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.
This is the best part of it; kids are also why he started in the first place. And his son is present during the recording. He may have built this alone but sharing it is a family project.
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.
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.
I think it's just that people miss there's a major intellectual side to all sports, but it often gets masked by the fact that those who excel in sports often forsake or ignore their education education early on, so they sound ineloquent, and people, especially those outside of sports, assume that means they're stupid.
Mike Tyson is an extreme example. He dropped out of high school and probably never paid much of any attention for the schooling he did have. But listen to an interview with him, like on Rogan, and the man has a mind when you actually listen to what he's thinking/saying [1], as opposed to how he says it. And that's after decades of drugs and plenty of blows to the head.
Gymnasium was historically a place where you go not only for your physical but also your intellectual education, and I think the Greeks had it right. A strong mind needs a strong body, and vice versa.
In my country we call the general middle school (the one that results in no specific professional qualification, i.e. a prep for university) a gymnasium. Physical education is only a small part of it, so it's interesting that we continue to name it thus and has the same origin as a gym.
(I had no idea who this guy was, as I am not from USA.)
As autistic person, I am not surprised. People hyperfocus on interests which scratch their itch (people with autism tend to be better at hyperfocus). A hyperfocus on gaming (specifically physical sports) fits in an autism profile, as does a hyperfocus on building a large (virtual) world. Keeping the build to yourself is akin to writing a book, not publishing it. In this case, the book is published.
If you will, he is manager/coach and player at the same time in Minecraft. Or, from a different PoV: IRL he is the coach, IVL he is the player (gamer).
Notice how his son did setup the A/V aspect of the recording, and how he is terrible with controller. PC gamer! I'm 40+ and would be terrible with either as well, CBA with it either.
Btw, I watched the video with my kids. They're aspiring Minecraft players, and enjoyed watching it -in awe- with me.
This is shocking to me. My brother is a retired college football head coach. Two of his sons are acclaimed college football players. I've spent time with the head coaches of two teams currently ranked in the top 10 in the NCAA. I've been around the sport for decades and know how coaches' lives can be monopolized by the job. To see an NFL head coach doing something requiring this level of time commitment blows my mind. I guess it's a reminder that to reach the very top level of a sought after profession, you have to be a remarkable individual.
The only additional note I'd have to add is Tomlin was one of the NFL's rare "CEO" coaches - he doesn't call plays for either side of the ball, so he probably is ever so slightly less busy than a head coach who happens to do so.
I remember a clip of him from a few years ago where he talked about watching some 7v7 football league on YouTube in his free time.
Dude is 100% a football junkie regardless of his time in Minecraft; I bet he's one of those people who only needs like 5 hours of sleep a night and just is obsessive about anything he touches
I have a totally different read on this. I also play a bit of minecraft many days, and for maybe 15-30 minutes at a time. Mike Tomlin here was playing on creative -- no risk, no survival, just infinite blocks to curate his zen garden. This is the perfect way to wind down for 15-20 minutes after a tough day in a hotel room. Or where ever. What percentage of NFL coaches or players do the exact same thing except with a phone instead of a controller, do some doomscrolling for 15-30 minutes and move on? This feels like just a different flavor of the same type of retreat that many people do.
FWIW, college coaching is generally seen as a more time consuming job because of the recruiting aspect. Every hour they aren't in the office or on the field is spent on the phone with a recruit or visiting one.
Thanks for the link... I didn't watch the whole thing as I resonated when he said 'entertainment is for detaching from life'. After hearing that I got it. That really is the problem with a lot of the "AAA" "Art" being produced today.
It's really nice that this was also something he did with his kids. The fact that his kids are grown and stopped but when they came back for the holidays they wanted to see how the city is doing is iirc the way this got out. He was mostly doing it as a way he could connect with his kids.
It also says a lot about Minecraft which of course has been said before but it makes sense this would be the game you would play to connect with all of your kids as they grow up in a supportive way.
Minecraft is really an amazing example of emergence from simple primitives and the virtue of engineering that gets out of way and lets users do the building.
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.
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.
Andy Reid is retiring when he gets his 303rd regular season win. At nearly the same time, Tomlin is going to find he once again has the zest for coaching.
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.
Actually, one of the biggest criticisms of him is that he overperformed with bad teams.
The NFL has a draft system where the worst team in the league gets the best pick in the next year's draft.
Tomlin dragging teams that should have won 2 or 3 games into the playoffs each year just to lose immediately meant that the Steelers never got any good draft picks and thus never improved the team year of year.
I don’t think this criticism matches reality though. The Packers did not bottom out to get Aaron Rodgers; the Patriots did not bottom out to get Tom Brady. The Browns did bottom out to get Baker Mayfield; how’d that go?
In fact there are way more examples of bad teams crashing into high picks, and then continuing to crash, than dramatic turn-arounds into Super Bowl victories shortly thereafter.
