Mike Tomlin spent 12 years building a Minecraft city
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Interesting choice for his favorite rooftop 12m in!
He had one more year on his current contract when he decided to retire.
He was mostly known for being able to wrangle the more "unique" personalities of the NFL and for his answers during press conferences. Giving us such gems as "The standard is the standard", "and things of that nature", "We're still squirreling those nuts", "We do not live in our fears", etc.
“The strength of the team is the team” discussions about meaningful expectations and divisions of labor are all particularly useful at various times. “Remaining singularly focused” is often the only way you can accomplish some specific task, and “wanting volunteers, not hostages” is important for many relationships, professional and personal.
My favorite quotes have to be about uncertainty and fear. If you blink, cut your eyelids off.” and “taking the calculated risks associated with secure victory” are great. “Living in our hopes not in our fears” go through my head a lot.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The idea of any NFL head coach having time to do this, especially a winning one, is absurd.
Overall > 0.5 win rate each year: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/TomlMi0.htm
But after 2016, playoffs? Not so much.
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.
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 are perpetually bad because their owners allow it.
Look at the Lions, new owner, completely new mentality.
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
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.
Don't let the "gridset" bros lie to you: one can simultaneously have hobbies and leisure time while being productive and successful.
Huh? Try 100+
If anything, I think successful people tend to have a range of pastimes and balanced activities in order to maintain perspective and not burnout.
If you're unfamiliar with Minecraft, the build he's showcasing isn't actually advanced when it comes to building. Building in Minecraft is almost an art form, and many techniques have been developed over the years. This is because you have limited control over what you want to express: you are operating at a block granularity (more or less) and a limited number of block types that give blocks different textures.
A tech savvy teen could probably write a Java mod that generates something similar to what he's done, even prior to LLMs. An LLM could take a Google Streets feed of NY and replicate it in-game, etc.
And he wouldn't care! The thing he's made is his own, made under his own constraints, shaped by his own mind.
Perhaps a lesson of meaning in the LLM era?
LLM generated software seems to push every story to "I wrote some prompts and Claude spit this out". Perhaps that story if fatiguing repeated over and over again. And we're losing something.
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.
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.
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
but it is cool how mike’s minecraft story follows a familiar arc for anyone raising kids after 2009, and learning about his interests in architecture and urbanism.
I feel like his coaching leveled them up. It will be interesting to see if he writes any books about his process, etc.
https://x.com/LeVeonBell/status/2105491655142867280
For those without X, "we were tryna win super bowls and coach T was on minecraft building cities "
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
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.
Yeah, it is fun exploring dungeons with my kids. But it seems he clicked the city together? That part always bothered me with minecraft to build anything big, or repetitive.
Well, I love automation, and AI is awesome for that. So now my kids can add details to castles or railwails build by algorithm (But using commands is a big temptation to destroy game balance in survival mode).
I've built a couple replicas of IRL buildings in survival over the years, for an hour or two after work, and found it very relaxing. It did take a lot of repetitive clicking, but the result was (almost) always worth it. And all the things like planning, finding the right place on the map and gathering the materials building materials made it feel like an actual construction, which I enjoyed.
So yes, personal preference. For relaxation and repetive tasks I rather go away from the screen.
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 also more fun on a server with friends, where it can be more about hanging out and doing something together, rather than a solo creative exercise.
I found the controller very difficult when I tried it, and I'm one that generally opts for a console with nearly every other game.
As an employer, UBI and universal healthcare might slash payroll costs and eliminate most of the hiring process.
As a founder, UBI might remove the funding barrier to entry.
What's the downside, and who is it a downside for?
Of course the strawman's proponents will use it as an example of why we should write the whole idea off entirely, rather than test the validity of the concern and discuss options that provide some form of equity to a wider population.
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.".
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.
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.
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.
What platform of Minecraft (console, pc, mobile) are you playing on?
Looking forward to his future walkthroughs.
Pssh
If I were a Steelers fan I'd probably be tearing my hair out, though.
I think it’s a great example of how healthy it can be to have an outlet/hobby that is unrelated to your profession
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.
12 years... does he have 2 or more different backup locations?
consoles aren't the _most_ reliable devices... i'd feel awful if he lost all that because of a bad playstation update
Appreciate your response though.
It's only of interest in baseball-invested USians, for the rest of us, no intellectual curiosity.