Okay, so for some context .ml is run by the Lemmy devs and the devs are openly tankies (authoritarian communists). .ml, along with Lemmygrad (also run by the devs) and Hexbear are known as the Tankie Triad. While not as bad as the other two, .ml still has a lot of tankies compared to instances that aren’t part of the triad. Additionally, .ml used to be the recommended instance (until .world came along), making it one of the more populated instances. Most other instances defederate with Lemmygrad and Hexbear, but not necessarily .ml.

Basically, there’s a lot of extremely opinionated and often combative people there and provoking them (intentionally or not) is very easy.

That’s my understanding of the situation anyway.

I believe people from Moscow are called Muscovites. I don’t know about Versailles though.

Support for Archos devices was removed from daily builds in 2020.

I have a Thinkpad T480 that I’m very happy with. I believe it’s around 7 or 8 years old, but it works great. Unlike most laptops, it doesn’t have soldered RAM, so it’s easily upgraded. One downside is that most units don’t come with a lot of storage, so you’ll probably want to get a larger drive. I spent around $200 on mine plus another $100 for the SSD. It’s a great inexpensive laptop that’ll last for years.