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.
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.
"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??
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.
Wow! Very weird to find my home state and birthplace on HN this morning. Some of these places are even new to me. I hadn’t heard of Crump’s sink, for example, which seems to be a more recent find.
Relatedly, the original Colossal Cave Adventure, often known simply as "Adventure", which was a very early videogame and inspired so many others that followed (including the Zork franchise and Kentucky Route Zero) was loosely inspired by the creators' caving expeditions in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave (National Park) and some of the rooms and room descriptions in Colossal Cave Adventure even match up with real Mammoth Cave rooms. (Though my attempts to use the magic word XYZZY to shortcut to find Dragon hoarded gold at the real Mammoth Cave seem to always fail.)
I don't think Wick's has ever been in the top spot in Louisville pizza. The last Impellizerri's just forever closed (in N'Albany), sadly, but Bearno's was always better than Wick's. (People are welcome to fight me on that. Wick's gets higher rated in people's heads sometimes simply because of its proximity to bars and usefulness as drunk food. Take off the drunk goggles and its not as good as you think.) Then there's all the recent up-and-comers like The Post.
You're right...Wick's has always been overrated(and overpriced).
Bearno's is probably my favorite pizza ever. I've since moved all over the US, and haven't found a damn thing that comes close in taste or style. It's definitely a love/hate relationship...you either love a billion tiny meatballs, or don't.
I've had a weird time explaining "Louisville Style" pizza to outsiders or that Louisville is a bit of a "pizza nexus" where all the styles of pizza meet and mingle. No matter the style of pizza that I want, I can find someone to sell it to me. But the "home" style that Bearno's/Wick's/Boomboz/Impellizerri's (RIP) build I don't know where else to find that and describing it is tough. ("It seems thin like New York style, but it is thicker than that because it has to hold all the toppings not just cheese and maybe pepperoni, something truly supreme like half a deli and a full salad. Yet it also isn't crispy like a cracker like Cincinnati style or [shiver] St. Louis style.") I found a pizza place one time in DC that was really close. I don't know if I could find it again. I've also lived in pizza deserts on the West Coast where the choices were nothing but Papa Johns and Pizza Hut for miles (both headquartered in Louisville, which is its own weird thing; truly a "pizza nexus"). So many cities think they know what pizza is and what the best kind is. Not everyone believes me that I think Louisville figured it out: the best kind of pizza is always whatever kind of pizza that you want today (feel like Chicago style or Detroit style or New York style today? go for it!), but the second best kind is a hybrid inspired by all of those and has to go toe to toe with all of those that I don't think exists anywhere but Louisville. I don't expect many people to believe me that have never lived in Louisville, and despite the big power chains being from Louisville, there's nobody who has felt like exporting "our" pizza and no one even knows there is a "Louisville style". It's fascinating.
In fact, pizza aside, Louisville punches wayyyy above its weight in food. I guess I took it for granted, and assumed every city was like that. Nope, not even close.
Re: pizza, apparently people in Ohio call it Dayton style pizza. Marion's looks a lot like Bearnos, but I've never tried it!
Bearnos as a company is pretty scummy(see footnote), else I'd try to franchise one where I live. I'd love to know their suppliers and processes to start a competitor, one day.
Footnote:
I left Louisville for good exactly 2 days after their Hepatitis admission. They went on the news promising to make it right and pay.
I got a shot, out of pocket. Talked to 'management' at the location and they had no idea what I was talking about, then told me to quit worrying about it. I pressed on and submitted receipts, kept following up. Never saw a dime. But worse, they knew they were lying. Claimed to not receive anything, but I had copies so emailed it. Every person directed you to someone else, impossible to reach because 'theyre busy.' After 3 weeks or so of their game, I just gave up as it was costing me more of my time than money I'd ever see.
Might make sense for like, Google, not a tiny little pizza company with a few locations.
I'm not even mad about the money... I'm mad they had the nerve to make an announcement they had no intention of following up on.
Louisville punching above its weight in cuisine is another one of those topics I find I have to try to explain to outsiders. It comes up a lot in cost of living discussions around the possibility of a relocation plan to potential jobs in interviews. I know and appreciate that I have been incredibly spoiled. I've had fantastic meals made by Beard Award Winning Chefs and that wasn't a gala I RSVPed months in advance, that was just an ordinary Friday night where I walked in to their restaurant without a reservation and snagged a table or a bar stool. I rarely think to even get reservations more than a day or two in advance, even for some of the fanciest places in town.
I've seen statistics from various food magazines that rank Louisville as high as third behind NYC and LA for number of high rated restaurants per capita and I believe those statistics. I've been in other cities and have heard people ask with awe and reverence if I've ever tried various Louisville fixtures because their reputation proceeds them or because the head chef of some other restaurant "studied" there for a time. I do think I'm incredibly spoiled.
