Man, I remember having to use a VPN to sign up for Spotify when it launched, because it was founded in and available to the UK only.

Sometimes it’s because of the temperature delta. Really cold outside and warm inside might feel hot, comparatively. Apparent temperature stuff.

Other times it’s probably over compensation for the thin skinned.

Irrelevant, unless your pihole is running on your DHCP server. Does the server running pihole have a statically assigned IP that is within the DHCP range being assigned to other devices?

Static addresses should be outside of your DHCP range, ideally. If you can’t change the range, and assuming sequential handouts of IPs from your router among other things, you can try setting the server’s static IP to a bigger number.