The US Postal Service delivered my hat mask today! Check out the Sly Stallone in Rocky vibe:

Very stylish, no? It so happens that the one I got is a little small, but still wearable. It only comes in one size, however, so I might have to try a different brand if I want to get a larger one.

This is close to perfect. It’s comfortable; I can breathe just fine with it on; people can see through it; and it’s simple to clean since the mask attaches to the hat via velcro. It covers my head fully except for the bottom, and if you can get into the habit of lowering your head a few inches when you feel a cough or sneeze coming on, it almost literally prevents any droplets from escaping in any direction. And unlike a cloth mask, it most likely helps protect me as well as protecting others from me.

Is there some downside to this? If so, I’d like to hear what it is. There are outlets that sell this kind of thing in a variety of hat styles, so you can even pick multiple hats for different occasions.

UPDATE: I just took my evening walk and the hat/mask worked fine. If you breathe through your mouth it will fog up the face shield briefly, but that’s about it. And in hot weather I suspect it would get pretty warm behind the shield. I’ll check that out this weekend, when temps are supposed to be in the 80s around here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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