They've got us on the beer factor and higher education. Not sports, but eff college sports anyway. Looking forward to going down for Lexington SC some though.
I was born and raised in Florence. I've always been fascinated by how widely the water tower is known; as far away as Boston I've had someone remark on it upon learning that I'm from there.
I'm not sure Florence has all that much else to recommend it, mind you. Of all the suburban towns surrounding Cincinnati, it's definitely one of them.
I would submit that they actually aren't that good on an absolute scale. Relative to other widely available chain wings, perhaps, and I suspect that's why they have such a strong following.
Mind you, I haven't had them in years and now live almost 7 hours from the nearest Quaker Steak and Lube. My recollection may be flawed.
Huh, I never knew Quaker Steak & Lube had spread that far. I lived in Sharon, PA for most of the 80s, and worked a couple blocks from the original restaurant. Decent wings, if a bit too focused on heat level ("atomic wings"). Nice lunch joint - of course, the pickings were pretty thin in Sharon.
Lex here, not bad for remote work, low cost of living, access to surrounding metro areas (Lou, Cinci), and Lex usually has something going on. Just got access to gigabit fiber so you're not disconnected from the rest of the world either.
Also in Lexington doing remote work - don't know too much about the local tech scene. Seems rather limited and the best option is to work remotely for a higher wage and take advantage of the lower COL in the area.
Same as it ever was: most local "big" tech employers (and VCs) still hugely (and sometimes myopically, looking at you local VCs) focused on Health Insurance or are otherwise Healthcare adjacent.
But yeah, also still a lovely place for remote work, if you can get it, given the cost of living/quality of life.
I worked for one of the big corporations in Louisville. Huge companies use lots of technologies but .NET, Java, React, SPA frameworks, Docker + Kubernetes, and cloud migrations are the norm.
what would be accomplished by geoblocking a states's tourism site?
Isn't the core point of state sites like this to attract tourists? Does geoblocking them help with this goal?
Some years ago Arizona paid to put very large advertisements in downtown Toronto (Canada) to attract cold candians in the winter... things like that may work, geoblocking certainly wont.
i bet you whoever wrote the rfp for the website copy/pasted most of it from some other rfp that listed "prevent login from outside the US" as a requirement since that's needed to comply with some regulations for apps storing data. Even though there's no login the contractor shrugged and "prevented _access_ from outside the US". I'll bet you lunch that's exactly what happened.
edit: and i'll add that the team who put the site together is long gone and the people who maintain content (if any) have no idea what geoblocking even is. So don't bother sending them an email...
Torchlight KY produced "torchlight coal" which made its way from Eastern KY to major rivers all up and down the East coast. And a very small, "wide spot in the road" community, Aflex KY was once a model coal camp and had a lot of conveniences. See two PDFs in my drive for articles on each of these subjects from a trade publication called The Black Diamond https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NDl85xvgmyiqVbq8dTe4...
The Pikeville cut-through was the second largest earth moving project in the western hemisphere -- behind the Panama Canal -- until the big dig in Boston. Still in the top 3! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikeville_Cut-Through
My dad grew up there and my Grandmother lived there until she passed. We still have some friends up there but it's been quite some time since I've visited. I have great memories of visiting in the summer during the 80's, buying ice cream at Dee's. My family is originally from Blaine. I had wanted to go to the Septemberfest this year but couldn't. Small world.
Ohio, Kentucky's neighbor to the north, also has a rich archaeological record. The Ohio Archaeological Society's journal is archived here: https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/55832 Fascinating read for anyone interested in this topic.
81 comments
[ 375 ms ] story [ 462 ms ] threadI find it hard to believe a government official would respond so unprofessionally.
This is more offensive than the obvious joke you're responding to. Unless you're participating in jokeception.
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??
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.
works just fine from Canada?
Stare Archeology websites don’t have the same incentives for IT attention…I mean the one here isn’t even very “Web2.0”.
What's the encoding and/or content all about?
[0] https://www.doi.gov/blog/mammoth-cave-explore-worlds-longest....
For anyone geoblocked
http://kentuckyroutezero.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
Bearno's is probably my favorite pizza ever. I've since moved all over the US, and haven't found a damn thing that comes close in taste or style. It's definitely a love/hate relationship...you either love a billion tiny meatballs, or don't.
In fact, pizza aside, Louisville punches wayyyy above its weight in food. I guess I took it for granted, and assumed every city was like that. Nope, not even close.
Re: pizza, apparently people in Ohio call it Dayton style pizza. Marion's looks a lot like Bearnos, but I've never tried it!
Bearnos as a company is pretty scummy(see footnote), else I'd try to franchise one where I live. I'd love to know their suppliers and processes to start a competitor, one day.
Footnote: I left Louisville for good exactly 2 days after their Hepatitis admission. They went on the news promising to make it right and pay.
