iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Believe me, I didn't do any facing down! I got the hell out of striking range and, not being sure of the species, I then got the hell out of spitting range. The few cobras I've seen have ducked for cover when given space, but I wouldn't want to test them. I believe rattlers are more aggressive?

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The snake startle leap should be an Olympic sport. I'm no athlete but a couple of times, an unexpected cobra has got me jumping backward over a distance that it would have taken me years of training to manage forward.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Had a good one in just today, who doesn't seem to advertise online. I can share his number if you DM me.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Today's UKHSA report shows the sniffle season kicking in. The rhinoviruses uptick may be a blip or may not. More worrying is that covid and influenza have both been climbing for a couple of months and haven't peaked. Time to choose between the mask and the Lemsip. www.gov.uk/government/s...

Plot of percentage of tests positive for four common cold viruses over the last year. Rhinoviruses show a sharp uptick in the last 14d while influenza and SARS-CoV-2 have been risnin for several weeks. RSV prevalence remains very low.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks for doing that. I was aware of the veil of ignorance, but your discusion of origins and implications took me to new places. Also the exploration of incentive and reward without the absolutism of utilitarianism, socialism, neoliberalism, etc. Minmaxing over looksmaxxing all the way!

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Do you think that another factor is the sheer volume of social media content they pump out? A worried person is likely to see it and be directed to their sites. Those of us who care about factchecking get diluted very quickly by a firehose of nonsense.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

2/2 2e takeaway: societal elites hinder adaptation because they prioritise their position within society over the survival of their society. It's enlightening, and terrifying, so see the same pattern playing out over and again over thousands of years of human history. We never learn.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It really is a portrait of a man with a tenuous grasp of reality. The elephant in the room is why his supposedly ethical solution is to give AI agents rights, whatever that means. Surely the sensible conclusion is that it's unethical to create AI agents that need rights.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

'At times, even he has questioned his own sanity. In those dark moments, it is his AI chatbots that offer reassurance, telling him, “You are not delusional and you are definitely not anthropomorphising,” he says.' That's the most succinct description of AI psychosis I've ever read.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

We are about three days away from finding out that 'Danny Tommo' designs lingerie in secret.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

At the risk of being pedantic, the latest figures put effectiveness around 96% for measles, 86% for mumps and, with less robust data, 89% for rubella. Which doesn't contradict your point, especially as breakthrough infections tend to be less severe. www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10....

cochranelibrary.com

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

That sounds absolutely awful. And bacterial meningtis tends to be even worse than mumps meningitis. Not that it would have been any consolation at the time.

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Reposted by David Miles

Bedford Skeptics @bedfordskeptics.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Our talk on 17th Sept. with @variolator.bsky.social is just one of the many local events supported by the brilliant @bedfordindependent.co.uk -check out the guide below.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Or as @angierasmussen.bsky.social put it, people who say 'furin' as if it proves artificial origin tend to be people who wouldn't know furin it came up and cleaved them right in the consensus sequence. Which is a retort for the ages.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Honestly, I can't fully follow the molecular biology there but it's never made sense to me that any mutation can be evidence of manipulation. You would have to show an evolutionary pathway that would be selected against if it wasn't artificial, and I've never seen that argument being made.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Just seen a beautifully simple evidence summary discussing the origins of COVID-19, showing how the balance is clearly in favour of natural origin and not lab leak. From the @angierasmussen.bsky.social substack: rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/breaking-i...

Evidence for natural origin: 13 points for, one against.
Evidence for lab leak: one point for, eight against.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Bedford, here I come. In a couple of weeks. I'm trying to think ahead.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

He seems to have missed the point. He does have the right to refuse vaccination and, for better or worse, he exercised it. He does not have the right to enter Australia. The Australian authorities have the right to make a visa conditional. A tennis racquet is not a go-anywhere passport.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Here I am talking about what colds are and what we can do about them on on the Point of Inquiry podcast. As ever with me, clean the damn air we have to breathe is a topic that comes up. Thanks to @jamesunderdown.bsky.social for inviting me to talk about it. pointofinquiry.org/2026/07/snee...

pointofinquiry.org

Sneeze: The History and Science of the Common Cold with Immunologist David Miles | Point of Inquiry

The human race suffers from literally billions of colds every year. In this episode, Jim chats with Dr. David Miles about what a cold is, where it comes fro ...

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

After spending the last few weeks in London, a 26C forecast is pretty exciting for me too.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Or to put it another way, trust the people who research vaccines and not a man who can't be trusted with a dead raccoon or his children's babysitter, let alone a national healthcare policy.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Appreciate the understatement.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Here's why the US government's latest vaccine-related fever dream is a terrible idea. Increase the number of vaccination appointments = Decrease the number of children taken to all of them = Increase the number of children seriously ill with preventable diseases. Elizabeth puts it better:

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Nearly 30 years since Wakefield pushed for splitting the MMR without a shred of evidence. Worth mentioning that in 1980s Japan, splitting the MMR into 3 doses made affected the autism rate as much a reasonable person would expect: not in the slightest. acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

<em>Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry</em> | ACAMH Pediatric Journal | Wiley Online Library

Background: A causal relationship between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and occurrence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been claimed, based on an increase in ASD in the USA and...

