Given coffee’s popularity, I think it’s safe to say that most people absolutely love coffee. In pretty much the same way, given the popularity of Star Wars, it’s safe to say that most people absolutely love Star Wars. Now, what happens when you put the two together?

A woman by the name of Violet Wilson, a twenty-something writer based out of Minneapolis with whom Bored Panda got in touch for an interview, recently went to Twitter to share her guide to how every Star Wars character prepares coffee⁠—everything from gas station and Starbucks coffee to Keurigs, Moka teapots, and straight-up caffeine pills. Now all we need is for someone to create one of those internet personality tests where you are assigned a Star Wars character based on how you make your coffee.

We invite you to check out and vote on her 16 submissions and a number of additions posted by her fans and other Twitter users.

More info: twitter.com

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"I'd seen people use this "characters as other things" as a format before and always got a kick out of it," explained Violet the inspiration behind this little Star Wars coffee project. "I love Star Wars and have spent a lot of time watching movies and reading books, and I thought that I could give it a shot. The only thing I like as much as Star Wars is coffee, so it made sense to me!"

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We asked Violet whether there was some sort of reasoning as to why a specific coffee preparation method was assigned to a specific Star Wars character. She explained the process as a "gut feeling" and added: "I like writing Star Wars fan fiction, so something I really enjoy is thinking about characterization. I thought, you know, Obi Wan for example is a little old fashioned, and he's thoughtful and careful. So, I thought that something like a French Press would suit him! I also wanted to find images that matched the style and look of each character as well. Padmé Amidala has a very old fashioned, almost Renaissance character design so I found something that had wood and brass in it to match her aesthetic."

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Since then, her Twitter thread went viral, not only on Twitter, but also in the form if screenshots on Imgur, garnering over 94,000 views in just a day. Needless to say, this left her rather surprised: "I basically just tweet to make my friends laugh, so it was cool to see that so many other people liked it too. Honestly, it was a total blast! Twitter can be kind of divisive, so I was happy that I made something that hopefully anyone who enjoys Star Wars can read and enjoy. People added their own suggestions for other characters, too, which was fun for me as a fellow fan. It's a weird time and it feels nice to think that I made some people smile."

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Now, the main question is still left unanswered: what is Violet's favorite coffee, and does that fit the character she assigned it to?

"Tough one, but I like cold brew coffee the best, which would make me most like Han Solo according to my own thread. I'm definitely not as much of a "shoot first" type person, but I adore Han's character so I'll take it!" said Violet.

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Now, Violet found success beyond just reposts on Imgur, manifesting itself in a way that is by some considered the highest form of approval and honor: "Some of authors of Star Wars books re-tweeted the thread with comments saying they liked it, which basically is the coolest thing ever. Star Wars is so fun."

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Microsoft has begun rolling out a new feature in Office 365 to help IT staff stop the scourage that is "Reply-All email storms." ZDNet reports: The feature started rolling out this week to all Office 365 users worldwide. In its current form, Microsoft says the "Reply All Storm Protection" feature will block all email threads with more than 5,000 recipients that have generated more than 10 Reply-All sequences within the last 60 minutes. Once the feature gets triggered, Exchange Online will block all replies in the email thread for the next four hours, helping servers prioritize actual emails and shut down the Reply-All storm. Microsoft said it would also continue working on the feature going forward, promising to add controls for Exchange admins so they can set their own storm detection limits.Other planned features also include Reply-All storm reports and real-time notifications to alert administrators of an ongoing email storm so that they can keep an eye on the email server's status for possible slowdowns or crashes. The article notes Microsoft has experienced two different "Reply-All email storms" internally witin the last 18 months which included more than 52,000 employees, "who ended up clogging the company's internal communications for hours." A post on Microsoft's Exchange blog now says "We're already seeing the first version of the feature successfully reduce the impact of reply all storms within Microsoft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Board Game Arena features online versions of popular games like Carcassonne. | Board Game Arena

Board Game Arena has 175 great games, an easy-to-use interface, and many ways to play with your friends.

“How do I play board games with my friends online?”

As somebody who increasingly writes about the pleasures of tabletop gaming, even in a time of pandemic (and Pandemic), it’s a question I’ve been asked more and more frequently in the last month.