I got a shot, out of pocket. Talked to 'management' at the location and they had no idea what I was talking about, then told me to quit worrying about it. I pressed on and submitted receipts, kept following up. Never saw a dime. But worse, they knew they were lying. Claimed to not receive anything, but I had copies so emailed it. Every person directed you to someone else, impossible to reach because 'theyre busy.' After 3 weeks or so of their game, I just gave up as it was costing me more of my time than money I'd ever see.
Might make sense for like, Google, not a tiny little pizza company with a few locations.
I'm not even mad about the money... I'm mad they had the nerve to make an announcement they had no intention of following up on.
See: https://www.wlky.com/article/bearnos-pizza-employee-diagnose...
Louisville punching above its weight in cuisine is another one of those topics I find I have to try to explain to outsiders. It comes up a lot in cost of living discussions around the possibility of a relocation plan to potential jobs in interviews. I know and appreciate that I have been incredibly spoiled. I've had fantastic meals made by Beard Award Winning Chefs and that wasn't a gala I RSVPed months in advance, that was just an ordinary Friday night where I walked in to their restaurant without a reservation and snagged a table or a bar stool. I rarely think to even get reservations more than a day or two in advance, even for some of the fanciest places in town.
I've seen statistics from various food magazines that rank Louisville as high as third behind NYC and LA for number of high rated restaurants per capita and I believe those statistics. I've been in other cities and have heard people ask with awe and reverence if I've ever tried various Louisville fixtures because their reputation proceeds them or because the head chef of some other restaurant "studied" there for a time. I do think I'm incredibly spoiled.
[0] https://archaeology.ky.gov/Find-a-Site/Pages/Florence.aspx
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Y'all_Water_Tower
I'm not sure Florence has all that much else to recommend it, mind you. Of all the suburban towns surrounding Cincinnati, it's definitely one of them.
Any time we drive to the Ikea in Cinci from KY, we'll get hot wings on the way home.
(My business is known for its chicken wings as well, just comparing notes!)
Mind you, I haven't had them in years and now live almost 7 hours from the nearest Quaker Steak and Lube. My recollection may be flawed.
Our recipe is simple: decent sized wings, deep fried naked, sauced and served. Good sauces matter, of course.
Given how easy that is, it's amazing to me that almost nobody else has good wings (at least around here). I'm not sure what they're doing differently.
But yeah, also still a lovely place for remote work, if you can get it, given the cost of living/quality of life.
Two meteor craters are visible as "broken windows". Middlesboro crater in the extreme southeast and Jeptha Knob near Frankfort (north central).
what would be accomplished by geoblocking a states's tourism site?
Isn't the core point of state sites like this to attract tourists? Does geoblocking them help with this goal?
Some years ago Arizona paid to put very large advertisements in downtown Toronto (Canada) to attract cold candians in the winter... things like that may work, geoblocking certainly wont.
Avoiding GDPR compliance problems?
The UK GDPR sets out seven key principles: - Lawfulness, fairness and transparency. - Purpose limitation. - Data minimisation. - Accuracy. - Storage limitation. - Integrity and confidentiality (security) - Accountability.
Dont keep track of any user info and you should be OK?
Many of the blocked countries dont have GDPR regulations, so there is that.
There is also the vast majority of US government sites which are not geoblocked.
https://kentucky.gov/Pages/home.aspx - works just fine from Canada?
Is there a compelling reason besides being friendly? Like treaties or something?
edit: and i'll add that the team who put the site together is long gone and the people who maintain content (if any) have no idea what geoblocking even is. So don't bother sending them an email...
Louisa KY was home of the first Needle Dam (and locks) in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_dam
Torchlight KY produced "torchlight coal" which made its way from Eastern KY to major rivers all up and down the East coast. And a very small, "wide spot in the road" community, Aflex KY was once a model coal camp and had a lot of conveniences. See two PDFs in my drive for articles on each of these subjects from a trade publication called The Black Diamond https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NDl85xvgmyiqVbq8dTe4...
Coal mining funded everything in Eastern KY and you can learn more about "coal camps" and the history at https://coalcampusa.com/eastky/eastky.htm
The Pikeville cut-through was the second largest earth moving project in the western hemisphere -- behind the Panama Canal -- until the big dig in Boston. Still in the top 3! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikeville_Cut-Through
We have the grand canyon of the south at breaks interstate park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaks_Interstate_Park
Home to one of the most famous feuds ever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield%E2%80%93McCoy_feud
We have our fair share of superfund sites... couple are interesting:
We had a huge superfund site as famous as love canal... "Valley of the Drums" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Drums
We have a nuclear waste dump that had / has plutonium disposed there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxey_Flats
Full list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Ken...
Where were you from / when did you leave? I have not lived in Louisa since 2003.
My mom worked at Blaine Elementary and of course I had my fair share of frozen cokes from Dee's through the later half of the 90's.