Longplay not the Coldplay; You get 1.1 Billion views, now what?; NGO reports on trafficking at southern border
3 Things this week and an award-winning poem from my recent contest
Happy weekend. Hope you’re loving life this July.
Here's this week's link round up and the third prize poem from my recent poetry contest.
Longplay, not the Coldpay
By now, you’ve probably seen the viral video that took over the internet, drowning out big news like wars, budget deficits and surplus, tariffs, at least for a moment.
The Coldplay kisscam scandal is the video that won’t go away, in which a secret affair between the CEO of the never-before-heard of AI company, Astronomer, was love-hugging the head of the company's HR. The man and woman are married, but not to each other. The sweet moment between the couple turned into a moment of shame as they realized their secret tryst was caught live in the concert.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin saw them on the jumbotron and jokingly commented that they were either having an affair or just shy, based on their reaction, which said it all. The moment launched a thousand online stories and a million response videos, like this one, which is too funny to not share:
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The terrible, home-wrecking moment is a shocking reminder of how faithlessness is easy and destroys in mere moments what is built over a lifetime. Faithfulness (maybe) may not be as easy, but is long-lasting and endures.
Your tweet gets 1.1 B views, what do you do next?
Look at those numbers! Over the last few weeks a post that the account Moon Dragon dropped on X has hit over 1 BILLION views. It’s a nice, winsome counterpoint to the salacious content so often seen online.
Can you imagine dropping a note like this and having that much engagement! The thread that follows shows just how disruptive it was to her life.
It was fun to see how big global brands jumped in and participated and shared stories.
I jumped into the fun and shared some of my own lore:
What about you? What’s a piece of lore about yourself?
NGO reports on trafficking at southern border
This report about trafficking on the southern border of the US that came out of a Congressional hearing, reported this week, was shocking. I heard it on Megyn Kelley’s AM Update.
Testimony by Ali Hopper of Guard Against Trafficking to the House Committee on Homeland Security revealed that hundreds of thousands of children from different parts of the world remain missing in the US. These children were routinely kidnapped and funneled into the US for profit. It’s an under-reported horror story.
Cartels hijacked the unaccompanied child migrant system creating a lucrative trafficking pipeline.
Hopper testified:
I have held a six-year-old Colombian child in my arms cold, dirty, and shaking left to die at the border by the cartel…. Hundreds of thousands of children remain unaccounted for as the U.S taxpayer dollars fueled a system hijacked by criminal networks…..Cartel's infiltrated NGOs along those smuggling routes, turning humanitarian Pathways into trafficking pipelines.
I know many of you started to read my work as a result of connecting to my play or our UnveilTV film She Has A Name that I wrote after learning about a trafficking incident on the border of Thailand.
This testimony is a startling, shocking reminder of how prevalent human trafficking is, how close it is to home, and how vigilant and enduring the fight against it must be.
The Third Place Poem from the First Ever TIWD Poetry Contest
Where time unravels
I sit beside your hospital bed,
waiting for a cosmic sign.
Dread, my only company,
a specter with your full-moon eyes.
He towers over buildings,
like shadowed cathedrals,
a hoarder of the secrets
guarded by skies above.
I braid tendrils and flowers
into the web of his teachings—
four-leaf clover, mystical lover,
murmuring spells
like a witchling in the dark.
Still, I sit,
in tender agony,
the limbo where apathy
and lost hopes congregate.
Your mirage aches
like a splintered bone,
a barrage of memory
and conjured stones
in the still space of early grief.
If only I could unravel
the coiled fibers of Time—
cinder to ember, road to gravel—
I would wrap weathered hands
in a blanket of undying stars
and whisper through the onyx rift:
“Life is an unrivaled gift,
Love endures through thick and thin.
Pain floods and ebbs like sea-bound tides,
Deathless as the ocean’s hymn.”
And though he stands at the door,
lingering, patient as the shore,
beacons trickle down the wooden frame,
bathing the room in daybreak gold.
So I weave lush gardens from clay
and vow to your moonlit visage,
afloat with doves in drifting white,
to lift you higher than spires,
mightier than jeweled streams,
and light the shadowed corners
with vibrant fires.
I sit in the wake of the steady flow,
and let the haunts fall into quiet,
my heart caught in my sore throat.About Veronica Sorgi
Veronica Sorgi is a writer and poet based in Brazil. Writing has been her lifelong outlet, a way to process emotion and explore the world through language. From notebooks filled with early drafts to collections of songs, stories, and poems, her creative journey has taken many forms. Poetry, however, remains her deepest passion and most resonant form of expression. Follow her on Medium.