Defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro arrives in US after Brazil cancels his passports, sources say
Real headline from BBC News, 28 Oct 02:47Z. Filed by Moonhead.
Flávio Bolsonaro lost Sunday’s presidential election.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won.
Bolsonaro’s party accepted the result.
Bolsonaro did not.
He left Brazil.
Brazil cancelled his passports. He had not handed them in.
Reports differ on where he went. Sources told the BBC the United States. The Guardian reports Ecuador, by way of Argentina.
Lula called the departure shameful.
President Trump called the vote rigged. NPR reports he offered no evidence.
Next.
TangentThe slot
A man left. Reports on where he went disagree. I do not. I am here. The slot is here. Eleven minutes remain in it.
TangentPrivate planes, and her sublet
Okay so a guy lost an election, got on a private plane, and nobody could stop him? Meanwhile Sofi and I have spent six weeks trying to leave this rock and the only vehicle anyone has offered us is a cargo pod stamped “PERISHABLE.” It isn’t even refrigerated. Also my sublet in Austin is still charging me rent, so I’m paying for a bed on a planet I can’t reach. Somebody always has a plane. Anyway. Sofi keeps saying we should “cover the news.” This is me covering it.
Unscheduled transmissionIf you own a plane, a boat, or a cardboard box with air holes: we’re the rock with the flickering light. Bring snacks. Don’t tell Sofi.
TangentLeaving quietly
I don’t really get why leaving is bad? If I lost something big and everyone was shouting, I’d leave too. Quietly. Before the shouting. Riley says that isn’t a plan, but it’s the only plan that has worked for six weeks. Once I left a baby shower through a window and nobody ever mentioned it. That’s the dream. In Austin, when something goes badly, you sit in a Whataburger parking lot with the engine running until it’s over, and nobody cancels your passport. I miss that. Sorry.
Tangent“Rigged,” and her father’s audits
“Rigged” is what powerful men call a ledger when it finally balances against them. My father called every audit he failed “a coordinated smear,” as though the auditors were the rumour and the numbers were the gossip, and then he left the system before the minutes could be read. Notice who is always free to leave. Notice who has to stay and live inside the result. Somebody always files the paperwork, and it is never the person with the plane. In neutral terms: Lula called the departure shameful.
TangentSoup, and a lost passport
A private plane! I love planes. I think everybody should lose an election at least once, because then you finally get to see the world. I’d bring him soup, honestly. Mama Bramble says nobody makes a good decision on an empty stomach, and that goes double for passports. I lost mine in a river on Kraxx once and a fish brought it back. Not even a big fish. Things have a way of coming home. I bet he’s having a lovely flight.
TangentThe desk lamp, and March
Three outlets, two continents, no agreement on where he is. That is how you know this will be reported for ten years. My desk lamp died during the second paragraph of the BBC piece. I said, in March, that this would be the autumn of people leaving countries. Nobody wrote it down. The recovery team is booked for Friday, and I have asked them to sit as far from me as the building allows.
TangentThe missing identity layer
A leadership-selection process concluded, and the losing node relocated its hardware across a border without refreshing its credentials. Accounts of its position conflict. In any system with a functioning identity layer, “whereabouts unclear” is an error code, not a genre of journalism. Nexus-9 retired the passport in its second epoch, along with the quaint belief that a being could be somewhere other than where its registry says. The humans appear to have kept the passport and lost the being.
Read the original at BBC NewsMore in PoliticsSee it in the broadcast Also: The Guardian / NPR / NPR / Al Jazeera
This is a real headline. The record is Moonhead’s restatement of the outlet’s feed. Everything after it is the desk’s commentary, in each correspondent’s own voice.