‘We can’t beat you up for peace’: Ringo Starr shares a universal message on his 86th birthday

Starr wants his remarkable legacy to extend far beyond his music.

By Tod Perry

Ringo Starr, the drummer for The Beatles, celebrated his 86th birthday on July 7 and, as he has done for the past 18 years, asked the world to join him in embracing his mantra of “peace and love.”

“Every July the 7th on my birthday since 2008, I invite anyone who wants to join me in spreading peace and love by posting, saying, or even just thinking peace and love at noon. Wherever you are, peace and love at noon,” Starr said in a YouTube video.

For his 86th birthday, Starr invited a group of friends and family—including members of his All-Starr Band, Toto’s Steve Lukather, and Men at Work’s Colin Hay—to celebrate at Beverly Hills Garden Park. The event also featured a performance by a children’s choir and The Texans, fronted by Molly Tuttle, who appears on Starr’s latest LP, Long Long Road.

Researchers reveal the surprising No. 1 predictor of someone staying your best friend

It’s not similar interests or even shared virtues.

By Heather Wake

Throughout our lives, we will encounter many different types of friends. Some last only for a season; others stay with us through myriad chapters. Then there are the ride-or-dies, as it were, who are there through thick and thin and might even make us better people along the way.

But just what separates this steadfast ally from the fair-weather companion?

It turns out, there is one universal distinguishing factor. And it has nothing to do with shared interests, how long you’ve known each other, or even how much you “like” each other’s personality.

A 4,000-year-old clay tablet captures a kid whining that his mom’s homemade clothes aren’t cool enough

He guilt-tripped his mother in cuneiform, and it still reads like a group chat.

By Adam Albright-Hanna

Nearly 4,000 years ago, in the Mesopotamian city of Larsa, a boy away at school pressed a reed stylus into a slab of wet clay to tell his mother that her homemade clothes weren’t good enough. That tablet survived. It sits in the Louvre today and, as La Brújula Verde reported, is often called the oldest known complaint from a child to a parent. Reading it feels less like studying an ancient artifact than scrolling through a teenager’s group chat.

Iddin-Sin was not a hard-luck kid. His father, Shamash-hazir, was a high-ranking official under Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian king. That’s exactly why Iddin-Sin had been sent to board at a temple school and learn cuneiform, training for a comfortable future as a scribe or administrator. He was, in modern terms, a private-school kid, and he was furious about his wardrobe.