But it’s also a question I’ve had myself. I love board gaming. I love board gaming with friends. But board games are uniquely difficult to play across Zoom, and the handful of free board game sites out there tend to be focused on the classics, like chess or checkers. Don’t get me wrong: Chess and checkers are fun. But more modern board games — your Sushi Gos, your Hanabis, your 7 Wonderses — aren’t really available online.

Or are they?

You can find all of those games I just mentioned on the website Board Game Arena, which has been around for years but exploded in popularity in recent weeks. It’s a site that’s been getting me through some tense times and letting me stay connected to friends around the planet. The selection of board games is truly impressive, and the interface is clean and simple to use.

But it’s also a site that has some problems, particularly as more people crowd onto its servers. I’d recommend Board Game Arena — but particularly if you can afford the $24 annual subscription, which will make your experience much more stable.

Board Game Arena has most of the classics, but it’s also got a surprisingly robust selection of modern games to play

The first thing to know is that Board Game Arena doesn’t have everything. If you wanted to play, say, Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan — to name two wildly popular modern games — they’re not there. (Just for simplicity’s sake, I’m defining “modern” as roughly everything from about 1990 on, when the rise of so-called “Eurogames” changed board gaming as a hobby for even the most casual enthusiasts.) The same goes for more obscure titles like (my favorite) The Fox in the Forest, most cooperative titles like Pandemic, and more cerebral and involved games like the Cold War simulator Twilight Struggle.

Many of the games I just listed have dedicated digital apps on phones and the PC gaming marketplace Steam. That means you can play them electronically, if you want. But those apps often don’t allow for play over the internet, and you’ll be purchasing app after app piecemeal.

Board Game Arena’s chief strength is that it features a lot of games, 175 in total, many of which are very well-known modern titles (Carcassonne, 7 Wonders, Sushi Go, to name three) and several of which are all-time classics (yes, chess and checkers and backgammon are here for you traditionalists). It also allows you to play with friends, so long as you know each other’s screen names. But if you don’t have friends ready and waiting to play, the site will fill your table with players randomly selected from around the world, based on your skill level and preferences. And it’s all free.

When Board Game Arena works, it works really well. It’s going to be the solution for most people looking for a way to play games against each other online while they’re closed away from the world. There’s even voice chat that will allow you to trash talk or engage in polite conversation as you play. (Look, I’m not going to tell you how to treat your friends.)

But — and this is a pretty massive “but” — the site often stops working almost entirely at peak hours (usually early evening on the East Coast of the US). The crush of new players who’ve joined what was once a pretty niche site has led to severe server strain that the site is struggling to keep up with. Preference is given to players with subscriptions — $24 for an annual subscription; $4/month for a monthly membership — during those peak times, so it’s not unusual for free players to just not be able to access the site at all. (Subscribers get some other perks as well, including the ability to create tables for certain popular titles, though free players can join a table for any game.)

Yet even in its free version, Board Game Arena will be a great stop for most Americans. The site’s peak hours roughly correspond with primetime hours in Europe, so by the time it’s night here, you’ll likely be lucky enough to stay connected and find games to play. And if you can afford a subscription, I’d recommend it wholeheartedly. The selection is great, the players are polite, and there’s no better way to show my friends how great I am at Yahtzee.

To play, simply visit BoardGameArena.com.

One Good Thing is Vox’s recommendations feature. In each edition, find one more thing from the world of culture that we highly recommend.

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Nathan W. Pyle on Twitter

Twitter:

 a roast of the 50 state flags

Can You Name Every One of These 20 Starfleet Officers?

WHO: Tim Duncan, a.k.a “Old Man Riverwalk.” WHAT: A quick turn as Spurs head coach gets Tim Duncan his first victory off the court. WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Let’s be honest, it hasn’t exactly been a banner year for the San Antonio Spurs. For more than twenty years, they’ve been one of the most reliable teams in the NBA, making it to the playoffs each year without much of a struggle, along the way building a dynasty that clinched five championships from 1999 to 2014. But as the Big Three players (Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker) retired, and the Kawhi Leonard debacle played out, things got a bit shaky. This season especially has been marked by historic losing streaks and nail-biting wins. So…View Original Post

