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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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?
"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.
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.
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.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_h_pQ1-5iQg
I just showed it to my kids and it’s wild to think that he has been working on this since before they were born.
I laughed when I saw the naming thinking, “hey this is the same as the Steelers coach”. Crazy that it actually is him, but hey he’s human too.
Interesting choice for his favorite rooftop 12m in!
This is... kind of insane. I'm not someone who is easily surprised by things but this one is so random, weird, and happily surprising.
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.
He didn't even want to share it, his kid kind of forced him to.
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 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.
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.
Perhaps a lesson of meaning in the LLM era?
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.
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."
This guy makes good choices. While I get upset on Reddit, he's happy building his city. I need to rethink my life.
Whatever you do, don't take up Factorio.
Was a bit confused by a sibling comment before realizing their comment is narrowed down to the Playoffs.
Overall > 0.5 win rate each year: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/TomlMi0.htm
But after 2016, playoffs? Not so much.
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 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.
It had also been 8 years since he had a decent QB. At some point it’s up to the GM to figure out how to get someone good.
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.
> The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
Don't let the "gridset" bros lie to you: one can simultaneously have hobbies and leisure time while being productive and successful.
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)
A pretty funny analysis I saw:
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
That 3-9 record is still 9 playoff appearances. Most coaches barely get one. It is just incredibly hard to win in the NFL.
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.
He also won Super Bowl XLIII in 2009
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.
One of his star players posted this in response.
https://x.com/LeVeonBell/status/2105491655142867280
For those without X, "we were tryna win super bowls and coach T was on minecraft building cities "
I doubt he wrote that himself, it's just engagement bait for the betting ad in the next tweet.
the responses are diabolical
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
Immediately made me think of this exchange:
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
"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.
yep, he has stated he placed every block one by one
If you watch the video you can really tell - all these tiny details from the various builds are still etched into his mind.
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.
I didn’t last 5 minutes trying to play Minecraft on a console, as it felt so tedious. This is seriously impressive.
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.
They're probably talking about the controller vs mouse and keyboard.
I think if we had some sort of UBI/provision for necessities this is the sort of thing people would be doing, and it would be great.
I suspect some people would still focus more of their time on winning the superbowl.
And you somehow think this is a good thing?
Yes. It is a societal health indicator. When societies create more art it is indicative of that society having their more basic needs met. https://www.simplypsychology.org/wp-content/uploads/maslow-5...
I've never worked a job where getting rid of the people who don't want to be there wouldn't improve the situation for everyone else.
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?
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.
I love this and thought I was being trolled when I noticed it trending.
Why is he using bedrock edition?
If you're referring to "Bedrock", than probably because it's the only one available on Playstation, which is what he's using.
Your getting downvoted but it's a natural question. It's like the kernel hacker running windows on a pad. But he's having fun, thats the whole point.