Good teams and coaches go for the Super Bowl every year because it is impossible to predict when you’ll get there and win. That includes when you have (or don’t have) a great quarterback. You just have to try your hardest every year and hope.
And excellence is a habit, not a dial you can quickly turn from one side to the other over the summer. Most players have short careers and so a team needs them to get better every year in order to hope to peak as a team.
It seems to me like a lot of sports criticism is based in regretful retrospection. “Oh, if only they’d done this or that, they would have won.” But it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Injuries alone are unpredictable and hugely impactful from year to year.
It’s a natural thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to actually manage a team.
> The Browns did bottom out to get Baker Mayfield; how’d that go?
Browns fan in. Baker had them legit good the COVID year - beat the Steelers in the playoffs, then lost to the Chiefs in large part to a hugely controversial call. Then Baker hurt his non-throwing shoulder trying to tackle someone on and interception that happened because the sprinter masquerading as a wide receiver (Anthony Schwartz) stopped his route. Then Jimmy Haslam, already famous for being a criminal and drafting Johnny Eightball when told to do so by a houseless person in downtown Cleveland told him to, made one of the worst trades in NFL history. Andrew Berry has had really good drafts the last two years which underscores your point.
Funny that Aaron Rodgers thought he would go #1 to his hometown 49ers who instead took Alex Smith. And that SF is killing it this year with Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy (further demonstrating your point).
I was also in Boston when Tom Brady happened; earlier that year I nearly physically ran into Drew Bledsoe. Just to keep things nerdy on HN, later that year I brought down the uni's network but it was not Harvard. Maybe I shouldn't have paid attention to sports so much
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."
... and life moved a bit further in those months. Experiences that could be had, meeting people that could have happened.
If its really relaxing to you, I rest my case. It wouldn't be to me, in same way no computer game or general computer activity ever could. Physical movement, ideally in the nature, the wilder the better. If you live too far reconsider permanently improving QoL by moving closer. Recharges batteries like nothing else.
There is still tomorrow to be more active, right, to catch up. But not with the same mindset that wasted today or yesterday.
I'm a somewhat ambitious climber (mostly indoor, however) and am in general very active. Factorio is an effective way to keep my brain busy as sometimes I get overwhelmed with my thoughts. But of course it is not the only thing that I enjoy and the remark about autumn was an exaggeration. I'm also very much against considering days "wasted". Sometimes I just need to take a day off and spend it at home, as long as there is a balance.
Beautifully put, better than I could have, why I don't touch games in general. They're amazing, but they make you feel like you're advancing, achieving, experiencing, when really you're not, you're barely doing anything than jumping into the future. But, as I understand you to mean as well, not everyone is like that, for some it feels to bring balance. In particular, if you're a coach, surely you have no shortage of human interaction, or being outside, doing sports, and networking. But it's not for me for sure.
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)
The idea that successful people need to be obsessively dedicated that that one thing exclusive to everything else is unhealthy and I think a hustle culture trope.
If anything, I think successful people tend to have a range of pastimes and balanced activities in order to maintain perspective and not burnout.
I think both perspectives are right. Successful people tend to have a range of pastimes but there are episodes in their career lasting 1-2 years where they are maniacally focused on one thing.
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.
A lot of work is busywork and not enjoyable. LLM automation in the optimistic case (UBI) allows everyone the luxury of such effort and journey. For most people work is not "communication" it's a necessity to make sure they can eat and have shelter.
People using LLMs to get a better return and get time back in the same way corporations do is desirable.
Also most of those stories on the back of food products are fables. Don't be fooled and take caution in the instinct to valorize work in a society that has always been trending towards automation.
Let them run rampant like a D line swarming the field. Once they have sacked the quarterback of the incumbent owner class they seek to replace, that is when we storm the field brother.
I hope my metaphor makes sense apologies I don't really watch or know much about American football. The point is LLMs are too disruptive a technology for the already unequal incumbent economy to survive. It could become even more unequal. Or we may all benefit from a well timed intervention into the economic disruption it will unleash. We should probably allow them to play on for now.
The game is not over my friend. We're not even at halftime.
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.
It may not be technically impressive at the nitty-gritty level, but I find his work much more aesthetically pleasing than I expected. The city looks real and like a pleasant place to live. It seems like urban planning went into it, not just architecture.
Agreed. It seems to have grown organically from a seed, which is the case for the most beautiful cities IRL. Usually planned developments are ugly. I don't think I've ever seen something like this, planned yet organic.
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.
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.
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 watched the scene and the more I think about it, the more I dislike it.
The quote is great and is a sobering view at how we live our lives. On that part I agree.
But Bob said right before that he won't be able to afford his mortgage nor the medical costs of his daughter's asthma and the movie somehow forgot to address that.