The post The Best Thing in Texas: Tim Duncan Is Undefeated as Head Coach of the Spurs appeared first on Texas Monthly.

dovewithscales:

nederboo:

themoonkilledmyagenda:

cataclysmofstars:

aphnorwegian:

mxcleod:

egalitarianqueen:

kibosh-josh-mahgosh:

egalitarianqueen:

rougaroucojones:

radarmatt:

rougaroucojones:

karolinedianne:

spangledshieldsandsilverwings:

Gif stands for Graphics Interchange Format. when graphics is pronounced “JAFFICKS” Then I will pronounce Gif with a “J”

^ This

It’s followed by an R of course it would be a hard g. But Giraffe is a soft g. Genius is a soft g. Gin is pronounced with a soft g too. GIF is I following a g, it would be pronounced with a soft g.

It aint Jif peanut butter though.

It would still be pronounced like that. The general rule is if the g is followed by an e or i, it’s soft g. U or a consonant is generally a hard g.

I will DIE WITH MY HONOR

Gear =/= Jear

Get =/= Jet

Gift =/= Jift

Give =/= Jive

In English, words with a ‘G’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ can be pronounced with either a hard ‘G’ or a soft ‘G’.

Words with Germanic roots such as ‘gear’, ‘get’, ‘gift’, ‘give’ (see above) are pronounced with a hard ‘g’ while words with Latin or Greek roots such as ‘gem’, ‘general’, ‘giraffe’, ‘giant’, are pronounced with a soft ‘g’.

So no, it’s not exactly a “general rule” that ‘g’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ makes a soft ‘g’ sound. 

Additionally, “GIF” is an ACRONYM starting with a word that begins with a hard ‘g’ sound, so “GIF” is therefore pronounced with a hard ‘g’.

We fight with honor

via @greenwoodthegreat. I could not have said it better, my friend.

Thor agrees.

This is a perfect compromise, it makes everyone unhappy.

geekremix:

captainsblogsupplemental:

Data was an artist on a level organics cannot achieve and I appreciate him.

Throughout history there are stories of men and women who, when faced with the decision to resign from their posts within a government grown rotten, opted to remain and subversively help where they could from inside the belly of the beast. We haven’t heard many of those stories from within the Trump administration so…

Read more...

Three people were hospitalized and 10 people were displaced by an overnight fire at an apartment building in West Philadelphia. But the reason you’re reading about this particular local news report on this here sports website is because a man who came upon the scene and literally began catching children being thrown…

Read more...

wired_parrot shares a report from the BBC: Released in 1982, Entombed was far from a best-seller and today it's largely forgotten. But recently, a computer scientist and a digital archaeologist decided to pull apart the game's source code to investigate how it was made. An early maze-navigating game, Entombed intrigued the researchers for how early programmers solved the problem of drawing a solvable maze that is drawn procedurally. But they got more than they bargained for: they found a mystery bit of code they couldn't explain (Link to full paper). The fundamental logic that determines how the maze is drawn is locked in a table of possible values written in the games code. However, it seems the logic behind the table has been lost forever.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gary Larson said goodbye to fans and the absurdist universe of The Far Side with his final comic on January 1, 1995, and since then the real world has done everything it can to live up to the inanity of his iconic comic strip. Unfortunately, the foolishness of 2019 isn’t nearly as enjoyable as sentient chickens and oversized suburban bugs. Now, the 21st century might be getting both of those creatures—along with aliens, cavemen, clever cows, and women with beehive hairdos—because for the first time in almost two decades, the cartoon’s official webpage has been updated. And unless this joke is on all of us, The Far Side will soon be returning.

After sitting dormant since 1999, The Far Side‘s webpage was updated suddenly and without warning (which we first learned about at The Daily Cartoonist). It features a new cartoon of an explorer using a blowtorch to melt some of the strip’s most iconic characters from a large block of ice. Below it reads, “Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!” Since the cartoon itself is signed by Larson, it certainly appears he will be returning with all new comics for the first time in almost 25 years.

Gary Larson’s official website for The Far Side stayed virtually untouched since July 2000, a time capsule of the early web—until yesterday, when it got its first redesign in 19 years. https://t.co/u34YeMZI4H pic.twitter.com/JC775vOwfp

— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) September 15, 2019

Does this make my complete Far Side collection obsolete? Yes. Do I care? Not even a little bit.

