April Fools: Optical Equity Initiative

For April Fools Day 2025, Off on a Tangent was a little blurry. Here’s why:

I’m pleased to announce that Off on a Tangent will be participating in an important new program: the Optical Equity Initiative.

About sixty percent of Americans are forced to wear glasses or contacts. This is a troubling example of deeply ingrained ideas of optonormity. By medicalizing people with nearer or farther focus points as “myopic” and “hypermetropic,” and people with other special eye abilities as “astigmatic” or “presbyopic,” we reinforce these damaging attitudes.

It’s critical that we begin to address these inequities. Effective immediately, Off on a Tangent will be presented with an optical offset. All viewers—cis-focus or not—will have a similar experience. If you wish, you can adjust your virtual glasses using the buttons at the bottom of the screen.

You can see how it looked here.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.