As inspirational as the speech may be, I doubt Bob went home and started applying to chef jobs afterwards. If anything, he's more likely to end up working the frier at KFC.
"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).
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.
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.
The surprising thing about Minecraft is it's less fun when you make building easier. My friends and I played on a survival mode server from middle school until college. Any of us could sit for hours building on that, but trying to do the same in creative mode would get boring after a few minutes.
Some people are fine with creative mode. The coach wanted a modern city, which is prohibitively difficult in survival mode because of how the ingame materials work. But in that case, it's not fun to use WorldEdit.
it's very interesting how devoid celebrity culture is of videogame references, it is now finally slowly shifting, but it still is surprising when you hear a celeb talking about games.
my favorite one in recent memory is discovering that singer The Weeknd is really into indie games. (play Arctic Eggs y'all)
The first time I realised gaming was actually happening everywhere and it was actually just that nobody was talking about it was when lady gaga was posting about playing Bayonetta.
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.
Dunno, once muscle memory kicks in, sorting the inventory, selecting recipes etc. all happens seamlessly without much though for me and my 6yo kid. I prefer playing on pc because of performance and visuals, but since most of minecraft gaming is done on the tv on a console, I'd say that after some playing one can become 90% as efficient as on pc (subjective ofc). Building blocks with mouse is more precise of course with a mouse nevertheless.
I assume Mike use the creative mode instead of survival mode. I tried survival mode and it feels too stressful for me. Even in creative mode, I struggled very much to build such elaborate landscapes a lot of folks can do. I’m wondering if this Minecraft is something you either love or hate it and nothing in between for you to learn?
What platform of Minecraft (console, pc, mobile) are you playing on?
I mean, PC is fine. I don't know what would be stressful in creative. Either you feel like creating something elaborate, in which case it's easy, or you don't, in which case what's the problem? There's no reason that you 'should' be motivated to make stuff like that.
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.
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.
> In order to work with other people you have to be socialized to some level of "is okay around other people".
Based on some of my personal experience and on informal interviews with folks I've known, the floor for that "some level" is so low that I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.
> UBI removes that.
To twist this a bit, one could say similar things about the move from community aid to aid you're legally entitled to receive -whether that's because you paid for it, or because it's welfare-. Making everyone dependent on community aid means that receiving aid is contingent on pleasing those who control access to that aid as well as those who directly provide that aid. Society might be -superficially- more polite if those who are consistently rude or angry, or were frequently too distressed or in pain to summon the energy to be polite were refused aid, but -IMO- we'd be way worse off in that society than one in which everyone is entitled to aid, regardless of their attitude. [0]
[0] Note carefully that I'm following your lead and specifically talking about attitude and sociability. "Gotchas" such as "Well, what if someone kills every aid giver who comes to give them aid. What then?" are out of scope... but the answer to that one is "Well, you imprison that someone for life and ensure that they can't harm any aid giver that comes to give them aid while they're in prison.".
Not everyone is good at coming up with a productive purpose on their own. A job lets those people adopt a purpose that gives their life some structure and meaning. Without it, people often waste away... all the people who die shortly after retirement, as an example. Add money into the mix, and that money can fund a drug habit as an escape for a lack of purpose. Drug overdoses spiked when the covid checks were sent out. Giving someone without purpose, and a drug habit, a bunch of free money can kill them.
I'm not opposed to the idea of UBI, I think we should at least set up the framework, so we can turn the dial up or down, depending on how things go with AI and robotics. The issues mentioned are some downsides I do think about and why I don't think it's as straightforward as "give everyone money and they'll start doing art."
I think universal healthcare alone would let a lot of people choose the job they want, instead of the job they feel they need.
I'm opposed to the idea of UBI entirely. I think we should take care of the poor and needy, but UBI, imo, isn't the way to get there. There are infinite jobs out there, the problem is paying for them. Go plant trees, build housing, teach children. If money happened that people could do whatever things and get paid for it, would be a better solution than free money from the sky for nothing.
I'd only really entertain the idea if these AI optimists are correct about AI and robots doing literally everything. I assume they are wrong, but having a system in place before it becomes a crisis seems wise. That's why I like the idea of being able to turn it up or down. Start with it way down, basically off (during this period, maybe the funds collected go toward shoring up social security). If things get bad, turn it up, and if the market starts to adjust and new types of jobs are created, turn it down again... so it can serve the purpose of bridging the crisis, rather than having congress issue checks randomly like we say 5 years ago.
To your point, how funds get distributed could be up for debate. Maybe instead of sending them to everyone, some kind of productive work that benefits society is required, and the fund would provide a way to get paid for work that normally pays little to nothing. The problem with this, is that the administration of such a program is expensive, error-prone, and full of bureaucracy, just like most other welfare programs. I'd like to think something like UBI would replace most of the other programs, to dramatically cut administration overhead for the countless programs that exist today.
