Mirror selection and package maintenance

I installed Trisquel while living in Japan. For probably a couple weeks or longer, running `sudo apt update` with `repo.jing.rocks/trisquel aramo` provided 0 packages to upgrade. I thought this was somewhat strange to go so long without any updates, so I changed to archive.trisquel.org.

This provided 33 updates. After upgrading, there remained 16 packages with the message `The following packages have been kept back`.

I ran `sudo apt dist-upgrade` which resolved the issue to 0 packages remaining for upgrade and 6 to remove.

I believe I solved the problem, if I actually had one.

Is it normal to have zero upgrades for so long? (Maybe I never noticed before that this is normal.)
Is it normal to have slight variance between repos?

Thank you.

Dan.