As for when the strip might formally return—and based on this announcement it seems to be coming back as an online comic—the best guess is January 1, 2020. The strip first appeared in paper’s on January 1, 1980, and that date also marked its farewell in 1995. (Though a second Gary Larson’s Tales from the Far Side TV special aired on CBS in 1997).

Will The Far Side seem as absurd in the 21st century as it did when it first debuted 40 years ago? We don’t know, but we know we can use a good laugh even more now.

Featured Image: CBS/Gary Larson

The post Gary Larson’s THE FAR SIDE Cartoon Coming Back appeared first on Nerdist.

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Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Keanu Reeves has always been great. That said, we are truly living in the golden age of the Keanu Renaissance. So much so that someone has created a DIY, portable Keanu gif player, because why resign yourself to merely imagining his glory, when you can watch multiple ten-second clips of it?

Read more...

When I wrote about App-pocalypse Now in 2014, I implied the future still belonged to the web. And it does. But it's also true that the web has changed a lot in the last 10 years, much less the last 20 or 30.

Websites have gotten a lot … fatter.

While I think it's irrational to pine for the bad old days of HTML 1.0 websites, there are some legitimate concerns here. The best summary is Maciej Cegłowski's The Website Obesity Crisis.

To channel a famous motivational speaker, I could go out there tonight, with the materials you’ve got, and rewrite the sites I showed you at the start of this talk to make them load in under a second. In two hours.

Can you? Can you?

Of course you can! It’s not hard! We knew how to make small websites in 2002. It’s not like the secret has been lost to history, like Greek fire or Damascus steel.

But we face pressure to make these sites bloated.

I bet if you went to a client and presented a 200 kilobyte site template, you’d be fired. Even if it looked great and somehow included all the tracking and ads and social media crap they insisted on putting in. It’s just so far out of the realm of the imaginable at this point.

The whole article is essential; you should stop what you're doing and read it now if you haven't already. But if you don't have time, here's the key point:

This is a screenshot from an NPR article discussing the rising use of ad blockers. The page is 12 megabytes in size in a stock web browser. The same article with basic ad blocking turned on is 1 megabyte.

That's right, through the simple act of running an ad blocker, you've reduced that website's payload by twelve times. Twelve! That's like the most effective exercise program ever!

Even the traditional advice to keep websites lean and mean for mobile no longer applies because new mobile devices, at least on the Apple side, are faster than most existing desktops and laptops.

The iPhone XS is faster than an iMac Pro on the Speedometer 2.0 JavaScript benchmark. It's the fastest device I've ever tested. Insane 45% jump over the iPhone 8/X chip. How does Apple do it?! ✨ pic.twitter.com/5nCKZUCAYK

— DHH (@dhh) September 21, 2018

Despite claims to the contrary, the bad guy isn't web bloat, per se. The bad guy is advertising. Unlimited, unfettered ad "tech" has creeped into everything and subsumed the web.

Personally I don't even want to run ad blockers, and I didn't for a long time – but it's increasingly difficult to avoid running an ad blocker unless you want a clunky, substandard web experience. There's a reason the most popular browser plugins are inevitably ad blockers, isn't there? Just ask Google:

So it's all the more surprising to learn that Google is suddenly clamping down hard on adblockers in Chrome. Here's what the author of uBlock Origin, an ad blocking plugin for Chrome, has to say about today's announcement:

In order for Google Chrome to reach its current user base, it had to support content blockers — these are the top most popular extensions for any browser. Google strategy has been to find the optimal point between the two goals of growing the user base of Google Chrome and preventing content blockers from harming its business.

The blocking ability of the webRequest API caused Google to yield control of content blocking to content blockers. Now that Google Chrome is the dominant browser, it is in a better position to shift the optimal point between the two goals which benefits Google's primary business.

The deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API is to gain back this control, and to further instrument and report how web pages are filtered, since the exact filters which are applied to web pages are useful information which will be collectable by Google Chrome.

