iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 27/10/2025

Talk to Me Human (my game) is done, out, released on Steam. I went unhinged with the bonus challenges in the second half to keep myself entertained. Spent so much time laughing hysterically in a room alone playtesting it you CANNOT convince Vincent he's in actual danger

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 16/09/2025

Your PhD advisor has at least five jobs. They’re probably really good at some and maybe bad at one or two. It surprised me how close (though abstract) the analogies are to traditional roles from industry. Except teacher, of course.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 03/09/2025

An emergent skill of mastering any craft—using software, cooking, even playing a game—is knowing what's actually important. An expert builds a precise workflow using a tiny fraction of the available control plane. At a deeper level, they know on which aspects to focus, and which to ignore.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 28/08/2025

Hello, last chance for 50% off Talk to Me Human! Early access ($4.99) — which includes the complete game — is ending. I’m releasing the full version soon on Steam and web, and the price will bump to $9.99.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 28/08/2025

My dream for Samin Nosrat's next book: Bitter Dank Umami Sweet. I have saved this stupid idea for literally years.

a fictional cover for a hypothetical book by Samin Nosrat called Bitter Dank Umami Sweet, similar in style to the cover of Salt Fat Acid Heat

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 10/06/2025

ye olde oversized spinning conical gradient

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 10/06/2025

unabashedly into my new 404 page

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 02/05/2025

I’m pleased to announce the release of Weatherspread, a web app for visualizing recent weather and tourism data! I built this app with friends Tristan and Shelby to aid in planning travel and events. Usually you plan things far enough out (say, 3-6 months) that there’s no reliable forecast.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 07/04/2025

works in footnotes too yes this is probably overall a bad idea

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 07/04/2025

Exciting to zero people but me, I randomly tried putting an image in a sidenote and it JUST WORKED if it hadn't I would have assumed no quantity of toil would have fixed it

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 31/03/2025

compare vs slop from the day before "Hit Indie ggame" :-(

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 31/03/2025

four gpt-4o redesigns of my game, in styles "beautiful" / "stylized" / "cell-shaded" / "cyberpunk." it's like having an amazing but stochastic concept artist. it makes the need for *art direction* so obvious — by allowing any style, what choices do you make to achieve a vision?

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 24/03/2025

Nerja (6/100) ft. Beach Gato

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 13/03/2025

The best paper-writing advice I ever got was: make the final sentence of each caption the takeaway. This Figure 1 is so information-dense the whole caption is the takeaway. Compare vs old caption which has side note (red) taking nearly 1/3 of extremely valuable space!

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 13/03/2025

Figure 1 must not only describe your work, but demonstrate its VALUE. It must make your contribution screamingly obvious. You will not believe how accidentally un-obvious you can make it. Accepted Figure 1 shows key dataset feature: perceptual distance affects description.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 12/03/2025

working on a post that's basically "how to get a paper accepted," using a case study one of my own that went from reject (2.5, 3, 3) to accept (4, 4.5, 4.5) with just one week of revisions

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 11/03/2025

Ahh, another day, another email from Google wanting to delete something I didn’t know existed

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 06/03/2025

don't make things actually work the next PhD metagame essay focuses on avoiding a bad (non-meta) strategy. here's what i mean: in fields like computer science, your research is temptingly adjacent to making a working, useful system.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 14/02/2025

PHD METAGAME - next essay out: "how to pick your phd school" (link below sorry) you gotta balance advisor match w/ school's prestige. what do you do? i don't know but boy I sure managed to write 1800 words about it

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 22/01/2025

props to the artist who made this sick glitch shader

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 21/01/2025

should you pick your phd school by advisor or prestige? cooking up a new post, one factor is tiiiiiiiime

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 20/01/2025

Place 4/100 is #Seville #Spain (travel recap) (new Spain thread) Immediately defeated (again) by Spain's Spanish. Years conjugating verbs went out my ears as I just tried to parse a single word. I eventually figured out one: "vale" ("OK").

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 19/01/2025

next PHD METAGAME entry live: "don't try to reform science" (link below) did you know there are two sciences? PhDs seem to attract a lot of smart, idealistic kids who are interested in doing Science 1 and don’t realize that they’ve signed up to do Science 2.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 18/01/2025

the swirling conversation (science 2) presides over the results tables (science 1). we dictate, but then we must obey

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 18/01/2025

there are two sciences / this one is the almighty results table (~'science 1') / new phd metagame essay dropping tomorrow

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 17/01/2025

Place 3/100 is #douro river valley #portugal. We booked spots in a small van tour. Our (British) guide made a NO POLITICS rule after a British couple onboard immediately inroduced themselves as pro-Brexit. Most of the day was learning about grape-eating villain bugs phylloxera.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 16/01/2025

The swirling mass of knowledge: "the insiders of your field are having a collective, evolving conversation about what they know and care about."

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 13/01/2025

Place 2/100 is #porto #portugal. It feels criminal to gloss over the heavenly pastéis de nata, shimmering Douro River, and (of course) the Velvety ports. But crammed among tourists for days, my favorite was escaping to the serene city park a bus ride west of the city center.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 09/01/2025

Place 1/100 is #lisbon #portugal. Started in black and white, I think because of the emotional strangeness of packing up and leaving behind lives for "adventure," then hitting the crushing normalcy of just being an annoying tourist in a city with ordinary life happening.

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 07/01/2025

Working on another essay animation

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 06/01/2025

Paper-as-currency illustration for upcoming little essay series called "The PhD Metagame." Made with Rive

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 20/12/2024

I created this multiplayer boat simulation in a 2 day hack/jam with my artist friend @spacefiller.bsky.social. There's not much game play right now per se, but it's been surprisingly soothing to boat around with friends in a big pool. Let us know if you have any ideas for features!!

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