YESTERDAY Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Federal Court, which among other things gets to decide whether politicians under investigation for alleged corruption may take seats in Congress, had to apologise to José Sarney, a former president of the country and the current president of its Senate. One day after Ronaldo, a Brazilian football legend, had announced his retirement from the sport, the court tweeted, “Listen up. Now that Ronaldo’s retired, when will Sarney decide it’s time to hang up his boots?”

The court quickly retracted the tweet, and begged Mr Sarney’s pardon for an opinion that “neither directly nor indirectly” reflected its thinking. The suspicion is that an official intending to send a personal tweet mistakenly logged on to the official account instead. Yet another reminder, if one were needed, of the dangers of overly hasty technology use.

And an excuse, too, to link to The Economist’s own thoughts on the matter, first published nearly two years ago. In a profile of Mr Sarney and his fiefdom in Brazil’s north-east, entitled “Where dinosaurs still roam”, we wrote: “José Sarney first ran for elected office over half a century ago. For the past 40 years he has controlled the fortunes of Maranhão, a state on the eastern fringe of Brazil’s Amazon region. He has represented it as federal deputy (twice), governor, and senator (twice). In 1985 he became the accidental, and undistinguished, president of Brazil when the man chosen for the job died before he could take it up. More recently he has been senator for the nearby and newly-created state of Amapá (twice). Time to retire, one might think.”

CORRECTION: Yet another reminder—since one clearly is needed—of the dangers of overly hasty technology use: the hasty tweet came from the Supreme Federal Court, not the Supreme Electoral Court, as we originally wrote. Sorry.