Administration overhead is people having jobs and coworkers and interacting with other people. If the point is to give people jobs, why would we want to get rid of jobs?
All those jobs create the bureaucracy that makes it harder for people to get access, lead to fights over who "deserves" what, and may create more problems than they solve.
There’s always Universal Basic Capital (owning stuff that makes more stuff) and you turn it up or down by allocating or deallocating stuff to making more stuff that makes stuff.
You utterly missed the possibility that if everyone had their basic needs covered, people just might go out and plant trees, teach, and build housing with their free time. Because people already do all those things as volunteers. Imagine how much more it could happen it people did not have to go burn all their energy working, sometimes two jobs, just to get food and pay rent.
Interesting if you read normie comments on news sites, Facebook etc that grown man shouldn’t play video games and it’s embarrassing. We still have a long way to go.
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.
Another thing that’s so great about this nerdy hobby is back in 2007 when Tomlin was interviewing for head coaching jobs the miami dolphins referred to him as “too hip hop” to hire as head coach. . .
Tomlin is also notoriously great at the podium. He takes “ice in the veins” and “fire in the belly” and is always able to elevate that kind of coach speak and keep it fresh. He’s a tremendous coach.
when you watch the video he has some really cool design ideas about buildings, like the one with the aquarium in the middle all the way up the structure provides natural lighting and no one has ever attempted to build such cool features into a building.... very impressive
Oh, don't be discouraged! Weekly or so I post stuff that disappears instantly and then days or weeks later posted by someone else ascends to the top of the front page. Just shrug and keep on truckin'!
Honestly I don’t care at all about internet points on here or Reddit EXCEPT that if you get too low or lose a lot quickly you aren’t visible in comments anymore, you keep being told you are “posting too fast” etc.
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
He didn't even want to share it, his kid kind of forced him to.
This is the best part of it; kids are also why he started in the first place. And his son is present during the recording. He may have built this alone but sharing it is a family project.
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!
I find funny how I had the same reaction as you and many people here. My other thought was, wait didn’t he retire only last year? lol
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.
This is the way the Rooney family manages the Steelers. They stick with coaches for a long time. They've only had four coaches in the last 57 years!
I was kinda shocked when he was let go, to be honest.
> I was kinda shocked when he was let go, to be honest.
Uh, Mike Tomlin resigned / reitired from the Steelers after 18 seasons without ever having a losing season. He wasn't let go.
He left on purpose to take a year off. Everyone expects he will be a head coach somewhere next season if he wants to.
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.
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.
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.
There's a video of San Antonio Spurs players, including Tim Duncan and David Robinson, playing Starcraft 2v2 on the road during the 1999 NBA Finals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7WEJQfwniQ
oh man what a blast from the past that was... playing Starcraft on hotel beds with 90s laptops and trackball mice. amazing.
In my experience, many people who are athletic, or have practiced enough of a sport to be considered athletic, just crave competition.
I think it's just that people miss there's a major intellectual side to all sports, but it often gets masked by the fact that those who excel in sports often forsake or ignore their education education early on, so they sound ineloquent, and people, especially those outside of sports, assume that means they're stupid.
Mike Tyson is an extreme example. He dropped out of high school and probably never paid much of any attention for the schooling he did have. But listen to an interview with him, like on Rogan, and the man has a mind when you actually listen to what he's thinking/saying [1], as opposed to how he says it. And that's after decades of drugs and plenty of blows to the head.
Gymnasium was historically a place where you go not only for your physical but also your intellectual education, and I think the Greeks had it right. A strong mind needs a strong body, and vice versa.
[1] - https://youtu.be/hcPUoxTvw5g?t=1849
In my country we call the general middle school (the one that results in no specific professional qualification, i.e. a prep for university) a gymnasium. Physical education is only a small part of it, so it's interesting that we continue to name it thus and has the same origin as a gym.
This is changing, it's hard to find someone these days who thinks sports are just for brutish jocks.
At some point nerd culture became the dominant culture. Many people today are into one or more of video games, super hero media, or anime and manga.
Same!
(I had no idea who this guy was, as I am not from USA.)
As autistic person, I am not surprised. People hyperfocus on interests which scratch their itch (people with autism tend to be better at hyperfocus). A hyperfocus on gaming (specifically physical sports) fits in an autism profile, as does a hyperfocus on building a large (virtual) world. Keeping the build to yourself is akin to writing a book, not publishing it. In this case, the book is published.
If you will, he is manager/coach and player at the same time in Minecraft. Or, from a different PoV: IRL he is the coach, IVL he is the player (gamer).
Notice how his son did setup the A/V aspect of the recording, and how he is terrible with controller. PC gamer! I'm 40+ and would be terrible with either as well, CBA with it either.