The ad blockers themselves are arguably just as complicit. Eye/o GmbH owns AdBlock and uBlock, employs 150 people, and in 2016 they had 50 million euros in revenue, of which about 50% was profit. Google's paid "Acceptable Ads" program is a way to funnel money into adblockers to, uh, encourage them to display certain ads. With money. Lots … and lots … of money. 🤑

We simultaneously have a very real web obesity crisis, and a looming crackdown on ad blockers, seemingly the only viable weight loss program for websites. What's a poor web citizen to do? Well, there is one thing you can do to escape the need for browser-based adblockers, at least on your home network. Install and configure Pi-Hole.

I've talked about the amazing Raspberry Pi before in the context of classic game emulation, but this is another brilliant use for a Pi.

Here's why it's so cool. If you disable the DHCP server on your router, and let the Pi-Hole become your primary DHCP server, you get automatic DNS based blocking of ads for every single device on your network. It's kind of scary how powerful DNS can be, isn't it?

My Pi-Hole took me about 1 hour to set up, start to finish. All you need is

• a Raspberry Pi 3b+ kit $59
• a quality 32GB SD card $9
• an ethernet cable

I do recommend the 3b+ because it has native gigabit ethernet and a bit more muscle. But literally any Raspberry Pi you can find laying around will work, though I'd strongly advise you to pick one with a wired ethernet port since it'll be your DNS server.

I'm not going to write a whole Pi-Hole installation guide, because there are lots of great ones out there already. It's not difficult, and there's a slick web GUI waiting for you once you complete initial setup. For your initial testing, pick any IP address you like on your network that won't conflict with anything active. Once you're happy with the basic setup and web interface:

• Turn OFF your router's DHCP server – existing leases will continue to work, so nothing will be immediately broken.
• Turn ON the pi-hole DHCP server, in the web GUI.

Once you do this, all your network devices will start to grab their DHCP leases from your Pi-Hole, which will also tell them to route all their DNS requests through the Pi-Hole, and that's when the ✨ magic ✨ happens!

All those DNS requests from all the devices on your network will be checked against the ad blacklists; anything matching is quickly and silently discarded before it ever reaches your browser.

(The Pi-Hole also acts as a caching DNS server, so repeated DNS requests will be serviced rapidly from your local network, too.)

If you're worried about stability or reliability, you can easily add a cheap battery backed USB plug, or even a second backup Pi-Hole as your secondary DNS provider if you prefer belt and suspenders protection. Switching back to plain boring old vanilla DNS is as easy as unplugging the Pi and flicking the DHCP server setting in your router back on.

At this point if you're interested (and you should be!), just give it a try. If you're looking for more information, the project has an excellent forum full of FAQs and roadmaps.

You can even vote for your favorite upcoming features!

I avoided the Pi-Hole project for a while because I didn't need it, and I'd honestly rather jump in later when things are more mature.

With the latest Chrome crackdown on ad blockers, now is the time, and I'm impressed how simple and easy Pi-Hole is to run. Just find a quiet place to plug it in, spend an hour configuring it, and promptly proceed to forget about it forever as you enjoy a lifetime subscription to a glorious web ad instant weight loss program across every single device on your network with (almost) zero effort!

Finally, an exercise program I can believe in.

Follow @lamebook on instagram for more content!

