Duckbill Masks Are Great

February 6th, 2023
bio, covid-19, masks
With covid I've tried a lot of different n95 masks, and I like the "pouch"-style masks best. By a lot! They're much easier to breathe through then anything else I've tried, probably because they have so much surface area. Because your mouth is in a large pocket, there's plenty of room for talking, and even singing. And they also get a good seal without being too squeezy on my face or head.

While I see more people wearing them over time, they are still relatively unusual. I expect some of this is different masks, being a good fit for people with different shaped heads and different preferences, but I think the main problem is that they make you look a bit like a duck:

Anna had covid but I didn't know it yet. I didn't get it, which I credit in part to this mask.

If I'm going to look anatine, however, I want to be intentional about it. No one seems to make these in yellow but I wish they would: I'd pay an extra $0.10/mask for some color:

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

I have a baby

I am pleased to announce the existence of the newest and smallest effective altruist, Seretse Benjamin Brennan.

via Thing of Things November 2, 2026

“We should be more ambitious with the software we build”

Since early this year, Michael Malis (of pgrust) has been showing me interesting things he's done and saying [W]e should be more ambitious1 with the software we build There is, understandably, a lot of skepticism about projects like pgrust because there…

via Posts on October 24, 2026

Was the HuggingFace hacking incident scheming?

In July 2026, internal OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace (HF) in order to figure out how their evaluation grader works. This involved a thousand agents coordinating on an improvised message board to carry out an elaborate sequence of exploits. A later grou…

via Victoria Krakovna October 18, 2026

more     (via openring)