Btw, I watched the video with my kids. They're aspiring Minecraft players, and enjoyed watching it -in awe- with me.
You might love this if you haven't seen it. Youtuber wanders into what he thought was an abandoned game and ends up having an amazing time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XjRNNkAKRM
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing this.
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.
This is shocking to me. My brother is a retired college football head coach. Two of his sons are acclaimed college football players. I've spent time with the head coaches of two teams currently ranked in the top 10 in the NCAA. I've been around the sport for decades and know how coaches' lives can be monopolized by the job. To see an NFL head coach doing something requiring this level of time commitment blows my mind. I guess it's a reminder that to reach the very top level of a sought after profession, you have to be a remarkable individual.
The only additional note I'd have to add is Tomlin was one of the NFL's rare "CEO" coaches - he doesn't call plays for either side of the ball, so he probably is ever so slightly less busy than a head coach who happens to do so.
I remember a clip of him from a few years ago where he talked about watching some 7v7 football league on YouTube in his free time.
Dude is 100% a football junkie regardless of his time in Minecraft; I bet he's one of those people who only needs like 5 hours of sleep a night and just is obsessive about anything he touches
I have a totally different read on this. I also play a bit of minecraft many days, and for maybe 15-30 minutes at a time. Mike Tomlin here was playing on creative -- no risk, no survival, just infinite blocks to curate his zen garden. This is the perfect way to wind down for 15-20 minutes after a tough day in a hotel room. Or where ever. What percentage of NFL coaches or players do the exact same thing except with a phone instead of a controller, do some doomscrolling for 15-30 minutes and move on? This feels like just a different flavor of the same type of retreat that many people do.
FWIW, college coaching is generally seen as a more time consuming job because of the recruiting aspect. Every hour they aren't in the office or on the field is spent on the phone with a recruit or visiting one.
Well now they can replace that part of the job with wheelbarrows full of cash!
Thanks for the link... I didn't watch the whole thing as I resonated when he said 'entertainment is for detaching from life'. After hearing that I got it. That really is the problem with a lot of the "AAA" "Art" being produced today.
It's really nice that this was also something he did with his kids. The fact that his kids are grown and stopped but when they came back for the holidays they wanted to see how the city is doing is iirc the way this got out. He was mostly doing it as a way he could connect with his kids.
It also says a lot about Minecraft which of course has been said before but it makes sense this would be the game you would play to connect with all of your kids as they grow up in a supportive way.
Minecraft is really an amazing example of emergence from simple primitives and the virtue of engineering that gets out of way and lets users do the building.
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.
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.
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.
Andy Reid is retiring when he gets his 303rd regular season win. At nearly the same time, Tomlin is going to find he once again has the zest for coaching.
That’s mostly luck.
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.
Actually, one of the biggest criticisms of him is that he overperformed with bad teams.
The NFL has a draft system where the worst team in the league gets the best pick in the next year's draft.
Tomlin dragging teams that should have won 2 or 3 games into the playoffs each year just to lose immediately meant that the Steelers never got any good draft picks and thus never improved the team year of year.
They were stuck in a purgatory of sorts.
I don’t think this criticism matches reality though. The Packers did not bottom out to get Aaron Rodgers; the Patriots did not bottom out to get Tom Brady. The Browns did bottom out to get Baker Mayfield; how’d that go?
In fact there are way more examples of bad teams crashing into high picks, and then continuing to crash, than dramatic turn-arounds into Super Bowl victories shortly thereafter.
Good teams and coaches go for the Super Bowl every year because it is impossible to predict when you’ll get there and win. That includes when you have (or don’t have) a great quarterback. You just have to try your hardest every year and hope.
And excellence is a habit, not a dial you can quickly turn from one side to the other over the summer. Most players have short careers and so a team needs them to get better every year in order to hope to peak as a team.
It seems to me like a lot of sports criticism is based in regretful retrospection. “Oh, if only they’d done this or that, they would have won.” But it’s impossible to know what would have happened. Injuries alone are unpredictable and hugely impactful from year to year.
It’s a natural thought, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to actually manage a team.
I think for most big NFL fans, they know that tanking can help, but nothing is stronger than team ownership and team culture.
The Browns are perpetually bad because their owners allow it.
Look at the Lions, new owner, completely new mentality.
> The Browns did bottom out to get Baker Mayfield; how’d that go?
Browns fan in. Baker had them legit good the COVID year - beat the Steelers in the playoffs, then lost to the Chiefs in large part to a hugely controversial call. Then Baker hurt his non-throwing shoulder trying to tackle someone on and interception that happened because the sprinter masquerading as a wide receiver (Anthony Schwartz) stopped his route. Then Jimmy Haslam, already famous for being a criminal and drafting Johnny Eightball when told to do so by a houseless person in downtown Cleveland told him to, made one of the worst trades in NFL history. Andrew Berry has had really good drafts the last two years which underscores your point.
