Heads I win, tails you lose
By William Wetherall
3 December 2025
I needed information on Marie Duret, a 19th century English actress, who settled in America but also "played the empire" in South Africa and Australia. Among the websites that featured what little is known or conjectured about her life was Australian Dictionary of Biography -- An initiative of the National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University.
When I clicked the link, my screen filled with a pop-up window -- not a cookie consent notice or product promotion, but a piece of "Cultural Advice" -- with a huge "Hide Message" button at the bottom.
"Cultural Advice"? Did one of the bots that monitor my online activities conclude that I might be planning to visit Australia, and needed some cultural advice?
Japan is my home -- has been for half a century -- and I have no intentions of visiting Australia again. I spent 2 nights in Sydney on my Tokyo-Hong Kong-Sydney-Fiji-Honolulu-Tokyo honeymoon in 1971, and ate enough lamb for a lifetime. And over the years, an occasional Australian acquaintance in Japan, a journalist or disoriented Japanologist, has updated by impressions of life in the down under Commonwealth of Nations realm.
How a country can recognize the monarch of another country as its head of state, and still call itself a sovereign state, mystifies me. But then I live in a country, and in fact am a national of a country, that hosts and relies on many American military bases -- yet considers itself a sovereign state, and a parliamentary monarchy with an "Emperor" who is not, if that makes sense.
Anyways, I was about to click the "Hide Message" button -- half expecting to then see a "Show Message" button, as though I might want to go back and see what I missed -- when my eye caught the first word, and I was hooked.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website contains names, images, and voices of deceased persons."
That's not me. What did the bots that monitor my online activities take me for? I'm a native of San Francisco, who migrated to Japan via Grass Valley and Berkeley.
Even if I were an aboriginal Australian or whatever, why would I visit a biographical dictionary to find information on a 19th century actress who had no name, no image, no voice, and was still alive?
Half trigger warning, half land acknowledgement
As I kept reading, I realized the "Cultural Advice" was half trigger warning, half land acknowledgement, half travel alert, and half declaration that no matter how you flip my coin, heads-I-win, tails-you-lose. I know this adds up to two, but if you raise two to the zero power, which represents nonsense, you get one. In fact, anything (x) to the zero power (^0) is one. Remembering that may save your life someday.
What I'm being told is that, if I'm not an aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, I don't need to be aware that the website contains names, images, and voices of the dead. Or to be alerted that I might encounter language considered inappropriate today but not when the dead were living.
I'm also being told that, even if I might be upset or offended by some of the material on the website, it was going to be there -- whether I liked it or not -- so live with it.
It's only history.
Last revised 3 December 2025