers during press conferences. Giving us such gems as "The standard is the standard", "and things of that nature", "We're still squirreling those nuts", "We do not live in our fears", etc.
“The strength of the team is the team” discussions about meaningful expectations and divisions of labor are all particularly useful at various times. “Remaining singularly focused” is often the only way you can accomplish some specific task, and “wanting volunteers, not hostages” is important for many relationships, professional and personal.
My favorite quotes have to be about uncertainty and fear. If you blink, cut your eyelids off.” and “taking the calculated risks associated with secure victory” are great. “Living in our hopes not in our fears” go through my head a lot.
The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
Overall > 0.5 win rate each year: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/TomlMi0.htm
But after 2016, playoffs? Not so much.
Don't let the "gridset" bros lie to you: one can simultaneously have hobbies and leisure time while being productive and successful.
Before Minecraft city (2007–2013): 5–3 in the playoffs — 62.5% win rate
After starting the city (2014–2025): 3–9 in the playoffs — 25.0% win rate
I feel like his coaching leveled them up. It will be interesting to see if he writes any books about his process, etc.
but it is cool how mike’s minecraft story follows a familiar arc for anyone raising kids after 2009, and learning about his interests in architecture and urbanism.
If you're unfamiliar with Minecraft, the build he's showcasing isn't actually advanced when it comes to building. Building in Minecraft is almost an art form, and many techniques have been developed over the years. This is because you have limited control over what you want to express: you are operating at a block granularity (more or less) and a limited number of block types that give blocks different textures.
A tech savvy teen could probably write a Java mod that generates something similar to what he's done, even prior to LLMs. An LLM could take a Google Streets feed of NY and replicate it in-game, etc.
And he wouldn't care! The thing he's made is his own, made under his own constraints, shaped by his own mind.
Perhaps a lesson of meaning in the LLM era?
LLM generated software seems to push every story to "I wrote some prompts and Claude spit this out". Perhaps that story if fatiguing repeated over and over again. And we're losing something.
https://x.com/LeVeonBell/status/2105491655142867280
For those without X, "we were tryna win super bowls and coach T was on minecraft building cities "
Yeah, it is fun exploring dungeons with my kids. But it seems he clicked the city together? That part always bothered me with minecraft to build anything big, or repetitive.
Well, I love automation, and AI is awesome for that. So now my kids can add details to castles or railwails build by algorithm (But using commands is a big temptation to destroy game balance in survival mode).
I've built a couple replicas of IRL buildings in survival over the years, for an hour or two after work, and found it very relaxing. It did take a lot of repetitive clicking, but the result was (almost) always worth it. And all the things like planning, finding the right place on the map and gathering the materials building materials made it feel like an actual construction, which I enjoyed.
So yes, personal preference. For relaxation and repetive tasks I rather go away from the screen.
Ryan Bingham: [after informing Bob that he has been let go] Your resume says you minored in French Culinary Arts. Most students work the frier at KFC. You bussed tables at Il Picatorre to support yourself. Then you got out of college and started working here. How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams?
Bob: Twenty seven thousand a year.
Ryan Bingham: At what point were you going to stop and go back to what made you happy?
Bob: that's a good question.
From Up In The Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkX-TPaodoM
It's also more fun on a server with friends, where it can be more about hanging out and doing something together, rather than a solo creative exercise.
I found the controller very difficult when I tried it, and I'm one that generally opts for a console with nearly every other game.
As an employer, UBI and universal healthcare might slash payroll costs and eliminate most of the hiring process.
As a founder, UBI might remove the funding barrier to entry.
What's the downside, and who is it a downside for?
Of course the strawman's proponents will use it as an example of why we should write the whole idea off entirely, rather than test the validity of the concern and discuss options that provide some form of equity to a wider population.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.