Funny that Aaron Rodgers thought he would go #1 to his hometown 49ers who instead took Alex Smith. And that SF is killing it this year with Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy (further demonstrating your point).
I was also in Boston when Tom Brady happened; earlier that year I nearly physically ran into Drew Bledsoe. Just to keep things nerdy on HN, later that year I brought down the uni's network but it was not Harvard. Maybe I shouldn't have paid attention to sports so much
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.
Factorio is to me what Minecraft is to Mike Tomlin. I give it a full recommendation. Oh, is it autumn already?
... and life moved a bit further in those months. Experiences that could be had, meeting people that could have happened.
If its really relaxing to you, I rest my case. It wouldn't be to me, in same way no computer game or general computer activity ever could. Physical movement, ideally in the nature, the wilder the better. If you live too far reconsider permanently improving QoL by moving closer. Recharges batteries like nothing else.
There is still tomorrow to be more active, right, to catch up. But not with the same mindset that wasted today or yesterday.
I'm a somewhat ambitious climber (mostly indoor, however) and am in general very active. Factorio is an effective way to keep my brain busy as sometimes I get overwhelmed with my thoughts. But of course it is not the only thing that I enjoy and the remark about autumn was an exaggeration. I'm also very much against considering days "wasted". Sometimes I just need to take a day off and spend it at home, as long as there is a balance.
Beautifully put, better than I could have, why I don't touch games in general. They're amazing, but they make you feel like you're advancing, achieving, experiencing, when really you're not, you're barely doing anything than jumping into the future. But, as I understand you to mean as well, not everyone is like that, for some it feels to bring balance. In particular, if you're a coach, surely you have no shortage of human interaction, or being outside, doing sports, and networking. But it's not for me for sure.
That game is a time machine that only goes forward.
If only its duration control wasn't broken. Every time you use it, you land way too far in the future...
But the pleasurable sensation of seeing those numbers next to the up arrow!
> 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)
When did he last have a QB that wasn't ass? I assume the Brown's coaches weren't spending time in Minecraft over the same period.
>60+
Huh? Try 100+
The idea that successful people need to be obsessively dedicated that that one thing exclusive to everything else is unhealthy and I think a hustle culture trope.
If anything, I think successful people tend to have a range of pastimes and balanced activities in order to maintain perspective and not burnout.
I think both perspectives are right. Successful people tend to have a range of pastimes but there are episodes in their career lasting 1-2 years where they are maniacally focused on one thing.
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.
Let's not get too wistful here.
A lot of work is busywork and not enjoyable. LLM automation in the optimistic case (UBI) allows everyone the luxury of such effort and journey. For most people work is not "communication" it's a necessity to make sure they can eat and have shelter.
People using LLMs to get a better return and get time back in the same way corporations do is desirable.
Also most of those stories on the back of food products are fables. Don't be fooled and take caution in the instinct to valorize work in a society that has always been trending towards automation.
Instead of UBI LLMs are just funneling even more money directly to the holders of capital.
Let them run rampant like a D line swarming the field. Once they have sacked the quarterback of the incumbent owner class they seek to replace, that is when we storm the field brother.
I hope my metaphor makes sense apologies I don't really watch or know much about American football. The point is LLMs are too disruptive a technology for the already unequal incumbent economy to survive. It could become even more unequal. Or we may all benefit from a well timed intervention into the economic disruption it will unleash. We should probably allow them to play on for now.
The game is not over my friend. We're not even at halftime.
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.
It may not be technically impressive at the nitty-gritty level, but I find his work much more aesthetically pleasing than I expected. The city looks real and like a pleasant place to live. It seems like urban planning went into it, not just architecture.
Agreed. It seems to have grown organically from a seed, which is the case for the most beautiful cities IRL. Usually planned developments are ugly. I don't think I've ever seen something like this, planned yet organic.
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
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.
That 3-9 record is still 9 playoff appearances. Most coaches barely get one. It is just incredibly hard to win in the NFL.
He also won Super Bowl XLIII in 2009
Talent-wise some of those most recent teams had no business being in the playoffs if you just looked at the roster/stats.
I feel like his coaching leveled them up. It will be interesting to see if he writes any books about his process, etc.
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.
Obviously the correlation is there, but the causation could go either way, if it exists at all.
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 "
the responses are diabolical
With XCancel gone we'll never know.
Nothing of value is lost.
I doubt he wrote that himself, it's just engagement bait for the betting ad in the next tweet.
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
HN killjoy: AI will make better food than humans
Great scene! The math seems a bit different at a head coach's salary.
I watched the scene and the more I think about it, the more I dislike it.
The quote is great and is a sobering view at how we live our lives. On that part I agree.