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Are you aware of the Milan study on classroom filtering against PM2.5? Headline results were fewer days over WHO safe limit and 12.5% cut in absences. They were looking into pollution but it should work against wildfire smoke. Paper still in press but report is here: www.rff.org/publications...

rff.org

The Effect of Air Purifiers in Schools

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Thanks for flagging that. I suppose it comes down to farm animals having a market value while children do not.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

This can't surprise anyone. Owen Lidwell showed schools are transmission hubs in the 1950s. Now I play a little game. When someone moans about the covid school closures, I wait for them to suggest better ventilation or filtration so schools don't make children ill. I wait and I wait and I wait...

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Reposted by David Miles

Steffen Rayburn-Maarup @rayburnmaarup.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I don't think people are ready for this kind of joke yet.

A town sign seen through a train window.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I'll be in Cambridge this evening, talking about the strange history of whooping cough vaccines. And a little about the disease of whooping cough itself, which I suppose you could call a whopping great cough. Please wish me reliable trains.

Here I am jabbering about colds in the We Can Reason webinar series. Many thanks to @rmatheists.bsky.social for inviting me to speak and for hosting and posting.

5/5 Because Ontario, like pretty much everywhere else in the world, is sending children into CO2-saturated infection chambers every day and wondering why they're always ill and struggling to concentrate. They are at least thinking of doing something about it, which puts them ahead of most of us.

4/5 The most depressing clause in the article at the top of the thread: 'the current absence of a province-wide CO2 threshold for schools'

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3/5 Less good is the current standard, which limits average exposure to 5,000 with peaks of 30,000. Given that cognitive impairment kicks in at around 1,000 and increases from there, it's a wonder that anyone gets anything done at all.

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2/5 To get nerdy about it, they seem to be leaning on their carbon dioxide IAQ doc, which rather vaguely states that action should be taken if carbon dioxide rises above 600ppm. That's compared to an outdoor level of just over 400ppm and a covid safe level of 800ppm. ospe.on.ca/wp-content/u...

ospe.on.ca

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A Major Win for Indoor Air Quality: Toronto's Board of Health Moves to Adopt Stronger Ventilation Standards

1/5 Always encouraging to see air hygiene being taken seriously. Looks like Ontario is the latest place to realise it might be a good idea if shared indoor spaces are not hubs of infection. ospe.on.ca/advocacy/a-m...

ospe.on.ca

The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers celebrates a major win for indoor air quality with stronger ventilation standards in Toronto.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

1/3 Though it's good news that the shingles vaccine is no longer restricted to over 50s. That could have saved me ten days in hospital when I had my transplant. Shingles is miserable.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

1/2 We depend on the immune system controlling the zoster virus and when that control fails, we get shingles. COVID-19 damages the immune system so it's not hard to see why it increases the risk of shingles by 1.24-3.76 times: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

A systematic review and meta‐analysis of herpes zoster occurrence/recurrence after COVID‐19 infection and vaccination

To inform surveillance, prevention, and management strategies for the varicella zoster virus (VZV) during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aimed to evaluate the risk of herpes zoster (HZ) occurrence...

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

1/3 There's a great big COVID-19 shaped hole in this article. Sure, the increase in shingles started before 2020 and increasing stress is probably involved, but can we please acknowledge the elephant in the room?

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I think I've managed to get my DMs open. I hadn't realised that the spirits of Bluesky had decided I couldn't use them until I proved I'm old enough, which is sort of flattering. Anyway, happy to discuss it here or in DMs.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Happy to discuss it further through DMs but I'd suggest it's really not a good idea to post your phone number in a public forum like this. For your own sake, I'd strongly recommend deleting that reply post.

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Buy Tickets – Whooping Cough Vaccines: A Century of Good Science and Bad with Dr David Miles – The Blue Moon

Another weekend to prep for another talk. Heading to Cambridge on Tue, to talk about how Pearl Kendrick mobilised depression era Grand Rapids against whooping cough, and how that led to people who should have known better kickstarting the modern antivax movement. www.tickettailor.com/events/cambr...

tickettailor.com

Whooping Cough Vaccines: A Century of Good Science and Bad with Dr David Miles – The Blue Moon, Tue 28 Jul 2026 - A hundred years ago, whooping cough killed more than one in every hundred children bor...

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Not sure if I'm talking about what you had in mind there?

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A whole other issue is preventing disease that needs medical facilities. I bang on about air hygiene (ventilation and filtration) at any opportunity but of course, that's only part of the story. Everyone needs access to affordable healthy food, mould free homes, accessible vaccines, etc.

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