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.

I was interviewed for this piece in New_ Public about the indie web by Alexandra Ciufudean! newpublic.substack.com/p/the-handma...

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.

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.

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

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"

unabashedly into my new 404 page

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.

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...

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

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?

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/)

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

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

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.

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

props to the artist who made this sick glitch shader

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

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").

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.

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

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

Hello PhD students, want to discuss strategies for the unwritten rules of academia? Published the first essay in a series covering the PhD metagame: 'Your Paper is an Ad' maxwellforbes.com/posts/your-p...

I recently spent a couple years wandering the globe with my partner. I thought it'd be fun to share just one photo each from 100 places we visited.

Working on another essay animation

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

My free demo is out! talktomehuman.com/demo (Play online, no login.) Talk out loud to play, test your skills of social persuasion, and NPCs talk back. Give it a shot if you haven’t played Talk to Me Human yet. I’d love to get your feedback!

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!!

The cozy web is alive and slow. I just posted my final monthly digest of the year https://maxwellforbes.com/blog/december-2024-monthly-digest/ My website is a forever ode to owning your stack, gardening your content, and endlessly fighting CSS (it always wins)

Hello, world