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

Here’s the link. Try the free demo if you’re still undecided! "I've never played a game that had me dying laughing like that!" — real unsolicited feedback (!) talktomehuman.com

talktomehuman.com

Talk to Me Human

The talking your way out of it simulator

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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 · 26/08/2025

The most cursed word in talking about research is “interesting.” maxwellforbes.com/posts/intere... It means anything from "I don't understand" to "that's been done before" "this should be our focus for 6 months"

maxwellforbes.com

The PhD Metagame: The Cursed Word "Interesting" - Maxwell Forbes

People calling ideas "interesting" was perhaps the greatest challenge I regularly faced in communicating about research.

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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

There’s lots more we’d like to build, but we’re releasing it now to get feedback. It’s free and there’s no ads, so if you’re interested and would like to support us, there’s a box to give your email. In the future, we may consider a premium app version or an patreon-like support option.

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

We’ve also added tourism stats, and synced it to weather data. This has been particularly eye-opening. It lets us see when a country experiences over-tourism (e.g., Croatia and Austria) relative to its population.

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

So historical data is your best bet. We’ve observed that the last few years is a much better indicator of what the weather will be like than most data sources which aggregate from 1900 or even 1950.

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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 · 11/04/2025

complete blog post is now live! more tips, and reframed into 2-step process: (1) get accepted by page 1, (2) avoid rejection with the rest. download both PDFs too. maxwellforbes.com/posts/how-to...

maxwellforbes.com

The PhD Metagame: How to Get Your Paper Accepted: Page 1 Accepts, the Rest Avoids Reject - Maxwell Forbes

In 2019, I submitted a paper that was rejected with review scores 2.5, 3, 3. One week later, I resubmitted it with minor...

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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 · 20/03/2025

2025's 'The HTML Review' just dropped!! co-edited by friend and collaborator Shelby (shelby.cool). check it out for a dose of avant-garde web. congrats to MNC, Shelby, and the authors! (thehtml.review/04/)

shelby.cool

Shelby Wilson

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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 · 13/03/2025

"There are three parts to your paper: the title, figure 1, and everything else." (please help me attribute this quote if you know) If you give a paper 4 parts, add the abstract. If 5, add the intro visible on page 1. Everything else still 1 part. Importance is front-loaded. Page 1 = book cover.

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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

Shouting into the void is my hobby, so here’s my redesign: 1. here’s what Google Cloud Shell is 2. here’s how much data you have there 3. here’s an `ls` of your home directory 4. here is why your 2KB weighs heavy on our poor exabytes

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

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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

if you have a burning desire to make useful things, this adjacency will drive you mad. problem is, this gap that sits between your research and actually useful systems, while seemingly so narrow, actually holds hundreds of hours of "solved" (engineering) work that will stunt your research progress

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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 · 19/02/2025

Beautiful. It makes me want to make medieval 'the sims' :-)

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Max Forbes @maxwellforbes.com · 18/02/2025

Hell yeah! I’m thrilled if it helps organize your thinking even in a tiny way. I think the decision took years off of my life. I wish you luck.

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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 · 20/01/2025

Woah, great framing, and this makes me wonder how many of these I've stayed at (not just in Japan) because I lacked the ability to judge

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