The bird heard 'round the world: A seagull looks up at another while standing on the chimney on top of the Sistine Chapel, during the second day of voting for the election of a new pope at the Vatican March 13, 2013.
New Media Triumph: A landmark historical event drew the attention of thousands yesterday — the Veronica Mars movie! While you were waiting for white smoke, Mars fans, or, as Kristen Bell calls them, Marshmallows, were frantically refreshing Kickstarter and setting records. Here’s how they raised more than $2 million in a matter of hours. (Forbes)
A Case of the Benjamins: This guy paid $10,000 for a brief speaking role in the Veronica Mars movie, and he’s not even a huge fan. He just has a lot of money and a love of making dreams come true. (Entertainment Weekly)
Old Media Triumph: Sure, it was the first Pope selection we could tweet about en masse, but the announcement of Pope Francis was classic suspense: no Nate Silver, no exit polls, just sitting and waiting. (TIME)
Speaking of God-Related Things: European researchers have discovered “the God Particle,” believed to be the one of the major building blocks of the universe. Scientists first predicted the subatomic Higgs boson particle, as it’s also called, back in the ’60s. (Gawker)
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread: This high-tech toaster will burn customized images from Google directly into your morning toast. (The Daily Wh.at)
Enjambment: Here is a haiku / About new Twitter poems / That are possible. (Slate)
Life of Pi: It’s 3/14, and you know what that means: Pi Day! It’s a day for math enthusiasts to celebrate everyone’s favorite mathematical constant beginning with 3.14159. It’s also a day for the rest of the world to indulge in some baked goods. Shout out to the pecan pie slices in the TIME cafeteria — your time has come. Here are 10 other photos of delicious pies. (mental_floss)
How About Some Cake Instead: It’s Michael Caine’s 80th birthday. Rest assured, Master Wayne served him breakfast in bed today. (Flavorwire)
RIP RSS: Sorry nerds, Google Reader’s days are numbered. Now you’ll have to find a new way to secretly browse Reddit at work. (New York)
Presidential Tunes: “Michelle’s like Beyoncé in that song,” President Obama tells Vogue magazine in its April cover story. “‘Let me upgrade ya!’ She upgraded me.” In the story, we also learn Barack likes to bump the Black Eyed Peas. Somebody let will.i.am know we found where the love is — it’s in the White House. (Vogue)
Sassypants: Mindy Kaling is writing another book. Memo to NBC sitcom ladies: keep the pages coming. (Huffington Post)
All Tweens Considered: NPR wants the young folks to listen in — and it’s launching a campaign to get 20-somethings to do so. (New York Times)
Conspiracy Theories: An Iranian news agency thinks Argo director Ben Affleck is a secret war criminal. In a statement, four-year-old Seraphina Affleck said she was “super bummed” the family vacation to Tehran was canceled. (BuzzFeed)
The Future: In 1993, AT&T made an advertisement predicting the technologies of today — and they got it spot-on, if you ignore the part where we use iPads as fax machines. (Reddit)