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dryriver writes: BBC Culture reports -- with some neat graphs in the article -- on two different scientific studies that both found that chart-topping pop music has been getting steadily sadder and angrier since the 1950s, and that both song lyrics and the musical tone in hit songs are sadder, more fearful, and angrier than ever before in history. Lior Shamir of Lawrence Technical University found the following trends in his algorithmic analysis of Billboard Hot 100 hit song lyrics: "Expressions of anger and disgust roughly doubled over those 65 years, for instance, while fear increased by more than 50%. Remarkably, today's songs are even more aggressive and fearful than in punk's heyday. One probable reason for this is the growing influence of rap music, which, like punk, has reflected social unrest and feelings of disenfranchisement. Sadness, meanwhile, remained stable until the 80s, then steadily increased until the early 2010s, while joy, confidence and openness all steadily declined." In the second independent study, Natalia Komarova, a University of California Irvine mathematician who had been shocked by the negativity of her daughter's own music taste, found the following: "Looking through half a million songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015, Komarova and colleagues found that the tone of the music had become less joyful since 1985 -- just as Lior Shamir's analysis of the lyrics had also suggested. Interestingly, Komarova found that the danceability -- as measured by features of the rhythm -- had increased alongside the negative feelings. So, despite the negative feelings they expressed, the songs were also more likely to get people moving. Just consider Robyn's hit Dancing on my Own -- the pulsing synths and percussion belying the lyrics of loneliness and isolation. In terms of albums, Komarova also points to Beyonce's Lemonade and Charlie XCX's Pop 2 mix-tape as being full of dark but danceable tracks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The best statewide barbecue chain in Texas is housed inside grocery stores. With ten locations of True Texas BBQ and counting, H-E-B is opening its version of a neighborhood barbecue joint from Magnolia to Midland. They’re making sides and desserts from scratch, smoking all-natural meats on site every day, and serving it all in a restaurant setting with local beers on tap. I was tricked into my first visit to a True Texas BBQ. After striking out during a barbecue search in Midland, I pulled up Google Maps on my phone. “BBQ near me” in the search bar yielded a dot over True Texas BBQ. I thought it might be some new local spot I hadn’t yet heard of, but a few minutes later I…View Original Post

The post H-E-B Runs the Best Barbecue Chain in Texas appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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If three late-game scenarios had gone any differently, Virginia’s NCAA Tournament would have likely ended in heartbreak for the second year in a row.

Virginia men’s basketball got the storybook ending it dreamed of after melting down and losing in historic fashion to 16-seed UMBC a year ago. The Cavaliers secured the program’s first national title with an overtime, 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Monday night.

The championship game featured a chaotic and intense finish, just as most other Virginia games did throughout March Madness. The magic number for UVA and its fans is 28.5. Had 28.5 seconds late in regulation across three games gone differently, Virginia wouldn’t have been crowned a champion.

This tournament run tested the Cavs’ ability to survive. On three different occasions, Virginia was a single missed or made bucket away from packing its bags and heading home. Let’s review Virginia’s miraculous, late-game heroics, and what was a gut-wrenching nine days for Hoos fans.

1. Elite Eight: Mamadi Diakite’s buzzer-beater

Ty Jerome, who had stepped up so many times before for the Cavs, missed the front end of a one-and-one with 5.9 seconds left in regulation that could have brought the Cavaliers within one point of No. 3 seed Purdue. But in extreme good fortune, the miss ricocheted to the perfect place for Cavs center Mamadi Diakite to back-tap the ball and give Virginia a last-chance possession.

Purdue still was up two points with less than three seconds left. The Cavs had no timeouts. One stop would send the nation’s best team home and punch an unexpected ticket to the Final Four for the Boilermakers.

But a laser of a pass from Kihei Clark ended in an improbable Diakite runner, sending the game to overtime for another five minutes of play.

The rest is history.

2. Final Four: Kyle Guy’s free throws

There we were again with the Hoos down by four points with the ball and the clock ticking with under 10 seconds to go. Kyle Guy sunk a clutch three-point shot from the corner to bring his team within one, then Auburn’s Jared Harper split a pair of free throws to make it a two-point game.

Auburn used its fouls to give, then made the worst mistake possible and fouled Guy as he was shooting behind the arc with .6 seconds to go, giving up three free throw attempts.

Guy stepped up to the line and drained all three for the win.

(And oh yeah, those free throws likely would not have been possible if referees hadn’t missed a blatant double dribble on Jerome).

3. Championship game: DeAndre Hunter’s three

In familiar form, Virginia had another late-game deficit, trailing by three points to Texas Tech with 22 seconds to go in the title game. This time, a new hero stepped up in Hunter, who hit an open three that saved the game.

This was Virginia’s year.

The Cavaliers went 35-3 on the season, and were the best team in college basketball since October according to advance metrics, even if the Cavs didn’t always roll through their stiff competition in April. Still, it’s fitting that they should be the team cutting down the nets.

But sheesh, everything could’ve been different had those 28.5 seconds gone any other way.

The post Skrillex Can Save You From Mosquito Bites appeared first on Nerdist.

Texans, it turns out, don't know their U.S. history. A new study from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found 63 percent of respondents in Texas failed a quiz based on questions from the U.S. citizenship examination.