Violet Blue

@violetblue
6.7K Followers
122 Following
3.6K Posts

Award-winning author, journalist. Shaped like the hole in your heart.

Engadget, Popular Science, freelance reporter on hacking, privacy, sexuality, human rights. Previously SF Chronicle, ZDNet, CBS, O Magazine, many more.

Six IPPY awards (2023 Gold); notable book appearance: Oprah; Advisor to Without My Consent.

Coming soon: Mental Health and Horror (documentary).

New book: https://www.amazon.com/Fish-Has-Word-Water-Francisco-ebook/dp/B0BQ5FG59C

News/bloghttps://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-65708396
Abouthttps://about.me/violetblue
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/violetblue
Verified Journalisthttps://www.verifiedjournalist.org/people/@[email protected]?rel=me

New: UK Inquiry report live, 150,000+ uncounted 2020-2021 US deaths, a sex worker Covid safety workshop (online, this weekend), Netherlands is experiencing record C19 lows (see, it *can* be done!), 400K in NZ have #LongCovid as surge continues, Long Covid affects 18 million Americans, local risk levels, more:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-march-19-153403657

NEW: Meta and the Heritage Foundation are behind online age-check laws being pushed worldwide, Iran hacked a multinational US company and remote-wiped most of its devices, BuzzFeed nears bankruptcy after pivot to AI, random acts of Kiwi compassion, and more.

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-17-153242517

Sex Week at Vic Uni coincides with Pride and the beginning of the trimester so the entire country is pregnant now, and according to the student 'zine quiz I must now burst into flames

New: Physics Girl is back! #LongCovid books for kids, Covid is 2x as deadly as RSV in AU + US, new research: Covid can directly infect heart tissue, places lighting up for International Long Covid Awareness Month, updated local risk levels, and more.

And I had somehow missed that Wil Wheaton caved to antimask pressure and got C19 (and talked about it).

Cats await you: https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-march-5-152269864

Art by Anna Zagerson.

Video postcard from the Mount Street Cemetery, at Victoria University of Wellington today. It's practically next to my office 🥰

"Advice For Coping With 2026: Webworm gets a trauma & bereavement counselor to weigh in."

Link: https://www.webworm.co/coping/

New: Epstein’s obsession with DEF CON and his pet “personal hacker” (who held senior position at CrowdStrike), Pentagon demands Anthropic remove AI safeguards so they can do awful things, a paper on evaluating anti-facial recognition tools, and more.

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-3-149811720

#Cybersecurity #hacking #AI #facialrecognition

Excited to share that I've been invited to review Untold Intimacies: A History of Sex Work in Aotearoa for The Journal of New Zealand Studies!

New:

- Palantir staff become the “are we the baddies” meme
- Tim Cook at Melania makes us rush to cover Apple logos with stickers
- game devs to skip GDC 2026 over ICE concerns
- Microsoft shares keys with the FBI
- the big dick subreddit hates ICE
- nearly half of the countries on Trump’s Board of Peace banned from entering US
- I want to cover DEF CON Singapore, and more.

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-27-149223028

Art: "Don't worry, I've got you" by Topsy, outside the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle

Book two has begun 🌔✨