But Bob said right before that he won't be able to afford his mortgage nor the medical costs of his daughter's asthma and the movie somehow forgot to address that.
As inspirational as the speech may be, I doubt Bob went home and started applying to chef jobs afterwards. If anything, he's more likely to end up working the frier at KFC.
"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).
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.
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.
The surprising thing about Minecraft is it's less fun when you make building easier. My friends and I played on a survival mode server from middle school until college. Any of us could sit for hours building on that, but trying to do the same in creative mode would get boring after a few minutes.
Some people are fine with creative mode. The coach wanted a modern city, which is prohibitively difficult in survival mode because of how the ingame materials work. But in that case, it's not fun to use WorldEdit.
it's very interesting how devoid celebrity culture is of videogame references, it is now finally slowly shifting, but it still is surprising when you hear a celeb talking about games.
my favorite one in recent memory is discovering that singer The Weeknd is really into indie games. (play Arctic Eggs y'all)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/video-games/202...
The first time I realised gaming was actually happening everywhere and it was actually just that nobody was talking about it was when lady gaga was posting about playing Bayonetta.
https://x.com/ladygaga/status/1058894361486753792
I was really impressed with what I saw. Not just the scale, but the designs, taste, and his level of enthusiasm about architecture and city layout.
Looking forward to his future walkthroughs.
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.
Correct. I've played a fair amount on the computer with a keyboard and mouse and hours can easily pass by.
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.
Dunno, once muscle memory kicks in, sorting the inventory, selecting recipes etc. all happens seamlessly without much though for me and my 6yo kid. I prefer playing on pc because of performance and visuals, but since most of minecraft gaming is done on the tv on a console, I'd say that after some playing one can become 90% as efficient as on pc (subjective ofc). Building blocks with mouse is more precise of course with a mouse nevertheless.
I assume Mike use the creative mode instead of survival mode. I tried survival mode and it feels too stressful for me. Even in creative mode, I struggled very much to build such elaborate landscapes a lot of folks can do. I’m wondering if this Minecraft is something you either love or hate it and nothing in between for you to learn?
What platform of Minecraft (console, pc, mobile) are you playing on?
I mean, PC is fine. I don't know what would be stressful in creative. Either you feel like creating something elaborate, in which case it's easy, or you don't, in which case what's the problem? There's no reason that you 'should' be motivated to make stuff like that.
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?
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.
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.
This is a nice argument for higher inheritance tax to pay for UBI, in my book.
> In order to work with other people you have to be socialized to some level of "is okay around other people".
Based on some of my personal experience and on informal interviews with folks I've known, the floor for that "some level" is so low that I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.
> UBI removes that.
To twist this a bit, one could say similar things about the move from community aid to aid you're legally entitled to receive -whether that's because you paid for it, or because it's welfare-. Making everyone dependent on community aid means that receiving aid is contingent on pleasing those who control access to that aid as well as those who directly provide that aid. Society might be -superficially- more polite if those who are consistently rude or angry, or were frequently too distressed or in pain to summon the energy to be polite were refused aid, but -IMO- we'd be way worse off in that society than one in which everyone is entitled to aid, regardless of their attitude. [0]
[0] Note carefully that I'm following your lead and specifically talking about attitude and sociability. "Gotchas" such as "Well, what if someone kills every aid giver who comes to give them aid. What then?" are out of scope... but the answer to that one is "Well, you imprison that someone for life and ensure that they can't harm any aid giver that comes to give them aid while they're in prison.".
Not everyone is good at coming up with a productive purpose on their own. A job lets those people adopt a purpose that gives their life some structure and meaning. Without it, people often waste away... all the people who die shortly after retirement, as an example. Add money into the mix, and that money can fund a drug habit as an escape for a lack of purpose. Drug overdoses spiked when the covid checks were sent out. Giving someone without purpose, and a drug habit, a bunch of free money can kill them.
I'm not opposed to the idea of UBI, I think we should at least set up the framework, so we can turn the dial up or down, depending on how things go with AI and robotics. The issues mentioned are some downsides I do think about and why I don't think it's as straightforward as "give everyone money and they'll start doing art."
I think universal healthcare alone would let a lot of people choose the job they want, instead of the job they feel they need.
I'm opposed to the idea of UBI entirely. I think we should take care of the poor and needy, but UBI, imo, isn't the way to get there. There are infinite jobs out there, the problem is paying for them. Go plant trees, build housing, teach children. If money happened that people could do whatever things and get paid for it, would be a better solution than free money from the sky for nothing.
I'd only really entertain the idea if these AI optimists are correct about AI and robots doing literally everything. I assume they are wrong, but having a system in place before it becomes a crisis seems wise. That's why I like the idea of being able to turn it up or down. Start with it way down, basically off (during this period, maybe the funds collected go toward shoring up social security). If things get bad, turn it up, and if the market starts to adjust and new types of jobs are created, turn it down again... so it can serve the purpose of bridging the crisis, rather than having congress issue checks randomly like we say 5 years ago.
