Masks Don't Work (At Hiding Your Identity)
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Let's start off with some good news for once. This week, the infamous North Carolina mask ban failed in the House. It even drew criticism from the bill's original author, Rep. John Torbett, who said he intends to ensure ordinary citizens can continue masking for health reasons. Worth noting: the original bill didn't remove the public health exception. That was added in the Senate after the original bill passed with broad bipartisan support. This development encourages us to fight back against these kinds of bans wherever they pop up.
We can stop them.
In fact, there's little evidence that any kind of medical mask does anything to conceal your identity. A report in Nature found that even sunglasses do a better job than a surgical mask or an N95 respirator. As the authors elaborate, "occlusion of the upper region of the face (including the eyes) impairs face identification, consistent with the notion that the eyes provide crucial diagnostic information for face identity processing.…