Brit here, also blocked, with a similar message, but to be fair, if that website had any good ancient artefacts on it i'd be over there to steal them in a flash, so maybe it's for the best.

Since it is a government website, I suspect that foreign IP have a strong historical correlation with mischief.

Particularly because mostly forgotten webpages like this one are an attractive nuisance for black hats, banning foreign IP’s was probably a best-practice argument.

There’s also the possibility that a sudden uptick in activity (HN slashsot effect) triggered an internal mechanism.

And politically, I suspect there wouldn’t be a lot of pushback to any of it.

But I could be wrong.

out of interest i tried the states main site https://kentucky.gov/Pages/home.aspx

works just fine from Canada?

Doesn’t surprise me that the portal isn’t geofenced because it is likely to be well maintained, monitored, and funded for business reasons.

Stare Archeology websites don’t have the same incentives for IT attention…I mean the one here isn’t even very “Web2.0”.

Interesting that the apparent base64 encoding doesnt decode to anything sensible. Sort of thing you'd see on a CTF challenge ...

What's the encoding and/or content all about?

Same getting blocked in Canada

Same. Too bad as I recently spent a couple of days motorcycling through Kentucky and there were some beautiful parts of that state.

Same

Or the UK

Please keep in mind that real people live in Kentucky and joke stereotyping it as you have is both unhelpful to progress and downright hurtful to those of us trying to make it a better place to live.

I'm a proud Kentuckian, and I thought it was amusing.

I agree that it's amusing as a joke made in context with friends over a beer. Not so much where the primary audience is the globe.

"The globe" won't remember the difference between Kentucky and Nebraska two days from now. They'll just remember that flyover states DGAF about people from other nations. My state got painted with that brush just as yours did. Instead of sitting in Louisville and taking this enormous silly offense you've taken (which seriously is like somebody in suburban St Louis caping up to steal the valor of the Winter's Bone family), why not direct your ire where it might do some good? The email I actually got from the state employee shortly after posting the above (which I'll happily forward to you) said "Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, the security settings are based on standards for Kentucky state government web pages and modification of those standards is beyond my control." Frankly that doesn't seem all that different from what I wrote? Take it from an actual hillbilly: when your state is less embarrassing you won't have to get as embarrassed about it.

I live near my birthplace in the Ozarks of southern Missouri. I've spent a lot of time in Kentucky, as well. I'm not "punching down" ITT. One way to "make it a better place" would be to leave a comment on the form like I did. Kentucky residents probably have other options as well...

I’m from the hills of KY and I left for a reason, so I find this not-insulting especially if the teller of the joke is also from some backwoods.

But I have a soft spot for the people whom I left obviously, and won’t tolerate highbrow coast-dwellers being jerks for no good reason. These hill folks tend be victims of their own boredoms caused by an independent nature that was once a highly desirable trait when we talk about survival… but victims of inevitable progress and deserve help/pity instead of scorn. Except those who deserve scorn, ya know??

That response doesn’t sound right, this reads more like a stereotype of Kentuckians. Can you back up your claims?

I find it hard to believe a government official would respond so unprofessionally.

> I know Kentuckians aren’t the smartest

This is more offensive than the obvious joke you're responding to. Unless you're participating in jokeception.

It’s rude but it has a grain of truth. Now it’s silly to think that Kentucky is incapable of producing mind-bogglingly talented people, but you’re far less likely to encounter them outside of probably 3 concentrated population areas. I went to college in Lexington and there are a great deal of very smart, very motivated people and the average person you encounter daily can hold a reasonably intelligent conversation. But in fairness to the comment, head east and you run into populations where the average intelligence is a dramatic departure from the average population of your Madisons or Boulders of the world. How much is nature vs nurture is up for debate but I think you’d be kidding yourself if you claimed it was strictly one of the two and not some combination.

Sorry, my comment wasn’t helpful in the least.