To your point, how funds get distributed could be up for debate. Maybe instead of sending them to everyone, some kind of productive work that benefits society is required, and the fund would provide a way to get paid for work that normally pays little to nothing. The problem with this, is that the administration of such a program is expensive, error-prone, and full of bureaucracy, just like most other welfare programs. I'd like to think something like UBI would replace most of the other programs, to dramatically cut administration overhead for the countless programs that exist today.
Administration overhead is people having jobs and coworkers and interacting with other people. If the point is to give people jobs, why would we want to get rid of jobs?
All those jobs create the bureaucracy that makes it harder for people to get access, lead to fights over who "deserves" what, and may create more problems than they solve.
There’s always Universal Basic Capital (owning stuff that makes more stuff) and you turn it up or down by allocating or deallocating stuff to making more stuff that makes stuff.
You utterly missed the possibility that if everyone had their basic needs covered, people just might go out and plant trees, teach, and build housing with their free time. Because people already do all those things as volunteers. Imagine how much more it could happen it people did not have to go burn all their energy working, sometimes two jobs, just to get food and pay rent.
The standard is the standard
I can't wait till tomorrow night's Football Night in America, where his cohosts will genuflect in amazement at this.
Pittsburgh needs to hire him as an urban planning consultant.
> Mike Tomlin former NFL player and coach made a giant city in Minecraft 2 points by sans_souse 23 hours ago | past | discuss https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/oct/01/mike-tomlin-mi...
Pssh
Interesting if you read normie comments on news sites, Facebook etc that grown man shouldn’t play video games and it’s embarrassing. We still have a long way to go.
I think more people will turn to Mine Tomlin for inspiration on what it means to be a Real Grown Msn than some randos on Facebook.
Those “normie” comments are terminally-online idiots and engagement bots. I mean, it’s a waste of energy getting upset of that.
This is legitimately one of my favorite tech / video game / football stories of all time. Heartwarming, charming, cool, everything.
If I were a Steelers fan I'd probably be tearing my hair out, though.
I laughed at one of the player comments paraphrased “we were trying to win superbowls and coach was playing Minecraft”
I think it’s a great example of how healthy it can be to have an outlet/hobby that is unrelated to your profession
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.
Some of the tweets coming from Tomlin's kids about this have been very funny.
I seen this before, this is some dedication especially not revealing it until now. I played Minecraft before, I respect this grind.
Got to love the ai-pilled folks that say this could be generated in few minutes with latest models
That’s the thing with AI: it doesn’t lead to a good story. No one cares that you typed some prompts and made something generic.
I like how it's a modern city. Kinda hard to do in Minecraft because the blocks are more designed for old-fashioned settings.
And he did this all with an Xbox instead of a PC?? Wow.
Now he's gonna be replaced by AI
Another thing that’s so great about this nerdy hobby is back in 2007 when Tomlin was interviewing for head coaching jobs the miami dolphins referred to him as “too hip hop” to hire as head coach. . .
Tomlin is also notoriously great at the podium. He takes “ice in the veins” and “fire in the belly” and is always able to elevate that kind of coach speak and keep it fresh. He’s a tremendous coach.
I love this and thought I was being trolled when I noticed it trending.
when you watch the video he has some really cool design ideas about buildings, like the one with the aquarium in the middle all the way up the structure provides natural lighting and no one has ever attempted to build such cool features into a building.... very impressive
Amazing build and a reminder that adults need play just as much as kids do.
I never understand HN. I posted this 2 nights ago with little traction on the site. Now it’s posted by someone else and it takes off. Why bother.
Oh, don't be discouraged! Weekly or so I post stuff that disappears instantly and then days or weeks later posted by someone else ascends to the top of the front page. Just shrug and keep on truckin'!
Honestly I don’t care at all about internet points on here or Reddit EXCEPT that if you get too low or lose a lot quickly you aren’t visible in comments anymore, you keep being told you are “posting too fast” etc.
Appreciate your response though.
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.
As opposed to what?
Could this be something that AI can build superquick with agents?
Umm, yes. How’s that relevant?
What?
who fucking asked dog
As someone swimming in debt and on the verge of homelessness, I wish I could afford that life of complete luxury.
This news is typically interesting only because of who made it, not what, so I'm surprised to see pop it up here.
It's only of interest in baseball-invested USians, for the rest of us, no intellectual curiosity.
This is interesting to any sane person. What is the point of your comment?
What's the purpose of doing performative disinterest here?
Baseball?
Did you watch the full video?! I did and find it impressive and intellectual. The guy is really interested in architecture, city planning, and etc..